One More Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  Behind the counter a pretty woman with poufy blond hair was busy stocking the glass pie cabinet. When she heard Charly come in she turned half around, her face already lit up with an automatic smile of welcome, and sang out, “Hey, there! You just go on and have a seat, hon, and I’ll be with you in a sec, okay?”

  What happened then made Charly feel as if aliens had taken over her body. All of a sudden she felt herself scrunch down and lean over to one side, as if she were trying to see out from behind an invisible obstacle. Those aliens must have taken over her voice, too, because when she spoke it seemed to have gotten a lot louder and higher pitched than her normal adult speaking voice, with a stronger Alabama accent than she’d heard coming out of her own mouth in almost twenty years. “Kelly? Kelly Grace, is that you?”

  At that, the blond woman sort of scrunched down herself, and stared at Charly for a second or two. Suddenly her mouth fell open, and she pressed both hands to her chest and gasped, “Oh, my Lawd, I don’t believe it!”

  She advanced on Charly with open arms, at the same time cutting loose with a blood-curdling squeal that would have prompted anyone within earshot to immediately dial 911 anywhere in the world, that is, except in the South, where they’re used to that sort of carrying on. It was, in fact, completely ignored by the teenage couples in the back booth and the boy playing video games three feet away.

  “Charlene Elizabeth Phelps, is that really you? Oh, my stars, I swear I’m gon’ die. You just come here an’ let me look at you-why, you haven’t changed a bit, not one little bit. Where in the world have you been all these years? Oh, God-my poor heart’s just goin’ like a freight train. Why didn’t you evah write? Oh-oh my, I b’lieve I’m just gon’ have to sit down ’fore I fall down. Charlene Phelps, I swear I could just kill you…”

  Although this was all delivered with the accompaniment of laughter, tears and hugs and at a decibel level rivaling that of a factory whistle, and was certainly all the welcome any prodigal son-or daughter-could have asked for and more, Charly didn’t let it go to her head. Since Kelly Grace had been her best friend all those years ago and was prone to emotional outbursts even then, it was pretty much what she’d expected.

  “It’s Charly now,” she said when she could get a word in edgewise. “I’m sorry I didn’t write…” Well. okay, she couldn’t help but be a little choked up.

  Kelly Grace waved that away as if it were just an old fly making a nuisance of itself. “Oh, hey, don’t you say a thing, not a thing. I know how it is, I really do-I’m terrible about that myself. But you coulda let me know you were comin’!”

  “Well,” Charly mumbled, “it was kind of on the spur of the moment.”

  Kelly Grace wiped her own hands on her apron and grabbed for Charly’s. “Well, you just tell me all about everything, this minute. Charly, you say? Oh, that’s cute, I really do like that-but you know I am never goin’ be able to call you anything but Charlene. Come on over here and sit. Are you hungry? Can I get you something to drink? How ’bout some sweet tea? Oh, Lord-you used to like cherry Cokes, remember? Do you still drink those things?”

  “Maybe if you put a little bourbon in it,” Charly said, not entirely facetiously.

  Kelly Grace laughed and fanned herself with her hand. “Oh, my, you haven’t changed a bit.” She cocked her head sideways and studied Charly with the frankly critical appraisal permitted lifelong friends. “But look at you, there’s not a gray hair on your head!”

  “And never will be,” declared Charly, “while there’s breath left in my body.”

  Kelly Grace laughed some more. “Well, now, I hear that. Let’s hear it for Clairol. No, but I swear, you look just the same as you did back in high school.”

  “So do you,” Charly lied as she slid into a booth.

  “Go on, I do not. I’ve put on at least twenty pounds since the divorce-”

  “Oh, Kelly, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, yeah, me too. It’s been a while, now, though. I’m okay with it-things work out for the best, you know?”

  “Did you and…?” Charly made a rotating motion with her hand.

