I chose to publish this novel using blog technology mainly because I had access and understood how. The bad side is that the chapters scroll in reverse order, so it is best to use the archive on the side bar to navigate.
But since it is a blog, feel free to comment at the end of chapters if you wish.
I hope readers enjoy the story. If you like it, please recommend it to someone else you think would like it as well.
Chapter 1.
Download PDF of the entire novel
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Chapter 23: Small Virtues and Petty Vices
The summer was making its progress and along with it, Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation. Miss Edna was rehabilitated, gambling had been brought to an end at Cole’s, Maddie Flanagan had been reunited with Plastic Jesus, and Nate was becoming well read and adept at two-handed canasta. Nate wondered how much more improvement Davis Corners could tolerate.
Nate had a dream several weeks after Maddie Flanagan’s funeral. He dreamed he was at Founder’s Hill and could see Jim Frank’s statue hanging from the old tree. As he walked up to it, he noticed he had his grandaddy’s gun in his hand. The statue looked like he remembered it from Jim Frank’s place, comical and garish. Suddenly, it swung out toward him and startled him. Instinctively, Nate shot at it.
He walked up to the statue to see how badly he’d damaged it. As he got closer, he saw that it wasn’t the statue any more. It was Washington. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at Nate in a hurt sort of way. Nate tried to explain that he’d been aiming at the statue, not at Washington, but he just kept looking at Nate with that hurt expression.
Nate woke up drenched in sweat, the way he used to when he dreamed about his grandfather. He looked at the chair across the room and jumped in fright. It looked like somebody sitting in the dark, keeping some sort of sinister vigil over him. He reminded himself to start hanging up his clothes in the closet from now on, rather than draping them across the chair. In the meantime, he forced himself to stare at the apparition until it went back to being his mislaid clothes. He was on the verge of being successful when the pile moved.
“What you looking at, butthole?”
Nate had almost completely forgotten about Grub Hanley, but he’d returned. Nate instantly remembered every sense of dread and terror Grub had ever instilled in him and wondered how he could’ve ever let his guard down. He thought about calling out for help, Grandmother Tillman could handle the likes of Grub. Grub anticipated the thought and Nate heard the metallic, ratcheting sound of a revolver being cocked.
“I threw your clothes on the floor, butthole. Put them on and let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Nate tried to get dressed. He had no strength in hands and couldn’t tie his sneaker laces.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Even in his panic, Nate noticed that Grub still substituted clichés for thinking. He knew that if he were to survive, it would be by out-thinking Grub, or by a miracle. Not placing much faith in miracles, Nate concentrated on keeping his mind alert.
Grub motioned Nate downstairs and kept poking him in the back with the revolver. They went through the kitchen and out the back door. Grandmother Tillman’s screen door in back had a lazy spring like the door at Hank Thompson’s store. Nate opened it wide as he went through. Grub Hanley came out close behind him and they walked off the back porch and toward the fields. A few seconds later, the screen door smacked shut behind them. Grub cursed and they both looked back. Nate expected every light to come on and Old Redemption to start barking. Nothing happened.
“Get a move on and don’t make no more noise,” Grub said.
Nate shifted his hopes back to a miracle.
They walked through the fields and into the woods. The woods went on for miles. Grandmother Tillman had never let Nate explore back there, so he had no idea what the lay of the land was. The moon was full, but he had a hard time seeing and had to grope his way slowly.
All the time they walked, Grub kept taunting Nate about the incident in the schoolyard and that night on Founder’s Hill. Finally, Nate tried to engage him in conversation just to get him to ease up.
“Where’d you go?” Nate said. “You been living back here in these woods all this time?”
“I been here and there,” Grub said cautiously. “Went to Henderson for awhile. I’ve been camping around here for a couple of days.”
“Henderson’s a nice place. What made you come back here?” Nate was afraid he already knew the answer.
“Ever hear the phrase ‘eat shit and die?’” Grub laughed quite a while at that.
Nate had a hard time picking his way through the woods. He kept stumbling and brushing up against trees, He could tell his face was all scratched from walking into branches. He tried to make as much noise as possible, but had little hope that it would do any good. He was certain Grub was going to kill him. They were so alone in the woods that no one would here the gunshot, let alone the pitiful noises Nate was making now.
After awhile, the damp, dirt-smell of the woods was joined by a smoky aroma, and Nate assumed they were coming up to Grub’s campsite. Suddenly, there were no more branches swiping at his face and he could see in the moonlight that they had come to a clearing. In the center was a campfire with its embers still glowing dull red.
“Get the fire going, butthole,” Grub said, then dumped himself down onto the ground. He waved the gun at Nate. “Now.”
Nate added some sticks that were piled up next to the fire and he could see empty cans and other trash strewn around. He didn’t see any kind of tent or lean-to, nor did he see any bedding. He blew on the embers and eventually new flames licked up and around the sticks he had piled on the fire. As the fire grew, he could see a black slash that ate up the light that softly coated everything else. Grub saw him looking at the scab of emptiness.
“Small cave. Makes a cozy little spot to sleep.” Grub was both proud and pleased with his discovery. “There’s a small road about a half mile down that way, but I avoid it mostly.”
Grub had found his element. He was a wild man slinking around the woods and sleeping in a cave.
Nate suddenly wondered if the cave was Iron Hoop. The thought gave him goose bumps all over, and he shuddered.
“What’s the matter, butthole, scared?”
Nate knew he had to get away. He knew that Grub intended to do horrible things to him and was going to kill him. He mustered whatever courage had come over him that day on the schoolyard and kicked the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. He started to run like that day on the baseball field, but this time Grub slid over and blocked his path. He stood there grinning behind the revolver aimed straight at Nate’s head. In the firelight, he truly looked Neanderthal with his stubble beard and crooked, yellow teeth. Nate just stood there crying and on the verge of throwing up. He would have begged, but he was too terrified.
Nate heard a low growling, but it wasn’t coming from Grub. It came from just outside the ring of firelight, and Grub and Nate both looked over just in time to see a shape emerge at top speed and leap the open fifteen feet of clearing. White teeth bit into Grub’s arm that held the pistol, and he screamed in shock and pain. The gun dropped, and Grub and the beast fought fiercely on the ground. Nate was paralyzed in disbelief for a moment. It was Old Redemption.
Grub’s hand shot free from Old Redemption’s mouth and grabbed the gun. It went off and Nate noted that the air smelled of gunpowder. Old Redemption lay sprawled out on the ground and Grub pulled himself up. His shirt was torn and his face was scratched and bloody. He looked at Nate and leveled the gun in his direction. Voices called out behind Nate in the woods, men calling to each other. Grub’s eyes widened with panic. Nate turned, and he started running toward the voices. He was vaguely aware of the tree branches snapping around him as he ran and heard a metal click among the wooden snapping sounds. No shot or explosion followed it, and he kept running and running, getting whipped and battered by the trees.
“Got him” a voice said, as strong arms wrapped around Nate and wrestled him down.
“Easy” another voice said. “That’s Mrs. Tillman’s grandson.”
Nate opened his eyes and squinted into a flashlight aimed at his face. The man was wearing a uniform. Nate was already crying too hard to cry any harder, so he squeezed back on the strong arms that had grabbed him. He calmed down just enough to vomit the entire contents of his stomach. The trooper pulled him back from fainting into his own puke, and both men laughed.
“Me, too, kid,” one of them said. “I’d do the same thing and don’t think I wouldn’t.”
More voices yelled off in the woods and finally more gunshots exploded. One of the troopers ran off in the direction of the shots, while the other got Nate up and hurried him in the other direction. Nate had no idea where they were, but they came to a narrow dirt road and a state patrol car with its lights flashing. The radio was crackling away and Nate could hear out-of-breath voices barking out code numbers through its static. A long silence followed while Nate sat and watched the leaves alternate from red to blue as the lights on top of the car swirled around. Then everything went black.
---
“Nate?” The woman’s voice was calm and soothing with just a hint of concern coming through. “Can you hear me?”
Nate opened his eyes and saw Grandmother Tillman. Her mouth loosened into a smile. Nate was in her living room and could tell there were lots of people around him. He felt a soft touch as someone stroked his wrist. He looked over. It was his mother, and she was crying. He didn’t say anything, just stroked her hair. Somehow, it was enough.
He started to say “Old Redemption,” but choked up halfway through.
Grandmother Tillman mouth tightened. “I know, I know.”
A policeman in the room walked over to Nate. “Something woke your grandmother up and she saw you were gone. She called us. State troopers already had the woods staked out. Grub held up a state liquor store in Henderson, and they’d tracked him to the woods. They figured he was holed up somewhere in there. The dog must’ve followed you and Grub. That was some kind of dog.”
Nate looked at Grandmother Tillman. This time his voice didn’t choke up.
“He saved my life. Grub was ready to shoot me and Old Redemption saved my life. That bullet was meant for me.”
Grandmother Tillman bit her lip for a moment. “When you came to live here this summer, I asked Old Redemption to look after you, and he did.” She sighed. “It’s like he knew he owed me for that day on the bridge, and this was his way of paying me back. He was good to his name, all the way to the end.”
“That Hanley boy won’t be bothering nobody ever again,” a policeman chimed in. “He shot at the officers and they returned his fire. One got him square in the head. Killed him on the spot, deader’n than…” He paused, not able to come up with the right phrase.
But Nate saw the inevitable end of the phrase, “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s nigger,” an end that would restore what had been broken, bring to an end the Great Reformation, and restore Jim Frank’s place and the statue to its former iconic glory.
