Art's Blood

by Vicki Lane

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, so I guess Aidan intends to be here for that hearing after all. Evidently he’s got a real fireball for a lawyer— dismissal is a definite possibility. But I got to wonder— where’s the money coming from, first for the bail and then for this attorney? And, it looks like, a new car.” He scratched his head. “What is it with all the white SUVs anyway?”

  * * *

  Sleep was slow in coming that night. Elizabeth was intensely aware of the chirr of crickets outside and the heavy breathing of the sleeping dogs in her room as well as the aching of her bruised body. She lay on her back, turning the day’s revelations over and over, trying to make sense of them: there was Rafiq’s obvious hatred for Boz; Boz’s involvement with the meth lab; the rumors about Carter Dixon; the handrail that gave way just after Kyra saw the nanny; the reappearance of Aidan and Willow.

  Again and again the same scenes replayed. My brain is churning, she thought, then smiled at the appropriateness of the image. Just like when I used to make butter. Fill the churn with cream, then beat that cream over and over till the fat hardens into butter and floats on top of the buttermilk. She yawned. By that analogy, if I keep at it, sooner or later I’ll separate the sheep from the goats.

  A very mixed metaphor, Elizabeth. She turned on her side and slid to the cooler side of the bed— Sam’s side. At once a confusion of images assaulted her— she closed her eyes and relived those few moments after she had fallen— when she had surrendered herself to the comfort of Phillip’s arms, there in that hot, dusty parking lot. She could still feel the pressure of his arms and the smooth fabric of his shirt against her cheek. She lay still, willing that moment back into reality, and doing so, fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Phillip, I haven’t…” she was saying as a growing chorus of whines and muted barks broke into her dreams. James was on the bed, trying to lick her face, and Ursa and Mollie were pawing impatiently at the closed bedroom door. Elizabeth burrowed into her pillow and tried to return to the tender and significant moment that was rapidly fading from her memory.

  To no avail. Now all three dogs were howling. Molly’s deep-throated baying could wake the dead. With the addition of Ursa’s contralto accompaniment and little James’s ridiculous high-pitched yipping that occasionally achieved a shrill howl, the noise in the bedroom banished romantic dreams. Slowly, aching in every joint, Elizabeth dragged herself out of bed.

  When the dogs had been released from the house for their usual morning run, she dressed, trying to remember the exact content of the dream. But aside from the memory of Phillip or was it Sam…or was it Sam but he looked like Phillip and the feeling that she wished the dream could have gone on, details were sketchy. He was holding me. And there was danger of some kind but because he was there I wasn’t afraid.

  By the time she had made coffee, the reality of the day had firmly replaced the fantasy of the dream. That brief embrace in the parking lot …I was upset— he was comforting me— just a friendly gesture, it doesn’t mean anything. Indeed, but for that brief and undeniable feeling of a line crossed in the sand. They had returned to Phillip’s house, where he had insisted on cleaning her scraped arm with peroxide. He had asked her to stay for dinner. But her knee had been throbbing from the fall and she ached all over. “Phillip, I think I just need to go home and lie down for a while,” she had said, common sense beating out inclination.

  “Why don’t you let me drive you home? You could come in tomorrow with Ben and pick up your car.”

  “No, really, I’m fine to drive. I just think I need to go home.”

  “You’ll call me when you get there,” he insisted. It hadn’t been a question.

  * * *

  When she called him, the line had been busy. Almost as soon as she put the phone down, however, it rang. “Elizabeth, how are you feeling now?”

  “Stiff, sore, a little sorry for myself. But I’m going to put an ice pack on my knee and stretch out for a bit.” She hesitated. “Phillip, I wish I could have stayed for dinner but I think this was the right thing to do.”

  “Yeah.” His voice had been unenthusiastic. “I guess so. Thing is, I just got off the phone with the folks who’re renting my house back in Beaufort, and there’s evidently some major problem with the roof. I’m going to have to go back and see if it’s as bad as they say. They think I need to spring for a whole new roof but I’m hoping it can be patched. If I leave early in the morning, with any luck I can take care of things and be back by Wednesday. That way I’ll only miss one day of classes.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth had tried not to sound disappointed. “Well, have a good trip. Give me a call when you get back and I’ll bring you up-to-date on what’s happening with Kyra.”

