Leaving Eden

by Anne Leclaire

  “Crops are being lost,” the announcer was saying, “which means a bad year for the farmers.” Well, duh. Like we couldn’t figure it out. He said nearly a thousand chickens had perished over at the poultry farm in Duncan. He didn’t mention what they did with all the dead chickens. I’d heard they ground them up for dog food, which I thought must be against some law. Next the man said two people had died of heat prostration. It was amazing to think a thing as natural as heat could kill a person. It wasn’t like it was a disease or anything. You’d have to be as old as Easter Davis or the Tyree sisters to die of something like heat. It was slowing me down, for sure. It’d made me oversleep and I was going to be late for work. At least the Kurl was air-conditioned. All we had at home were these lame fans in the windows that only stirred the air but didn’t cool it one degree.

  Daddy’d made coffee, and the pot was still on the stove. I swear he’d drink hot coffee if the thermometer read two hundred, but all I wanted was iced tea. I poured a large glass and stirred in some sugar, watching it swirl around the ice. Just the thought of food made me queasy. Outside, heat was rising off the road in waves thick enough to walk on.

  It was Tuesday, Seniors’ Day at the Kurl, and I prepared myself for the usual bowel complaints. Gas, indigestion, constipation. Last week Hattie Jones said it was getting so she had to order Metamucil in the industrial size. She said things like that flat-out without a trace of embarrassment, like we were sincerely interested in the state of her intestines, like getting laxatives by the barrel was something to brag on.

  “Sorry,” I told Raylene. “Overslept.” She was busy talking and hardly looked at me.

  “Some families attract tragedy,” Raylene said. “They just draw it to them.”

  “Like the Millers,” Lenora Mallows said. She was soaping up Easter Davis. “Remember the Millers.”

  The Miller family moved to Louisiana years ago, but whenever someone was having a string of misfortunes, people always brought up the Millers. Misfortune dogged that family to such a degree that they were famous for it. Even children knew their history. First off, their baby died of pneumonia, and one year later they lost their house in a fire. They didn’t save one stick of furniture. Nothing. Chief Newman said they were lucky to get out alive. After that, the linen factory over in Redden closed down, so Mr. Miller was laid off and they’d had to live on charity. Like Raylene said, they seemed to attract bad luck. Even their good luck had a way of turning bad. Like when the oldest boy, a running back for Eden, got news of a full scholarship to Georgia. The next day, he was hitching home on 29—which everyone knew was dangerous, cars whizzing through like there was no tomorrow—and he got hit by a truck. His football scholarship was crushed as flat as his hip. “Some people just draw it to them,” Raylene said again. “Seems like they got a lightning rod for misery.”

  Raylene’s theory seemed dangerous, like just believing in something could make it true. Mama always said you had to be careful of your thoughts. She said they had power. They were on that list of invisible stuff like love and prayer and imagination. Imagination, she said, was just another kind of thinking. She said the first place anything existed was in our minds.

  It made me exhausted to even think of having to police my mind all the time, watching what I thought, thinking of how an idea could just shoot out like a piece of lightning to take up residence in the world. If thoughts had power, why hadn’t they cured Mama? Did some thoughts hold more power than others? What made that so?

  “Who found him?” Cora Giles was saying.

  “His wife,” Hattie said.

  “How dreadful,” Cora said. “Imagine. Discovering him like that.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t more than four years back the daughter died,” Hattie said. “Swimming accident, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, that’s what the family said,” Cora said. “If I remember, there was talk.”

  “That’s right,” Easter Davis said. “There always was something funny about it. Her drowning and all. Wasn’t she supposed to be a crackerjack swimmer?”

  Cora turned to me. “She was in your class, wasn’t she?”

  I was still playing catch-up. “Who?”

  “The Reynolds girl,” Cora said. “Can’t think of her name to save my soul.”

  “Sarah?”

  “That’s right,” Raylene said.

  My mind finally caught on. They were talking about Spy’s family.

