by Ross, Ann B
“Sam!” I cried. “Oh, Sam, go get her. Where’s Coleman? She’s going to do herself some damage out there!”
“He’s right behind her,” Sam assured me. “See, he’s pulling her away.”
Relieved that Coleman was on the job, I shifted my concern to the source of the paper-and-birdseed shower. “Where’s that stuff coming from? Sam, can you see anything?”
“Looks like it’s coming from the roof.” Sam stretched to try to see over the heads of the mob. “Here comes another downpour. See it?”
Yes, I did, for what looked like an armful of papers, large, small, long and slender pieces whooshed up in the air above the roof of the Family Life Center, then came drifting down to the eager hands below.
Little Lloyd came running back to us, his eyes big with wonder and his hands grasping a few pieces of the airborne treasure. “Miss Julia!” he cried, fear, wonder or awe vibrating in his voice. “Look what it is!”
Sam took a shiny paper from him and held it up. My knees nearly buckled under me as I read PRAY WITH US. “My Lord!” I cried, clutching Sam’s arm to keep myself upright. “It’s one of Emma Sue’s bumper stickers!”
“Yessum,” Little Lloyd said, nodding his head and trying to catch his breath. “But look at this,” he added, holding up a much smaller piece of paper. “It’s not Mrs. Ledbetter’s.”
I took the paper and read: GOOD FOR ONE FREE LUBE JOB AT P & J’S PIT STOP. “It’s a gift certificate!” I drew in my breath sharply. “Oh, my goodness, remember that church that had all their bingo prizes stolen? How many of these things are there?”
“Lots of ’em!” Little Lloyd assured me. “I heard people yelling about groceries and movie passes and free gas! It’s a miracle, Miss Julia!”
“Well, I guess it would be, if I believed in such things. Still,” I said, marveling at the sudden appearance of that which had been taken from the backseat of my car, as well as from the Briar Creek House of God, “how could these things come out of the blue like this?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Sam said, laughing and pointing to the top of the building. “There’s your answer.”
I looked up to see a jumping, yelling small figure scampering along the ledge of the roof right above Pastor Petree’s head. The figure reached down and threw out another handful of papers to the waiting hands below. At the sight of him, half a dozen deputies dispatched by Lieutenant Peavey swarmed to the door of the building, intent on rounding up the perpetrator of, well, I didn’t know what. Littering, maybe.
Pastor Petree seemed oblivious to the antics above him, for he’d turned on the ladder to face the crowd, making his perch somewhat problematic, to say the least. He held one of Emma Sue’s bumper stickers, a look of wonder on his face.
Then the figure above him leaned over and dropped a double handful of small, brightly colored objects onto the pastor’s head, and I thought the poor soul was going to go into a rapture of some kind. Miss Wiggins screamed as she snatched at the objects. “My candy! It’s my candy!”
Then, from the midst of the shouting, shoving crowd, I heard Binkie’s clear voice. “That’s my client!”
When a cackling laugh floated down from the ledge, I too recognized the source of the miracle of the coupons. “It’s Dixon Hightower!” I yelled. “Sam . . . !”
“Dixon!” Little Lloyd yelled, jumping up and down. “It’s that Dixon Hightower! Oh, my word, he’s here amongst us!”
I reached out to calm him down, but something dark and feathery brushed my shoulder and I jumped a mile.
The air was suddenly filled with a mighty rushing of wings amid the scattering and cries of wedding guests, as a swarm of pigeons from the steeple of the church swooped down on my lawn. They flew in and around us, coming to skimming halts around our feet, then waddling and pecking at the grass.
Little Lloyd’s arms flailed as another bevy of flapping wings swooshed past his head. “Help!” he cried. Then, seeing what they were after, he yelled, “It’s the birdseed! Look, Miss Julia, they’ve come for the birdseed!”
“Oh, Sam,” I said, almost collapsing on his shoulder. He put his arm around me and held me close. “What else can go wrong?”