Grandmother Tillman saw it too and she stared instinctively at Nate to see what he was going to do. This great unspoken thing loomed between them. Everyone saw her staring at Nate and they stared at him too. It was like the dream where his grandfather sang, and everyone in the room looked at Nate.
“Deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish.”
No one made a sound, no face reacted. Everyone pondered what Nate had just said. Grandmother Tillman was the first to respond, with a slight arch of her eyebrows. She alone realized what Nate’s choices had been, and was proud of the one he made.
“Jim Frank don’t have no fish,” the policeman said and then looked to Henry for an explanation.
Henry responded with a slow grunt of approval. “Don’t get much deader ‘n that, then do you?” he responded.
This new phrase could come to smack of something, Henry thought. It would take awhile, but it had possibilities. The fact that there were no fish in Jim Frank’s pond, in fact, no pond for fish to even be in, gave it a curious dimension. You could say that the hopes for a fourth quarter comeback when the home football team was down forty-two to three were “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish,” meaning no worse now than when the score had been zero to zero at the start of the game. There never had been hope, just as there never had been fish in that dust pond.
Nate knew it was not as good as the other choice from an objective viewpoint of “smackiness.” But growing up sometimes means knowing when something is over and it’s time to walk away. At any rate, the new phrase would be good enough to earn Nate’s place back into Jim Frank’s on Saturdays. It also brought Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation to its successful conclusion. The job was complete.
---
Nate sat on the porch the next day, packed and waiting for his parents to come pick him up, when Jim Frank’s old truck pulled up. He called to Grandmother Tillman and she came out.
“Why, what brings you over here?” she said pleasantly, but with genuine curiosity.
“I brought your dog back,” he said simply.
Grandmother Tillman smoothed down the front of her dress and walked over to the truck. Nate followed her. Old Redemption was laid out peacefully in the back.
“I’ll bury him for you, if you’ll tell me where.” Jim Frank was soft-spoken and respectful.
“Here, in the shade of this tree. It was his favorite spot.” Grandmother Tillman was crying softly.
After Jim Frank dug the hole, Nate helped him lower Old Redemption into it, and they covered him up. The three of them stood next to the grave. It reminded Nate of Maddie Flanagan’s funeral and he remembered the headstone someone had donated.
“Can we mark it somehow?” he said.
“Not a cross, though,” Grandmother Tillman said. “It wouldn’t be fitting to put a cross on a dog’s grave.”
Jim Frank smiled and dug a narrow slit along the top of the grave. He went back to the truck and returned with a rusty, metal circle. Nate recognized it right away. Even though Grandmother Tillman had never seen it before, she knew what it was, too. Jim Frank placed it in the slot at the head of the grave and tamped the dirt back around it, so it made an arc coming out of the ground.
“This here iron hoop’s finally come to rest after all these years,” Jim Frank said, with a final pat of his shovel. “And all that rode with it.”
Grandmother Tillman reached out and touched Jim Frank on the arm. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Jim Frank put the shovel in the back of his truck and drove away.
“I’ll plant an ivy at the base of that old hoop, it’ll look nice,” Grandmother Tillman said. She stood next to Nate and started to reach over and tussle his hair. At that moment, though, he looked so grown up to her that she stopped and put her arm through his instead.
“I’m going to miss having you around here, you know.”
Nate smiled. “Uncle Henry’s asked me to start going to Jim Frank’s with him again,” he said. “Not much new to see there, I could ask him to drop me off here some Saturdays instead.”
“I’d like that a lot.” Grandmother Tillman squeezed his arm and then turned and walked toward the house.
“I could pick us up some beer and cigarettes on my way.”
Grandmother Tillman laughed and softly muttered “Nurse!” as she walked back inside.
As Nate waited for his parents to arrive, he thought about his summer’s education—how wrong people’s images and reputations could be and how gifts like faith and love can be the most precious of all. And although the history of the world might be written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains as Grandmother Tillman had said, the history of everyday places like Davis Corners, he thought, was written in the small virtues and petty vices of simple men and women like his Uncle Henry, Maddie Flanagan, Washington, Miss Edna, and Doctor Lightcap.
And in Davis Corners, heroes smacked of the likes of Grandmother Tillman, whose house by the side of the road offered sanctuary to any in harm’s way—and Jim Frank, a junk man who saw value in everything.
The end.
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Nate had a dream several weeks after Maddie Flanagan’s funeral. He dreamed he was at Founder’s Hill and could see Jim Frank’s statue hanging from the old tree. As he walked up to it, he noticed he had his grandaddy’s gun in his hand. The statue looked like he remembered it from Jim Frank’s place, comical and garish. Suddenly, it swung out toward him and startled him. Instinctively, Nate shot at it.
He walked up to the statue to see how badly he’d damaged it. As he got closer, he saw that it wasn’t the statue any more. It was Washington. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at Nate in a hurt sort of way. Nate tried to explain that he’d been aiming at the statue, not at Washington, but he just kept looking at Nate with that hurt expression.
Nate woke up drenched in sweat, the way he used to when he dreamed about his grandfather. He looked at the chair across the room and jumped in fright. It looked like somebody sitting in the dark, keeping some sort of sinister vigil over him. He reminded himself to start hanging up his clothes in the closet from now on, rather than draping them across the chair. In the meantime, he forced himself to stare at the apparition until it went back to being his mislaid clothes. He was on the verge of being successful when the pile moved.
“What you looking at, butthole?”
Nate had almost completely forgotten about Grub Hanley, but he’d returned. Nate instantly remembered every sense of dread and terror Grub had ever instilled in him and wondered how he could’ve ever let his guard down. He thought about calling out for help, Grandmother Tillman could handle the likes of Grub. Grub anticipated the thought and Nate heard the metallic, ratcheting sound of a revolver being cocked.
“I threw your clothes on the floor, butthole. Put them on and let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Nate tried to get dressed. He had no strength in hands and couldn’t tie his sneaker laces.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Even in his panic, Nate noticed that Grub still substituted clichés for thinking. He knew that if he were to survive, it would be by out-thinking Grub, or by a miracle. Not placing much faith in miracles, Nate concentrated on keeping his mind alert.
Grub motioned Nate downstairs and kept poking him in the back with the revolver. They went through the kitchen and out the back door. Grandmother Tillman’s screen door in back had a lazy spring like the door at Hank Thompson’s store. Nate opened it wide as he went through. Grub Hanley came out close behind him and they walked off the back porch and toward the fields. A few seconds later, the screen door smacked shut behind them. Grub cursed and they both looked back. Nate expected every light to come on and Old Redemption to start barking. Nothing happened.
“Get a move on and don’t make no more noise,” Grub said.
Nate shifted his hopes back to a miracle.
They walked through the fields and into the woods. The woods went on for miles. Grandmother Tillman had never let Nate explore back there, so he had no idea what the lay of the land was. The moon was full, but he had a hard time seeing and had to grope his way slowly.
All the time they walked, Grub kept taunting Nate about the incident in the schoolyard and that night on Founder’s Hill. Finally, Nate tried to engage him in conversation just to get him to ease up.
“Where’d you go?” Nate said. “You been living back here in these woods all this time?”
“I been here and there,” Grub said cautiously. “Went to Henderson for awhile. I’ve been camping around here for a couple of days.”
“Henderson’s a nice place. What made you come back here?” Nate was afraid he already knew the answer.
“Ever hear the phrase ‘eat shit and die?’” Grub laughed quite a while at that.
Nate had a hard time picking his way through the woods. He kept stumbling and brushing up against trees, He could tell his face was all scratched from walking into branches. He tried to make as much noise as possible, but had little hope that it would do any good. He was certain Grub was going to kill him. They were so alone in the woods that no one would here the gunshot, let alone the pitiful noises Nate was making now.
After awhile, the damp, dirt-smell of the woods was joined by a smoky aroma, and Nate assumed they were coming up to Grub’s campsite. Suddenly, there were no more branches swiping at his face and he could see in the moonlight that they had come to a clearing. In the center was a campfire with its embers still glowing dull red.
“Get the fire going, butthole,” Grub said, then dumped himself down onto the ground. He waved the gun at Nate. “Now.”
Nate added some sticks that were piled up next to the fire and he could see empty cans and other trash strewn around. He didn’t see any kind of tent or lean-to, nor did he see any bedding. He blew on the embers and eventually new flames licked up and around the sticks he had piled on the fire. As the fire grew, he could see a black slash that ate up the light that softly coated everything else. Grub saw him looking at the scab of emptiness.
“Small cave. Makes a cozy little spot to sleep.” Grub was both proud and pleased with his discovery. “There’s a small road about a half mile down that way, but I avoid it mostly.”
Grub had found his element. He was a wild man slinking around the woods and sleeping in a cave.
Nate suddenly wondered if the cave was Iron Hoop. The thought gave him goose bumps all over, and he shuddered.
“What’s the matter, butthole, scared?”
Nate knew he had to get away. He knew that Grub intended to do horrible things to him and was going to kill him. He mustered whatever courage had come over him that day on the schoolyard and kicked the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. He started to run like that day on the baseball field, but this time Grub slid over and blocked his path. He stood there grinning behind the revolver aimed straight at Nate’s head. In the firelight, he truly looked Neanderthal with his stubble beard and crooked, yellow teeth. Nate just stood there crying and on the verge of throwing up. He would have begged, but he was too terrified.
