“Hey, bud.”
“Hey,” Turner said. He looked good. Combed hair. Even looked like he had a fresh shave. Hell of an improvement since the last time he’d visited him at the hospital. “You part of all this, Kyle?”
“Indirectly, I guess.”
Turner laughed, a good sound. “I find it hard to believe you’d be indirectly involved in anything. I was sorry to hear you had to resign. A lot of folks think the world of you.”
“Well, there’s a time for everything. How are you doing now? I mean . . .”
“Yeah. It’s one day at a time, brother. You know how it is. They got me on some new medicine. I’ve been staying with my cousin in Johnson City. Probably will for a little while. Melanie and the baby are up at her sister’s place, which is probably best for the moment. I did want to ask you something, though.”
“Ask away.”
“I wanted to see if I could get back in the group. I’d like to work out there until we get the whole crop planted. I know Buckhorn’s done, but I thought there might be some places we hadn’t got to on Woman’s Back. I’m a pair of hands if nothing else.”
Kyle patted his shoulder. “I imagine we can find a spot. Here, step over this way with me. I want to introduce you to somebody.”
Frank had just freed himself from one attendee who’d asked him to autograph a Vols Football calendar when Kyle got his attention.
“Frank, this is Turner Whist. He’s one of the men who’ve been part of the reforestation group I’ve told you about. He’s stuck a fair amount of greenery back on these ridges in the past few months.”
Frank smiled, warmly shook Turner’s hand.
“Glad to meet you, Turner. Good people like you keep a man like me in business. I need as many trees in this county as we can get.”
“Frank owns an arbor business,” Kyle explained.
“Sorry,” Frank laughed. “My wife says I only tell the kind of jokes that are funny to myself. I’m glad you brought this up, though. I think it would be great to go up there with you guys sometime. Put my hands in the earth.”
“I think that’s a hell of an idea, Frank. I was just telling Turner we needed his strong back back on the job. And two is always better than one.”
“It’s hard to argue with that.”
After telling Turner good-bye, Kyle and Frank went out to the truck. Kyle had driven to give Frank a last-minute chance to review his notes. Now, it seemed just as well because Frank’s hands were shaking like a branch in a hard wind.
“Man, I’m glad that’s over,” Frank said.
“Nerves?”
“Feels like I just jammed my fingers in a socket.”
“Doesn’t show. Looked great up there. Made me a little jealous, in fact. Made me think if I was the one running against you, I’d have something to worry about.”
Frank settled back, watched the town lights thin as they turned for the highway and headed toward the bulk of the mountains. “Well, that’s good to hear,” he said. “Maybe it means somebody else will have something to worry about too.”
A FEW days short of the debate Orlynne began making a final push. She had a list of influential residents she believed could be swayed to Farmer if he went out and talked to them in person. Gerald remained unconvinced.
“We need to work the phones,” Gerald said. “It’s what’s always made the difference when things have come down to the wire.” He pointed at a list of names he’d pulled out.
“Oh come on, Gerald. You’re telling me that Maynard Cobb will be brought around by a little sweet talk over a telephone?”
Gerald laughed, crossed out that name and three others.
“You’ll play hell getting him to vote either way. He’s been dead six months. Dropped a couple of hours after that meeting we had about a power line easement down around Hampton. He was furious that we voted it through. I felt kind of bad about it afterwards, but he was always riled up about something. Remember that, Pettus?”
Kyle glanced up from his work with Frank, nodded.
“Still, at least he died doing what he loved,” Gerald continued.
“What’s that?” Orlynne asked.
“Being miserable.”
“You can be a hateful old thing, can’t you?”
Gerald shrugged.
“I agree with you, Orlynne,” Frank said. “I need to be out there. We’ll go as soon as you get the names and places ready.”
An hour later they were on the road, Frank driving his work truck. It was good for getting back in on some of the unpaved roads of the hollows as well as being a kind of unofficial advertisement as he rolled through. He had stayed in his work clothes too. No reason to hide the man in a suit and tie. He was simply one of them coming to talk about why he was the best person to protect the community from an old threat dressed up new.
By suppertime they had visited and talked with half a dozen business owners and otherwise civically minded people. They made no effort to distinguish between traditional Democrats or Republicans. This was more important than party lines, they said. This danger too severe. Overall, they were received with cool politeness when they knocked on doors. But once they sat down and took a cup of coffee or tea, the social ice began to melt and Frank would start talking, and when he talked it became obvious why he was the right man to run. He spoke with ease, avoided the kind of baggy rhetoric of someone who was conscious of being heard rather than understood. He spoke with directness and paused to listen to what others said in turn.
The last stop of the day was at the Reverend Joseph Winter’s place. He was in the side yard watering several pots of begonias. Winter was a large hairless man with a head as round as a brass doorknob. He was flushed from the heat and he’d broken into a considerable sweat. He patted dry the back of his neck with an embroidered handkerchief. Along the stitching appeared a palisade of tiny blue crosses.
“It’s the green thumb of Carter County,” Winter said in his mellifluous voice. A voice long practiced to pitch itself to the back pews of the church house. He rested his watering can on the porch ledge and shook hands all around.