  “Lawd, that poor woman,” Cora said. “Imagine. First her daughter, and now her husband.”

  “Mrs. Reynolds?” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her husband’s dead.”

  “Mr. Reynolds is dead?” I remembered when I’d called the house and how angry Mr. Reynolds had sounded, how he’d threatened to call the police. Maybe it was a heart attack. All that anger couldn’t be healthy. Or an accident. Then I remembered what the radio had said about people dying of heat prostration. “Was it the heat?”

  “What, honey?”

  “Mr. Reynolds. Did he die of the heat?”

  “Lawd, no, child,” Hattie said.

  “He was murdered,” Cora said.

  “Sheriff Craw must be in his glory,” Lenora said. “I imagine those TV people will be arriving with their cameras. First murder in the county in I can’t count how many years.”

  “Mr. Reynolds was murdered?” I said.

  “Last one was back in the fifties,” Easter Davis said.

  “I remember that,” Lenora said. “Lillie Grigsby.”

  “The husband did it,” Easter said. “John, his name was. Accountant for some company over in Lynchburg. Little squirrel of a man. You wouldn’t think he had it in him.”

  “It’s surprising what people are capable of,” Cora said.

  I was picturing Mr. Reynolds at the school picnic all dressed up in a three-piece suit, wearing a hat similar to the one he’d worn in the picture on the front of the Eden Times when he was cutting the ribbon at the new chamber of commerce dedication. I was remembering how Sarah had said her mama’d had a face-lift, with stitches behind her ears, ’cause her daddy wanted her looking young.

  “The fifties?” Hattie said. “You sure it was that long ago?”

  “Summer of fifty-six,” Easter Davis said. “I remember Swannie was busy campaigning for Eisenhower, doing the phoning for the county, and Sissy couldn’t get through on the phone. Six months along and she walked all the way over to tell us.”

  “Wasn’t there one after that?” Hattie said.

  “You’re thinking of that hippie they found in the woods up by the Pedlar,” Lenora said. “They never did determine that was murder.”

  “Mr. Reynolds was murdered?” I repeated.

  “Right in his own office,” Cora said. “Sheriff’s looking into it. Thinks it musta been some drug-crazed kid, looking for money. Or maybe a client.”

  “Must have been someone he knew,” Hattie said. “He wouldn’t let a stranger in his office.”

  “No,” said Easter. “Especially not one with a gun.”

  “A gun?” I said. “Mr. Reynolds was shot?”

  “Right through the head, I hear,” Lenora said. “Close range, rest his soul.”

  “That poor woman,” Raylene said. “All the money in the world can’t heal the wounds she’s having.” Even though Mrs. Reynolds had never once set foot in the Kurl and drove all the way to Richmond to get her hair done, I could tell Raylene was genuinely sorry. But that was Raylene for you. Heart as big as Texas.

  “Wonder if they’ll have the funeral here?” Hattie said. “Aren’t his folks from Roanoke?”

  “That’s her kin. His hail from Lynchburg.”

  “I suspect the funeral will be here,” Lenora said. “They’ll bury him next to the daughter.”

  “Isn’t there another child?” Easter said. “Lawd, it’s getting so I can’t keep up.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Hat
tie.

  Spy, I thought. Then I remembered the thing I’d been working hard to forget.

  “There’s the boy,” Cora said. “You know the one. Drives around in his car like he owns the road. Going up to Charlottesville in the fall. Studying to be a lawyer like his daddy.”

  “Tallie?” Raylene said. “You okay, honey?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “You look peaked.”

  “I’m okay.” I was picturing Spy taking out the gun, and I was hearing it go off, hurting my ears. I concentrated on stopping the thought in its tracks, stopping it before it flowed like electricity all the way to Sheriff Craw.

  Hattie let out a long, satisfying burp. “Bacon,” she said. “Bacon and doughnuts for breakfast. In this heat. I should know better. Raylene, you got any Tums around here? I got so much gas in me, I could blow the place up.”

