Storm Track dk-7

by Margaret Maron

  Looking at his father’s sleeping face, the worry lines smoothed out for the moment, Stan realized that it wasn’t fine, hadn’t been fine even before they left Warrenton. More and more, it was as if he and Dad and Lashanda were in a circle together and Mama was on the outside with her back to them.

  A scrap of a verse he’d learned in Sunday school when he was younger than Lashanda came to him. Something about a person standing apart.

  But Love and I had the wit to win:

  We drew a circle that took him in.

  That image suddenly troubled him so much that he slipped out of the room as silently as he’d come. What did circles of love have to do with this anyhow? They loved Mama and Mama surely loved them.

  Look at the way she took care of them, the way she cooked good food and kept the house so neat and clean. Not like Willie’s mom, who half the time sent him out for pizza or KFC and didn’t seem to care if dishes piled up in the kitchen or if people dropped clothes and toys and schoolbooks wherever they finished with them so that she couldn’t have vacuumed or dusted even if she’d wanted to.

  Unbidden though came memories of the way Mrs. Parrish could throw back her head and roar with laughter over something Willie said, how Sister Jordan would reach out and suddenly crush her grandsons with big warm hugs for no reason at all, how old Brother Frank and Sister Hathy Smith still held hands when they walked across the churchyard despite their canes.

  When did Mama quit laughing and hugging them? he wondered. Or holding Dad’s hand? Because she did use to.

  Didn’t she?

  He shook his head angrily, hating himself for these disloyal thoughts. Mama loves us, he told himself firmly, and we love her. She’s just busy doing good things for people. She sees that Sister Jordan’s grass is cut, sees that nobody at Balm of Gilead goes hungry, and even though she doesn’t like dealing with white people, she doesn’t let that stop her from driving over to Dobbs whenever some of the congregation need help signing up for benefits.

  She makes sure all the shut-ins get their Meals on Wheels and that they have a ride to the clinic for their checkups.

  And look how she loaned her car to Miss Rosa yesterday so Miss Rosa wouldn’t lose her job when her car broke down Friday.

  Mama’s prayer partner was a cheerful person. Rough as she had it, she could always find things to laugh about when she came to visit, outrageous things white people did where she worked, things that made Mama shake her head and cluck her tongue.

  Dad thought Miss Rosa was using her, but Mama just shrugged at that. “We’re here to be used, Ralph,” she reproached him. “How can I see your church members struggling and not try to help?”

  As Stan entered the kitchen, he could see his mother and Rosa Edwards through the open door that led out to a screened porch. The two women sat facing each other across a small wicker table. The Bible was open between them, but their hands were clasped, their heads were close together and Miss Rosa was speaking with low urgency.

  Both of Clara Freeman’s children knew better than to interrupt a parent’s conversation, so Stan went to the doorway and waited quietly until one of the women should notice him.

  Miss Rosa saw him first and sat back abruptly, as if startled.

  “What is it, Stanley?” his mother asked sharply.

  “May I have a glass of lemonade, Mama?”

  “Yes, but be sure and wipe up the counter if you spill any. I don’t want ants in my kitchen again. Lemonade for you, Rosa?”

  “I shouldn’t. In fact, I probably ought to go.” The other woman shifted in her chair, but didn’t get up. “I’ve hindered you too long already.”

  “You never hinder me,” said his mother with a smile for her friend. She closed her Bible and put it aside. “Stanley?”

  Without spilling a drop, he brought a brimming glass out to the porch and set it down in front of Miss Rosa.

  “Thank you, honey,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  As he returned to the kitchen, he heard Miss Rosa say, “You’re raising you a fine young man, Sister Clara.”

  “We’re real proud of him,” his mother said.

  As she always said.

  * * *

  Sunday dinner long over, the kitchen restored to order, the chattering nieces and nephews and their noisy children now departed, Cyl DeGraffenried’s grandmother rested drowsily in her old oak rocking chair. The chair had a split willow seat that her own mother had woven half a century earlier and Mrs. Mitchiner kept it protected with a dark blue cushion. No one else ever sat there and the child who dared put his skinny little bottom on that cushion without being invited risked getting that bottom smacked.

