She said it from memory. She’d practiced in front of the mirror the night before. She turned and smiled at the governor, who looked rather queasy.
He said, “You can’t do that.”
She said, “Watch me!”
Then she took the check from the easel and tore it in half. It was thick cardboard, but she was a strong Quaker woman. It ripped right down the middle.
Jessie hadn’t planned on tearing the check, but the idea came to her during her speech, and it seemed a good one. It felt like the thing to do. A dramatic statement. A testimony.
She was right. It played on all the television stations that evening.
Bob Miles Jr. couldn’t have been happier. Finally, something to write about. This was better than a murder.
“Peacock Kills Goose That Laid Golden Egg,” read the headline. It was a clever headline. Even Jessie thought so. She and Asa bought three extra copies to mail to their children.
Jessie told Asa, “I didn’t even think about the kids. I hope they’re not upset with us.”
But they weren’t. They were proud. To Jessie, that was better than having five million dollars, having your children proud of you. It’s a good thing when parents are proud of their children, but it’s especially fine when children take pride in their parents.
The state sent her a check anyway, along with a letter saying Jessie had to cash it—it was the law.
She wrote I refuse to accept this money across the face of the check and mailed it back.
A man from the lottery came to see her. He said when Jessie bought the ticket, she accepted certain obligations to take the money.
She said, “I didn’t buy the ticket. It was given to me.”
He said her refusing to take the money made the lottery look bad.
“That’s precisely what I’d hoped,” she told him, then showed him the door.
This has never happened before. They’re saying it might end up in court. Jessie’s ready to go. She’s never felt this alive. It’s a wonderful thing to have a testimony.
They’ve been talking about it down at the Coffee Cup. Those old men sit at the liar’s table underneath the swordfish and talk about what they’d have done with five million dollars. Dumb things. They want to open bait shops. They want to corner the worm market.
I’m glad I didn’t win. I’d have bought my mother a dishwasher and she and my father wouldn’t have stood side by side anymore—she washing, he drying and putting away. They’d have stopped looking out the kitchen window at the finches on the feeder. They’d have been the poorer for it.
Those old men sit down at the Coffee Cup wishing they’d hit it big. What they don’t realize is that they already have. If you can go home to someone who loves you, if your children are proud of you, if you can keep your integrity, you’ve hit the jackpot. You don’t need the state to call your number. It’s already been called.
Twenty-three
Legal Grounds
The reason for our town’s unbroken chain of bliss is that for seventeen years, we had only one lawyer—Owen Stout. With a shortage of lawyers to cultivate hostility, couples who might have divorced stayed married and resolved their conflicts. Persons inclined to sue, having no lawyer to further their claim, settled their contentions peaceably. Besides, it is against our religion to sue each other, so we don’t hire lawyers, we just stop talking to one another. This caused the lawyers to stay away in droves.
So Owen Stout lived in a regular house on a regular street, but was dreaming of a bigger home after Jessie Peacock won five million dollars in the lottery. He was going to charge her 10 percent of the winnings to manage her affairs, except Jessie declined the money, saying the lottery was immoral. Owen was glad Jessie was a woman of virtue; he just wished she’d put off virtue until he had his 10 percent.
Owen had made his peace with his modest income. What annoyed him was walking into the Coffee Cup for lunch and having to listen to the lawyer jokes. Ernie Matthews, who spent eight years in high school, would spy Owen and start in with his lawyer jokes, and people would laugh as if Ernie were a genius.
There would be Ernie, sitting at the counter, blowing into his hands.
“Man, it’s cold out there,” he’d say. “It’s so cold, I just saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.”
The old men at the liar’s table under the swordfish would hoot. They thought Ernie was hysterical.
Thus encouraged, Ernie would tell another.
He’d say, “What does a lawyer use for birth control?”
The old men would think about that, then one of them would ask, “I don’t know. What does a lawyer use for birth control?”
Ernie would answer, “His personality.”
They thought that was hilarious. They’d pound the table and snort.