Nate heard a low growling, but it wasn’t coming from Grub. It came from just outside the ring of firelight, and Grub and Nate both looked over just in time to see a shape emerge at top speed and leap the open fifteen feet of clearing. White teeth bit into Grub’s arm that held the pistol, and he screamed in shock and pain. The gun dropped, and Grub and the beast fought fiercely on the ground. Nate was paralyzed in disbelief for a moment. It was Old Redemption.
Grub’s hand shot free from Old Redemption’s mouth and grabbed the gun. It went off and Nate noted that the air smelled of gunpowder. Old Redemption lay sprawled out on the ground and Grub pulled himself up. His shirt was torn and his face was scratched and bloody. He looked at Nate and leveled the gun in his direction. Voices called out behind Nate in the woods, men calling to each other. Grub’s eyes widened with panic. Nate turned, and he started running toward the voices. He was vaguely aware of the tree branches snapping around him as he ran and heard a metal click among the wooden snapping sounds. No shot or explosion followed it, and he kept running and running, getting whipped and battered by the trees.
“Got him” a voice said, as strong arms wrapped around Nate and wrestled him down.
“Easy” another voice said. “That’s Mrs. Tillman’s grandson.”
Nate opened his eyes and squinted into a flashlight aimed at his face. The man was wearing a uniform. Nate was already crying too hard to cry any harder, so he squeezed back on the strong arms that had grabbed him. He calmed down just enough to vomit the entire contents of his stomach. The trooper pulled him back from fainting into his own puke, and both men laughed.
“Me, too, kid,” one of them said. “I’d do the same thing and don’t think I wouldn’t.”
More voices yelled off in the woods and finally more gunshots exploded. One of the troopers ran off in the direction of the shots, while the other got Nate up and hurried him in the other direction. Nate had no idea where they were, but they came to a narrow dirt road and a state patrol car with its lights flashing. The radio was crackling away and Nate could hear out-of-breath voices barking out code numbers through its static. A long silence followed while Nate sat and watched the leaves alternate from red to blue as the lights on top of the car swirled around. Then everything went black.
---
“Nate?” The woman’s voice was calm and soothing with just a hint of concern coming through. “Can you hear me?”
Nate opened his eyes and saw Grandmother Tillman. Her mouth loosened into a smile. Nate was in her living room and could tell there were lots of people around him. He felt a soft touch as someone stroked his wrist. He looked over. It was his mother, and she was crying. He didn’t say anything, just stroked her hair. Somehow, it was enough.
He started to say “Old Redemption,” but choked up halfway through.
Grandmother Tillman mouth tightened. “I know, I know.”
A policeman in the room walked over to Nate. “Something woke your grandmother up and she saw you were gone. She called us. State troopers already had the woods staked out. Grub held up a state liquor store in Henderson, and they’d tracked him to the woods. They figured he was holed up somewhere in there. The dog must’ve followed you and Grub. That was some kind of dog.”
Nate looked at Grandmother Tillman. This time his voice didn’t choke up.
“He saved my life. Grub was ready to shoot me and Old Redemption saved my life. That bullet was meant for me.”
Grandmother Tillman bit her lip for a moment. “When you came to live here this summer, I asked Old Redemption to look after you, and he did.” She sighed. “It’s like he knew he owed me for that day on the bridge, and this was his way of paying me back. He was good to his name, all the way to the end.”
“That Hanley boy won’t be bothering nobody ever again,” a policeman chimed in. “He shot at the officers and they returned his fire. One got him square in the head. Killed him on the spot, deader’n than…” He paused, not able to come up with the right phrase.
But Nate saw the inevitable end of the phrase, “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s nigger,” an end that would restore what had been broken, bring to an end the Great Reformation, and restore Jim Frank’s place and the statue to its former iconic glory.
Grandmother Tillman saw it too and she stared instinctively at Nate to see what he was going to do. This great unspoken thing loomed between them. Everyone saw her staring at Nate and they stared at him too. It was like the dream where his grandfather sang, and everyone in the room looked at Nate.
“Deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish.”
No one made a sound, no face reacted. Everyone pondered what Nate had just said. Grandmother Tillman was the first to respond, with a slight arch of her eyebrows. She alone realized what Nate’s choices had been, and was proud of the one he made.
“Jim Frank don’t have no fish,” the policeman said and then looked to Henry for an explanation.
Henry responded with a slow grunt of approval. “Don’t get much deader ‘n that, then do you?” he responded.
This new phrase could come to smack of something, Henry thought. It would take awhile, but it had possibilities. The fact that there were no fish in Jim Frank’s pond, in fact, no pond for fish to even be in, gave it a curious dimension. You could say that the hopes for a fourth quarter comeback when the home football team was down forty-two to three were “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish,” meaning no worse now than when the score had been zero to zero at the start of the game. There never had been hope, just as there never had been fish in that dust pond.
Nate knew it was not as good as the other choice from an objective viewpoint of “smackiness.” But growing up sometimes means knowing when something is over and it’s time to walk away. At any rate, the new phrase would be good enough to earn Nate’s place back into Jim Frank’s on Saturdays. It also brought Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation to its successful conclusion. The job was complete.
---
Nate sat on the porch the next day, packed and waiting for his parents to come pick him up, when Jim Frank’s old truck pulled up. He called to Grandmother Tillman and she came out.
“Why, what brings you over here?” she said pleasantly, but with genuine curiosity.
“I brought your dog back,” he said simply.
Grandmother Tillman smoothed down the front of her dress and walked over to the truck. Nate followed her. Old Redemption was laid out peacefully in the back.
“I’ll bury him for you, if you’ll tell me where.” Jim Frank was soft-spoken and respectful.
“Here, in the shade of this tree. It was his favorite spot.” Grandmother Tillman was crying softly.
After Jim Frank dug the hole, Nate helped him lower Old Redemption into it, and they covered him up. The three of them stood next to the grave. It reminded Nate of Maddie Flanagan’s funeral and he remembered the headstone someone had donated.
“Can we mark it somehow?” he said.
“Not a cross, though,” Grandmother Tillman said. “It wouldn’t be fitting to put a cross on a dog’s grave.”
Jim Frank smiled and dug a narrow slit along the top of the grave. He went back to the truck and returned with a rusty, metal circle. Nate recognized it right away. Even though Grandmother Tillman had never seen it before, she knew what it was, too. Jim Frank placed it in the slot at the head of the grave and tamped the dirt back around it, so it made an arc coming out of the ground.
“This here iron hoop’s finally come to rest after all these years,” Jim Frank said, with a final pat of his shovel. “And all that rode with it.”
Grandmother Tillman reached out and touched Jim Frank on the arm. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Jim Frank put the shovel in the back of his truck and drove away.
“I’ll plant an ivy at the base of that old hoop, it’ll look nice,” Grandmother Tillman said. She stood next to Nate and started to reach over and tussle his hair. At that moment, though, he looked so grown up to her that she stopped and put her arm through his instead.
“I’m going to miss having you around here, you know.”
Nate smiled. “Uncle Henry’s asked me to start going to Jim Frank’s with him again,” he said. “Not much new to see there, I could ask him to drop me off here some Saturdays instead.”
“I’d like that a lot.” Grandmother Tillman squeezed his arm and then turned and walked toward the house.
“I could pick us up some beer and cigarettes on my way.”
Grandmother Tillman laughed and softly muttered “Nurse!” as she walked back inside.
As Nate waited for his parents to arrive, he thought about his summer’s education—how wrong people’s images and reputations could be and how gifts like faith and love can be the most precious of all. And although the history of the world might be written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains as Grandmother Tillman had said, the history of everyday places like Davis Corners, he thought, was written in the small virtues and petty vices of simple men and women like his Uncle Henry, Maddie Flanagan, Washington, Miss Edna, and Doctor Lightcap.
And in Davis Corners, heroes smacked of the likes of Grandmother Tillman, whose house by the side of the road offered sanctuary to any in harm’s way—and Jim Frank, a junk man who saw value in everything.
The end.
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 22: The Letter
On the way home from the funeral and for the rest of the day, Miss Edna said very little and kept mainly to herself. Nate and Grandmother Tillman assumed she was just melancholy over Maddie’s death. She hardly said a word during dinner. Nate began to suspect it was something other than the funeral that had her down.
After dinner, they all washed dishes, as usual. This time, however, Miss Edna was drying everything with an exaggerated care, as if she were trying to focus her whole consciousness on the act, trying to contain it so it didn’t go someplace else, someplace she didn’t want it to go.
“Why’d you have all those phone books,” Nate asked.
Grandmother Tillman looked at him, then at Miss Edna. She wasn’t reproachful. It felt to Nate like that day the storm had come up and he’d asked his grandmother what had been in the bag she sent to his grandfather. It just felt like Miss Edna needed to answer this question.
“I collected phone books. The truckers would bring them to me from towns they passed through.” She answered in a slow, distant-sounding voice.
Nate could tell that this was where she’d been trying to keep her mind from going.
“Why?”
She was quiet for a long time.
“I was married once, did y’all know that?”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate shook their heads.
“Lord, I wasn’t even sixteen yet, when I married Lonnie, my high school sweetheart. Had two babies right away, two little boys, Andy and Robbie. She sat down at the kitchen table and was quiet for a long time. “When I was nineteen, I got real crazy and ran off with some slick roadie that worked with a traveling country western music show. I was hot stuff, traveling and seeing big cities.” She looked real embarrassed and shrugged. “That lasted for about two months, and then he dumped me. Gave me bus money to get back home.”
She paused and distractedly smoothed an invisible tablecloth with her hands for a minute.
