After the weenie roast, there would be an auction to raise money for the church. Men donated cords of wood, bales of cotton, carved cedar walking sticks, fresh apple cider, and ten-pound bags of pecans, walnuts or peanuts. Women gave crocheted tablecloths, embroidered aprons, colorful patchwork quilts, fancy cakes, or quart jars of canned fruits, the peaches and cherries glowing like jewels in that crisp autumn sunlight.
Will got his start as an auctioneer at one of the Sweetwater Harvest sales.
Daddy wasn’t a churchgoer, but he always came to the sale and donated a hundred-weight of cured tobacco and bid on a quilt or some cakes. Growing boys always needed covering or feeding.
Relatively speaking, Southerners—especially those out in the country—have only recently taken to Thanksgiving. Certainly it was never a major holiday when I was very young. Oh, we colored pumpkins and turkeys in kindergarten and put on assembly plays in Pilgrim costumes of buckled shoes and hats and gray clothes with wide white collars. And we’d get Thursday and Friday off and the mail wouldn’t run on that Thursday, but otherwise, it was just an ordinary day of the week. Like as not, Daddy and the boys would harvest beans or cut stalks that day while Mother and Maidie and I went about our usual chores.
It wasn’t till I was in middle school and after some of the boys had married town-bred girls who celebrated Thanksgiving like the rest of the country that Mother started cooking a turkey and making a special holiday meal.
Daddy still thought it was a made-up holiday imposed on us by the North. As a boy, he could remember when Thanksgiving depended on annual presidential proclamations and was vaguely mistrusted as a remnant of Yankee puritanism. “They tried to outlaw our Christmas, so we never much bothered with their Thanksgiving,” he says, harkening back to lore handed down from before the Civil War.
Mother was a girl but old enough to remember when President Roosevelt stabilized Thanksgiving in 1939 and made it the fourth Thursday in November instead of the last Thursday, a distinction with a difference. “And not for the glory of God,” she would say dryly, “but for Mammon. November had five Thursdays that year and Mr. Roosevelt thought it would help stores get out of the Depression quicker if the country had an extra week of Christmas shopping days.”
Which is why Haywood and Isabel would feel no qualms about flying off to Atlantic City next Thursday instead of staying home to eat a big meal. As long as we get together sometime toward the end of the week, our family still has no fixation on any particular day.
My Thanksgiving reverie was suddenly interrupted by a sharp nudge in the ribs by Portland Brewer. Everyone else had their heads bowed for the prayer that closed the minister’s sermon. Once again, I’d missed it entirely.
Oh, well.
We stood for the singing of a final hymn—“Bringing in the Sheaves”—a last benediction, then we left the shadowy sanctuary and passed into the bright sunshine where red, gold and brown leaves lay thickly on the sidewalk and swirled along the gutters. Last night’s chilly wind had finished stripping the crepe myrtles and maples. The oaks alone still held their brown leaves.
As Cherry Lou Stancil’s court-appointed attorney, Avety Brewer wanted to hear my account of Mr. Jap’s death.
“Too bad she didn’t get to sign the farm back over to him,” I said. “That leaves her going to trial with her primary motive still intact.”
“You never know,” Avery said gamely. “Juries have acquitted with a lot more evidence than a Kmart sales slip for the weapon.”
“Right. And I suppose Millard King’s going to argue accidental discharge of said weapon and have Tig Wentworth plead to involuntary manslaughter?”
Portland grinned at her husband. “Now there’s a thought, honey. She said the shotgun was a present. Maybe her little ol’ son-in-law tripped on a mole run as he was going out to give it to him.”
Avery was not amused and went on ahead to warm up their car.
As the rest of the congregation streamed through the broad oak doors, then clumped for snatches of Sunday morning conversation along the steps and sidewalk, Portland touched my sleeve and drew me aside.
“Can I speak to you a minute, Deborah? Off the record?”
“Sure, Por. What’s up?”