Owen would just smile and eat his eggs, and maybe reach over and slap Ernie’s back and say, “That’s real funny, Ernie. You’re pretty clever.” All the while thinking to himself, You moron. What do you know?
Which, of course, he couldn’t say out loud. He could think it, but he couldn’t say it. When you’re a public figure in a small town, you have to treat people with dignity, even Ernie Matthews.
It was a lonely feeling being the only lawyer in town, the sole target of lawyer jokes. So when Owen received a letter in early February from a Ms. Haroldeena Morrison, informing him of her desire to move to Harmony and practice law with Owen, he was relieved that the burden of ridicule would finally be shared.
He had been to the Coffee Cup. When he returned to his office, the letter was laying on his floor, underneath the mail slot. He read the return address. Ms. Haroldeena Morrison. He repeated her name to himself. Haroldeena Morrison…Haroldeena Morrison…Then her name registered. Haroldeena Morrison was the only grandchild of Harold and Mabel Morrison. Her father had named her Haroldeena for his father, over the strong objections of his wife.
Owen Stout remembered the widow Mabel Morrison talking about Haroldeena. She’d graduated from law school, the letter said, and had passed the bar and was looking for a job. She’d be in town the next day and wondered if she could meet with him.
She arrived at Owen’s office the next day, just before lunch. Owen was shocked. She didn’t look like a Haroldeena. She was exquisite, the prettiest woman he’d ever seen in Harmony, prettier even than the Sausage Queens. Haroldeena Morrison didn’t look like she’d eaten many sausages. She looked very…womanly. Owen Stout knew he couldn’t give her a job. Before she’d even said a word he knew he couldn’t hire her, for fear of subjecting his wife to the gossip and speculation.
Oh, Haroldeena Morrison was ravishing. She reached across the desk and shook his hand. Her hand lingered in his. Owen Stout began to sweat. He’d never touched a lovelier hand. He couldn’t bear the temptation.
“Welcome to Harmony, Haroldeena,” Owen said.
“Thank you,” she said. “But please call me Deena.”
Owen rose from his chair and smiled and said brightly, “Lunch?” And he took her to the Coffee Cup, whose atmosphere would stifle any romantic urgings.
They walked around the corner to the Coffee Cup. Owen pushed open the door. The bell tinkled. Everyone looked up. They stared at Deena. What was this? Who was this beautiful creature? They wanted to ask, but it wouldn’t have been polite. What was she doing with Owen? The speculation began in earnest.
Ernie Matthews was seated at the counter reading a book.
Owen said, “Hello, Ernie. What you reading?”
Ernie said, “Well, it’s a book about two ex-convicts. One of them studies to become a lawyer, and the other decides to go straight.”
Ernie erupted in laughter. The old men hooted and pounded the table.
“Aren’t you the clever one,” Owen said, slapping Ernie on the back.
Owen and Deena sat in a booth by the front window. It was there Owen told her he couldn’t hire her, that there wasn’t enough business.
“Heck, I can’t even afford a
secretary,” he told her. “Why don’t you practice in the city? You seem like a smart person. You could make a good living up there.”
Deena talked about how when she was little, she would come to Harmony to visit her grandparents, Harold and Mabel Morrison. She remembered them taking her to the soda fountain at the Rexall. Remembered sleeping in her Grandma’s bed with the windows up, listening to the crickets. She was tired of the city. Tired of the noise and the haste and the crime.
She said, “I want to live here. I want to meet a nice man and get married and have children and be a lawyer in this town.”
Owen looked at Ernie Matthews, who was probing his ear with his finger.
“Your choice of suitors,” Owen told Deena, “will be drastically limited.”
Against Owen’s counsel, Deena Morrison moved to Harmony. Her Grandmother Mabel let her use the old Morrison’s Menswear building. She had a sign made, Deena Morrison, Attorney-at-Law, and hired Ernie Matthews to paint the inside of the building, a monumentally stupid blunder. Ernie made jokes the whole time, and whenever Deena looked his direction, he’d be staring at her, his finger in his ear. He thought Deena had hired him because she had a crush on him. He began wearing Old Spice aftershave. His pants came to just beneath his gut. He’d bend over to pour paint, his pants would slip, and she’d see more of him than she really wanted to. It discouraged her, listening to his lawyer jokes and catching glimpses of his pale backside.