Plenty, as it turned out. Coleman hustled Binkie to the waiting patrol car and, as they climbed into the backseat, Deputy Moser released the trunk latch and a rush of balloons escaped into the air. Children ran to catch them as the balloons wobbled and floated up, passing the flecks of paper floating down, and disturbed by the commotion, the pigeons rose in a fluttering mass. Then they circled and rushed down again. Just as they began to settle on the yard, Sergeant Moser eased the car down the street, trunk lid flapping as the last of the balloons zoomed out like a comet’s tail. Then, with Binkie and Coleman waving from the windows, he set off that whomping siren again.
At the sound of it, the pigeons swooshed up again with a great fluttering of wings to circle above the heads of the guests. Then, shedding feathers as they came, they dived among us, landing on heads and shoulders and between feet, so that people were stumbling and tripping over them. I heard the sheriff yell out, “Dad-blame the dad-blamed cussed luck!”
Sam was shaking so hard that I wondered if he could hold me up. When I looked at him in sudden concern, I saw he was laughing his head off.
“Sam Murdoch!” I said, drawing myself up. “How can you laugh at a time like this? My beautiful wedding is ruined!”
“Ruined? Oh, Julia,” he said, wiping a finger under his eye as he began to control himself. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve gotten Binkie and Coleman married; you’ve taken strangers to your table; you’ve brought in an escaped prisoner and you’ve provided a feast for the birds of the air.” He stopped and smoothed his hand across my face. “I’d say that this wedding is far from ruined.”
“Well, if you put it that way . . .” I began to smile, thinking that no one would ever be able to outdo me when it came to putting on a wedding.
“Besides,” Sam whispered, “if you don’t like the way this one turned out, I can think of another one you can work on.”
Chapter 40
But by the time that day had ended, I’d had my fill of weddings and miracles, too, if the truth be known. Unless, of course, Hazel Marie managed to drag Mr. Pickens to the altar, which would be a miracle in itself. If that came about, I would have to take a hand in it, just to make sure he didn’t run out before it was over. But a wedding between those two didn’t look to be happening anytime soon, much to her sorrow.
Well, sorrow is not quite the word. Exasperation, maybe, for she took a lesson from Coleman and laid down the law. Although, to my mind, it was a law with no teeth in it. What she told Mr. Pickens was that she and Little Lloyd would move in with him for the summer, and if by the time school started in the fall, he hadn’t become more amenable to making the arrangement permanent, they’d move back home. If I’d have them, which, of course, I would, and gladly too.
“I told him,” she said to me, “that three months was long enough for him to make up his mind. And I mean it, Miss Julia, I told him it’d be either put up or shut up.”
I was proud of her for taking a stand, but I’d’ve been even prouder if she’d turned down even a trial period and let him suffer for a change. Still, you take what you can get, so I didn’t point out the inherent danger of putting herself in Mr. Pickens’s seductive hands. I’d seen him in action.
Besides, she already knew where I stood when it came to cohabitating without benefit of matrimony. Then she gave me even more reason to hold my peace because, after ranting to me about his recalcitrant ways, she went all soft and dreamy at the thought of that man and asked if Little Lloyd could stay on with me a couple of weeks.
“Just so we can get used to each other,” she said, having the grace to blush. “Sort of a honeymoon, you know. Time for ourselves for a little while. Though I guess it won’t be a real honeymoon since we won’t be married.”
“I guess it won’t,” I said. “But of course Lit
tle Lloyd can stay with me. He can stay all summer if you’ll let him.”
In fact, as done in as I was at the improper way she was conducting herself, my heart lifted at the thought of not losing the boy, at least for a while.
So, in the week following Binkie and Coleman’s wedding, Hazel Marie took her suitcases and hair rollers and shopping bags full of shoes and went off with Mr. Pickens.
I didn’t discuss the situation with the boy, not wanting to criticize his mother, or approve of her actions either. Better to leave well enough alone, I thought. Besides, what a child doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Although I expect it’s highly likely that a child knows more than you think he does.