Portland was a Smith before she married Avery Brewer and is Uncle Ash’s brother’s daughter, which makes us courtesy cousins. Not that the courtesy is needed. We’ve been good friends since we got thrown out of the Junior Girls’ class in Sunday school for teasing prissy Caroline Atherton. Indeed, Portland’s one of the reasons I stuck with law. After nearly messing up my life, I looked around to see what my friends were doing with theirs and Portland seemed to be having the most fun.
She and I were still the same height and approximate build, only on her, it looked better. She had short wiry black hair that curled all over her head as if a mad beautician had styled a Persian lamb, and her brown eyes were worried as she drew me even further away from the crowd.
“You remember that contested paternity suit I argued before you a couple of weeks ago?”
“Vaguely. Refresh my memory.”
“Beecham versus Collins? Single mom and cute little girl? I represented the alleged father.”
“Oh, yeah. The one where blood tests proved he couldn’t have fathered the child?”
“That’s the one.”
“So?”
“So day before yesterday—Friday? I got a call from one of Collins’ friends. He’s facing a paternity suit, too, and Collins recommended me.”
“What’s wrong with that? You won the case, why wouldn’t he recommend you?”
“Because I wasn’t Collins’ only recommendation,” Portland said grimly. “This friend tried to be subtle about it, but he asked me to make certain that we used Jamerson Labs and that it’d sure be nice if Mrs. Diana Henderson could be the technician who actually draws the blood and runs the test since she did such a good job for ol’ Tim there, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.”
“What?”
She nodded unhappily.
“He bribed her?”
“Maybe.”
As the implications sank in, I said, “You’re talking perjury here. And subornation of perjury, too. Or conspiracy. And that’s just for starters. Who approached whom?”
If possible, Portland looked even more unhappy. The ethical ground she was walking over at the moment was shakier than Jell-O.
“I don’t know, Deborah. Swear to God. And maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.”
“Do you honestly think so?” I asked her squarely.
Her eyes met mine. “No.”
“Who was the opposing attorney? Ambrose Daughtridge? I want your client and Mrs. Henderson in my courtroom first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Ex-client,” Portland said hastily.
“Whichever.”
“We’ll be there.” She gave my arm a squeeze, then with her wiry dark curls bouncing in the sunlight, she hurried over to the curb where Avery waited in their car.
As I started to cross the street to my own car, a white pickup stopped in the crosswalk in front of me and my nephew Reese leaned over and pushed open the passenger door.
“Want to buy me a cup of coffee?” he asked.
With those oversized tires, I had to hike my Sunday skirt to make that long step up to the cab, but one glance at the diamond-patterned treads made me think that it might well be worth the price of a cup of coffee to hear what Reese had to say about yesterday morning.
18
« ^ » As in every rising colony, so in this, tradesmen are much wanted; and the demand for them must increase in proportion to the number of settlers that resort to it.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
As the youngest of my father’s twelve children, I have nieces and nephews who range in age from four years older than me, right down to high school.
Reese, the second of Herman and Nadine’s four, had to be at least twenty-six, but going on for sixteen if the love and money he was lavishing on this juked-up truc
k meant anything.
The white exterior was waxed to a diamond sheen that dazzled my eyes, and the heavy chrome bumpers were even shinier.
The interior was lushly upholstered in a supple honey-brown vinyl that made everything—from the adjustable seat to the doors to the dashboard and even the steering wheel itself—feel buttery soft. Besides the standard accessories, the dashboard had a built-in CD player with extra speakers concealed in the doors, and the lid of the padded armrest not only had a place to hold drink cups, it flipped back to reveal a cellular phone. The golden oak gun rack across the rear window and the stock of the Winchester hanging in the rack both matched the light caramel tones of the upholstery.
“Done much hunting this season?” I asked as I buckled myself in.
“Naw. Don’t have time. Got a few doves back in September, but we been so busy wiring that new subdivision south of town lately, I’m doing good to get away by dinnertime on Saturday. Now that daylight savings is over, sunset comes mighty early.”