“I wasn’t going to go, not that I didn’t still love them. I just didn’t feel I could ever get them to take me back. Finally, I went. Not to ask them to take me back, but just to tell them I was sorry. I wanted to tell them that I loved them and they didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I didn’t want my babies wondering why their momma had left them and wondering if there was something wrong with them. I wanted to tell Lonnie what a good man he’d been and how there was something wrong with me, and not him. I just wanted to tell them I was sorry and tell them one last time that I loved them. I know you probably find that hard to understand.”
Grandmother Tillman said, “Oh no, baby, I understand.” For the first time, Nate realized how much it must have weighed on his grandmother all these years that she had never gone to the cave to see his grandfather.
“What happened when you went?” Nate said.
“Moved. Our old place was empty. Lonnie didn’t have any real family. He’d been raised by an uncle, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and none of our old friends knew where he’d gone with the boys. They were just gone.
“I traveled around a bit after that and would look for them in towns I went through. I got in the habit of calling directory assistance and asking for the number of Lonnie McElroy, just on the off chance that he was in that town. After I settled here in Davis Corners, I asked truckers to bring me phone books from towns they went through. I looked in them to see if Lonnie and my boys were there.”
She started to cry quietly, “I don’t want them to take me back. I just want to tell them I’m sorry and that I love them.”
Grandmother Tillman got up and went to her. The two of them held tightly to each other and cried.
Grandmother Tillman then went into her cupboard drawer and took out a tablet of yellow, lined paper and a pen. She put them in front of Miss Edna.
“You write a letter to them right now, this minute, and pour your heart out. Tell them everything you feel. Say everything you’ve wanted to tell them all this time.”
Mess Edna looked at her and started to protest.
“Do it now, just like I said. You tell them everything you feel.”
Miss Edna did as she’d been told and sat there for half an hour, writing in that tablet. When she was done, she’d filled up three sheets. She looked at Grandmother Tillman, asking now what should she do.
“Get to bed, all of us, let’s get to bed. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna hugged again for a moment, and then everybody went to their rooms.
The next morning they had breakfast together and Miss Edna’s mood had lifted. She was the Miss Edna in wet hair and a country dress who smelled like Ivory soap. The yellow tablet was nowhere to be seen.
After breakfast, Grandmother Tillman suggested they all go for a walk, so they strolled down to the bridge that crossed the Sawatassee River. They stood and watched the slowly swirling water slip around the rocks and through the deadfalls.
Nate threw a stick into the water and watched it spin and whirl and make its way downstream.
“Where’s it go,” he asked.
“Bigger rivers, the Gulf, the Atlantic Ocean, and from there the whole world,” Grandmother Tillman said. She looked at Miss Edna.
Miss Edna perked up as she watched the stick float out of sight. Grandmother Tillman reached into the deep pocket of the dress she was wearing and pulled out a sealed jar with the sheets from the yellow tablet folded up neatly inside.
“You’ve said everything you can say. Send it, and get on with your life.”
Miss Edna took the jar and rolled it in her hands. “The whole world,” she said wistfully. Then she caringly lobbed it into the river. They watched it float downstream until it, too, went out of sight. Grandmother Tillman put her arm around Miss Edna’s waist and started to lead her away from the river.
“Back in the house I’ve got an envelope with two hundred dollars in it. I’ve checked bus schedules to Atlanta and one leaves every day. I’ve also got the names of some women residence hotels you can stay at until you get yourself set up again.”
Miss Edna looked at her with disbelief and shock.
“Of course, you’re welcome to stay here with Nate and me as long as you want to, but there’s nothing for you here in Davis Corners. You need to get on and start your life over.”
“I can’t take your money,” Miss Edna said.
“Pay it back, then. Anyway, with you around, Nate’s hormones are going crazy and he’s eating me out of house and home.”
Nate blushed and wanted to crawl under a rock.
Miss Edna started to cry again and Grandmother Tillman put her arm around her.
“I’ll find that hungry banker and open that restaurant, and I’ll pay back every penny,” Miss Edna said.
“I have no doubt that you will.” Grandmother Tillman laughed.
“But I’ll never be able to repay what else you’ve done. I’ll always love you.” She kissed Grandmother Tillman on the cheek and ran up to the house.
Grandmother Tillman and Nate walked silently the rest of the way. She seemed to be savoring her newly won kiss and the declaration of love from one she’d befriended. Nate thought how strange it was that something as simple as a broken ceramic statue couldn’t be fixed, yet something as complex as a human heart could be broken and made whole again.
His own heart was breaking the next day as they put Miss Edna on the bus to Atlanta, Georgia. Not much was said among any of them. Miss Edna and Grandmother Tillman hugged, squeezed, and patted. Everyone cried and waved. Nate made sure Miss Edna’s bags got safely loaded into the baggage compartment beneath the bus and watched her climb up the steps. She turned one last time.
Grandmother Tillman called out, “It wouldn’t hurt at all if that banker fella was single.”
So with two hundred dollars, sound advice, and the love of two people going with her, Miss Edna started her life over.
Chapter 23
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
After dinner, they all washed dishes, as usual. This time, however, Miss Edna was drying everything with an exaggerated care, as if she were trying to focus her whole consciousness on the act, trying to contain it so it didn’t go someplace else, someplace she didn’t want it to go.
“Why’d you have all those phone books,” Nate asked.
Grandmother Tillman looked at him, then at Miss Edna. She wasn’t reproachful. It felt to Nate like that day the storm had come up and he’d asked his grandmother what had been in the bag she sent to his grandfather. It just felt like Miss Edna needed to answer this question.
“I collected phone books. The truckers would bring them to me from towns they passed through.” She answered in a slow, distant-sounding voice.
Nate could tell that this was where she’d been trying to keep her mind from going.
“Why?”
She was quiet for a long time.
“I was married once, did y’all know that?”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate shook their heads.
“Lord, I wasn’t even sixteen yet, when I married Lonnie, my high school sweetheart. Had two babies right away, two little boys, Andy and Robbie. She sat down at the kitchen table and was quiet for a long time. “When I was nineteen, I got real crazy and ran off with some slick roadie that worked with a traveling country western music show. I was hot stuff, traveling and seeing big cities.” She looked real embarrassed and shrugged. “That lasted for about two months, and then he dumped me. Gave me bus money to get back home.”
She paused and distractedly smoothed an invisible tablecloth with her hands for a minute.
“I wasn’t going to go, not that I didn’t still love them. I just didn’t feel I could ever get them to take me back. Finally, I went. Not to ask them to take me back, but just to tell them I was sorry. I wanted to tell them that I loved them and they didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I didn’t want my babies wondering why their momma had left them and wondering if there was something wrong with them. I wanted to tell Lonnie what a good man he’d been and how there was something wrong with me, and not him. I just wanted to tell them I was sorry and tell them one last time that I loved them. I know you probably find that hard to understand.”
Grandmother Tillman said, “Oh no, baby, I understand.” For the first time, Nate realized how much it must have weighed on his grandmother all these years that she had never gone to the cave to see his grandfather.
“What happened when you went?” Nate said.
“Moved. Our old place was empty. Lonnie didn’t have any real family. He’d been raised by an uncle, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and none of our old friends knew where he’d gone with the boys. They were just gone.
“I traveled around a bit after that and would look for them in towns I went through. I got in the habit of calling directory assistance and asking for the number of Lonnie McElroy, just on the off chance that he was in that town. After I settled here in Davis Corners, I asked truckers to bring me phone books from towns they went through. I looked in them to see if Lonnie and my boys were there.”
She started to cry quietly, “I don’t want them to take me back. I just want to tell them I’m sorry and that I love them.”
Grandmother Tillman got up and went to her. The two of them held tightly to each other and cried.
Grandmother Tillman then went into her cupboard drawer and took out a tablet of yellow, lined paper and a pen. She put them in front of Miss Edna.
“You write a letter to them right now, this minute, and pour your heart out. Tell them everything you feel. Say everything you’ve wanted to tell them all this time.”
Mess Edna looked at her and started to protest.
“Do it now, just like I said. You tell them everything you feel.”
Miss Edna did as she’d been told and sat there for half an hour, writing in that tablet. When she was done, she’d filled up three sheets. She looked at Grandmother Tillman, asking now what should she do.
“Get to bed, all of us, let’s get to bed. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna hugged again for a moment, and then everybody went to their rooms.
The next morning they had breakfast together and Miss Edna’s mood had lifted. She was the Miss Edna in wet hair and a country dress who smelled like Ivory soap. The yellow tablet was nowhere to be seen.
After breakfast, Grandmother Tillman suggested they all go for a walk, so they strolled down to the bridge that crossed the Sawatassee River. They stood and watched the slowly swirling water slip around the rocks and through the deadfalls.
Nate threw a stick into the water and watched it spin and whirl and make its way downstream.
“Where’s it go,” he asked.
“Bigger rivers, the Gulf, the Atlantic Ocean, and from there the whole world,” Grandmother Tillman said. She looked at Miss Edna.
Miss Edna perked up as she watched the stick float out of sight. Grandmother Tillman reached into the deep pocket of the dress she was wearing and pulled out a sealed jar with the sheets from the yellow tablet folded up neatly inside.
“You’ve said everything you can say. Send it, and get on with your life.”
Miss Edna took the jar and rolled it in her hands. “The whole world,” she said wistfully. Then she caringly lobbed it into the river. They watched it float downstream until it, too, went out of sight. Grandmother Tillman put her arm around Miss Edna’s waist and started to lead her away from the river.