The two of us found plenty of other situations to discuss, the main one being that apparition on the wall across the street. Every afternoon after supper, we’d sit on the front porch and talk over the changes that were slowly taking place. Whatever had caused the white lines on the bricks, whether it was salt deposits as Sam said it was or poor workmanship as I suspected or even some mysterious hand writing on the wall as the worshipers believed, it was still going on. Little by little, changes in the design were taking place. Not two days after the wedding, the two eyes had blended into one white splotch that was now spreading down to the mouth. Soon there’d be no features at all, which was fine with me. If you want a sudden start to your day, just wake up in the morning and find a woman’s twenty-foot face staring at you through your window.
As it was, the town of Abbotsville narrowly escaped the calamity of becoming the Myrtle Beach of North Carolina, for people continued to pour in from all over the place. I thought I was going to have to move just to be able to get to the grocery store, but Little Lloyd set up a lemonade stand in the front yard and made a killing.
Well, when that woman on the wall started dissolving into something else, the mayor, the town commissioners and the chamber of commerce met in an emergency session to see what they could do to keep people coming and spending their money locally. One of the commissioners even suggested hiring a painter to preserve the woman in living color. Emma Sue Ledbetter took it upon herself to tell them that if we wanted a mural on our Family Life Center, we’d pick a subject better suited to what our church stood for. Which was family values and, to her mind, a strange woman’s face didn’t come close to measuring up.
So nothing was done and the woman continued her disappearing act. The number of spectators who had been attracted to the image began to dwindle down, as well. A few cars still drove by, slowing so the passengers could look out, but before the month was out, it would’ve taken a unusually active imagination to make out anything other than a brick wall that badly needed a paint job.
“Wonder if it really was a miracle,” Little Lloyd mused. I was in a wicker rocker on the porch, and he sat on the steps making a chain of dandelion stems. Although it was getting along toward dusk, bees still hummed in my abelia and snowball bushes.
“I don’t know,” I answered, rocking softly and thinking over all that had happened. “Could be, I guess. Or if it wasn’t, it served the purpose. At least we got Binkie and Coleman married, and if the woman on the wall had anything to do with that, then I’m just as grateful as I can be to her.”
The boy thought that over for a few minutes, then he said, “You think since she’s fading away, it means we don’t need any more miracles?”
“I expect we need, and probably get, more than we think we do.” I stopped and twisted my mouth, considering what to say to him. “Still, there’s one thing you should remember, Little Lloyd. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and we don’t have much say about either.”
He didn’t have much to say after that, which is what I notice usually happens when you quote a Bible verse to somebody.
* * *
Both Sam and Coleman helped entertain the boy so he wouldn’t miss his mother too much, and of course she called every day and came to visit. Bringing that insufferably pleased-with-himself Mr. Pickens with her. I let him know just what I thought of their arrangement, believe me I did, and more than once, too. But all I got from him was the suggestion that I make the same arrangement with Sam.
“Do you good, Miss Julia,” he said, “and help you sleep, too.”
“My sleep doesn’t need help, thank you,” I told him, and right sharply, too. But little got through that hard head of his.
* * *
It wasn’t long after getting the house straight after the wedding that Pastor Ledbetter returned from the Holy Land with a newly inspired fire for preaching and a sunburn. I don’t know who all told him what’d happened while he’d been gone, but I was sure Emma Sue had filled him full of her version. I saw him several times walking up and down the sidewalk, studying the remnants of the woman. It was fairly plain to me that he couldn’t see it himself. He’d come to a stop, plant his hands on his hips and shake his head.
I took it on myself to go over to his office a few days after he got back to suggest that he see to Pastor Petree’s welfare.
“That young man needs to go back to seminary for a refresher course,” I told Pastor Ledbetter. “Maybe a remedial course would be better. Just don’t inflict him on another congregation without warning them that he’s apt to lose his composure on occasion.”