  I got busy straightening out the magazine table, relieved the conversation had reverted to the usual Tuesday topics. I didn’t really believe Spy had anything to do with his daddy’s death any more than I’d had anything to do with my mama’s. When I looked up, Lenora was looking at me funny, like she could read my mind as easily as she divined soap bubbles. Like she knew all about Spy and his gun.

  Tallie’s Book

  Thoughts hold power.

  It’s surprising what people are capable of.

  sixteen

  Cora was right about the TV people. By Tuesday noon, they covered the town like fleas on Old Straw. It got so crowded in Wayland’s Diner that Mr. Wayland had to take on extra help. The reporters acted like the place was their own private club and the booths were their personal desks. Mainly they were from Lynchburg, but some came all the way from Richmond. I thought about how people passed every day, and wondered what made some people more deserving than others of special attention. Raylene said it was because Mr. Reynolds was rich. If it’d been one of us, she said, the only reporter interested would be Miss Gibbons from the Eden Times. There were vans all along Main Street, dish antennas on their roofs big enough to contact Mars, and camera crews had set up on the sidewalk outside Mr. Reynolds’s law office. “The scene of the brutal murder,” I heard one reporter saying into her mike, her voice all edgy and excited. I swear some people would dance on the grave of the newly dead. I could never figure what caused people to be so taken with the misfortunes of others. A couple of reporters tried to set up over on Carlton’s Way, outside the Reynoldses’ house, but someone complained, so Sheriff Craw blocked the road off with sawhorses and said only residents could drive through. He put extra men on duty to enforce this rule. After work, I rode by on my Raleigh, trying to catch sight of Spy, but the front curtains were drawn tight and his red Camaro was nowhere in sight. When I got home, I phoned, but I got an answering machine telling me to leave a message, so I hung up.

  On the six o’clock news a reporter “live on the scene” (like they’d use a dead one?) said the murdered man had been a prominent lawyer in the community. There was a picture of Mr. Reynolds and one of Mrs. Reynolds, too. They called her a former model and mentioned she’d been a Breck Girl. They said stuff about how this was “the second time the family had been visited by tragedy,” and told how Sarah had drowned. And they showed her picture, too. Then the reporter said the local sheriff had no leads and the people in Eden were locking their doors at the thought of a killer in their midst. Which was a big fat lie. You wouldn’t believe they could just make up stuff like that and get away with it. Raylene said they did it all the time. She said the only ones who told the truth were Dan Rather and the weatherman, and you couldn’t always count on them.

  It was crazy like that for twenty-four hours; then on Wednesday afternoon a huge scandal broke in the mayor’s office in Lynchburg, something about a secretary and misspent funds, and the lot of them cleared out like they’d never been. “Sex, politics and money,” Raylene said. “That beats a murder anytime.” Then on Thursday morning, the Glamour Day people returned to the Klip-N-Kurl with everyone’s pictures, and for a while, believe it or not, we all forgot about Mr. Reynolds’s murder.

  We were expecting the two blondes, Sylvia and Patty, but this time the company sent men, as if ladies weren’t to be trusted with this part of the transaction. There were two of them and they wore suits with narrow legs and narrower lapels and sported slicked-back hair, the kind of men who called you honey and made you hold tight to your purse.

  I’d observed that most men felt out of place in the Kurl, but these two waltzed in with giant-sized cups of take-out coffee and fake leather briefcases, acting like they owned the lease. Without even asking Raylene, they shoved the magazine table over by the sinks, where we’d have to walk around it all day, and set up a card table.

  Miss Tilly was first on the schedule. They made a big fuss over her, calling her the “lovely Miss Pettijohn” and pulling out a chair for her to sit in. After they had her settled in, one of the men reached for his briefcase and took out a large white envelope with Glamour Day in pink letters in one corner. Raylene and I left off what we were doing and went over to watch. The pictures were wrapped in two sheets of tissue, which one of the men unfolded slowly, making a big deal of it. Then he spread them out on the table: one 9 x 12, three 8 x 10s, five 5 x 7s and twelve wallets, in a combination of the five poses.

