Home Fires dk-6

by Margaret Maron

  But he and Cletus had eaten an early supper and gone cat-fishing somewhere along Possum Creek, said Maidie. She was there on the screened back porch, rocking in the late afternoon shade and shelling butter beans for the freezer. I pulled another rocking chair closer to the hull bucket, fetched a pan from the kitchen and sat down to help her.

  “How come you never told me you know Cyl DeGraffenried?” I asked.

  “Don’t remember you ever asking,” she said mildly as her fingers rhythmically twisted the flat green pods and nudged the beans loose with her thumb. “Besides, I can’t say as I know her. Except for Miz Mitchiner, she keeps herself to herself. Far as that goes, Miz Mitchiner, she ain’t all that outgoing neither.”

  I ate a podful of tender raw beans. “Who’s Mrs. Mitchiner?”

  “Her granny. Lives out from Cotton Grove. Goes to Mount Olive.”

  “Any kin to that Horace Mitchiner that’s a jailer at the courthouse?”

  Maidie frowned in concentration and I could almost see pages of genealogical data scrolling past her eyes. She finally shook her head. “He might be a far cousin of her husband, but I believe he’s from that bunch of Mitchiners on the other side of Dobbs and Mr. Robert Mitchiner was from right around here. ’Course, he’s been dead almost forty years.”

  She poured her hulled beans into a large pot on the table, refilled her pan with more pods from the bucket that Cletus or Daddy had brought in from the garden, then settled back in her cane-bottomed rocking chair to shell and reminisce in earnest.

  “Miz Mitchiner, she’s had a hard life. Her brother’s wife ran off and she had to raise his young’uns, too, ’cause he was right sickly and couldn’t work much. And Mr. Robert, he got killed in a car wreck when their baby boy won’t but two. Her onliest daughter Rachel was Cylvia’s mother and Rachel—Lord, she was a sweet-tempered girl! Had the prettiest singing voice, to be sure. Used to sing lead in the choir. Anyhow, Rachel died of pneumonia when that little girl was just starting to school. All them children turned out good, though. Cylvia, too. But Miz Mitchiner’s son Isaac, he got in some kind of trouble and he run off to Boston before he was fullgrowed and she ain’t never heard another word from him in over twenty years. It has to grieve her.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, honey. With all your brothers? And A.K.? And as long as you been a judge? You know what hotheaded young men are like.”

  “I mean, was it civil or criminal? Did he rob a place, maybe kill somebody?”

  “I can’t rightfully remember all the details,” Maidie said, her forehead wrinkling as she tried. “But it won’t nothing like that, though. It was more to do with fighting for our rights. Trying to get colored folks signed up to vote? But seems like I remember there was something about breaking some white boy’s nose that might’ve meant going to jail? And later we heard there was a white girl that he’d messed with and her menfolks was after him. Anyhow, whatever it was, I reckon he figured it was time for him to get out of Dodge.”

  That was something my mother used to say all the time and it made me smile. I emptied a pod of beans into my mouth. They were crisp and tender and had an earthy sweetness of flavor. “So Mrs. Mitchiner raised Cyl here? I thought she came from down around New Bern.”

  “She does, she does. Her daddy found another light-skinned woman down there and that’s the one raised her. But you know how it is with some women. I don’t think she was mean or nothing, but she had girls of her own. Let’s just say she didn’t mind that Miz Mitchiner brought Cylvia up here every summer when she was little.”

  She threw another handful of hulls into the bucket that sat between us. “To do her daddy credit though, he promised Rachel before she died that he’d see she went on to school and he did and look how good she’s done—district attorney! She always was brighter’n a silver dime.”

  “Cyl’s that, all right,” I agreed, trying to match her hull for hull. “But she sure is hard on young people that break the law. Especially young men.”

  Maidie nodded thoughtfully. “Probably because of her uncle running away like that. He made a lot over her and they say she took it awful hard when he left. He was only ten years or so older’n her and just as dark-complected as her—onliest one of Miz Mitchiner’s family that was. All the others is real light.”