  Mrs. Mitchiner gave a dainty yawn and settled herself more comfortably in the chair.

  Cyl nudged a small footstool closer and said, “Wouldn’t you rest better if you went and lay down for a while?”

  “I’m not ready to take to my bed in the daytime yet,” Mrs. Mitchiner said tartly.

  As Cyl had known she would. Unless she were sick, her grandmother never lay down until bedtime. If the sun was up, so was she. Her only concession to sloth was to lean back and let her spine actually rest against the cushion.

  “See you next Sunday, then,” said Cyl as she bent to kiss that cool pale cheek. “Call me if you need anything.”

  The older woman caught her hand. “Everything all right with you, child?”

  “Sure,” Cyl said cautiously. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. This last month, there’s something different. I look at you in church. One minute you be sad, next minute you be lit up all happy.”

  Green eyes looked deep into Cyl’s brown.

  “Oh, baby, you finally loving somebody?”

  “You, Grandma,” she parried lightly. “Just you.”

  “I may be old, but I’m not feeble-minded,” said Mrs. Mitchiner. “Just tell me this. Is he a good Christian man?”

  “He tries to be,” Cyl whispered.

  Satisfied, Mrs. Mitchiner leaned back in her chair. “That’s all God asks, baby. That’s all He asks.”

  * * *

  At the Orchid Motel, Marie O’Day was showing her newest employee the ropes. Mrs. O’Day didn’t speak much Spanish and if Consuela Flores understood much English, it wasn’t obvious. Nevertheless, they managed to communicate well enough that when they came to the last room at the back of the motel and found a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, Consuela pointed to the work sheet and made an inquisitive sound.

  “Good!” said Mrs. O’Day with an encouraging nod and exaggerated pantomime. “Este guest no check out at noon, and it’s past three o’clock.” She tapped her watch and held up three fingers. “Qué más? What you do now?”

  Confidently, the apprentice maid stepped up to the door and rapped smartly. “Housekeeping!” she called in a lilting accent.

  Sunlight played on the low bushes that separated walkway from parking lot and a welcome breeze ruffled the younger woman’s long black hair as she listened for an answer. When no one responded, she used the master key to open the door, again announcing herself.

  Inside, the drapes were tightly drawn, but enough sunlight spilled through the doorway to show that the king-sized bed had not been slept in. The near side pillow had been pulled up against the headboard and the coverlet was rumpled where someone had sat. Otherwise the bed was still made. An overnight case sat open on the luggage bench under the window and a cosmetic bag lay on the dresser next to a bottle of wine and two plastic goblets, familiar signs that this guest was still in residence even though the room had been booked for only one night.

  Consuela Flores looked to the motel owner for instructions.

  “Start with the bathroom,” Marie O’Day said briskly, pulling the curtains to let more light into the room, “then we’ll—”

  “¡Cojones de Jesús!” Consuela shrieked. Crossing herself furiously, she recoiled from her path to the bathroom and slammed into Mrs. O’Day.

  A tor
rent of Spanish poured from the terrified maid and she clung to her employer, who looked over her shoulder to the figure that sprawled on the floor between the bed and the far wall.

  It was a slender blonde white woman.

  She was naked except for black bra, a black lace garter belt and stockings. One sheer black stocking was on her leg. The other was knotted tightly around her neck.

  CHAPTER | 4

  A faint rise in the barometer may be noticed before the sharp fall follows. Wisps of thin, cirrus cloud float for 200 miles around the storm center.

  Election day was still two months away and I had no Republican opposition. Nevertheless, I continued to hit as many churches as I could every Sunday I was free. Today was homecoming at Bethel Baptist, the church that my mother and Aunt Zell had grown up in, not to mention my sister-in-law Minnie and Dwight Bryant as well. I hadn’t planned to go, but then I hadn’t planned to be free either.

  Instead, I dragged my aching bones out of bed early and with my own two hands and a recipe off the Internet, I made a perfect pan of lemon bars for the picnic dinner that followed the preaching services. I also contributed a deep-dish chicken pie prepared from ingredients I’d bought Friday evening when I still thought Kidd was coming.

