Southern Discomfort

by Margaret Maron

  Nor did I have to put on a mask and coveralls or wrestle with rolls of fiberglass. Must be part of the covered-dish-dinner syndrome. Tell a bunch of women to bring a vegetable, a meat or a dessert to a community meal and you'll always—not once in a while, but always—get a balanced selection. Volunteering for specific jobs seems to work the same way. There were women who actually wanted to tack six-inch-thick insulation batts between all the exterior studs and joists, and I certainly wasn't going to get in their way. Another crew swarmed onto the roof and had all the shingles on before lunch. I myself got to help set the two exterior doors and nine windows, which was sort of fun.

  In and around cries for more nails. "Head's up!" and "Nail it 'fore it grows," Carver Bannerman's death was the big topic of conversation. Of equal interest were the doses of arsenic he and Herman had ingested. Had it only been Herman, human nature being what it is, Annie Sue and I might have worked all morning surrounded by a cocoon of speculative silence. Enough Tar Heel wives have laced their husband's food that you couldn't blame even good friends for wondering if Nadine had suddenly decided to exchange wedded bliss for widowhood. Luckily for Nadine, young Carver Bannerman's quasi-victimship kept Herman's firmly in the realm of accidental.

  Yes, poison was a woman's weapon of choice; yes, most women—most convicted women—seldom stopped with one victim; but since there seemed to be no connection between Herman and Bannerman, people felt free to exclaim and question.

  "Good riddance to bad rubbish," said everyone who'd heard of Bannerman's attack on Annie Sue.

  He was being buried over in Goldsboro that morning, so his wife's friend, Opal Grimes, wasn't around to crimp the lively discussion. If asked, most of the women wouldn't have recognized either Carver or Rochelle, but that didn't stop the cheerfully catty gossip as we hammered and sawed in the cool morning sunlight. Lazy but shrewd was the general assessment of Rochelle. Assuming he was a prize worth having—a man for whom every woman was a potential sexual conquest—she had skillfully played the cards she'd been dealt and had won the gold ring.

  A car had been seen arriving and then leaving again in the rainy twilight just minutes before I got there. A woman down the street thought for sure the driver was a young woman, and her description of the car was enough like Rochelle Bannerman's that I figured Dwight was looking very carefully into her account of how she'd spent the evening. Not that he was sharing that information with me.

  "He sure was handsome," conceded the woman who had approved a bank mortgage on his trailer, "but can you imagine going to bed with him?" She pounded a final nail into her end of the siding. "One of my clerks heard he'd lay anything with a vagina. Wouldn't you be terrified of waking up with some nasty infection? To say nothing of AIDS?"

  "Well, I heard—"

  "My brother-in-law said—"

  "—and her husband was right there in the room!"

  None of the volunteers acted as if they knew of Cindy McGee's involvement with the dead man because the dirt was dished too freely as she moved back and forth from one task to another. Except for Paige and Annie Sue, I seemed to be the only one who noticed her drawn face and her lack of chatter.

  Attention was showered on Annie Sue. She got praise for her bravery and commiseration both for the attack and for Herman's illness. Her self-esteem had lots of bolstering that day.

  Poor Cindy had nothing; and every time another comment about Bannerman's womanizing went round, Paige Byrd flushed crimson and looked equally miserable. Sympathetic mortification for her friend, no doubt. Yet she, too, had to hold her tongue.

  Somehow they got through the morning and at lunchtime, one of the women from Paige's church called upon the three girls for a song. They were scheduled to sing at services the next morning, "but I've got to go to Greensboro tonight, so I won't get to hear you," she said.

  "Yes, do sing for us!" others urged.

  Cindy and Paige both looked like they'd just as soon go eat worms, but when Annie Sue stepped up onto the porch, they didn't have much choice.

  I'd never heard the girls sing together and their close harmony was a pleasant surprise. No accompaniment, just an a cappella rendering of some old hymns. Annie Sue had always enjoyed the spotlight, and I was glad to see an easing of tension in Cindy's face. Even Paige seemed to lose herself in the melody. Their fresh young voices twined in and out, point and counterpoint, until they infected the rest of us.