  “Bobby Hanratty,” Kelly Grace filled in for her, leaning against the opposite bench with her arms folded across her plump waist. Her smile, the dimples, were the ones Charly remembered. It was her eyes that were older-reminiscent and a little sad. She shrugged. “Yeah…you know how it was. We got married right after we graduated. Probably shouldn’t have-we were real young and stupid. Had our babies right away, too…” Her eyes suddenly darkened, and she caught herself and blurted, “Oh, God, Charlene, I’m just so sorry. I didn’t mean-”

  Charly grimaced. “Jeez, Kelly Grace, it’s okay. It was years and years ago.” She put a bright smile on her face. “So, you have kids? What kind, how many, tell me all about it.”

  It was the right thing to say. Kelly Grace was all sparkles and dimples again. “Oh, yeah, got two, one of each. Well, good Lord, they’re all grown up by now, though-Bobby Jr.’s graduatin’ next week, and Sara Louise is a year behind him.”

  “No way!”

  “I know, doesn’t seem possible, does it? Seems like it was just yesterday you and me were in high school, and it was me and Bobby and you and…oh, Lord, there I go again. Charlene, I’m just so sorry, I should keep my big mouth-”

  “Hey, I told you, it’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah…” Kelly Grace’s eyes rested on her, a slight frown making wrinkles appear in all the places Charly had recently begun to study minutely in her own mirror. This is too weird, she thought. How can my best friend have wrinkles? The last time I saw her we were sixteen. Sixteen.

  “How ‘bout you?” Kelly Grace asked hesitantly, obviously still feeling uneasy about it. “What all have you been doin’ with yourself? Did you ever…you know?”

  “Get married? Have kids?” That, of course, was the biggy. The ol’ sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. “Nope,” said Charly cheerfully, “not yet. Guess I just haven’t had time.”

  With that out of the way, Kelly Grace relaxed and settled herself like a nesting hen into the opposite side of the booth, from whence she resumed her artillery barrage of less important questions. “So, what have you been up to? Where’ve you been? Hey, did you ever get to California? I remember you were always talkin’ about goin’ out there.”

  “I did.” Charly nodded, her head going up and down like one of those tacky little doggies people used to put in their car windows. “That’s where I live now. I’m an attorney, actually.”

  “No way! Get out! You are not!”

  “It’s true. I’m a lawyer,” Charly said, her own laughter feeling like rocks rattling inside her chest. “Swear to God: Who’d a’ thought, huh?”

  “A lawyer! Oh, my God, the judge musta had a cow when he heard that!”

  The laughter died. Charly rested her elbows on the tabletop and pressed interwoven fingers to her lips. After a moment she cleared her throat and said, “He doesn’t know.”

  There was absolute silence. Then Kelly Grace leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, “You mean you haven’t…”

  “Nope.” Charly shook her head. “Haven’t seen him, haven’t spoken to him. Not in twenty years.”

  Kelly Grace’s eyes went wide. “Then you don’t-” She cut herself off and clamped her lips together, while her gaze slipped away and down.

  Charly tried laughing it off. “Hey, give me a break, I just got into town. You’re the first person I’ve seen, much less talked to.”

  “But you’re going to, right? I mean, well, for heaven’s sake, you are goin’ to go see him, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I’m gonna have to,” Charly said dryly. “I’m sure the news will get to him that I’m here.” And probably already had, she thought as the door gave its warning ding, and she glanced around nervously to see who had just come in. A couple of teenagers, nobody she’d know. She shook back her hair, making a conscious effort to unclasp her hands and relax her shoulders. “Ac
tually I was driving around the square trying to get my courage up, and I saw the sign. I wondered if that was you, and I just thought I’d stop in for a minute, say ‘Hey,’ you know, maybe give my nerves a chance to settle a little… Damn, Kelly Grace,” she burst out, “this isn’t gonna be easy!”

  Kelly Grace shifted in uneasy sympathy. “I guess not.”

  “Hey,” said Charly brightly, “I don’t suppose you’d happen to have a bottle of Black Jack tucked away someplace?”

  Kelly Grace put a hand over her eyes and groaned. “Oh, Lord, does that bring back memories! Remember that Fourth of July… Lord, I thought I was gon’ die.”

  So many memories, Charly thought. So many years. And maybe…not nearly enough. Because if it still seems like yesterday to me, and to her, then it probably does to everyone else, too.