People began to drop hints about her dating Ernie.
“He’s a catch,” they’d tell her. “Owns his own truck and paints real good.”
Deena told her grandmother, “I’m going to die a lonely old woman, with no one to mourn my passing. I’ll be like one of those women you read about in the paper who they find a month after she’s died. I’ll die all alone in a house full of cats.”
She came to church at Harmony Friends Meeting, hoping to meet someone. The women of the Mary and Martha class invited her to Sunday school. They read from the book of Proverbs about being good wives.
Fern Hampton hinted that Deena was too picky. “There never was a horse that you couldn’t find a bush to tie it to,” she told Deena.
Great, thought Deena. Now I’m a horse.
The law practice wasn’t working out. Deena was getting cynical. She complained to her grandmother that people in Harmony didn’t want women working outside the home unless they were teaching kids or pouring coffee. Then, if they marry, they’re to do the proper thing and quit.
One nasty, early spring Sunday afternoon, Deena drove to the city to a coffee shop. It was no ordinary coffee shop. It had brick walls and antique tables with linen tablecloths. There were bookshelves full of books and a fireplace along the back wall. She sat near the fire and read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and felt sophisticated. She liked Harmony, but the only copy of Leaves of Grass was in the library and hadn’t been checked out since 1973 when Dale Hinshaw mistook it for a book on lawn maintenance.
Deena sat there, listening to the pleasant murmur of conversation, waiting for the server and marveling at this oasis of civility. She looked out the window at the rain and the swelling buds on the trees and thought of the promise they held. I want a new life, she thought. Sitting there, in all that civility, it occurred to her that she didn’t really want to be a lawyer after all. She’d have to move to the city, where the practice of law was nothing but an organized battle for money. A fiscal brawl. She wanted no part of it.
She wanted to open a coffee shop, just like this one, in Harmony. An oasis of civility. Why not? She had the building. She’d made coffee before. She grew excited thinking of it. She fished a notebook from her purse and began writing her ideas.
There was a young man waiting on tables wearing a T-shirt that read, They’ll never take me alive. His left eyebrow was pierced with a gold ring. It made Deena queasy to look at him.
She wrote in her notebook, “Do not hire anyone with a pierced eyebrow.”
The young man came to her table and asked, “Whad’ll ya have?”
There were twenty-six flavors of coffee. Deena couldn’t decide. The man rolled his eyes, which caused his eyebrow ring to bob up and down. Deena’s stomach rolled.
She peered at the menu. She could make out the words crisp brightness and full body and Trinidad Peaberry Blend and Country Morning Blend.
She decided on the Country Morning Blend. It tasted pretty good. It was a little like bacon and eggs, with buttered toast on the side.
Deena didn’t think she could start with twenty-six flavors. That was a bit ambitious. She’d start with one flavor and go from there. She’d call it “Harmony Blend.” It would be just like the town—mostly plain with a few nuts thrown in. She wrote that in her notebook.
She finished her coffee and drove back to Harmony, to her grandmother’s house. They sat in the kitchen and Deena told her grandmother her idea.
“A coffee shop, Grandma!” she told her. “A coffee shop that doesn’t smell like stale grease and cigarettes, no old men cackling at lawyer jokes, where the waitress won’t chew gum and say, ‘Whad’ll ya have?’ but will instead glide up to your table and smile and say, ‘How may I help you?’ An oasis of civility!”
Mabel Morrison clapped her hands. “Haroldeena, that’s a wondrous thought,” she declared. “Can I help?”
