“Maybe we’re going at this the wrong way,” I said. “Maybe it’s not who she slept with, but who she didn’t. Like Dr. Jeremy Potts.”
“Who?”
So I told him about young Dr. Potts, who would have walked away from his marriage with no strings attached to his income had it not been for Lynn Bullock’s shrewd advice to his wife and Jason Bullock’s equally shrewd representation.
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. A professional degree as marital property. Good thing I made Dotty settle out of court.”
(Tough talk, but Dotty herself told me that Reid was voluntarily paying twenty percent of his income for young Tip’s support.
(“I’m socking it all away in mutual funds for his education,” she’d said complacently.
(Like most hotshot real estate agents in this part of the state, Dotty’s doing very well for herself these days.)
“Did you hear that she’s getting married again?” Reid asked abruptly.
“Who? Felicia Potts?”
“Dotty.”
Most of the time, Reid kept the torch he carried for his ex-wife well hidden under his Casanova cloak, but every once in a while, I caught a glimpse of it. She was the love of his life and he’d screwed it up by screwing around.
I reached out and squeezed his arm. “Maybe I’ll call Amy,” I said, offering what comfort I could. “See if she’s heard anything about Dr. Potts.”
* * *
Against my better judgment and only because it would be his word against mine if this ever came to Dwight’s attention, it seemed I had agreed to keep quiet about my pen for the time being.
And now, God help me, I was even volunteering to ask a few questions on my own. And yeah, part of it might be to help Reid, but part of my very nature is a basic need to find the truth and bring the facts to judgment.
My internal preacher was not fooled by such high-flown rationalizations.
“You’d risk your career for curiosity? Curiosity killed the cat.”
“But no cat ever caught a rat without it,” said the pragmatist.
CHAPTER | 13
The people of the North might differ radically from the people of the South in many ways, but in the presence of such a dreadful visitation of nature, involving suffering and death, the brotherhood of man asserts itself and all things else are forgotten.
After Reid left, I watched the late news. The situation in Iraq might be occupying the rest of the country’s TV screens, but here in central North Carolina, most of the newscast was given over to Hurricane Fran which seemed to be heading straight toward Wilmington. It was packing winds of 130 miles per hour and forecasters were saying it could push in a wall of water twenty feet high. The sheer size of the storm—more than five hundred miles across—guaranteed that we were going to feel its effects here in the Triangle.
All along the coast, people were nailing sheets of plywood over their windows and getting their boats out of the water. Portland and Avery were congratulating themselves for bringing their boat back to Dobbs.
Skycams showed us thick lines of headlights heading inland through the rainy night as coastal residents from Myrtle Beach to Manteo sought higher ground. Channel 11’s Miriam Thomas and Larry Stogner spoke of ordered evacuations in both South Carolina and Ocracoke, which is linked to the mainland only by ferries. New Hanover County had ordered a voluntary evacuation of all beach communities, including Wrightsville Beach where some of my Wilmington colleagues live; while Brunswick County was taking no chances. Evacuation was mandatory on all the barrier islands.
Reporter Greg Barnes showed motels filling up fast and shelters that were opening in schools and fire stations around Fayetteville to help handle the evacuees.
Even Don Ross, WTVD’s color man, was unusually serious as he reported on local grocery stores that were already experiencing a run on batteries and canned goods. Eric Curry’s camera panned over empty bread shelves and depleted milk cases.
I tried to call Kidd, but all I got was his answering machine.
It was nearly midnight but I wasn’t a bit sleepy. Instead, I switched off the television and roamed around the house restlessly. I had candles and a stash of batteries for my radio, a half a loaf of bread and a fresh quart of milk. I should be okay, but the dire predictions left me uneasy.
The rain had finally stopped and I went out to put all the porch and lawn chairs into my garage. The night should have been quiet except for frogs and crickets, yet male voices floated faintly on the soggy warm air and sirens seemed to be converging from different directions. I was about to get my car out and go see what was happening, when headlights appeared on the lane that runs from Andrew’s house to mine and connects with a homemade bridge across Possum Creek.