“Back in the house I’ve got an envelope with two hundred dollars in it. I’ve checked bus schedules to Atlanta and one leaves every day. I’ve also got the names of some women residence hotels you can stay at until you get yourself set up again.”
Miss Edna looked at her with disbelief and shock.
“Of course, you’re welcome to stay here with Nate and me as long as you want to, but there’s nothing for you here in Davis Corners. You need to get on and start your life over.”
“I can’t take your money,” Miss Edna said.
“Pay it back, then. Anyway, with you around, Nate’s hormones are going crazy and he’s eating me out of house and home.”
Nate blushed and wanted to crawl under a rock.
Miss Edna started to cry again and Grandmother Tillman put her arm around her.
“I’ll find that hungry banker and open that restaurant, and I’ll pay back every penny,” Miss Edna said.
“I have no doubt that you will.” Grandmother Tillman laughed.
“But I’ll never be able to repay what else you’ve done. I’ll always love you.” She kissed Grandmother Tillman on the cheek and ran up to the house.
Grandmother Tillman and Nate walked silently the rest of the way. She seemed to be savoring her newly won kiss and the declaration of love from one she’d befriended. Nate thought how strange it was that something as simple as a broken ceramic statue couldn’t be fixed, yet something as complex as a human heart could be broken and made whole again.
His own heart was breaking the next day as they put Miss Edna on the bus to Atlanta, Georgia. Not much was said among any of them. Miss Edna and Grandmother Tillman hugged, squeezed, and patted. Everyone cried and waved. Nate made sure Miss Edna’s bags got safely loaded into the baggage compartment beneath the bus and watched her climb up the steps. She turned one last time.
Grandmother Tillman called out, “It wouldn’t hurt at all if that banker fella was single.”
So with two hundred dollars, sound advice, and the love of two people going with her, Miss Edna started her life over.
Chapter 23
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 21: A Woman of Faith
Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna drove slowly back toward the farm, telling each other the story of how they’d gotten even with Buddy Cole.
“The bit about the taxes was great,” Nate said. “How’d you come up with that?”
“Wasn’t original, I’m sorry to say. It’s how they got the famous gangster Al Capone.”
They passed by Evans Field and Grandmother Tillman slowed down. Her forehead wrinkled with concern.
“That’s odd,” she said.
Nate and Miss Edna looked over and saw Maddie Flanagan’s Bel-Air in the dark parking lot with the driver’s door open. If the dome light hadn’t been on, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
“What’s Maddie doing way out here?” Grandmother Tillman said.
She turned the Oldsmobile into the parking lot and drove up next to the Bel-Air. Skid marks and kicked-up rocks made it appear that the Bel-Air had been characteristically bridled to a stop. Maddie wasn’t in the car.
“Something’s not right,” Grandmother Tillman said.
The skid marks and the open door gave the scene an eerie sense of urgency or panic on the part of the nowhere-to-be-found Maddie. Everyone got out of the car and started to look around cautiously.
“Look there,” Miss Edna said.
“Oh my Lord,” Grandmother Tillman said.
They ran to the edge of the weeds by the parking lot, where they could see Maddie sprawled out, dead or unconscious, they couldn’t tell which from a distance. When they got to her, they could see that her forehead was sweaty and that she was breathing in short, choppy breaths.
“She’s alive, but I think she’s real sick,” Nate said. “Doctor Lightcap said she was sick that night at the tent meeting.”
Her being there had to be connected to the tent meeting somehow, Nate thought. He didn’t know why else she’d come to Evans Field all alone at night.
“You two stay here with Maddie. I’m going to call Doctor Lightcap and get an ambulance out here.” Grandmother Tillman looked intently at Nate and Miss Edna to see if they were squeamish.
Nate nodded that it would be okay.
Grandmother Tillman hurried off in the Oldsmobile, doing a pretty good impression of how Maddie would’ve pulled out. Nate went to the Bel-Air to see if he could find a blanket or something to make a pillow for Maddie. There was nothing in the front or back seat. He took the keys out of the ignition and opened the trunk. He expected her car to be all cluttered and trashy, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was as neat as could be, even the trunk. He felt a little ashamed of himself. Because she was poor and frumpy, he’d just assumed otherwise.
He found a neatly folded, cotton sheet in the trunk, and he rolled it up and put it under Maddie’s head. Not knowing what else to do, he just stood by so he could shoo away any birds or animals, if they happened to come by. Miss Edna just stood next to Nate and held onto his arm.
Grandmother Tillman returned and told them the ambulance was coming and that Doctor Lightcap would meet them at the hospital. She saw the sheet under Maddie’s head and the open trunk. She could tell Miss Edna was too distraught to have been that cool-headed, and she gave Nate a nod of approval. She looked around to see what else needed to be done or could be done. Finally, she knelt down next to Maddie and dried the sweat beads that sat on her forehead. She quietly murmured “there there,” but the incantation wouldn’t work. Something more than just a heart was broken in Maddie’s old body.
They heard the ambulance siren long before it arrived. When the medics arrived, they took over and trundled Maddie into the ambulance and sped away. Nate closed up Maddie’s car and Grandmother Tillman put the Bel-Air’s keys in her purse to give to the proper authorities later.
In the car ride over to the hospital, Nate told Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna what little he knew. He told them what Maddie had said that day at Hank Thompson’s when she almost ran over Washington, how Doctor Lightcap said she was old and probably wouldn’t get much older. He also told them about the tent meeting, and how Maddie had thrown away her plastic statue of Jesus. He then realized what she’d been doing at Evans Field, she’d come back for Plastic Jesus.
There wasn’t much to do at the hospital, as they mainly processed Maddie in and got her comfortable in a room. Jeremiah Lightcap came in and nodded at Grandmother Tillman. He checked some paper work at the desk, then came over to where Grandmother Tillman was sitting with the others in the Emergency Room waiting area.
“She’s in room three-one-seven,” he said. “There’s not much any of us are going to be able to do, but you can come up with me if you want.”
“You two children wait here,” Grandmother Tillman said. Nate thought it was funny how she kept referring to Miss Edna as a child.
When Jeremiah and Grandmother Tillman entered the room, Maddie looked much the same as when Grandmother Tillman had found her, but now she had an IV tube running into her arm and was lying in a clean bed. She started to regain consciousness after a few minutes.
“I threw him away,” she gasped weakly.
“Try to rest,” Jeremiah said.
“But I threw away my Plastic Jesus and now he’s gone. What am I going to do?” Maddie started to cry.
Jeremiah squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Maddie, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not okay,” Maddie said frantically. “I lost my faith and now I’m going to die. I threw Plastic Jesus away and he’ll never come back.” She looked desperately into Jeremiah’s eyes.
He turned away and his jaw muscles twitched and tightened. After a long pause, he turned back to Maddie.
“He’ll come back if you ask him.”
Grandmother Tillman looked over at the doctor and her eyes widened. Jeremiah Lightcap was noted for two things: he was a cynical atheist, and he was a man who always told the truth, even if it would mean giving up his own life to do it. Grandmother Tillman knew this, and Maddie Flanagan did, too.
“What do you mean?” Maddie said.
“Think you’re the first person to throw away Jesus,” he asked. “You ask Jesus to forgive you and he’ll come back.”
“He can’t,” Maddie said weakly. “I threw him away and now he’s gone.”
“Peter threw him away and Jesus came back, didn’t he?” Jeremiah softly stroked Maddie’s gray hair back from her sweaty forehead. “Didn’t Peter deny Jesus that night in the soldiers’ courtyard?”
“Denied him three times,” Maddie said.
“And Jesus forgave Peter, didn’t he?”
Maddie thought for a minute and then she looked Jeremiah Lightcap intently in the eye. “He forgave him and he came back. If I ask Jesus to forgive me, will my little Plastic Jesus come back? I threw him away, and I tried to find him again, but I’m too sick to keep looking for him. How will I ever get him back?”
Jeremiah was quiet as he looked into Maddie’s pleading eyes. He didn’t see that Elaine Collins had come in and was standing at the door, listening intently. At last, he answered with absolute conviction in his voice.
“If you pray for Jesus to forgive you, you won’t have to look for Plastic Jesus. He’ll find you.”
Maddie eased back into her pillow. Her breathing was still shallow, but no longer the frantic, choppy breaths of before. Jeremiah made some notes and handed a paper to the attending nurse. He looked back at Maddie, but she was asleep with her head turned sideways on the pillow, and she was smiling.
He looked up and saw Elaine standing there. He blushed and motioned Grandmother Tillman and Elaine out of the room. The three of them went to the visitors lounge at the end of the hall, and Jeremiah lit a cigarette. He flung himself wearily into one of the chairs.
“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen a human being do for another,” Elaine said. “I know what it meant for you to say those things.”
He sucked hard on the cigarette and held the smoke for a long time before letting it out. He turned to Grandmother Tillman. “I tried so hard to save him that day.” The pain and failure in his voice were amplified by the almost four decades it had taken to come out.
Grandmother Tillman bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Elaine stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.
“I prayed that day like only a innocent young boy could. I knew if I had faith, that faith would be rewarded, and the two of us would come out of that hole alive, me pulling and Mr. Tillman hanging onto my legs, like I was some angel of the Lord lifting Daniel out of the lion’s den.” He stared at the floor and pushed his hand back through his hair.
“Even with the water pouring all around us and both of us pumped with adrenaline and faith, we couldn’t free him. Even so, I had faith and I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t quit believing. I would’ve died that day, believing we were both going to get out.”