  “I thought I’d check in with you every night, Elizabeth.” He had sounded tentative, but determined. “Keep up with things that way. I hate leaving just when…when things are getting interesting….”

  * * *

  Interesting. As she ate her breakfast she wondered exactly what he had meant. I feel like someone in junior high, she thought. It seemed as if things should be simpler now. After all, in this age of “hookups” and “one night stands,” it’s a little silly for me, a “woman of a certain age,” to be spending this much time and speculation over what was, after all, no more than a friendly hug. It may not have meant anything.

  Or it may have meant everything, whispered a voice from the other side of that threshold that she had passed the previous day, back in the hot dusty parking lot.

  CHAPTER 19

  LORETTY’S LEGACY

  (MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12)

  BY MONDAY THE BRUISES WERE AT THEIR MOST SPECTACULAR and the knee, though sore, was mending. Phillip’s call the night before (she had carried the phone with her around the house, as eager as a teenager for its ring) had been long and chatty. His parting words, “Sleep well, Elizabeth,” had come true and she had awakened smiling, ready for what the day might bring.

  She spent the morning making herb vinegar. Down in her garden she filled two baskets with sprigs of herbs— oregano, thyme, Italian parsley, dill, garlic chives, sage, basil, and tarragon. Back in the kitchen she rinsed off the leafy bunches and shook the moisture from them. She had already washed out her gallon jars— eleven of them— and she divided the herbs among the jars, stuffing nine of them with a mixture but reserving the tarragon for just two. Tarragon, the “little dragon” of herbs, was too overpowering to mix with milder flavors. “Does not play well with others,” she mused as she filled the jars with slightly warmed apple cider vinegar.

  She set the jars on the table under the window. There they would sit for several weeks as the herbs’ essences permeated the vinegar. Then she would strain the vinegar and throw out the now pulpy and unattractive herbs. The savory vinegar would be decanted into attractive bottles, each of which held a peeled clove of garlic and a few sprigs of an herb in flower— blue thyme, yellow dill, or white chives. The finished bottles, corked and sealed with wax and labeled with the Full Circle Farm label, would go to a specialty grocer in Asheville.

  She swept out her kitchen and wiped the countertops, considering what to do next. Her body still felt too battered to want to attempt much work outside. And, for September, it was a staggeringly hot day. She decided to eat some lunch and then go visit Miss Birdie to get more leads on quilts for the show at the library.

  * * *

  As she pulled across the bridge to Birdie’s place, Elizabeth smiled to see the pale blue Fairlane parked beside Birdie’s old truck. That meant that Birdie’s cousin Dorothy was visiting. Dorothy, having worked as an aide in a nursing home for many years, saw no reason to cut back now that she was officially retired. It was her custom to spend varying amounts of time with her elderly friends and relatives, cleaning and cooking and “seein’ ’bout” their sundry needs. She was always full of good humor and funny stories, and Birdie looked forward to her visits. “Though to tell you the truth, Lizzie Beth,” Miss Birdie had confid
ed after an extended stay by Cousin Dorothy, “hit’s summat more peaceable without her. She’s awful bad to talk all the day long. And run that sweeper! Ay law, she like to wore out the linoleum rug.”

  As she came up to the porch, Elizabeth could hear Dorothy’s voice, rising above the murmur of a soap opera. “Now, Birdie, you ought to let me take down them window blinds and wipe the dust off of ’em. And while they’re down, I’ll just go ahead and wash them windows too. No, it’s not too much for me. I ain’t happy just settin’ and watchin’ the TV. Why, look who’s here! It’s your friend Miz Goodweather at the door!”