The truck slowed to a stop as it drew near me and I saw Andrew behind the wheel with his son, A.K. Just topping the rise a few yards behind was Robert on the farm’s biggest tractor.
I ran over to meet them. “What’s happening?” “Rescue squad’s been called out,” said Andrew. “A car’s gone in the creek and they want us to help get it out.”
“Oh, no!” Without being invited, I ran around to the passenger side, pulled open the door and shoved in next to A.K.
“You know who it is?” he asked as his dad put it in gear for the creek. The tractor lights behind us lit up the cab.
“I hope not,” I answered. “But you know Ralph Freeman, the preacher at Balm of Gilead? His wife was out this way today visiting one of their church members and she never came home.”
“That don’t sound good,” said Andrew. “No, sir, that don’t sound good at all.”
* * *
We came out onto the hardtop just south of the creek, where it bends at the bridge before the turn-in to the homeplace.
The curve was lit up like a carnival. Flashing lights of red, yellow, and blue bounced against the low-lying clouds and were reflected back in ghastly hues. Three patrol cars, a fire truck, and a rescue truck had their spotlights aimed down toward the muddy water that rushed under the bridge. The creek had flooded its channel and was as high as I’d ever seen it.
Men were out there in it up to their necks, working around the door of a white car whose top projected only a few inches above the turbulent waters. I recognized Donny Turner and Rudy Peacock from the West Colleton volunteer fire department—both were too big to miss—and skinny little Skeeter Collins from the Cotton Grove rescue squad. Five or six other dark and indistinguishable figures milled around in the water and I heard someone yell, “Damn! Is that a cottonmouth?”
“Fuck the cottonmouth and hand me the damn collar!” cried Skeeter.
By the glare of the spotlights, I saw the men relay a cervical collar to him without letting the water touch it. Skeeter’s head disappeared inside the car.
“That’s a good sign, ain’t—isn’t it?” asked A.K. “They don’t put collars on dead people, do they?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wondering how they could possibly remove Clara Freeman—if it was Clara Freeman—from the car without drowning her in the process.
“Watch it, boys!” Skeeter shouted. “I felt it start to shift.”
“Get that tractor in here,” said the fire chief. “We need to get a chain or something on this car.”
Robert backed his big John Deere down through the bushes at the water’s edge. There was a winch above the drawbar and someone grabbed the hook and waded into the water with it. Robert let the cable feed out slowly as the man hauled the hook over toward the car where other hands reached for it. There was a confused splashing around the end of the car and several strangled coughs as men came up gasping for air before the hook was securely attached to the back undercarriage.
There were also enough strangled curses to make me glad I was a woman on the shore instead of a man out there in the middle of a muddy, moccasin-infested creek. (We may be technically equal these days but that doesn’t mean we jump into every activity with equal enthusiasm.)
Finally, a v
aguely familiar voice called, “Put some tension on it, but for God’s sake, go easy!”
That’s when I recognized that the man who’d carried the hook out to the car was Jason Bullock. I’d heard that he’d joined a lot of civic organizations like the volunteer fire department, but this was the first time I’d seen him since the night of our post-game pizza over in Dobbs.
With the tractor in its lowest gear and half a dozen men doing what they could to support the car upright, Robert kept the cable taut as he slowly pulled until the Honda was on solid ground. Water was still waist-high where the men now stood on what was normally the creekbank, but at least there was no immediate danger of losing the car and the person inside. A lightweight molded plastic stretcher board was passed from the rescue truck and soon they had a recumbent form strapped onto it.
When they came ashore, I saw that it was indeed Clara Freeman, unconscious and with all her vital signs erratic, but alive.
Dwight had arrived by then. As they loaded Mrs. Freeman into the ambulance, he turned to me with a lopsided smile. “Sometimes I’m glad I listen to you. If she’d spent the night out there . . .”