  “Didn’t know you could cook anything besides popcorn,” said Dwight, helping himself to a spoonful.

  “And you still won’t know till you actually taste it,” teased Seth, who was right in behind him.

  Seth’s five brothers up from me and likes to pretend I can’t tie my own shoelaces yet.

  “Y’all leave Deborah alone,” said Dwight’s mother. “I know for a fact that Sue started teaching her how to cook before she was five.”

  I love Miss Emily. Whenever she’s putting Dwight in his place, she always looks like a militant Chihuahua up against a Saint Bernard. I’m told that Dwight and his sister Nancy Faye take after their dad, a big slow-moving deliberate man who was killed in a farming accident when his four children were quite young. The other two look like Miss Emily, who is small and wiry and has bright orange hair.

  She’s the enormously popular principal of Zachary Taylor High School and drives an elderly TR that she turns over to the vocational kids for a new paint job every spring. They think she’s pretty cool because no matter how outrageous the color or detailing, as long as it isn’t pornographic, she drives the results for a year. Currently, the car’s a midnight blue with a ferocious cougar splayed across the hood. Last year it was turquoise with flamingoes and palm trees and the year before that, a neon purple with red and yellow racing stripes.

  I took a serving of her pear salad. With so many newcomers from all over the whole country, Colleton County church picnics are no longer just home-fried chicken and ham biscuits. These days the chicken’s likely to come out of a fast-food bucket that’ll be plonked down alongside a bowl of guacamole or eggplant parmigiana. But Miss Emily’s pear salad is unpretentious comfort food from my childhood: canned pear halves on buttercrunch lettuce with a blob of mayonnaise in the center and a healthy sprinkle of shredded American cheese. Even though I wind up scraping off most of the cheese and mayonnaise, I still put it on my plate every time it’s offered.

  Miss Emily was pleased and took me around and introduced me to all the new people who’ve moved in since I last visited. In between, we paused to hug and reminisce with old-timers who remembered my mother and still knew Aunt Zell. If everybody was speaking gospel truth that Sunday, I could count on a hundred votes right here.

  I was surprised Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash hadn’t come, but Minnie said they were spending the weekend with cousins down on Harkers Island. “I think she was hoping they might could have a hurricane party.”

  People were talking about beach erosion from the storm surges Edouard had kicked up as it passed by our coast, but a hundred and fifty miles inland, the weather here was downright pleasant—low 80s, low humidity, nice breeze. In fact, the day was much too beautiful to stay inside and after all the preaching and handshaking (and a helping of fresh banana pudding from the dessert table), I wanted some physical activity. My whole body was still a little sore and achy from last night and I knew just what it needed.

  “Anybody for a swim off my new pier?” I asked when I’d worked my way back around to Seth and Minnie.

  “You know, that sounds like fun,” said Minnie with a pleased smile. “I haven’t been in the water this whole summer.”

  Miss Emily begged off, but Dwight thought he’d swing by for a while if he could find an old bathing suit at her house.

  “Come on anyhow,” said Seth. “I got an extra, don’t I, hon?”

  “If you don’t, Robert or Andrew will,” said Minnie.

  I packed up the remains of my chicken pie and lemon bars and stopped at a store on the way home for a bag of ice, some soft drinks, salsa and several bags of tortilla chips in case this turned into another picnic.

  * * *

  The long pond that my house overlooks is actually more like a small lake that covers about five acres. Years ago, Daddy scooped out a marshy bottom when the little twins thought they wanted to raise catfish as a 4-H project. When they got over that enthusiasm, the original pond was drained, bulldozers and backhoes enlarged it to its present size and it was restocked with bass, bream and crappies.

  The land Daddy deeded me takes in only the eastern third of the pond. The rest is part Haywood’s and part Seth’s, but of course, the whole family use it as freely as if all the land still had Daddy’s name on the deed.