So they sat, grandmother and granddaughter, through the evening, plotting and planning. They began writing down everything they knew about coffee. They knew there was coffee with caffeine, which was served in a brown pot, and coffee without caffeine, which was served in an orange pot. They knew if you forgot and left the coffeepot turned on all day, the coffee would burn and turn hard.
Deena wrote that in her notebook. Don’t forget to turn off coffee-pot at end of day.
It took Deena and Mabel two months to get the coffee shop ready. They ripped off the paneling down to the old bricks and sanded the wood floors. They put a fireplace on the back wall. On Sundays they went to antique shops and bought tables and chairs. They went up to Mabel’s attic and hauled down the big red goose from the International Shoe Company of St. Louis.
Mabel said, “It belongs in that building. It’s been there forty-two years. It doesn’t belong in my attic. You watch, Haroldeena, people will come in just to see that goose.”
They set the red goose above the coffeepots; then to the right of the goose hung Deena’s law diploma, along with a sign that read:
No lawyer jokes permitted.
Violators will be fined five dollars.
She put a jar next to the cash register for the fines.
Her grandmother asked, “Deena, honey, what are we going to name our coffee shop? We need a name.”
Deena said, “Grandma, I’ve been thinking about it. I think we ought to call it ‘Legal Grounds.’”
Mabel smiled. “I like it,” she said. So the sign painter from the city came and took down the Deena Morrison, Attorney-at-Law sign and hung up the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop sign.
Deena and Mabel opened the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop on a Saturday morning. By ten o’clock all the tables were full. Everyone in town who couldn’t abide the stale grease and cackling old men of the Coffee Cup came to dwell in this oasis of civility. The window was steamy. People were drinking their cups of Harmony Blend. It was delicious—a miracle in a mug. They drank their miracle and talked about important things, and no one made fun of them.
They talked about the rise of political liberalism in Europe and the growing trade imbalance. Deena read a poem from Leaves of Grass. Then they sipped their coffee, and listened to Luciano Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” from the opera Turandot. All this culture and beauty in our town, which had been hidden for fear of what others might think, was now allowed to blossom.
At least until ten-thirty. That’s when Ernie Matthews clomped in and sat at a table, backward in a chair, his elbows resting on the chair’s back. “How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?” he asked in a loud voice.
The room fell quiet. People turned to stare. Mistaking their attention for interest, Ernie said, “When her lips are moving!” He cackled and slapped the table.
He looked at Deena and grinned. He’d read somewhere that women like a man with a sense of humor.
But Deena didn’t laugh. Nor did anyone else. They just stared at him.
Deena pointed to the sign next to the goose: No lawyer jokes permitted. Violators will be fined five dollars.
Ernie said, “That’s ridiculous. I ain’t paying five dollars. Whoever heard of such a thing? I ain’t paying that.”
“Ernie, you’ll have to pay five dollars or leave,” Deena said. She said it politely and smiled.
Ernie paid the five dollars. He wasn’t happy, but he paid it. He crammed it in the jar, then drank his coffee, stomped out, and didn’t come back for two weeks.
Things were going good for Deena. People would sit in the Legal Grounds and drink their Harmony Blend and talk about things that mattered. Three or four times a day someone would spy her diploma next to the red goose and ask Deena’s advice on their legal matters. That’s when she came up with the idea of hanging up another sign which read:
Two questions for ten dollars.
You could ask Deena any two questions for ten dollars.
That next Saturday Ernie Matthews lumbered in and read the sign and said, “Two questions for ten dollars. Isn’t that a bit steep?”
Deena said, “I don’t think so. Now what’s your second question?”
She does a big business with the eligible farmers. They come there just to see her. She’s so pretty. They watch as she works her way from table to table, pouring coffee and smiling at people. Oh, that smile. On days when it’s raining and they can’t work the fields, they drive into town to gaze at her. Deena-gazing. They sip their coffee and fall in love to the strains of Pavarotti. They imagine what it might be like to marry her. The thought overwhelms. They switch to decaf to steady their nerves. Some days she’ll read poetry. They imagine, as she recites a particularly lovely phrase, that she is directing the verse at them.
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