“We’d like a minute of your time, Reverend,” Kyle said. “If you think your garden could stand a moment of neglect.”
He smiled with an air of professional beneficence, welcomed them inside.
They sat in the cool of the living room, offered lemonade by Winter’s wife, though they refused, citing full bladders from a full day of campaign visits throughout the area.
Winter politely laughed.
“I had heard you all were on the warpath today. I’m impressed you haven’t dropped from the heat. I can’t remember a summer like this, can you all? It’s giving my growing season absolute fits. I can only imagine the professional problems it’s giving you, Mister Pettus.”
Kyle allowed that it had become more than a passing concern.
“So, Mister Farmer, I suppose you’ve come here to press me into the service of the good fight?”
Frank smiled, leaned forward in his chair.
“I think as that we’re both Christian men, we might find that we have a great deal more in common than you would with Mister Noon.”
Winter smiled slightly, lifted his open hands as if to beg for a moment of patience.
“I’m certainly not disputing the fact of your relationship with Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior, but a great many issues we hold in local elections have more to do with what’s going on in our neighborhood than what’s transpiring on the stage of national political theater. It would be naive to expect people to vote against their own interest. Surely, you understand there are limits to the kind of influence a man like me can wield from the pulpit.”
Frank and Kyle exchanged a glance.
Frank said, “Reverend Winter, I’m not expecting you to turn your church into a platform for endorsement. However, don’t you think the nature of this election, the fact that the man is an avowed white supremacist, doesn’t that change things for you in
the slightest?”
Winter retained his impassive smile.
“I really do applaud what you all are doing and I wish you the best of luck. But I’m afraid I’m not in the position to enter into the political fray. I’m sure you understand,” he said, standing. It became clear that he had nothing more to say.
By the time they’d gone back out to the truck Kyle wanted to put his fist through the dash.
“Did that bastard just say he thought it wasn’t his place to side against a racist? Did I imagine that?”
Frank turned the key, gassed the engine until it thrummed.
“Calm down, Kyle,” he said. “You’re getting a lesson, is all.”
“A lesson in what?”
“In how easy it is to be a coward.”
LAURA MET him at the house. She had stopped off in town and brought some chicken and vegetables home, kept the plates warm in the oven. They sat down to eat, split a bottle of Côte du Rhône poured into water tumblers. He was quieter than normal, though she didn’t need to pick up on that to see that he was bothered.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not sure I know how to. I thought things were one way. I’ve spent years working for what I thought was right, and now it seems like it was all a joke.”
“I thought the campaign was going well.”
He shrugged, drank.
“Maybe it is. It’s just that there’s a rot beneath the surface. Something that makes me feel ashamed, useless.”
She reached across the table, took his hand.
“You’re doing good work, Kyle. All of you. I’m proud of you. Others are too. You can’t control everything. Be a little easy on yourself.”
He said that he would. They talked pleasantly for a while, let the pattern of routine conversation cleanse what had stuck to them from their time apart over the course of the day. It was easy to lose themselves like that for a while, perhaps even necessary. Later, they moved out to the living room and listened to music, finished their wine. With her head on his shoulder it was possible to witness the gradual spread of evening through the front window and let that be enough.
27
THE NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY AND FRANK WAS UP EARLY ENOUGH THAT IT was still dark outside. He stood in the kitchen and drank two cups of coffee before he went into the girls’ room to make sure they were up and ready for church.
“But it’s too early, Daddy.”
“Too early for Jesus? I surely hope not. Shake a leg, you two. We’re going somewhere new today, and I don’t want to show up late.”
They groaned about it, but wrestled themselves out of bed. Frank closed their door. Getting to be big girls, and he knew they needed their privacy, though privacy was about to be a rarity for any of them pretty soon.
“Don’t take too long now, okay?” he said through the door before turning back down the hall to the master bedroom.
Gloria was still in bed. He slipped under the covers next to her and felt the good, warm pressure of her body against his. Fourteen years now they’d slept in the same bed. That was a long time to build yourself into another’s unconscious physical habits. Impossible not to develop a kind of symbiotic regard for what the other person was feeling. The body expressed certain things that weren’t said. Even as he held her, her limbs conveyed an unsettling he had felt in her since he’d decided to make a run for the commissioner’s seat. Not surprising. It had to have been a kind of natural disaster in the middle of her life. She had grown up with alcoholic parents who’d only gotten dry once she left the house for college. Yelling and tears at all hours of the night. Petty theatrics, really. That was what her young life had been. So she’d built her adult world around what could be reliable. A hardworking husband. A counseling job at the university. There was a commitment to clarity in the way she lived. To wake up one day and find the careful hedge of protection she’d cultivated exposed on this scale, it must have terrified her, even if she revealed little on the surface.
Truthfully, even he could only partly understand why he was doing it. The reason he’d given Pettus, that it was a question of taking a moral stance, that wasn’t untrue. But something more had chewed his skin. It had been a long time since he’d found himself in a serious struggle, and he missed it. The excitement of putting himself on the line was just as important to him as keeping a refuge was for Gloria.