  “Will you look at that,” Raylene said.

  “Oh, my,” Miss Tilly said, her voice hushed like you’d use in church.

  “You’d have to go far to find a prettier picture,” the first man said. He picked up the one of her in the tiara and set it in front of her.

  Miss Tilly reached out to finger her image. She looked like she might cry.

  At this point, the second man took over. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to let you keep the nine by twelve at absolutely no cost,” he said. He smiled like he was giving her a special treat, like the 9 x 12 wasn’t already included for the original twenty dollars.

  Miss Tilly’s eyes were stuck on those pictures. I didn’t even know if she was listening to him.

  “The complete package, all twenty-one photos, is yours to keep, too,” said the first man.

  That got her attention. Miss Tilly looked up at him, her mouth shaped in a perfect O.

  “That’s right,” he said. “All twenty-one photos.” He moved them around the table, drawing Miss Tilly’s eyes back to the pictures. She reached out to pick one up.

  “The whole package,” he said, “for only ninety-nine dollars.”

  Miss Tilly’s hand fluttered to her lap.

  “That works out to less than five dollars apiece,” the second man chimed in.

  I looked over at Raylene. I wondered if she knew about this part of the deal.

  “Oh,” Miss Tilly said, her voice gone all flat.

  “Now, we can offer an installment plan if that’s convenient,” the first man said. “We can break it down into payments for you.”

  “How much would that be?” Miss Tilly asked in that flat tone.

  “Let’s see,” said the second man, as if he were only at that moment doing the figuring. “We can give it do you for—let’s see—for twenty dollars a month spread out over a period of five months.”

  “Interest free,” said the first.

  “Twenty dollars?” Miss Tilly said.

  “That’s right,” said the second. “And absolutely no additional interest for the entire five months.”

  “None,” said the first.

  Willa Jenkins was next on line, and she crowded in to look at Miss Tilly’s photos. “Jesus, be praised,” she said, “but, girl, don’t you look fine.”

  And she did. The way Raylene had fixed her hair you couldn’t see her scalp shining through, and Patty, the camera-woman, must have played some photographer’s trick with the lighting, which Mama’d told me was a technique photographers used. Lighting, Mama said, was everything; it could be your friend or enemy, add ten years or take them away. They must have done something like that, because most
of Miss Tilly’s wrinkles were ironed out. She looked like she could be the queen of some important country. England, maybe. Or France. It didn’t take five minutes for Miss Tilly to decide on the installment plan, her hand barely trembling at all as she signed on the line. I imagined her drinking watery tea for the rest of her natural life.

  Willa settled in the chair next, and when they unfolded the tissue and brought out her shots, she tossed back her head and laughed right out loud. “Praise, Jesus,” she said. Her two friends elbowed their way in and repeated the praise to Jesus. I had to admit she looked amazing. Sparkling in a red satin top. All cleavage. Like Aretha, only fatter. “Praise, Jesus,” she said again. Just like Miss Tilly, she couldn’t seem to stop staring at her pictures. As she was putting her signature to the installment payment contract, I was wondering how she’d break the news to Baylor, who was still looking for work. But maybe, seeing his Willa look like a star, maybe he’d think it was worth five months of grits and boiled greens. When it was their turn, her girlfriends took the whole package, too. They left, sashaying out like they’d won the lottery.

  With customers coming in all morning and us leaving off shampoos and sets to go take a look, we ran behind on the schedule, but no one complained. It was the same story whenever anyone saw the photos. They were intoxicated, plain drunk on these visions of themselves, and every single one of them ended up buying the whole lot. I couldn’t imagine what they were going to do with all these photos. How many pictures of yourself in rhinestones and elbow-length gloves could you hang on the walls of a four-room house? How many wallet-sized ones could you hand out? How much could you sacrifice to get them?