  “I should be going,” she said, covering an involuntary shiver as she slid out of the booth.

  Kelly Grace followed, but when Charly glanced over at her, she saw that her friend had her hand clamped over her mouth and that above the hand her eyes were way too bright Somehow Charly knew that the brightness wasn’t laughter.

  A new thought and a terrible fear clutched at her heart. She halted, touched Kelly Grace’s arm and said airlessly, “He’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, he didn’t…die or anything?” And tried to laugh, as if it were of no consequence to her one way or the other.

  Kelly Grace blinked, then gave a sharp bark of laughter. “The judge? God, no. I guess there was some talk he was goin’ to retire a year or so ago, and I b’lieve he has cut back some. But…no, the judge is still-” she shrugged “-the judge.”

  “And Aunt Dobie, is she…?”

  “Aunt…you mean miz-” Once again she stopped herself. She swallowed, nodded, and her eyes slid away. “Oh, yeah, she’s still goin’ strong.”

  “The Stewarts?” The word caught, and emerged in a croak.

  Kelly Grace’s lips twisted in a little half smile of sympathy. “No, hon, they’re gone. Mr. Stewart, he passed on a few years back, and Miz Stewart, she sold the old place and moved down to Mobile to be closer to her grandkids. Becky and Royal-the girls, remember them?-they’re both married and livin’ down there somewheres.”

  They were at the door. Charly paused, looked over at the woman, now inexplicably middle-aged, who at the age of sixteen had been her best friend in all the world. Save one. She searched for something to say. But so many emotions were backed up inside her that she couldn’t say anything at all. Kelly Grace seemed to be having the same problem. She wiped away a tear, and they both laughed.

  “It was so great seein’ you again.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Sniffling, Kelly Grace said, “Charlene, you come on back here later on, now, y‘hear? After you’ve been to see him. We have catchin’ up to do. You just have to meet my kids… come up and see Mama…”

  Charly tried clearing her throat, but the ache there obviously meant to stay awhile. “Oh, Kelly, I wish I could, but I can’t. I have to get back to Atlanta. I just came to…” She made the mistake of looking at Kelly Grace’s face again. She turned away, saying tightly, “You know people in this town aren’t going to be exactly thrilled to see me back. I doubt that’s changed, even after all this time.”

  “My Lord, it’s been twenty years!”

  Charly drew a breath and let it out in a snort of ironic laughter. “Kelly Grace, fifty years wouldn’t be enough. You haven’t forgotten anything that happened, have you? Don’t kid yourself-neither has anybody else.”

  It had been a good many years since Charly Phelps had made a fool of herself in a public place, and here she was, not thirty minutes back in Mourning Spring and trembling on the brink of doing just that. I’ve got to get out of this town, she thought. Do it, get it over with and get out of here. God, I hate this place.

  “I’ll stop and see you before I go,” she finally promised, desperate to escape. She gave Kelly Grace a quick hug and pushed her way through the door.

  Looking neither right nor left, she hurried across the street. She unlocked the Taurus, got in, started it up, backed out of the parking space and drove off, all without allowing herself to think even once about what she was about to do. She’d conquered skydiving pretty much the same way, come to think of it. And if I did that, she told herself, teeth clenched with determination, I can do anything. I can do this. I can.

  Her courage thus bolstered, her resolve fortified, she turned off the courthouse square and onto Hill Street, so named for the residential neighborhood in which it dead-ended. The Hill wasn’t much of a hill, as hills go, but it did lend a kind of exclusivity to the cluster of mansions dating back at least to Reconstruction. A few were even said to have actually survived the Yankee invasion. All the homes on the Hill had the same quiet, if rather stuffy elegance, surrounded by brick and wrought iron and shaded by oaks so huge and old they arched over the street and met in the middle, turning it into a sun-dappled tunnel.

  Her destination was the second house from the end, a redbrick Victorian monster with a white-columned portico and black shutters. She turned into the semicircular driveway, shut off the engine and sat for a moment, watching dust motes dance in the afternoon’s last sunlight where it slanted through the trees. The ache in her throat felt like a betrayal.