  When I drove into the yard, I saw two fishermen in our old rowboat at the far end of the water. One was definitely Daddy—I could see his truck parked under a willow tree down there. I assumed the other was one of my brothers or nephews. At a distance, they tend to look a lot alike. I waved before taking my bags into the kitchen and putting the ice in a cooler.

  By the time I got the food stowed and then called around to the rest of my brothers who still live out this way, cars and trucks were pulling into my yard—Minnie and Seth, Andrew and April, Andrew’s A.K. and Herman’s Reese. Haywood and Isabel were in Atlantic City this weekend, Robert and Doris weren’t home, and Zach’s wife and daughter Emma were visiting Barbara’s sick grandmother in Wilson, but Zach said he’d come as soon as he could find out what she’d done with his swimsuit. (Half of my brothers still act like they’re guests in their own homes and don’t have a clue as to where anything’s kept even though their wives have been putting stuff back in the exact same places since the day they were carried across the thresholds.)

  Long as I had the phone in my hand, I called Will and Amy over in Dobbs and they said they’d try to make it before dark.

  That’s when I finally noticed the message light blinking on my answering machine. Two messages actually. The first was from Kidd and came about five minutes after I left for church this morning: “I know I said I couldn’t come, but this is dumb when we both have Labor Day off tomorrow. Call me back and say if it’s okay if I scoot on up there this afternoon. I really miss you, Ms. Judge.”

  All right! His words zinged a warm flush through my body. “Take that, Amber, baby!” I thought gleefully.

  A moment later, my emotions took a plunge into ice water as I listened to Kidd’s second message.

  “I guess you must be at church or something. Oh, God, Deb’rah, I sure do hate to have to say this. Some asshole hunter took a potshot at Griggs this morning. Got him in the shoulder. He’s going to be okay and the shooter’s in jail, but they just called me out to cover for him. Damn, damn, damn!”

  My sentiments exactly as I angrily reset the message tape.

  “Hey, it’s not Kidd’s fault that his colleague got shot,” reasoned the preacher who lives in the back of my head.

  The pragmatist who shares head space agreed. “The situation’s exactly what it was before you heard his message. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Except that he lifted me up and then let me drop again,” I sulked out loud.

 
“So? Since when do you take all your emotional cues from somebody else?” they both asked.

  Point taken, I decided, and I made myself breathe deeply till I calmed back down. Just in time, too, since my yard seemed to be filling up with large animals. Through the window, I saw Zach’s teenage son Lee, Andrew’s Ruth and Seth’s Jessica arrive on horseback, escorted by Blue and Ladybelle, the farm’s boss dogs, and a couple of Robert’s redbones.

  How Herman’s Annie Sue over in Dobbs had heard so quickly, I didn’t know, unless she was already on the farm, but here she was, getting out of her car with her friend Cindy McGee, and both wore bathing suits under their T-shirts.

  Since it was just family and nobody I needed to impress, I changed into a faded old black bathing suit and topped it with a “big-and-tall” white cotton dress shirt that Haywood outgrew this spring. It’s loose and airy on me, perfect for keeping the sun off my bare arms.

  Until I had this house of my own, I hadn’t quite realized how much I loved giving parties and having people come.

  Seth, who was helping me carry lawn chairs from the garage, smiled when I said that. “Must be the Mama Sue in you.”

  “That woman sure did know how to throw a party,” agreed Dwight, putting a couple of chairs under each arm. He’d arrived in a bathing suit and T-shirt as faded as mine, his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes on a hanger in his truck.

  Mother’s parties and her hospitality were legendary. I had neither the space nor the help that she’d had, but I liked the thought that I might be carrying on her tradition.

  * * *

  The kids were jumping in and out and Minnie was bobbing around on a big fat inner tube when I got down to the pier. We’d had so much rain this month that the pond’s surface was almost even with the pier and I jumped right in. The water’s deep enough there to take a running dive off the end, but I’ve resisted all entreaties for a real diving board.

  “Only if you all agree to wear helmets,” I tell my nieces and nephews, having seen too many head injuries for one lifetime.

  (They tell me I’m starting to sound like their parents.)

  “Here comes Granddaddy!” called A.K. “Race y’all to him.”