The Bullards rushed toward Buford, but Silas stopped them. He gestured to the young woman on the floor. “Jaime is a lifeguard at the club’s pool,” he said. “Like all the lifeguards in the employ of this club, she has obtained her Red Cross certification in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. If you will be kind enough to leave her some room to work, she is equipped to handle this kind of situation.”
Lindsay, who had seen even doctors and nurses grow flustered in emergencies, was impressed with the young lifeguard’s calm demeanor. There was an uncharacteristic quiet among the Bullards, who seemed transfixed by the young woman’s rhythmic counting and breathing.
“Andre found Mr. Bullard lying on the ground.” Silas said quietly, indicating the man in the staff uniform. “He immediately summoned the emergency services and then very wisely ran to the pool area to alert Jaime, who began administering CPR at once. The ambulance should be here any second.” As if on cue, three black-garbed paramedics hurried through the door. One of them took over chest compressions as the other two measured vital signs and made preparations to administer some medication.
“Everybody out!” one of the paramedics barked without taking his eyes off the needle he was preparing. There was a moment of collective immobility. No one seemed able to process the command. “Out now!” he repeated. Jaime the lifeguard ushered people into the hallway like a rancher moving a herd of recalcitrant cattle.
In the hallway, the Bullards began to speak for the first time since Silas summoned them. “It was his heart. I just know it. The strain was too much for him,” Versa said. “If I get my hands on Joe, I’m gonna wring his scrawny chicken neck.”
“Not if I get to him first!” Kathilee said. Her hands were clenched at her sides and she stomped her foot as she spoke. The twins stood like nightclub bouncers, their arms crossed and their faces twisted into identical scowls of menace. Keith’s florid face was lit up in red-hot fury.
Kimberlee raised her hand, trying to throw a little calming oil on the roiling waves of their anger. “Don’t be mad at old Joe, y’all, it’s not his fault. The one we should be angry at is whoever shot my Vernon.”
“What have I done to deserve this?” Versa covered her face with her hands.
Silas put a consoling arm around her shoulder. “I know you must feel as if the plagues of Job have descended on your family. I implore you to remember, ma’am, that your husband is a man of strong spirit. I am sure he will recover.” The words were spoken with the authority of Moses proclaiming the Ten Commandments. His tone awakened in Lindsay memories of her adolescence, when she used to sit wide-eyed in the front pew on Sunday mornings, cradled in the solemnity and assuredness of her father’s words. The door to the office slammed as the paramedics barreled out, bearing Buford on the stretcher. “Y’all can follow us to the hospital,” one of them shouted as they hurried past.
As the family hastily pursued the paramedics down the stairs, Kathilee turned and said to Lindsay, “Can you let all of them downstairs know what’s happened?” Lindsay nodded, as the Bullards swept past on a tide of black dresses and puffy hair. Lindsay dutifully returned to the reception hall, where the luncheon was in full swing. In her job as a chaplain, she was often the bearer of bad news. Today, however, she felt more like the Angel of Death as she cut through the polite chatter with the latest revelation. As the astonished guests absorbed the news, each seemed to select some combination of thoughts from a menu of three: 1.) Joe Tatum was a no-good, rabble-rousing so-and-so with blood on his hands; 2.) the Bullards were an unlucky family, Mount Moriah’s version of the Kennedy clan; and 3.) Buford Bullard’s high-strung nature and lifelong diet of deep fried everything had finally come home to roost. The guests dispersed quickly, leaving half-eaten portions of banana pudding and blueberry pie. At last Lindsay was left standing alone and exhausted in the glass atrium, surrounded by vases of drooping white chrysanthemums and trays piled with glistening chicken bones.
Chapter 23
Lindsay decided not to go straight home. It was early afternoon and the sun was just beginning its slow descent toward the horizon. Lindsay’s brain was as used up as a dry corn husk; somehow, a month’s worth of drama had been packed into a few short hours. She drove slowly down Church Street, Mount Moriah’s main thoroughfare, past the glass and steel facade of the hospital, which looked molten in the afternoon heat. Every one of the town’s four stoplights caught her, leaving her to bake in the powerful sun. At last, she pulled into the little alley that led around to John and Rob’s large Victorian house.