Grandmother Tillman walked over and sat next to him. They were the young widow and the teenager as she put her arm around him and grieved with him. Elaine thought how this was the meeting they had never had, a meeting put off all this time because it hurt the two of them so much to have it.
Jeremiah said, “ The last thing your husband did on this earth was to shove me away from him. He knew what was inevitable and accepted it. He gave me my life.”
Grandmother Tillman and Jeremiah Lightcap held onto each other and wept softly for a death that had happened decades ago. Nevertheless, that death was somehow linked to one happening now just down the hall.
“I swore on that day never to put my faith in anything ever again. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to save lives with science because of the one I wanted to save with faith, but couldn’t. But you know, Ralph Johnson was right. He told me that medicine has never stopped anyone from dying. I’m not going to stop Maddie from dying, in fact, it’ll happen tonight or tomorrow most likely.” He sat up straight and looked directly at Grandmother Tillman. He held Elaine’s hand.
“And just like your husband gave me life that day, even though he couldn’t have it for himself, I decided to give Maddie back her faith, even though I know I can never have it for myself. And if that meant telling a lie, well, poor Maddie’ll never know it.”
Grandmother Tillman got up and kissed Jeremiah on his head. “God owes you something good, and I hope you get it.”
It was late when Grandmother Tillman got everybody home. On her way upstairs, she stopped by the mantle in the living room and looked at the picture of her husband that she kept there. She smoothed away any invisible dust that might be on the glass with her hand. Then she gently kissed the picture and went upstairs. She walked with a straightness to her back and a definite pride in her step, proud of her husband and his last act of bravery.
The phone rang the next morning and she got it. It was Elaine Collins calling to say that Maddie had passed away peacefully in the night. Wanamaker’s was arranging the funeral and it would be the next day. There wasn’t any family and Maddie couldn’t be said to have a lot of friends, so there wasn’t much reason to make an event out of it. There would be just a simple grave-side ceremony for anyone who wanted to attend.
The next day, Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna got to the cemetery, fully expecting to be the only ones there. They were surprised to see Hank Thompson there as well. Hank looked up and smiled sheepishly.
“I kind of grew used to the way she’d spit at me before she’d order her dollar’s worth of gas,” he said.
Jeremiah Lightcap’s car pulled up, and he and Elaine Collins joined them. They looked more like a couple than they ever had, as they held hands walking up to join the group.
“Not much of a turnout, quantity wise,” Jeremiah said, “But quality wise, I’ll be content to do as well when my time comes.”
Grandmother Tillman gave him a hug and Nate shook his hand. Hank Thompson slapped him on the back. Jeremiah said, “I usually avoid these things. Hard to face the family and all. But in this case, I should be pretty safe.”
Everyone stood around, telling stories about Maddie and waiting for the hearse to bring the body over from Wanamaker’s. Finally it pulled into the cemetery. It looked sad, no flower car, no limo for the family, just the lone hearse with Maddie. As it pulled up to the gravesite, everyone could see that it was Washington driving. A subtle color line in Davis Corners was being broken, almost unnoticed.
Grandmother Tillman nodded and said, “It’s an ill wind, indeed, that doesn’t blow someone something good.”
Nate and the three men helped wheel the coffin up to the graveside. Hank Thompson made a quick comment that the roads would be safer but lonelier with Maddie gone. Jeremiah deferred and Grandmother Tillman read some verses from her bible. She closed with an impromptu prayer.
“Take your daughter, Maddie, dear Lord, into your bosom, and grant her peace and peace to those who tended to her on this earth.”
Everyone walked away from the grave and Nate chatted with Washington along the way. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law had gotten drunk again. Since it was only Maddie Flanagan and nobody was expected to show up, Wanamaker had told Washington he could handle it. Jeremiah Lightcap had gotten a little ahead of the rest, and all of a sudden he stopped dead in his tracks. Elaine walked up to him to see if he was okay, and then they all saw it at the same time. There, on the dashboard of the hearse was Plastic Jesus.
Washington explained. “I picked it up that night Miss Flanagan threw it away. I figured it would bring me luck, and it did. See, I’m driving the hearse for the first time.”
Elaine put her arm around Jeremiah. “You told her Plastic Jesus would come back, and you were right. You didn’t lie to her, after all.”
Jeremiah nodded his head and smiled. He turned to Grandmother Tillman and said, “The other night you told me God owed me something good. He came back for one last ride with Maddie. I’ll consider us even on that one.
Maddie Flanagan was thus buried in a small ceremony attended by a few friends, a black chauffeur, and a plastic statuette of Jesus. A week later, an anonymously donated headstone appeared with the simple inscription:
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
“The bit about the taxes was great,” Nate said. “How’d you come up with that?”
“Wasn’t original, I’m sorry to say. It’s how they got the famous gangster Al Capone.”
They passed by Evans Field and Grandmother Tillman slowed down. Her forehead wrinkled with concern.
“That’s odd,” she said.
Nate and Miss Edna looked over and saw Maddie Flanagan’s Bel-Air in the dark parking lot with the driver’s door open. If the dome light hadn’t been on, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
“What’s Maddie doing way out here?” Grandmother Tillman said.
She turned the Oldsmobile into the parking lot and drove up next to the Bel-Air. Skid marks and kicked-up rocks made it appear that the Bel-Air had been characteristically bridled to a stop. Maddie wasn’t in the car.
“Something’s not right,” Grandmother Tillman said.
The skid marks and the open door gave the scene an eerie sense of urgency or panic on the part of the nowhere-to-be-found Maddie. Everyone got out of the car and started to look around cautiously.
“Look there,” Miss Edna said.
“Oh my Lord,” Grandmother Tillman said.
They ran to the edge of the weeds by the parking lot, where they could see Maddie sprawled out, dead or unconscious, they couldn’t tell which from a distance. When they got to her, they could see that her forehead was sweaty and that she was breathing in short, choppy breaths.
“She’s alive, but I think she’s real sick,” Nate said. “Doctor Lightcap said she was sick that night at the tent meeting.”
Her being there had to be connected to the tent meeting somehow, Nate thought. He didn’t know why else she’d come to Evans Field all alone at night.
“You two stay here with Maddie. I’m going to call Doctor Lightcap and get an ambulance out here.” Grandmother Tillman looked intently at Nate and Miss Edna to see if they were squeamish.
Nate nodded that it would be okay.
Grandmother Tillman hurried off in the Oldsmobile, doing a pretty good impression of how Maddie would’ve pulled out. Nate went to the Bel-Air to see if he could find a blanket or something to make a pillow for Maddie. There was nothing in the front or back seat. He took the keys out of the ignition and opened the trunk. He expected her car to be all cluttered and trashy, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was as neat as could be, even the trunk. He felt a little ashamed of himself. Because she was poor and frumpy, he’d just assumed otherwise.
He found a neatly folded, cotton sheet in the trunk, and he rolled it up and put it under Maddie’s head. Not knowing what else to do, he just stood by so he could shoo away any birds or animals, if they happened to come by. Miss Edna just stood next to Nate and held onto his arm.
Grandmother Tillman returned and told them the ambulance was coming and that Doctor Lightcap would meet them at the hospital. She saw the sheet under Maddie’s head and the open trunk. She could tell Miss Edna was too distraught to have been that cool-headed, and she gave Nate a nod of approval. She looked around to see what else needed to be done or could be done. Finally, she knelt down next to Maddie and dried the sweat beads that sat on her forehead. She quietly murmured “there there,” but the incantation wouldn’t work. Something more than just a heart was broken in Maddie’s old body.
They heard the ambulance siren long before it arrived. When the medics arrived, they took over and trundled Maddie into the ambulance and sped away. Nate closed up Maddie’s car and Grandmother Tillman put the Bel-Air’s keys in her purse to give to the proper authorities later.
In the car ride over to the hospital, Nate told Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna what little he knew. He told them what Maddie had said that day at Hank Thompson’s when she almost ran over Washington, how Doctor Lightcap said she was old and probably wouldn’t get much older. He also told them about the tent meeting, and how Maddie had thrown away her plastic statue of Jesus. He then realized what she’d been doing at Evans Field, she’d come back for Plastic Jesus.
There wasn’t much to do at the hospital, as they mainly processed Maddie in and got her comfortable in a room. Jeremiah Lightcap came in and nodded at Grandmother Tillman. He checked some paper work at the desk, then came over to where Grandmother Tillman was sitting with the others in the Emergency Room waiting area.
“She’s in room three-one-seven,” he said. “There’s not much any of us are going to be able to do, but you can come up with me if you want.”
“You two children wait here,” Grandmother Tillman said. Nate thought it was funny how she kept referring to Miss Edna as a child.
When Jeremiah and Grandmother Tillman entered the room, Maddie looked much the same as when Grandmother Tillman had found her, but now she had an IV tube running into her arm and was lying in a clean bed. She started to regain consciousness after a few minutes.
“I threw him away,” she gasped weakly.
“Try to rest,” Jeremiah said.
“But I threw away my Plastic Jesus and now he’s gone. What am I going to do?” Maddie started to cry.
Jeremiah squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Maddie, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not okay,” Maddie said frantically. “I lost my faith and now I’m going to die. I threw Plastic Jesus away and he’ll never come back.” She looked desperately into Jeremiah’s eyes.
He turned away and his jaw muscles twitched and tightened. After a long pause, he turned back to Maddie.
“He’ll come back if you ask him.”