  “You come right in, Lizzie Beth,” Miss Birdie called out. “Hit’s some cooler in here. That sun’s full on the porch right now and hit’s just a-bakin’ out there.” Miss Birdie, enthroned in her recliner chair with one eye on the television, motioned Elizabeth to the sofa. “You got all the quilts you need fer that thing they’re puttin’ on at the libery? I was tellin’ Dor’thy about you borryin’ some of mine and she said that you had ought to go see ol’ Franklin Ferman—”

  “That’s what I told her all right.” Dorothy came out of the kitchen with a step stool and made for the nearest window. She pulled up the wooden slats, climbed on the stool, and began to detach the blind. “You know, Franklin’s wife Loretta was a good hand to quilt and she had her a stack of purty quilts on her bed. I looked in on her time and again when she was bed-bound, there at the end, and I never saw so many colors and patterns.”

  The blind came loose and Dorothy handed it to Elizabeth, who stood waiting to receive it. “Franklin lives in that little green house near the bridge, just above that new double-wide. You ought to go down and see them quilts; they’re a sight on earth.”

  Elizabeth expressed cautious interest in seeing these quilts, saying that she could use a few more for the show. The words were barely out of her mouth before Dorothy had Franklin Ferman on the telephone, arranging a visit from “that nice Miz Goodweather who lives up to the ol’ Baker place. You know, that Florida woman that Birdie’s friends with.”

  Elizabeth smiled ruefully. She and Sam had bought their place some twenty-one years ago and had christened it Full Circle Farm, a nod to the farming backgrounds of their various great-grandparents, and had, in the eager pride of ownership, put the name on a sign at the entrance. But to the neighbors it was still “the ol’ Baker place” no matter what their sign said. And she was still “that Florida woman.” Would always be “that Florida woman.” And should Laurel or Rosemary eventually move back and have children, those children would never be considered “real” Marshall County natives. As an elderly neighbor had said years ago, “Well, way I see it’s like this: ol’ cat might have her kittens in the oven, but you wouldn’t call ’em biscuits, now would you?”

  Dorothy hung up the phone and beamed triumphantly at Elizabeth. “I told him you’d come down after you and Birdie’d had your visit. He’ll be lookin’ for you.” She leaned toward Elizabeth as if to confide a dark secret. “Franklin acts like he don’t like folks but it’s along of he’s awful shy. Always has been. Just don’t pay him no mind— he’ll be tickled to see you.”

  “I was tellin’ Dor’thy how I let you borry them quilts of mine and I got to tryin’ to remember who all hit was had worked on that quilt for Lexter and Britty Mae. When I named Fanchon and Tildy—”

  Dorothy broke in, almost bouncing with excitement. “I said, ‘Law, Birdie, they used to be a Fanchon and a Tildy livin’ up at the Golden Years Home when I was workin’ there.’ Shared a room, they did. Of course, that was several years back of this and I reckon they’ve passed on by now, poor old things. They didn’t seem to have no family but each other— I believe they was sisters.”

  Dorothy was back on the step stool, ready to detach the last set of blinds, but she stood there, lost in memory. “My, how them two ol’ biddies did fuss. I’d go in there and one would take on and say that the other had stole her clothes and that other one would just act so meek and mild and not sayin’ nothing. Pretty soon I’d find ever what hit was that was missin’ and put hit back in hits right place and then, come the next day, seemed like the meek one would take a mean streak and just devil the life out of the other. She’d drink up both glasses of juice at juice time and eat up all the cookies at snack time and the other poor old thing’d be cryin’ like her heart would break. Hit was just pitiful how them two carried on.”

  “Britty Mae always said that hit was Fanchon was the mean one.” Birdie looked up from her television “story.” “Called her a home devil. I reckon hit was her caused most of the trouble, wasn’t hit?”

  “Law, Birdie honey, I never could keep them two straight.” Dorothy had brought a sponge and a bowl of soapy water from the kitchen and was beginning to wipe down the blinds that she had spread out on the floor. “They was about the same size and they looked so much alike I couldn’t hardly tell one from t’other.”

  “They looked alike?” Elizabeth frowned. “Someone told me that Fanchon was really beautiful and Tildy was very…very plain.”

  “Might have been that was true in their early years.” Dorothy was kneeling on the floor, bent over the blinds. “But, law, when I saw ’em they was just two fat old women. Honey, old age done got ’em both.”