  A black woman beside me began to croon along. Another joined in with a more solid gospel swing. I've always adored sing-alongs—never do I feel so connected to other people around me as when my voice lifts with theirs—and soon we were all so much into it that BeeBee Powell's new front yard sounded like the Benson Singing Grove over in Johnston County.

  Lu Bingham had served a Peace Corps stint, and she taught us a women's work song from West Africa. We went back to our tools more refreshed than if we'd spent the whole lunch hour resting. Throughout the afternoon, occasional bursts of song spurred us on. Everything from Michael, Row the Boat Ashore to There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly. Lu had to cut us off after one chorus of We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder, though, because our hammers went from a brisk 78 rpm to a lugubrious 33 ⅓.

  * * *

  After a quick shower that evening, I drove over to Chapel Hill while it was still light, taking back roads that wound past stands of lush green corn and fields of half-cropped tobacco. Almost every yard was lined with watermelon red crepe myrtles or yellow daylilies. Knee-deep in summer! Whoever wrote that knew about ditch banks tumbled with yellow sneezeweeds and wild pink roses, about powerlines and bridge abutments draped in camouflage curtains of kudzu vines, about jack oaks heavy with broad dark leaves.

  Near Holly Springs, I got stuck behind a farm truck piled high with huge burlap bundles of cured tobacco, but I was in no hurry and didn't really mind. Occasionally, a beautiful yellow leaf would work its way out of a bundle and drift back past my windshield like an exotic golden butterfly.

  Daddy always shakes his head when he sends tobacco off to market like that—"like bundles of dirty clothes," he says—because he was a grown man with sons working alongside him before farmers quit marketing tobacco in the old way.

  First the cured leaves went from stick barns to the packhouse where they were gently stripped from the four-foot-six sticks, each leaf sorted according to grade, then hand-gathered into bundles thick as a woman's wrist and the stem ends hidden by wrapping them in a smooth "tie leaf." Next, each bundle was hung back over the stick and packed onto the truck's flatbed for the drive to market. At the warehouse, the sticks were unloaded and carefully piled in a neat stack on the market floor. "And any young'un who carelessly stepped on a bundle of prime-grade leaf was lucky not to get a switching," my brother Andrew tells me.

  By the time I came along and started helping by driving tractor, Daddy and my brothers had switched over to gas-fired bulk barns that look like the box trailers of an eighteen-wheeler. No more tying the leaves onto sticks, no more hand-grading. Just dump the cured leaves out onto big burlap squares, knot the four corners and toss them onto a truck headed for Fuquay or Wilson.

  * * *

  Herman was cranked up in bed when I got to the hospital and he looked more alert than I'd yet seen him. His feet and legs had sustained the most neurological damage. They had started physical therapy, but it was still too soon to know what the final outcome might be.

  "I'll be clomping up and down the hall with one of them metal walkers like an old crippled person," Herman said ruefully.

  "Better than a wheelchair," said Nadine.

  But it might be a wheelchair.

  It was his first stay ever in a hospital; and, since Nadine was probably the only woman who'd touched his body since he was married, he was finding the experience almost as embarrassing as it was interesting. Certainly it was a novelty to have a pretty young physical therapist manipulate his legs and massage his hands and feet.

  The tips of his fingers were still numb, too. He
was aware of pressure, but not tactile discernment. He could handle a fork well enough to do justice to his supper tray, "but I don't know as I'll ever be able to hold little screws again."

  "Sure you will," said Nadine.

  "And if you can't, you'll let Annie Sue do it while you ride around from job to job and supervise," I said.

  He'd been told all the details of the night he collapsed and he shook his head stubbornly. "If I hadn't let her stay there working by herself, that bastard'd never touched her."

  "You can't wrap her in cotton. Anyhow, the kid's pretty good at it. Rufus Dayley sent over another inspector sometime this week and he gave her an 'A-OK' on the rough-in."

  "Did he now?" He tried to look nonchalant and didn't quite succeed.

  It was still a wonder to him where he could have gotten arsenic. He and Nadine had wracked their brains for Mr. O'Connor and neither could think of a single place he'd eaten when others hadn't partaken of the same dishes.