Grandmother Tillman looked over at the doctor and her eyes widened. Jeremiah Lightcap was noted for two things: he was a cynical atheist, and he was a man who always told the truth, even if it would mean giving up his own life to do it. Grandmother Tillman knew this, and Maddie Flanagan did, too.
“What do you mean?” Maddie said.
“Think you’re the first person to throw away Jesus,” he asked. “You ask Jesus to forgive you and he’ll come back.”
“He can’t,” Maddie said weakly. “I threw him away and now he’s gone.”
“Peter threw him away and Jesus came back, didn’t he?” Jeremiah softly stroked Maddie’s gray hair back from her sweaty forehead. “Didn’t Peter deny Jesus that night in the soldiers’ courtyard?”
“Denied him three times,” Maddie said.
“And Jesus forgave Peter, didn’t he?”
Maddie thought for a minute and then she looked Jeremiah Lightcap intently in the eye. “He forgave him and he came back. If I ask Jesus to forgive me, will my little Plastic Jesus come back? I threw him away, and I tried to find him again, but I’m too sick to keep looking for him. How will I ever get him back?”
Jeremiah was quiet as he looked into Maddie’s pleading eyes. He didn’t see that Elaine Collins had come in and was standing at the door, listening intently. At last, he answered with absolute conviction in his voice.
“If you pray for Jesus to forgive you, you won’t have to look for Plastic Jesus. He’ll find you.”
Maddie eased back into her pillow. Her breathing was still shallow, but no longer the frantic, choppy breaths of before. Jeremiah made some notes and handed a paper to the attending nurse. He looked back at Maddie, but she was asleep with her head turned sideways on the pillow, and she was smiling.
He looked up and saw Elaine standing there. He blushed and motioned Grandmother Tillman and Elaine out of the room. The three of them went to the visitors lounge at the end of the hall, and Jeremiah lit a cigarette. He flung himself wearily into one of the chairs.
“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen a human being do for another,” Elaine said. “I know what it meant for you to say those things.”
He sucked hard on the cigarette and held the smoke for a long time before letting it out. He turned to Grandmother Tillman. “I tried so hard to save him that day.” The pain and failure in his voice were amplified by the almost four decades it had taken to come out.
Grandmother Tillman bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Elaine stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.
“I prayed that day like only a innocent young boy could. I knew if I had faith, that faith would be rewarded, and the two of us would come out of that hole alive, me pulling and Mr. Tillman hanging onto my legs, like I was some angel of the Lord lifting Daniel out of the lion’s den.” He stared at the floor and pushed his hand back through his hair.
“Even with the water pouring all around us and both of us pumped with adrenaline and faith, we couldn’t free him. Even so, I had faith and I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t quit believing. I would’ve died that day, believing we were both going to get out.”
Grandmother Tillman walked over and sat next to him. They were the young widow and the teenager as she put her arm around him and grieved with him. Elaine thought how this was the meeting they had never had, a meeting put off all this time because it hurt the two of them so much to have it.
Jeremiah said, “ The last thing your husband did on this earth was to shove me away from him. He knew what was inevitable and accepted it. He gave me my life.”
Grandmother Tillman and Jeremiah Lightcap held onto each other and wept softly for a death that had happened decades ago. Nevertheless, that death was somehow linked to one happening now just down the hall.
“I swore on that day never to put my faith in anything ever again. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to save lives with science because of the one I wanted to save with faith, but couldn’t. But you know, Ralph Johnson was right. He told me that medicine has never stopped anyone from dying. I’m not going to stop Maddie from dying, in fact, it’ll happen tonight or tomorrow most likely.” He sat up straight and looked directly at Grandmother Tillman. He held Elaine’s hand.
“And just like your husband gave me life that day, even though he couldn’t have it for himself, I decided to give Maddie back her faith, even though I know I can never have it for myself. And if that meant telling a lie, well, poor Maddie’ll never know it.”
Grandmother Tillman got up and kissed Jeremiah on his head. “God owes you something good, and I hope you get it.”
It was late when Grandmother Tillman got everybody home. On her way upstairs, she stopped by the mantle in the living room and looked at the picture of her husband that she kept there. She smoothed away any invisible dust that might be on the glass with her hand. Then she gently kissed the picture and went upstairs. She walked with a straightness to her back and a definite pride in her step, proud of her husband and his last act of bravery.
The phone rang the next morning and she got it. It was Elaine Collins calling to say that Maddie had passed away peacefully in the night. Wanamaker’s was arranging the funeral and it would be the next day. There wasn’t any family and Maddie couldn’t be said to have a lot of friends, so there wasn’t much reason to make an event out of it. There would be just a simple grave-side ceremony for anyone who wanted to attend.
The next day, Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna got to the cemetery, fully expecting to be the only ones there. They were surprised to see Hank Thompson there as well. Hank looked up and smiled sheepishly.
“I kind of grew used to the way she’d spit at me before she’d order her dollar’s worth of gas,” he said.
Jeremiah Lightcap’s car pulled up, and he and Elaine Collins joined them. They looked more like a couple than they ever had, as they held hands walking up to join the group.
“Not much of a turnout, quantity wise,” Jeremiah said, “But quality wise, I’ll be content to do as well when my time comes.”
Grandmother Tillman gave him a hug and Nate shook his hand. Hank Thompson slapped him on the back. Jeremiah said, “I usually avoid these things. Hard to face the family and all. But in this case, I should be pretty safe.”
Everyone stood around, telling stories about Maddie and waiting for the hearse to bring the body over from Wanamaker’s. Finally it pulled into the cemetery. It looked sad, no flower car, no limo for the family, just the lone hearse with Maddie. As it pulled up to the gravesite, everyone could see that it was Washington driving. A subtle color line in Davis Corners was being broken, almost unnoticed.
Grandmother Tillman nodded and said, “It’s an ill wind, indeed, that doesn’t blow someone something good.”
Nate and the three men helped wheel the coffin up to the graveside. Hank Thompson made a quick comment that the roads would be safer but lonelier with Maddie gone. Jeremiah deferred and Grandmother Tillman read some verses from her bible. She closed with an impromptu prayer.
“Take your daughter, Maddie, dear Lord, into your bosom, and grant her peace and peace to those who tended to her on this earth.”
Everyone walked away from the grave and Nate chatted with Washington along the way. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law had gotten drunk again. Since it was only Maddie Flanagan and nobody was expected to show up, Wanamaker had told Washington he could handle it. Jeremiah Lightcap had gotten a little ahead of the rest, and all of a sudden he stopped dead in his tracks. Elaine walked up to him to see if he was okay, and then they all saw it at the same time. There, on the dashboard of the hearse was Plastic Jesus.
Washington explained. “I picked it up that night Miss Flanagan threw it away. I figured it would bring me luck, and it did. See, I’m driving the hearse for the first time.”
Elaine put her arm around Jeremiah. “You told her Plastic Jesus would come back, and you were right. You didn’t lie to her, after all.”
Jeremiah nodded his head and smiled. He turned to Grandmother Tillman and said, “The other night you told me God owed me something good. He came back for one last ride with Maddie. I’ll consider us even on that one.
Maddie Flanagan was thus buried in a small ceremony attended by a few friends, a black chauffeur, and a plastic statuette of Jesus. A week later, an anonymously donated headstone appeared with the simple inscription:
Maddie Flanagan
d. 1963
A Woman of Faith
Chapter 22d. 1963
A Woman of Faith
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 20: Revenge
Nate and Miss Edna were both groggy at the breakfast table the next morning, and Grandmother Tillman chided them.
“I heard you two up ‘til all hours last night, chattering like a couple of school girls.”
“Miss Edna was telling me all about Cole’s. It’s amazing what goes on in your home town, right under your own nose, and you don’t even know about it.”
Miss Edna shot a questioning glance at Nate but he shrugged it off. He let his comment work on Grandmother Tillman. If she followed up on it, then he might be able to include her in his plan. If not, then he would have to figure out how to do it alone.
Grandmother Tillman refilled her coffee cup, looked out the window, and seemed more interested in the weather at that moment, rather than anything Nate had said.
“Like what,” she finally asked.
Nate feigned a moment of confusion, as if he had completely forgotten what he had been talking about.
“Oh, a gambling casino,” he said. “I never would’ve thought a town like Davis Corners would have a gambling casino.”
Miss Edna wanted to point out that one slot machine hardly constituted a gambling casino, but she kept still, wondering what Nate was up to.
Grandmother Tillman laughed.
“A gambling casino, here in Davis Corners? What are you talking about?”
Nate related what Miss Edna had told him about Captain Jack, the slot machine in the truckers’ locker room. Grandmother Tillman looked shocked. She discounted Nate’s hyperbole, this certainly was no casino, but it was an incursion that could only get worse. She had heard stories about truck stops that were centers for drug dealers and prostitution. She certainly would like to see Buddy Cole’s little aberration nipped in the bud.
As Grandmother Tillman felt herself starting to get worked up, she realized she was being artfully manipulated by her grandson. She chose to go along, partly for her amusement, partly to see what he was up to.
“But what can ordinary people like ourselves do about it?” She laced her question with a generous dollop of sarcasm, which Nate missed.
“The ideal solution, if such a thing was possible, would be to get rid of the slot machine and make restitution to those who’d been victimized.” Nate tried to look as if this was the first time he had given this any thought.
Grandmother Tillman was amused by his dramatics.
“I hardly think of those truck drivers in the back room as victims,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“Even so, it wouldn’t be right for Buddy Cole to profit from what he’s been doing,” Nate said.