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later Elizabeth was on her way to visit Franklin Ferman. She pulled her car into the driveway and waited to see if he would appear on the porch, but the only signs of life were a few scrawny red hens scratching around the base of a mildewed lilac bush at the side of the house. Elizabeth got out of the car, slammed the door loudly, and waited a few minutes. When no one appeared, she climbed the steps to the porch, knocked vigorously on the frame of the sagging screen door, and called out, “Mr. Ferman? It’s Elizabeth Good—”

  “Come in the house.” The peremptory voice seemed to come from the depths of the little dwelling. Elizabeth stepped into the front room. An oil stove, a disgraceful old upholstered chair, and an upended wooden box lay to her right; to the left was a narrow bed, its white-enameled iron frame dotted with patches of rust. A moth-eaten army blanket and a faded pink chenille bedspread covered the hillocky mattress, and one almost flat pillow, its striped ticking plain through the worn yellowing pillowcase, lay at the head. The room was dark and stuffy and smelled strongly of mice.

  “Back here.” The voice was husky, with an unused quality to it. Elizabeth followed it through the door by the oil stove and found herself in a small, grimy kitchen. The sink and countertops were piled high with unwashed dishes: their sour smell suggested they had been there for some time. Franklin Ferman was sitting at the ancient enamel-topped kitchen table, busily spooning soup beans from a saucepan into his toothless mouth. His false teeth lay by his left elbow, just beside the remnants of a somewhat charred cake of cornbread. An overturned box of cereal, a jar of sorghum molasses with a steady stream of ants climbing and descending its sides, and an assortment of more dirty dishes crowded the rest of the filthy tabletop.

  “Git you a chair.” He nodded toward a straight-backed wooden chair. Its hickory-bark seat had a gaping hole that had been covered by a narrow board. Elizabeth pulled the chair up to the table across from her host and sat down carefully.

  “Thank you for letting me come over, Mr. Ferman. I’m Eliz—”

  “Dor’thy told me who you are.” The noisy inhalation of food continued. “I’ll show you them quilts quick as I get done. I got that ol’ sugar in my blood and iffen I don’t eat regular, I’m like to pass out.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Ferman; I’m in no hurry.” She composed herself to wait, trying to ignore the teeth grinning up at her from the table. Covertly looking around the kitchen, she tried to imagine what it might have been like when Loretta Ferman was alive. The grayed and tattered remains of sheer ruffled curtains edged in red hung at the window over the sink. The cabinets, beneath layers of grease and dirt, showed that some loving hand had once enameled them a bright yellow and adorned them with deca
ls of baskets overflowing with fruit. A brilliantly painted (beneath the grime) plaster hen and rooster decorated the wall beside her, and behind Franklin Ferman’s head hung a large framed print of Leonardo’s Last Supper. Elizabeth had to suppress a smile when she saw that the nail it hung from had been pressed into double duty: a rusting metal flyswatter hung down the middle of the picture, entirely covering the figure of Jesus.

  She looked away from the Last Supper to see a terrified mouse peeking out of the cereal box there on the table. Black bead eyes seemed to consider the options. Suddenly the tiny creature made a break for it, darting toward the side of the table.

  Franklin Ferman took the spoon from his mouth, smacked the mouse hard on the head, and, without missing a beat, resumed shoveling the beans into his toothless maw. “That’ll learn him,” he commented moistly.

  The little gray form quivered and was still. Elizabeth sat, listening to the prolonged slurping sounds of the old man and studying the small corpse. Finally she stood and gingerly picked up the mouse by its tail. The kitchen door was open to the back steps and she walked over to it and tossed the dead mouse toward some scraggly boxwoods.

  The body was instantly pounced on by a lean speckled hen that snapped it up in her yellow beak and darted under the back steps, eagerly pursued by two red chickens intent on stealing the treat.

  With a satisfied belch, Franklin Ferman pushed the saucepan aside. He picked up his dentures, put them into his mouth, then said, “You keep chickens?”

  Elizabeth turned from the door. “Yes, I have a few—”

  “Loretty was plumb foolish over them things.” The old man pulled out a ragged blue bandana and blew his nose loudly. “I wish you could’ve seen this place when she was alive. I ain’t much of a hand to keep house, but back when Loretty was able, ever thing was just so.”