  (As someone smack-dab in the middle of the color chart, Maidie speaks of skin tones as casually as I talk about the color of someone’s hair or eyes, but it does aggravate her if somebody preens herself on being light or puts another sister down for being too dark. “Like they was extra smart for deciding to get themselves born like that,” she sniffs scornfully.)

  “Best I recall, Cylvia must’ve been around eight or maybe nine the summer Isaac run off. They say she ’bout cried herself sick and after that, she didn’t come as much or stay as long.”

  Was it that uncomplicated, I wondered, nibbling on more raw beans. A girlchild so wounded by her young uncle’s abrupt flight that she unconsciously tried to punish every young black male who strayed from the straight and narrow?

  “You keep on eating my beans,” Maidie said, “and they ain’t gonna be none to freeze. You so hungry, why don’t you go get you some of that ham I fixed for supper?”

  “Ham?” I suddenly realized just how hungry I was. “Maybe I’ll fix a sandwich to take with me,” I said, abandoning the beans as abruptly as Isaac Mitchiner had abandoned his niece.

  An hour later, I sat on the steps of my own house and watched the sun set redly over the tips of the tall pines half a mile away that mark the edge of Andrew and April’s backyard. Shorter oaks, and maples, now in the full leaf of summer, ranged closer, flanked by a thicket of scrub pines, wild cherries, dogwoods and sassafras that bordered the broad fields of corn. A warm breeze blew from that direction and carried the smell of tasseling corn, the promise of dryer air tomorrow, the plaintive call of a mateless and lonely chuck-will’s-widow.

  You and me, bird, I thought, feeling vaguely sorry for myself as the red sky deepened to purple and a pair of bats flitted across the pond in jittery dives and abrupt zigzags to snatch invisible insects from the air.

  On the concrete porch floor beside me, my cell phone lay silent. When he called this morning, Kidd had asked where I was going to be tonight and he sounded pleased when I said I’d probably work out here till dark and then I’d go take supper with one of the boys or visit Daddy for a while.

  “How ’bout I call you there around seven-thirty?” He had helped me site the house and knew its surroundings quite well by now. “You be on your porch, I’ll stand on my deck and we’ll see the sun go down together, watch the same stars come out.”

  “And who says men aren’t romantic?” I’d teased.

  But the sun had already set, the moon was glowing brightly overhead and still he didn’t call.

  Despite my ham sandwich, my resolve was weakening on that last pack of Nabs in the paper bag and I was just reaching for it when the phone finally trilled.

  “Hello?”

  “Sorry I’m late.” Kidd’s voice was warm and chocolaty smooth in my ear, making me hungrier for him than for all the cheese crackers in the world. “Amber needed a ride to her friend’s house out in the country and I couldn’t get back in time. Are you still out at the pond?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Looking for Venus and wishing you were here to show me Mars.”

  He chuckled and I knew he was hearing the double meaning.

  “Oh damn!” I murmured as headlights flashed through the trees that lined Possum Creek and jounced down the lane toward me.

  “What?”

  “Someone’s coming. I don’t believe this. I’ve been out here by myself for over an hour and now that you’ve finally called—”

  I tried to make out the shape of the vehicle—car or truck?—but the headlights were blinding.

  “Let me get rid of them and I’ll call you right back,” I said as I rose to my feet and tried to squint past the brightne
ss.

  “No, wait,” he said. “You’re there alone. Find out who it is before you hang up.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  A split second later, I was standing there stunned as Kidd turned off the headlights and stepped from his van with a big grin on his face and his phone in his hand.

  “Surprised?”

  The word came doubly, through the dusk and through the receiver at my ear, and for the next few minutes, all I could say between laughter and kisses was “You turkey!”

  “Surprised?” he asked again, his forehead touching mine.

  “Totally and utterly.”

  There was a waste of more valuable airtime before we finally remembered to turn off our phones.

  Arm in arm, we walked around to the back of the van. He lifted the hatch and I saw that the space was stuffed with camping equipment: tent, sleeping bags, cookware, a cooler full of cold beers and a big chilled steak that made me hungry all over again.