“Another two inches and her nose would have been in the water,” said a dripping Jason Bullock as we watched the ambulance speed away with lights flashing and siren wailing. “Anybody call her husband yet? He ought to be told.”
My heart went out to him in his empathy for Ralph Freeman and I knew he was probably remembering his own tense hours of worry before Dwight came and told him the worst a husband can hear.
“The dispatcher’s calling him right now,” Dwight said. “She’ll tell him to meet the ambulance at Dobbs Memorial.”
I put out my hand to Jason and told him how sorry I was for his own loss. He thanked me, then looked at Dwight. “I’ve tried not to bug you, Bryant, but do you have anything yet?”
“Sorry. We have a few leads, but nothing solid. But maybe you could come by the office tomorrow and let’s talk again? Go over a few possibilities?”
“Sure.”
We stood there on the side of the road and watched as the excitement wound down and the volunteers packed it in. The fire truck trundled across the bridge, back toward Cotton Grove, the extra patrol cars headed off to their usual sectors, and the remaining deputy showed Dwight the sketch he’d made to explain how Clara Freeman wound up in Possum Creek.
“We’ll check again tomorrow in the daylight, but we couldn’t see skid marks. Looks like she came flying down the slope, misjudged the curve and drove straight off the road without touching the brakes, going so fast, she just sailed into the creek.”
I was craning over Dwight’s shoulder, but Jason stared back up the slope that was now washed in light by Robert’s tractor lights.
“You reckon she might’ve blacked out? Or the gas pedal stuck?”
“With a stuck accelerator, she’d have been standing on her brakes,” said Dwight.
“And if she was blacked out,” said the deputy, “she wouldn’t’ve been going fast enough to skip the bank.”
“Hey, Deb’rah,” Andrew called. “You ready to go?”
It was getting late and he had a couple of bulk barns loaded with curing tobacco to see to.
“Go on ahead,” I called back. “I’ll ride with Robert.”
All this time, local traffic had come and gone sporadically on this back road. When we first arrived, it was one-lane, directed by a trooper who kept the rubberneckers moving. This late, long past midnight, in a community that was still mostly farmers and early-rising blue-collar workers, the road was practically deserted. Nevertheless, an occasional car came by and slowed to ask whether everything was under control. If they knew Dwight or recognized Robert’s tractor, the driver would even get out of his vehicle and come over to gawk at Clara Freeman’s drowned car.
My brother Robert had finished pulling it up onto the shoulder of the road and water streamed from the open doors. I walked over to have a look myself while Dwight and his deputy finished conferring and Jason was right behind me when an oncoming car slowed, stopped, and a man came toward us.
“Evening, Judge,” said Millard King. “That’s not your car, is it? You all right?”
I sensed Jason Bullock stiffening behind me and I knew that King hadn’t immediately realized who was standing there with me. In the half-light cast by reflected headlights, I saw recognition spread across his face when he came closer.
“Bullock.” His voice was neutral as he nodded to Jason.
“King.” Jason’s voice was equally neutral, but I finally had an answer to whether or not he knew his wife had been sleeping around.
And with whom.
Like a nervous hostess smoothing over an awkward social lapse, I found myself chattering about the accident, about Jason’s part in helping to rescue Clara Freeman and how lucky she was to have been found before drowning.
“You live around here?” Jason Bullock asked bluntly.
Now that he mentioned it, what was Millard King doing on this back road at this hour?
“Just down in Makely,” he answered easily. “But my brother lives over in Fuquay, so I’m up and down this road a lot. You say she went in this afternoon sometime? I sure didn’t notice when I came through around eight. ’Course, it was still raining then.”
“Oh look!” I said. “There’s Lashanda’s baby doll.”
I went over and pulled a soggy brown rubber doll from the car. As I did, I saw something lumpy on the floor beneath the steering wheel. Clara Freeman’s pocketbook. I gathered it up, too, thinking that I’d carry it to the hospital with me tomorrow morning.
The two men circled the car.