He nudged her and she made a displeased sound.
“That’s no way to start the morning,” he told her.
“There better be a cup of coffee in your hand if you’re talking to me right now.”
He reached for the nightstand and held a mug above her nose. Her eyes opened with little friendliness. Still, she pushed herself up on her pillows and took the mug by the handle. He let her drink for a minute before broaching what he had decided in the middle of the night. That they would attend Reverend Winter’s church, show the old hypocrite that he was willing to walk into the lion’s den and sweet-talk those lions until they were curled up and purring.
“Sounds like a waste of time to me,” she said. “Do more good to go to Mars.”
“But Martians are outside the district. What good would that do?”
“Will you shut up and let me get dressed? Lord.”
All the girls cleaned up good, he was pleased to see. Maybe not Easter good, but close enough. He liked going to church as a family. It felt like putting things in order. Everything was sorted and snapped into place. Sitting down and listening to scripture eased his nerves, and having the contentment of his family with him solidified whatever the preacher had to say that Sunday because he knew he was lucky enough to have the proof of blessings within his immediate grasp. It hadn’t always been that way with him, and he knew it was dangerous to fail to appreciate such a fragile gift.
The church parking lot was already crowded by the time they arrived, but Frank found a place down near the back tree line where a small creek edged into the deeper woods. He went out to look at the water and watch some of the other recent arrivals while Gloria finished fussing with her makeup. By the time she got out he had counted a dozen families on their way toward the pews, and none of them a shade darker than cream of wheat.
“You sure this is a good idea?” Gloria asked, seeing the same thing he did.
“No, but we’re beyond that now, I’m afraid. Come on, kids. Let’s see what kind of Christians they grow out this way.”
When they entered, several faces turned, some kindlier than others. He smiled at a couple sitting at the end of the pew and asked their pardon as they seated themselves halfway down the row. He scanned the program as he listened to the organ play “All Creatures of Our God.” As it concluded, Reverend Winter took his place at the pulpit. He welcomed everyone and beamed a preacher’s smile that looked like it had been practiced in front of a mirror since seminary. It was the kind of thing that was so obviously insincere that it amazed Frank anyone could see if for anything other than a hoax. Amazing what people could put up with if they thought that was what was expected of them.
He closed his eyes when Winter said it was time to pray, though his mind wasn’t on prayer at that moment. Instead, he thought of what he would do if he should lose the election. It was one thing to rearrange his and his family’s lives for the sake of civic service. But what would it mean if he risked an essential part of himself and then have it rejected, discounted? Surely that was a strong possibility. He knew it was naive, but he believed being a good man mattered, that it mattered to others as well, despite so much evidence to the contrary. But how would you feel if you staked yourself against someone like Gavin Noon and lost? The idea of it made him ill. As Reverend Winter said his amen, Frank swallowed back a taste of bile.
“Frank, you okay?” Gloria asked, squeezing his hand.
“Yeah, baby. I’m good.”
Winter opened his heavy gilded Bible and began to preach. It was something about friendship and David and Jonathan, though Frank only periodically followed the line of
reasoning. When Winter spoke, something else came out between the words. Something equal parts honey and horseshit. Like a poison flavored as a candy. He glanced around to see how his flock accepted his message. Their solemn and sleepy faces held little he could read.
Somehow the hour eventually spent itself and everyone stood to receive the benediction. But before Winter delivered his final words his eyes caught Frank’s.
“I do hate that it’s time to go,” Winter said, “but I want to remind everyone that they are welcomed to attend the after-service coffee which is held, as always, in the basement fellowship room. We have such good talks down there. And you absolutely never can anticipate who might drop in for a visit.”
Frank felt a nudge in his side.
“Why do I feel like that was for your benefit?” Gloria asked.
“Because you’re a wise woman.”
She made a sound of reluctant agreement.
The press of bodies slowed their way down the carpeted stairs, so that by the time they made it to the after-service gathering a line had already formed at the coffee urn. The girls had already had enough and were picking at the sleeves of their dresses, saying they were itching. Frank told them they could go on outside and play as long as they stayed out of the creek as well as the parking lot. They didn’t give him a second to reconsider, vanishing in a ripple of bright taffeta.
“Mister Farmer, I thought that was you,” Reverend Winter said, his smile theatrically bright. Neither offered to shake the other’s hand.
“This is my wife, Gloria.”
Gloria bent her head and pressed her lips for a civil greeting.
“Lovely, just lovely,” Winter murmured. “I thought I saw your children as well?”
“They needed a little air,” Gloria answered. “Too much adult conversation drove them to it.”
Winter laughed, brought out his handkerchief to dab above his shirt collar.
“I can certainly sympathize with that, Mrs. Farmer. I’m sure Frank has already mentioned we had some of that kind of boring talk regarding his political ambitions here lately. I really do deplore that kind of thing. It’s a terrible burden to put on a house of worship, this question of which ballot to stuff. I’ve never been a political man myself. I prefer to let the word of God speak for itself. Activist preachers are the pharisees of the world today, from what I can gather.”
How Fire Runs Page 19