  Oh, God, I hate this place.

  She opened the car door and stepped out, then closed it carefully behind her. Had she ever done anything more difficult?

  Oh, yes, once. Twenty years ago.

  But this was only one step…still so many more to go.

  Her heart pounded and her breath came in soft, quick snatches as she mounted the steps between two concrete urns filled with bright red impatiens and yellow day lilies. She crossed the wood plank porch where white wicker armchairs and rockers sat empty, reminiscent of long, hot summer evenings, tall glasses of cold, sweet tea, and lightnin’ bugs blinking on and off in the twilight.

  On the doormat she paused, looked down, and from a habit she’d thought long forgotten, carefully wiped her feet. She wiped her hands on the sides of her expensive gray gabardine slacks, wrinkled and creased now from the flight and the long drive from Atlanta. Then she took a deep breath, held it and firmly pressed the doorbell. She could hear the old-fashioned chimes go echoing through the great, high-ceilinged rooms. She bowed her head and waited, counting her own heartbeats.

  The door opened without warning, thrown wide to frame the figure of the woman who stood there. She was as straight and regal as in Charly’s memory, though she seemed perhaps a little smaller. Her close-cropped hair, once pepper black with only the lightest sprinkle of salt, was snowy white now, but her mahogany skin was still without a wrinkle, stretched taut over the bones of a face that might have graced the walls of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb.

  Her deep-set eyes seemed equally ancient in that eternally young face, missing nothing. They skewered Charly where she stood, narrowed, then went wide with shock. She lifted her hands, sucked in air and whispered, “Oh, my sweet Jesus…”

  It was in no way a blasphemy, but a heartfelt prayer.

  Chapter 2

  June 10, 1977

  Dear Diary,

  This is just so unfair! The judge found out about my platform shoes, and did he throw a fit! He says no daughter of his is going to show her face in something so trashy, and besides, I’d probably fall off of them and break an ankle, which is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. They’re not trashy. Everybody’s wearing them but me. Colin even says they’re bitchin’, and he’s got the best taste of anybody I know. The judge says they’re just a fad, and a waste of money, but I bought them with my birthday money, so I don’t see how it’s any of his business!

  Thought for the Day: It’s the absolute pits, having a judge for a father.

  Charly lifted her hands, tried a smile that didn’t work and finally just said, “Hi.”

  “Sweet Jesus…sweet Jesus…” Tears had begun to trickle down the woman’s
cheeks.

  In about another second they were going to be flooding down Charly’s, too. Desperate not to let that happen, she laughed instead, and said in a shaking voice, “Yes, it’s me, Aunt Dobie. It’s me, Charlene. How are you?”

  One hand rose slowly to touch Charly’s cheek. “Charlene Elizabeth… is that you?”

  Then the same hand hauled off and smacked her hard on the arm. “That is you! Wicked, wicked girl! Never called, nor wrote…I thought you was dead.”

  Trembly with relief, Charly rubbed her arm and said, “Ow!”

  Aunt Dobie whacked her again for good measure. “I thought you was dead, and here you stand. Come here and let me look at you. Oh, praise the Lord, praise Jesus. My baby’s come home. My baby’s come home.”

  And with that, Charly found herself enveloped in loving arms, familiar arms, and in old, familiar scents-Ivory soap and starched cotton clothes, oil of wintergreen and strong coffee laced with a splash, just a splash, of bourbon whiskey-and in the time and place those scents evoked. Just like that, she was a child again, seeking solace and protection in those same strong arms, while inside, her heart quaked with dread.

  Because, of course, she wasn’t a child, and had not been in more than twenty years. And not even Dobrina Ralston, the only mother Charly had ever known, was going to make what she’d come to do easier.

  “Aunt Dobie,” she began, “is he…is my…?” But her voice was betraying her. She drew herself up straight and tall to give it support, and with a good strong breath behind it, tried again. “Is he here?”

  “He is. Yes, he is,” Dobrina crooned, wiping her face with the big wraparound apron she’d worn for all the years Charly could remember. “You just come in here, child. Come in.”