  "Abandoned wells?"

  "I carry my own water cooler for my workers and an ice chest with drinks."

  "What about pottery juice mugs? I've heard that the acid in fruit juice can leach arsenic out of ceramic cups and pitchers."

  "His orange juice comes right out of the Minute Maid carton and right into the same plain glasses we've had for ten years," said Nadine.

  As for Carver Bannerman, Herman knew he was a county inspector and remembered now that he'd seen him several times at the Coffee Pot. They had never exchanged more than a few words in passing, though, and certainly they'd never shared a meal anywhere else that he knew of.

  "Dwight and Terry," Herman said. "When they were here the other night, they think I was the one killed Bannerman?"

  "You, Annie Sue or me, one. But only because of the circumstances."

  He nodded. "I reckon any of us would've."

  "Would've what?" chirped Annie Sue from the doorway.

  Inevitably she was trailed by Cindy and Paige, and I was touched by the sadness in Paige's brown eyes as my niece scampered over to Herman for a big bear hug.

  "Think how much you'd miss your daddy," whispered the preacher.

  "Perry Byrd was an intolerant bigot and racist," the pragmatist sniffed. "He must have been hell on hinges to live with."

  "He was her father, and now he's gone forever."

  "Humph! Ralph McGee's gone forever, too, but you don't see Cindy mooning over Herman and Annie Sue."

  Indeed, her face was brightly animated as she chattered with Nadine.

  The girls were quickly followed by more friends and relatives who still believed in visiting the sick and comforting the afflicted. By eight-thirty, the room was so full that we spilled out into the hall, a dozen different conversations going at once.

  Nobody would miss me if I left, I reasoned, and maybe it was still early enough to zip over to K.C.'s cottage. Watch the moon rise above Jordan Lake. See how the steaks were holding up.

  Not to mention the men.

  * * *

  The night air was deliciously cool as I headed toward the parking lot, but I'd only gotten as far as the ramp when I heard running footsteps behind me.

  "Miss Deborah! Judge Knott?"

  Paige Byrd.

  "Are you going home now? Could I ride with you? Please?"

  I hesitated, and she drooped like a bright-headed zinnia deprived of water. "Oh. You're going somewhere else, aren't you? I'm sorry."

  "No, no," I lied. "Come along. It'll be nice to have company."

  "K.C.'s party," whined the pragmatist. "Why are you feeling guilty about this child? This is so irrational. Let her ride home with Cindy and Annie Sue."

  "You have an obligation," said the preacher. "You don't have to take her to raise, only to remember that you're sitting in her father's seat and that gives her a claim on you."

  The pragmatist sat sulking in the corner of my brain, but I made myself smile at the girl as I unlocked my car door. "Did you tell Annie Sue you were leaving?"

  She nodded. "Suddenly, it was just so smothery in there. I thought I was going to faint if I didn't get out."

  We talked of claustrophobia and scary experiences with elevators and tunnels, yet even after we had cleared the lights of Chapel Hill and were out on I-40 East zooming toward Dobbs, I kept feeling waves of tension from her. Nothing I said seemed to put her at ease.

  Inevitably our talk drifted toward Carver Bannerman, his opportunistic treatment of Cindy and his attack on Annie Sue, and how Annie Sue was more worried about Mr. Herman and what was going to happen to him than what had nearly happened to her.

  "At first she was scared maybe he was the one who'd hit Carver with the hammer," Paige said.

  "I know. But he didn't. Major Bryant's narrowed down the time to when he ran off the road and collapsed, so that proves he couldn't have."

  "If he had, what would've happened to Mr. Herman?"

  "He'd probably have been charged with voluntary manslaughter."

  "And gone to jail?"

  "Not necessarily."

  She picked up on the curiosity in my voice. "Are these stupid questions? Dad never talked about his work much and the only time I was in his courtroom was when our whole history class went."