“What about sunrise?” I asked snidely.
He snorted and took the turn on the truck lane a hair too sharply so that we bumped up over the curb. “You sound just like Ma.”
“Bite your tongue, boy!”
Nadine’s a good woman, but she can be awfully rigid about the morality of early rising and hard work and going to church three times a week.
Reese laughed. “Yeah, I’m thinking of getting me a doublewide and putting it out near the long pond. Dad said he’d cut me off an acre or two if I wanted it. I shouldn’t never have moved back home again. If I stay out late on a Saturday night and then try to sleep in, they act like I’m going straight to the devil. I tell you what’s the truth—I’m getting too old to have to be up and out on Sunday mornings before they get back from church.”
We pulled into the drive-through at Bojangles and I told him I’d spring for a sausage biscuit as well, if they were still serving breakfast. “I got up too late to eat, myself,” I admitted.
The truck windows operated electronically. Reese pushed the button to lower his and yelled down into the staticky speaker, “Two sausage biscuits and two large coffees. No cream. No sugar. You do take your coffee black, don’t you, Deb’rah?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. Coffee stains’ll sponge right up if you spill it on the carpet, but that creamer stuff’s hell to get out.”
He sounded like Hints from Heloise.
When we drove around to the serving window, those oversized tires put us up so high that Reese had to lean out and reach down to take our order. “And could we have some extra napkins?”
“Don’t you trust me not to smear sausage grease on your seats,” I teased.
“Never hurts to be safe,” he said mildly.
That was so unlike the old devil-may-care Reese that I took a good long look at him as he reseated his ball cap so that his light brown hair lay smooth before he pulled out of the Bojangles driveway into the Sunday church traffic that clogged the main commercial street through town.
He has the clear, forget-me-not blue eyes of all our clan and the solid regular features of most of his cousins. None of my brothers are movie-star gorgeous and neither are their children, but nobody in our family’s ever stopped a clock either. Reese has always had girlfriends—“trashy girlfriends,” according to Nadine, but she’d say that about any woman he moved in with if there wasn’t a gold band on his finger first.
He’s been working for Herman and Nadine since high school and has never shown too much energy or ambition. All he seems to want is to put in his forty hours, then spend the weekends hunting and fishing and maybe a quick roll in the hay between football games. His younger sister Annie Sue is the only one of Herman’s kids with a real feel for the electrical business.
But ever since Herman’s brush with death left him in a wheelchair, we haven’t heard much grumbling either from or about Reese. He wasn’t slacking either. A couple of knuckles on his hands were scraped raw where he’d banged them when he was pulling wire across ceiling rafters or while he was trying to bore holes though hard-to-reach floor joists. For a moment, I almost wondered if the real reason he broke up with his last girlfriend and moved back home was so he could be there to help out as Herman adjusted to his loss of mobility.
“Even hedonists can rise to the occasion,” whispered my idealistic preacher.
“Get real,” said the cynical pragmatist. “This is Reese, for God’s sake.”
I took another look around the interior of his truck and decided I was probably imagining things.
Nevertheless, I took his sausage biscuit out of the greasy paper it’d come wrapped in and carefully tucked a fresh napkin around the bottom so he could eat while he drove without strewing crumbs.
A third of the sandwich disappeared in a single bite and his mouth was full as he said, “I could eat a horse.”
I broke off a small piece of my sausage and biscuit, barely enough to take the edge off my own appetite, and passed the rest over to him. He grunted his thanks and wolfed it down, too.
Yeah, this was Reese all right.
With the rich smell of sausage and coffee filling the cab, we drove aimlessly in a wide looping circle around Dobbs, enjoying the drive. Not going anywhere, just going.
“Dwight Bryant call you yet?” I asked.
“Nope. What about?”
“About what time you drove past Jap Stancil’s garage yesterday?”