  We pitched the tent at the edge of the pond near the pier and I pumped up the air mattresses while Kidd started a fire. We had camped twice before, once in the mountains, once on the Outer Banks, so I knew the drill. Mostly, it was to keep out of his way while he laid out the gear as efficiently as Aunt Zell putting away groceries in her own kitchen.

  A Tupperware bowl held tossed salad greens and there were crusty rolls, tin plates to put then on and real knives and forks to eat with. When the meat came off the grill, charred on the outside and atavistically rare on the inside, it was the most delicious steak I’d put in my mouth since the one he’d cooked at Blowing Rock.

  I popped the tops on two Heinekens and we ate sitting on the pier with our bare feet dangling in the water.

  Our plates were soon clean, but other hungers still raged as we turned to each other. The smell of him—his aftershave, his clean cotton shirt—the taste of his steak-smeared lips against mine, the heat of his hands that ignited all my senses as they slipped beneath my shirt and unhooked my bra.

  He wasn’t wearing a belt and when I undid the buttons, his jeans slipped easily from his slim hips.

  The planks on the deck were still warm from the hot June sun and after all our appetites were finally sated, we lay on our backs looking up at the stars. The moon was halfway to full. It sequinned the pond as we slid into the water and glistened on our wet bodies as we twined around each other like silvery eels in the moonlight.

  That night, we zipped our sleeping bags together to form a double mattress and we slept on top of them with only a light sheet for cover. The sun woke us a little after five and it seemed so natural for Kidd to be there beside me that I didn’t care how awful I must look: tangled hair, fuzzy mouth, no makeup.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, pulling me down on him.

  By the time Will and his crew arrived at seven, we’d already had breakfast, put the camp in order and were clearing the floors of debris so that Sheetrock could be delivered on Monday as scheduled.

  Kidd is good with his hands (no double entendre intended) and under Will’s supervision, we installed the doors for my two-car garage and built a workbench along one wall. I hadn’t planned on a garage at all, but Will talked me into it.

  “Open carports let the whole world know at a glance if you’re home or not, or whether you’ve got company,” he’d said with the sly smile of one who’d slipped his car into someone else’s garage a time or two. “Besides, you’ll be glad for the extra storage space.”

  Now, as Kidd and I built shelves over the workbench, I could appreciate Will’s reasoning. I would never own enough stuff to fill these shelves, but in months to come, it might cut down on my family’s raised eyebrows if Kidd’s van were discreetly stowed behind thick aluminum doors, so I hammered and sawed with a will despite the sweat trickling down my face.

  At noon, Will paid the men their week’s wages in cash and I wrote him a check that covered his time, too.

  “Everybody keep their act together, you could be moving in by the end of July,” Will said.

  “It’s looking real good,” I told him, but he frowned as he gazed out past the pond to the dilapidated greenhouse.

  “We sure do need to get Haywood to pull that ugly thing off. You speak to him about it?”

  I nodded. “He says he’s going to fix it up.”

  “I’d stick a match to it,” Will said, “only there’s nothing there to burn.”

  After he’d gone, Kidd and I drove over to Seth’s and borrowed a couple of horses and spent the afternoon riding along back lanes, catching up on a week’s worth of small talk. By the time we’d unsaddled the horses and turned them back out to pasture, I was feeling truly gamey and sat on the far side of the van’s front seat as we drove in to Dobbs.

  “Kidd! How nice,” said Aunt Zell as she opened the screen door for us. “Y’all are just in time for drinks.”

  The back porch was deep and shaded. It ran the full width of the house and was a cool place to sit on a hot afternoon. The beds of bright flowers just beyond the screen echoed the crisp floral chintz on Aunt Zell’s new patio cushions. A bowl of peanuts and a plate of raw vegetables sat on the glass-topped table.

  Uncle Ash set his glass down and walked over to the door of his den. “Bourbon for you, son, or gin-tonic? Unless you’d like to shower first, too?”

  I left Kidd in their capable hands and went upstairs.