When John bought the house years before, it was practically derelict, having stood empty for the better part of a decade. He initially undertook only structural improvements, reinforcing the foundation, rewiring the electrics, and rebuilding the wide front porch that opened onto Church Street. He lived for years like a monk in one bare-walled room. After Rob moved in, however, the two of them threw themselves into the renovation. Rob, in particular, worked with such untiring vigor that he seemed to be remaking something within himself with each alteration he made to the house. After his abrupt departure from college, he worked ten hour days on the house, while at the same time finishing his undergraduate degree in social work at a nearby state school. His spiritual thirst could not be slaked, however, and eventually, he enrolled in a Masters of Divinity program at a Unitarian Universalist seminary. The well-meaning PC liberals there were only too happy to welcome a gay, Asian fundamentalist refugee into their funky, free-thinking fold. Like so many people whose sexual or spiritual orientations made them unsuited for or unhappy with mainstream churches, Rob at last found a home for his ministerial calling in working as a hospital chaplain.
Lindsay had never expected to become a chaplain herself; she had wanted get her PhD and teach religion at a Christian college. But, like Rob, she found her plans undone by love. Her engagement to Timothy Farnsworth exploded in her face, and she retreated to the safety of Mount Moriah and hospital chaplaincy. She moved in with John and Rob, and, like Rob, had rushed headlong into the work of renovating their massive house. John taught her how to hang drywall and use a band saw; the arduous physical labor had been her therapy and consolation.
The end result of those tumultuous years was a house of breathtaking beauty. A million little details worked into the building by John’s skilled hands, when combined with Rob’s careful planning and Lindsay’s playful use of color, made the house look like an elaborate wedding cake. Lindsay still had a key to the house and one robin’s egg blue bedroom was still designated as “Lindsay’s room,” though she hadn’t slept there in a long while.
Lindsay’s spirits lifted when she caught sight of the whimsical lines of the house’s roof. And she was even more heartened when she saw Rob and the two Tatum men on the screened-in back porch, pitching gently forward and backward in mismatched rocking chairs. John and Rob had changed into shorts and t-shirts, but Joe still wore his full Confederate regalia. The shadows cast by a stand of sugar maples shaded the porch from the late afternoon sun. As Lindsay got out of her car and approached the house, Anna emerged from the back door carrying an ice-filled cooler of beer. “Hey Linds, the boys were just telling me about all the excitement out at the golf club,” she said, placing the cooler at Joe’s feet.
“I’m afraid that that’s not even the half of it,” Lindsay replied, opening the screen door. She took a seat next to Anna on the wicker sofa, and she quickly filled them in on the rest of the day’s events—her encounter with Warren in the library, the whispered conversation of the Bullard men, the collapse of Buford Bullard, and the subsequent disintegration of the memorial lunch. She avoided any discussion of Kimberlee’s revelations under the willow tree. Unloading all the information that had been bouncing around inside her head began to restore Lindsay’s equanimity. The beer also helped.
“Wow, and all I did today was patch up a fractured rib and prescribe Demerol for a guy with a kidney stone.” Anna took a long swig from her bottle of MGD. She leaned in closer to
Lindsay. “With all that going on, how did you find the time to skin a poodle and glue its pelt to your head? I’m assuming that’s what happened, anyway.”
Lindsay pinched the soft skin under Anna’s arm and smiled. “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate your friendship?”
“Ouch! I thought circus clowns were supposed to have a good sense of humor.”
“This thing with the Bullards is getting mighty heavy, Linds,” John said. “I don’t know if you should be getting yourself involved any more than you already are.”
“Yeah, Linds,” Anna agreed. “The spunky amateur girl detective always ends up hogtied in a subterranean lair or trapped in the attic of the Old McCoy Mansion as the villain sets it on fire.”