“It’s amazing,” said King. “The car doesn’t seem to have a scratch on it.”
“Dry it out and it should be good as new,” agreed Bullock.
My brother Robert came over, put the car in neutral and closed the doors. “What you planning to do with the car, Dwight? Want me to tow it over to Jimmy White’s garage?”
“Would you mind?”
“Naw, but he ain’t gonna be up this time of night.”
“That’s okay. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow.”
As I climbed up to the glassed-in cab of the big tractor with Robert, I saw King and Bullock walk to their separate cars. I guess they didn’t have much to say to each other.
Not tonight anyhow.
* * *
Jimmy’s garage was only a couple of miles away and the car pulled easily, so we were there in ten minutes. Not surprisingly, the building was dark and silent, as was Jimmy’s house out back, behind a thick row of Leland cypresses.
I helped Robert unhitch the car. We left the key in the ignition switch, although I did detach it from Clara’s keyring. When we climbed back into the tractor cab, I stuck the keyring in Clara’s soggy handbag and tucked it back under the tractor seat so I could hold on.
Now that we weren’t towing the car, Robert put it in gear and soon we were jouncing briskly across rutted dirt lanes. The tractor is air-conditioned and has an AM/FM radio, but Robert keeps the tape deck loaded with Patsy, Hank and George.
“Ain’t no country music on the radio no more,” he said. “Hell of a note when country stations don’t play nothing but Garth Brooks and Dixie Chicks and think that’s country.”
We rode through the night harmonizing along with Ernest Tubbs and Loretta Lynn on “Sweet Thang,” a song that used to really crack me up when I was six.
CHAPTER | 14
“Prepare for the worst, which is yet to come,” were the only consoling words of the weather bureau officials.
The calls started at daybreak.
“You got you plenty of batteries laid in?” asked Robert.
“Batteries?” I asked groggily.
“They’re saying we’re definitely gonna get us some of that hurricane. You want to make sure your flashlight works when the lights go off.”
“We got an extra kerosene lantern,” said his wife Doris, who was on thei
r extension phone. “How ’bout I send Robert over with it?”
Less than ninety seconds after they rang off, it was Haywood and Isabel.
“Don’t forget to bring in all your porch chairs,” said Haywood.
“And fill some milk jugs with clean water,” said Isabel.
“Water?” I yawned.
“If the power goes, so does your water pump.”
Seth and Minnie were also solicitous of my water supply.
“I’ve already got both bathtubs filled,” Minnie said. “This hot weather, you want to be able to flush if the electricity goes out.”
I hadn’t lost power since I moved into my new house the end of July, but it wasn’t unusual when I was growing up out here in the country. It seldom stayed off more than a couple of days and since we heated with woodstoves that could double as cookstoves, no electricity wasn’t much of a hardship in the winter. More like going camping in your house. Especially since it was usually caused by an ice storm that had closed school anyhow, so that you got to stay home and go sliding during the day, then come in to hot chocolate and a warm and cozy candlelit evening of talking or making music around the stove.
Summer was a little worse. We never had air-conditioning so we didn’t expect to stay cool even when the electricity was on, but running out of ice for our tea and soft drinks was a problem. And two days were about as long as you could trust food from the refrigerator in hot weather.
I emptied the ice bin into a plastic bag so that my icemaker would make a fresh batch. And I dutifully filled my tub, kettle, and a couple of pots with water since I had no empty plastic jugs on hand.
Daddy drove through the yard with my newspaper and said I ought to come over and stay at the homeplace till the hurricane had passed.
I pointed out that my new house had steel framing and was guaranteed to hold up under winds of a hundred and seventy miles an hour, “So maybe you should spend the night with me.”
“Mine’s stood solid through a hundred years of storms and Hazel, too, and it ain’t never even lost a piece of tin.” The mention of tin must have reminded him of the house trailer Herman’s son Reese was renting from Seth because he added, “Reese is gonna come. And Maidie and Cletus.”
Storm Track dk-7 Page 15