  My rooms on the second floor had begun as an apartment for Uncle Ash’s elderly mother years ago. Although connected to the main house, it had its own separate entrance and had been a convenient place to perch while trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. I could even feel virtuous about staying on after I was earning enough to get my own place because Uncle Ash’s job as a tobacco buyer meant lots of travelling both here in the States and in South America and he didn’t like to leave Aunt Zell alone. But now that he would be retiring at the end of the summer, the time was more than right for me to move out.

  Nevertheless, I was starting to feel nostalgic already as I moved through the cool, pale green rooms, undressing while I went till I stepped naked into the shower.

  I lathered with scented soap and shampoo and decided that hot water on tap has to be one of civilization’s greatest luxuries.

  “Unless it’s air-conditioning,” said the pragmatist in my head as I towelled off and let the cool air flow over me.

  “Amen,” agreed the preacher.

  I dried my hair, twisted it up in a loose knot which I secured with a couple of enameled clips, slid on a sleeveless blue dress that matched my eyes and put on a pair of dancing shoes in case we dropped by one of the clubs in Raleigh. Lipstick, mascara, and I was ready to ride.

  During the week, I try to act mature and judge-like. Happily, the woman who grinned back at me in the mirror didn’t look one bit like a judge. Didn’t feel like one either as she slipped her toothbrush and a fresh pair of bikini-cut panties into her oversized straw purse.

  Downstairs, Aunt Zell looked me over carefully, but all she said was, “Don’t forget we’re due early at Mount Olive tomorrow.”

  13

  Less confrontation

  More communication

  —Freedom Chapel

  Maidie had promised to save us seats if we got to Mount Olive early enough and a young girl, dressed all in white right down to the small white beads braided into her hair, was on the watch for Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and me as we walked up the gravel drive from the parking area beside the church. She looked about twelve or thirteen, that endearing time when they teeter between childhood and adolescence, more at ease in sneakers than the one-inch heels she wore this morning.

  As she handed us program leaflets, the tilt of her head, her deep-set eyes and something about her shy smile made me ask, “Aren’t you kin to Jimmy White?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “He’s my momma’s daddy.”

  “You’re Alice’s daughter?”

  “Wanda’s,” she murmured and led us inside and down t
he aisle to where Maidie was seated.

  Alice had been a year ahead of me in school, Wanda two years behind. Sometimes I feel as if I’m the only graduate of West Colleton High who hasn’t gone forth, been fruitful and multiplied.

  Mount Olive’s interior was as classically simple as its exterior. Sunlight streamed through the frosted glass windows into a large open space of dazzling brightness. Aunt Zell, Uncle Ash and I walked down an aisle carpeted in a royal blue that matched the pew cushions. Painted on the wall behind the choir was a large colorful mural of John the Baptist standing on the bank of the river Jordan with Jesus, ready to baptize him. Everything else was painted white: walls, ceilings, all the trimwork. Even the sturdy plantation-made pews had a hundred and fifty years’ worth of white enamel on them.

  Four big white wooden chairs, seats and backs padded in royal blue leather, stood between the simple hand-carved pulpit and the choir stall like ecclesiastical thrones. I recognized the Reverend Anthony Ligon, who pastored here, and the activist attorney Wallace Adderly, of course. Sitting between Adderly and Ligon was the Reverend Floyd Putnam, a white preacher from Jones Chapel Baptist Church in Cotton Grove. On the other side of Adderly was the Reverend Ralph Freeman.

  Sunday School wasn’t over yet and already the sanctuary was three-fourths full as Uncle Ash let me slide in beside Maidie. I glanced around and found more white faces than one usually saw at these things. I expected there would be even more for the picnic lunch. Mrs. Avery sat next to Jack and Judy Cater from Sweetwater and my friends Portland and Avery Brewer were there from First Baptist in Dobbs along with Chief District Court Judge Ned O’Donnell. Luther Parker nodded gravely from the end of the pew across from us and Louise gave me a wink.

  To my surprise, I realized that the person in front of them with her eyes firmly fixed on the wall painting was Cyl DeGraffenried.