“They’re right,” Rob said. “For all you know, Kimberlee Young is a homicidal maniac.”
“I’m even surer now than I was before—Kimberlee did not kill her husband. That’s why I need to be involved. The police are so focused on railroading her, they might be letting the real killer get away.” Lindsay turned to Joe. “Oh, but speaking of homicidal maniacs, you’re going to want to steer clear of the Bullards for the time being. They are on the warpath.” She paused. “Gosh, that is the second time today that I’ve had to warn someone about them. They are actually a very loving family, underneath all the threats and bluster.”
“They didn’t look so loving when Buford Bullard had Pop by the neck.”
“Never you mind that, Son. Buford was just protecting his little girl, same as any father would,” Joe said.
“I just wish you’d tell us what you said to her.”
“That ain’t none of your damn business. It’s between Vernon and his missus, so stop asking. And you, Little Miss Busybody,” Joe said, pointing a sinewy finger in Lindsay’s face, “need to stop sticking your nose in where it don’t belong.”
“Pop, lay off. Lindsay was just…” John began.
“Boy, unless you want me to cut a switch and tan your backside, that best be the end of this conversation.” Joe rose abruptly, stormed into the house, and slammed the screen door behind him. They all sat still for a moment, stunned into silence. Joe’s cantankerousness was a given, but he had never spoken so crossly to Lindsay before. He had taken a shine to her early on, and, for all these years she had been exempt from his tirades. She thought now of Silas’s revelations about Joe and Versa’s romance and wondered how much that played into his fit of temper.
“Silas Richards said something strange at the memorial. Something about Versa and Old Joe being, uh, closely acquainted back in the day,” Lindsay said.
John took a long swig of beer. “Yeah, I’ve heard something along those lines. Not from Pop, mind you. Just talk.”
“So there’s nothing in that?”
“Well now, if my Momma was still with us, she’d have a thing or two to say on the matter.” He took another slow drink before continuing. “Momma said she was forever grateful to Versa for throwin’ Pop over so that she could have a shot at him herself.”
“Versa dumped Old Joe for Buford?”
“No. She dumped him for Silas Richards.”
“What?!”
“Versa was quite the hot commodity back in the day. Or so I hear. My momma said that Versa threw herself at Silas. Wouldn’t even give Pop the time of day once Silas came on the scene. One day, Versa found herself in the family way. No ring was forthcoming from Silas, but another of her beaux stepped in to fill the breach.”
“Buford?”
“Yep.”
“Come to think of it,” Lindsay said, “I do remember hearing rumors to that effect. It was so long ago, I’d forgotten all about it.”
“All is know is what Momma said. Who knows. We’re talking about a woman who believed that the sun shined out of Pop’s backside. The story she told suited her view of things.”
Rob gave a long whistle. “So you like to think you know this town, huh Linds?”
“Fine. I didn’t remember the details of a forty-year-old paternity scandal. Jerry Springer would have trouble keeping track of all that.”
Just then, Lindsay’s phone chimed to indicate an incoming text. “It’s from Kimberlee. Buford is alive, but unconscious. He’s in the ICU. I can’t believe they’re doing a bedside vigil again. It’s so hard on a family. It was only a week ago today that Vernon was there.”
“Are you gonna go over there?” John asked.
“Not now. I might stop by tomorrow, after the revival.”
“The revival?! I thought you steered clear of those things,” Anna said.
“Usually I try to schedule an emergency, last-minute, couldn’t-possibly-get-out-of-it shift at the hospital, but I think I’m going to go this year,” Lindsay said. In the dozen years since she had left Mount Moriah for college, she had only attended the revival once. She was no longer a regular attendee at her father’s church, either. After a week spent ministering to patients at the hospital, she always found that by Sunday, the only communion she wanted or needed was a jog out in the countryside.
“Do you have sins to atone for?” Rob teased.
“Robinson Wu, you should know me better than that,” Lindsay said. “I’m attending this revival out of a heartfelt desire to support my father in his essential work of helping people on their path to healing and wholeness. Plus, I love baby-back ribs.”