“Who says I did?” His voice was wary.
“Saw your tracks.”
“Must’ve been from last week sometime. No, wait a minute, I remember now. I did cut through last Tuesday to see if I could fit a trailer between those willows near the long pond.”
“Oh, come on, Reese. It rained hard all day Friday. Didn’t stop till after midnight. Your tracks were laid down sometime yesterday morning. New crisp diamonds in a wide tread. You’re not going to tell me any of the other boys have tires like yours.”
“Okay, so it was me,” he said grumpily. “You don’t have to go telling the whole county, do you?”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause I was suppose to be working. Finishing up a house there on Forty-Eight. But dammit all, Deb’rah! Dad and Ma don’t want me to work on Sunday, the state don’t allow Sunday hunting and I’ve not taken a full Saturday off in two months. Ruth and Jessica were riding their horses along the creek in the new ground Thursday evening and Jess told me she saw some pretty big deer tracks.”
Ruth is Andrew’s younger daughter by his second wife and Jessica is Seth and Minnie’s middle child. Both are still in high school.
“Well, you know how A.K. keeps bragging about that head he’s got mounted? I thought it’d sure be fun if I took a little drive through, maybe bag a big buck myself if I got lucky.”
“And did you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Saw the tracks though and man, they’re humongous, but that’s all I saw.”
“What time was this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying much attention to the clock. I knocked off around ten-fifteen, ten-thirty, and drove straight on over. I was maybe ten minutes away. Say ten-thirty, maybe ten forty-five?”
“See anything of Mr. Jap when you drove past the garage?”
“Nope, not a soul. I would’ve stopped to ask Allen about a sticky valve, but his truck wasn’t there neither. You don’t think Dwight’s really going to come asking me stuff, do you?”
“If someone tells him those are your tire tracks, he will. You ought to go ahead and tell him yourself ’cause that could help narrow down the time range. Dwight’s got no reason to mention it to your dad, especially if you ask him not to.”
But Reese was getting a look on his face like a right-sided mule hitched up to left-sided traces. No way was he going to pull that load.
“Granddaddy already said he saw Mr. Jap at the crossroads around ten-thirty. I’m telling you I didn’t see anybody when I drove in or when I drove out,
and I don’t see why I’ve got to get involved.”
He drained the last of his coffee, crushed the foam cup in his hand, and turned down the street that would bring us back to my car. I sipped my own coffee and tried to figure out why he was so reluctant to speak to Dwight.
There was a sour feeling between us when he pulled up beside the church.
“Thanks for breakfast,” he said stiffly.
As I opened the door to climb down, a gust of cold wind caught my hair and tangled it in the bolt action of the Winchester behind me.
Awkwardly, Reese reached over to untangle me and I said, “You do have a deer license, don’t you?”
He shook his head and looked at me sadly. “What do you think I am, stupid or something?”
Anger I might’ve believed. Ironic laughter I might’ve believed. But all that innocence shining in his bright blue eyes?
I held out my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Come on, Reese. Show me.”
He slammed his hand down hard on the seat between us. “Okay, so I don’t have a fucking deer license. You satisfied? When’ve I had the time to buy one? Will you tell me that? And now I suppose you’ll tell your boyfriend and I won’t be able to turn around without a game warden breathing over my shoulder.”
“Get a license,” I told him, sliding down to the street without breaking the heel on my shoe. “And leave your gun home till you do.”
I slammed the door and was walking away when I heard both windows power down.
“You know something, Deb’rah?” Reese shouted angrily. “You used to be a damn sight more fun before you got to be a judge.”
Before I could answer, he screeched off from the curb, ran a red light at the intersection and tore off down the street in utter disregard of the thirty-five miles per hour speed limit.
“Thank goodness it’s Sunday and the streets are deserted,” the pragmatist said piously.
The preacher was too dismayed to comment.
19
« ^ » This is a great spur to their diligence, and an ample reward for their toil, which is far from severe...“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
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