Pastor Ledbetter listened to my advice with a calm, though severely peeling face, assuring me that it was all being handled. I didn’t press him, for I was sure that he was still suffering from shock at the mess he’d returned to.
Emma Sue had taken the young preacher home with her after the wedding, but it had taken an athletic deputy to climb the ladder and talk him down. Pastor Petree’d been wet and exhausted, and so hoarse from all that yelling and carrying-on that he’d hardly been able to manage on his own. Emma Sue’d put him in her guest room, and he’d stayed there in bed under her constant ministrations until Pastor Ledbetter returned, after which the pastor wasted no time rectifying the situation. Before the day was out, he had Pastor Petree transferred to a ministerial retreat for burned-out preachers, of which I learned there was an unsuspectedly high number.
* * *
When Coleman returned from his brief honeymoon, he took Little Lloyd for a tour of the sheriff’s department, which was an entertainment I decided I could do without. At other times, I kept the child busy with overseeing the fence installation at the Hillandale Trailer Park, going over the bills with him and showing him the rental income, as well as pointing out the discrepancy between the two.
“Well, see, Miss Julia,” he said, after studying the figures, “in a couple of years we’ll recover the cost of the fence and the paving of the street. Then we’ll have a better investment.”
That was such perceptive reasoning that I didn’t point out that an investment is only as good as what a buyer is willing to pay for it. If we were willing to sell, which we weren’t. Still, paving the street and putting up a fence was little enough to do in order to put a stop to Miss Wiggins’s complaints.
It frosted me, though, that as it turned out, Dixon Hightower had been responsible for all the thefts in her neighborhood, as well as in mine. And since he was back under lock and key where he belonged, we hadn’t needed to spend that money at all. I only went through with it to show Little Lloyd some business management practices.
And speaking of Dixon, Binkie came back from her honeymoon and swung full steam into his defense. Since he’d been taken safely into custody on her wedding night, she hadn’t needed to worry about him getting hurt while she was gone. Sam came by and picked up Little Lloyd and me so we could go to the hearing, and that was an entertainment worth attending. I declare, listening to the witnesses, from the jailer who let Dixon escape to the psychologists and social workers who examined him, made me realize that it’s all in your point of view. You can pretty much tell what a witness is going to say if you know which side of the fence he’s on.
During the testimony about his state of mind, or lack of same, Dixon sat beside Binkie taking it all
in. He smiled and laughed at some of the stories told about his escapades, delighted at being the center of attention. Several times he’d turn around and scan the spectators, waving to those he recognized and, in general, enjoying the limelight.
The testimony was fascinating, I must say, for we learned that Dixon had hidden the fruits of his labors deep in the Family Life Center, down in the shaft that would eventually accommodate an elevator. I was reminded that Pastor Ledbetter had always told Dixon that the church was open to him at all times, and Dixon had taken him at his word.
Deputies had found Emma Sue’s tortoiseshell hairbrush, Lillian’s can opener, a child’s plastic toy—Big Wheels, they called it—and empty snack-food wrappers from the Hillandale Trailer Park. That wasn’t all, though. When the prosecutor started laying out the odds and ends from Dixon’s cache, we all leaned forward, amazed at the sorry lot that had drawn Dixon’s eye.
The bailiff wheeled out a bicycle with a flat tire and propped it against the table. And the exhibits kept coming, drawing gasps from the spectators as they recognized their belongings. But when the prosecutor held up a Game Boy, Little Lloyd pulled his Game Boy from his pocket. His head suddenly swiveled toward me. “I thought . . . ,” he whispered. Then he squinched up his eyes. “You bought me another one.”
I patted his knee. “I didn’t want you to worry. Now you’ll have two, so you can give one to Mr. Pickens,” I said, thinking the man needed something to keep his hands occupied.
In all the tawdry display presented to the court by the prosecutor, the only thing of monetary worth was Pastor Ledbetter’s clock with the little brass balls, the appearance of which caused Emma Sue to overflow with an avalanche of tears in thanksgiving. Between sobs, she murmured, “It’s a miracle!”