They all laughed and then fell silent, sipping their beers and enjoying the deepening cool of the evening.
“Seriously, what made you change your mind about going? You hate those things,” Rob said.
“Guilt, I guess. I was talking to Silas Richards at the memorial today and he just seemed to assume that I would go because I’m Jonah’s daughter. There’s something about Silas that actually reminds me a little bit of my dad. That got me thinking about how disappointed Dad always is when I don’t go. He knows I’m just making excuses. It’s the church’s biggest event of the year and I always skip it.”
“What happens to all the money they raise at these things anyway?” Anna asked after a moment. “I heard it was over $10,000 last year.”
“They do something different with it every year. This year, it’s going to an orphanage in Guatemala. Sometimes it’s for building projects at the church or charities in North Carolina,” Lindsay said.
“Charities, huh? No using the money on a gold-plated, air-conditioned house for your Chihuahuas like Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker? No hush money payments to male escort services?” Anna said.
“Nope. My dad is about as squeaky clean as they come. No scandals, no embezzlement, no Chihuahuas. My only pet growing up was a goldfish and it lived for 11 years in a bowl on my dresser, and I’m reasonably sure that my dad has never had a meth-fueled night of pleasure with a male prostitute.”
“Then he doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Rob said, coyly batting his eyes at John.
“If I find out that you bought a Chihuahua without telling me, I’m gonna be pissed,” John said.
Chapter 24
When Lindsay arrived at the county fairgrounds on Sunday morning, the gravel parking lot was already teeming with cars. A group of white tents covered several hundred yards of ground. Next to them, a row of portable toilets stood shoulder to shoulder like regimental soldiers. A five-foot high banner decorated with a portrait of Christ hung over the entrance to the main tent. He looked like a rock star in flowing robes; his outstretched hands invited people to “Come to Jesus!” Signs directed the crowds to a Prayer Tent, a Puppet Theater, and something called the Bible Bazaar. Beyond the tents, Lindsay saw a group of men readying the grills for the afternoon’s rib feast.
She sighed deeply and entered the shade of the main tent. As a kid, she had obediently attended all manner of functions, watching as Jonah grew his church from a small meeting in the high school gym into the multi-pronged ministry it was today. But as she grew older, she had begun to dread the tent revivals. There was something improper about seeing her father—usually so straight-laced and be-suite
d—out here on preaching in a t-shirt and jeans. It was like running into your teacher buying condoms at the pharmacy counter.
The main tent was set up as she remembered, with folding chairs facing the stage, next to which stood a portable baptism pool. She herself had received the Holy Dunk in that very pool when she was about thirteen, shortly after Sarabelle had disappeared from their lives. Back then, her main duties at the revival included passing the collection baskets and leading a special prayer and song for the children. Her cheeks burned now at the memory of herself up on the stage self-consciously singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”.
Inside the main tent, dozens of people were milling around, waiting for the next sermon to begin. Lindsay scanned the crowd distractedly, looking for Jonah. Her search was interrupted by someone shouting her name. Lindsay turned to see a stout, middle-aged woman heading straight for her.
“It is you! I knew it! I can’t believe my eyes. It’s been years. I keep asking your father what’s become of you!”
Lindsay greeted the woman with a tight smile. “Hello, Mrs. Bugbee. How have you been?”
“Me? Well, I’ve been fine, honey. The real question is, how have you been?” Mrs. Bugbee replied. “We all heard, of course, about the sad breakup with that boy up in the Northern States a few years ago. Such a pity. His name was Timothy, right? Timothy Farnsworth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You were engaged, right? And you got cold feet and broke it off?” She sucked her teeth. “Well, I suppose when you were in your twenties it probably seemed like you had a lot of time in front of you. So, have you met someone else?”
“I’m not really seeing anyone at the moment.” Lindsay said, thinking that Mrs. Bugbee’s legs in wide khaki shorts looked like the drip sandcastles she used to build on the beach. She tried hard to sweep those thoughts from her mind and to concentrate instead on smiling.
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