  "Well, manslaughter's usually defined as the unlawful killing of a human being without malice," I explained. "There's voluntary, involuntary and vehicular. Vehicular's when a death is caused by driving recklessly. You didn't mean to kill someone, but you weren't being careful. Involuntary manslaughter is usually from criminal negligence. You might argue that death occurred because of a tragic accident; the prosecution will argue that you should have realized that the situation could result in someone's death."

  "And voluntary?"

  "That's when you meant to kill him, but—"

  "If you meant to," she interrupted, "why isn't it murder?"

  "For it to be murder, you'd have to think about killing somebody ahead of time and you'd probably try to do it so nobody would know you were the killer. In other words, intent to kill and premeditation. Those are the two elements of murder in the first degree. But voluntary manslaughter is when you did it in the heat of passion, without malice aforethought—no intent, no premeditation—and usually with plenty of provocation."

  "Like Carver trying to rape Annie Sue."

  "Exactly. No jury in the world would convict a man for trying to prevent his daughter's rape. At the most he'd get a suspended sentence. Maybe some community service. Under the circumstances, a district attorney might decline to prosecute or the judge might well dismiss the charges."

  She was silent as we exited from I-40 before reaching Raleigh and angled south onto Forty-Eight.

  I glanced over and by the lights of the dashboard, I saw that her cheeks were wet with tears.

  "Paige?"

  "It's all my fault! I shouldn't have left." Her voice was ragged with repressed sobs. "Annie Sue's the very best friend I ever had—the first best friend I ever had—and I went and left her both times! But when Mr. Herman—"

  "Hey, wait a minute," I said, reaching out to pat her shoulder with my free hand. "Carver Bannerman was slime. If it hadn't been Annie Sue, he would have jumped someone else, and sooner or later, someone was going to jump him back. You couldn't know he was going to show up that night. And as for Herman, surely by now you know that his bark's worse than his bite?"

  She shook her head. "Annie Sue always said—"

  There was a service center up ahead and Paige was so distrait that I pulled in and cut the engine, and opened the windows so that the cool night air could sweep over us.

  "Look, honey, I know y'all haven't known each other all that long, but don't you see how Annie Sue dramatizes everything? Her daddy growls a lot, but when it comes right down to it, have you ever known him not to let her do something she really wants to do? They're crazy about each other."

  Instead of reassuring her, I seemed to be making her more miserable. The worst thing about bucket seats is that you can't sco
ot over and hug somebody easily. Nevertheless, I unbuckled my seat belt and tried, but she was stiff in my arms. At this point, Annie Sue or any of my nieces would have their faces snuggled into my neck, bawling their eyes out, and already feeling better; but Paige couldn't let herself melt into the comfort of a sympathetic hug. She was choking on silent sobs and painful tremors shook her hunched shoulders.

  It broke my heart to think of her going almost sixteen years without a best friend to giggle and cry with, to talk girl talk and swap secrets; and now that she did, she felt that she had somehow let her friend down, had failed Annie Sue when—

  Wait a minute... both times?

  "You left, took Cindy home, and then you went back to the WomenAid house, didn't you?"

  Her eyes were dark pools of terror as she pulled away. She tried to deny, to shake her head, but no sound came out.

  "You hit Carver Bannerman?"

  Paige's eyes dropped and a long shudder ran through her. "I didn't mean to kill him. Honest!"

  Across the broad expanse of concrete, cars pulled in and out at the gas pumps under a bright white shelter, and their headlights flashed onto Paige's pale face.

  "When I got up on the porch and went through the doorway, I saw Annie Sue fighting him."

  Her words began in hesitant spates, then quickened into a torrent.

  "At first I didn't know if they were, you know, fighting or playing. And then, just as it hit me what was going on and I saw her trying to pull away, the light smashed and I could barely see them anymore. I couldn't hear either. Not her anyhow. Just him. Grunting like an animal. It was awful!"

  "A hammer was lying there on a crosspiece and I grabbed it up—all I could think was he was hurting her and I had to make him stop. He had pulled her shorts down and was squirming all over her and she wasn't moving and when he started undoing his own pants, I yelled at him and he came up at me with a roar and I just hit him and hit him and—"

  At last the sobs tore through her words and she clung to me while wave after wave of terror and anguish crashed through her body.