Grandmother Tillman went to the stove and poured Miss Edna another cup of coffee.
“Revenge is tricky business, you two. It’s like a ditch you dig for your enemy to fall into. You’re as likely to fall into it yourself and break your own neck.”
Nate squirmed at the table, realizing he had been too transparent. He wondered if his grandmother was angry at him for trying to persuade her in such a round about way to help them get even with Buddy Cole. All three of them sat around the table staring silently into their cups. Grandmother Tillman thought about that day at the trailer park, seeing all of Miss Edna’s belongings strewn in front of her trailer. She remembered how humiliating it had been for the young woman.
“No, it’s best to walk away from revenge,” she said. A conspiratorial smile crossed her face. “But shutting down an illegal casino, now that’s a whole other story.”
Nate and Miss Edna squealed like two kids whose mom said they could skip school just this once. Nate laid out his plan to the two of them. Miss Edna was astounded and voted for it immediately. Grandmother Tillman pondered it carefully before admitting it could work. The three of them worked out some last details and decided to do it.
“Your mother’s not going to be real pleased with me if she finds out about this,” Grandmother Tillman said to Nate. “One of the reasons you’re here is so I can keep you out of these kinds of high-jinks.”
“I know,” Nate said. “I’m asking you to get in trouble with me so we can get even with Buddy Cole for how he treated Miss Edna.”
“So be it, then. I’ve always been a sucker for someone who speaks the plain truth.”
A few necessary phone calls were made, and the plan was put in motion.
That evening, around eight, Miss Edna strolled into Cole’s as if nothing in the world had ever happened. She swung by and visited with Angie, the girl working the cash register. They giggled and Miss Edna slipped her something. Pearl, the waitress on duty, sniffed her nose up when she saw her sit at the counter. The truckers all whistled and hollered and asked where she’d been.
“We’ve heard all kinds of stories, Sweetie,” one said. “You been all right?”
“I’ve never been better.” The sincerity in her voice relaxed the men at the counter. “What’ve you been hearing?”
“Nothing you’d want to hear, and nothing anybody believed.”
Pearl sniffed again when the trucker looked at her.
“Sylvester,” Miss Edna called back. Sylvester looked up from the grill.
“What can I get you, girl?” he said.
“What say you and I have our old regular?”
Sylvester threw a couple of t-bones on the grill and smiled. Pearl immediately grabbed her purse from behind the counter and headed toward the Ladies’ room. She stopped by the phone along the way and made a quick call.
Miss Edna joked with the men at the counter and asked about a half dozen of her friends who weren’t there. Truckers had one of the most extensive and reliable communication systems anywhere. A new joke or piece of gossip put out on Monday would work its way over the Interstate and CB network, so that every trucker who worked the regular routes knew it by Wednesday.
“I can’t see you guys from this side of the counter,” Miss Edna said as she moved around to the other side. “This is more like it.”
Pearl came back from the Ladies room.
“Employees only, behind the counter,” Pearl said in a snooty voice. “Since you quit without notice, I’m surprised you’ve got the guts to show your face here at all.”
“Quit?” Miss Edna looked at the truckers.
“Buddy said you went crazy and tore your place up and then quit without giving him any notice,” one of the truckers said.
Sylvester walked out from around the grill with two steak dinners and set them at the end of the counter. Miss Edna walked down and sat across from Sylvester, on the customer side. Sylvester filled two cups with fresh coffee, and they started eating.
Between mouthfuls of t-bone and fries, Miss Edna said , “I don’t suppose Buddy gave any reason why I would go crazy like that and throw all my own stuff out into the dirt and mud.”
“Because he wouldn’t cheat on his wife and children like you asked him to,” Pearl said in her snooty tone.
“And you believed that?” Miss Edna said.
“Why wouldn’t I? It sounds like something you’d do.”
“Let me show you what’s wrong with that story, and it has nothing to do with what I would or wouldn’t do.”
Miss Edna walked down to the end of the counter. She had been making herself a salad and still had a raw onion and a knife in her hand. She laid them down and put her arm around the trucker sitting at the end.
“You married, cowboy?”
“You know I am,” he said.
“Love your wife and kids?”
“You know I do.”
“If I asked you to go to bed with me, would you?”
“In a heartbeat, darling.”
Everybody at the counter laughed, except Pearl.
Miss Edna walked down the counter and repeated the interview in pretty much the same fashion with each trucker.
“See, that’s what’s wrong with Buddy’s story,” Miss Edna said to Pearl. “If I had asked him to go to bed, that horny little toad would’ve done it.”
“Well, I just don’t think...”
“For the love of God, Pearlie, we’re talking about Buddy, here. He’d screw a woodpile if he thought there was a snake in it.”
Once again, everybody laughed. Miss Edna was enjoying being her old self again.
“Speak of the horny little devil, and up he pops,” she said when she saw Buddy’s truck pull up outside. He got out of the truck and stomped into the diner.
“Lookee who’s here, like she’s the queen bee. I thought you left town.”
Buddy went behind the counter and walked down to the end where Miss Edna and Sylvester were eating. While he was doing that, Nate slipped into the diner and grabbed the key to the truckers’ locker room off of the wooden statue by the cash register. Miss Edna saw him and looked at the end of the counter where she had left the onion. Nate scooted by, right behind Buddy, grabbed the onion and headed back to the locker room.
“I should’ve called the police on you, you owed me thirty days notice on your trailer or one month’s rent.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” Miss Edna said.
“Felt sorry for you, I guess. Fine way you repay me, sneaking back here and eating my food.”
“Right, I snuck in through the front door, after all, you left it open. Oh yeah, you also left all the lights on and all these people in here. And I seem to remember that this is a restaurant. People eat food in a restaurant.”
“I should call the police now,” Buddy said.
“No need to, here they are.”
Ernie Roberts, the policeman who had interrogated Nate about Grub Hanley walked into the diner. He took his hat off and gave a general nod to the crowd at the counter. The argument came to an awkward silence. He sat down alone in one of the booths and Pearl went over to take his order. Miss Edna went back to eating her t-bone.
“How did queen bee here order her steak?” Buddy called over to Pearl.
“Didn’t order a steak. Didn’t order anything.”
“Hear that, Officer Roberts? The lady here is eating food she didn’t order and didn’t intend to pay for. What’re going to do about that?”
Roberts didn’t have a chance to answer. Nate came running out from the back room, bawling like a baby.
“That machine took my money. It took my quarters I saved to go to the movies.”
He ran over to Grandmother Tillman, who had walked into the diner at just that moment.
“What machine, child? Don’t cry. What has you so upset?”
Everybody stiffened to attention. The sudden appearance of Grandmother Tillman was like the school principal walking into the poker game in the boys’ lavatory. Buddy Cole looked at the statue by the cash register and panicked when he saw the key for Captain Jack wasn’t there.
Officer Roberts walked over to Nate.
“Calm down, son. What’s wrong?”
“I was playing with that machine in the back, the one with the pretty wheels that go around, and it took all my money.” Nate continued to bawl profusely, and he hoped Officer Roberts wouldn’t detect the strong onion aroma on his cheeks. The general atmosphere of the diner smelled so heavily of grease and onions, however, that no one could have detected what little Nate added to it.
Officer Roberts went back into the truckers’ locker room and returned.
“What’re you doing with a slot machine here?” he said to Buddy.
Grandmother Tillman went into hysterics.
“A slot machine? A slot machine? You have gambling where young children can lose their lunch money and allowances?”
The entire diner was silent and everyone was waiting to see how Buddy got out of this one. Buddy smiled confidently.
“Not a real slot machine, a toy one. Why if you’ll look again, you’ll see there’s a sign that says it’s for entertainment, not gambling.”
“But it took my money,” Nate said though his blubbering.
“All you have to do is tell me how much you lost, that is, how much you played with, and I give it right back to you.”
The policeman looked at Grandmother Tillman. “If that’s the case, I’m not sure any law’s been broken,” he said.
Buddy gave Nate the eight quarters he said he’d put into the machine. “Just like the sign says,” he said with a smug smile.
“You’ve never given me my money back,” one of the truckers said. “I’ve put twenty bucks into that thing over the last two years.”
“Same here, I never got anything back.”
And so it went all along the counter.
“Well, you should’ve asked,” Buddy said.
“We’re asking now.”
Buddy looked at Officer Roberts. “This is silly, how would I know how much money people have put into that thing. Everybody and his brother’d start showing up asking for money they never lost.”
“What’s the name of that bass boat of yours?” Miss Edna said.
“Captain Jack’s Loot,” one of the truckers said. “That’s where all the money is. Sell that damn boat and give us our money back.”
The crowd started getting riled and Officer Roberts had to yell out for everyone to calm down. He asked Grandmother Tillman what he should do.
“First of all, you’ve got to confiscate and destroy that gambling machine.”
Buddy winced.
“Secondly, some kind of restitution should be made. The easiest way would be for Mr. Cole here to sell the boat, since that’s where the money seems to have gone, and distribute the money in reasonable shares until all claimants have been satisfied or all the money’s gone. I would volunteer to distribute those funds, unless someone feels I wouldn’t be objective or trustworthy.”
Nobody in Davis Corners was going to touch that last challenge, not even Buddy Cole.
“You’ve got no way of knowing that I bought that boat with winnings from the slot machine,” Buddy said.
“There’s another way, then,” Grandmother Tillman said.
This part was outside Nate’s plan, and he was curious what Grandmother Tillman was up to.
“What’s that?” Buddy said.
“Why your tax records, of course. You would’ve claimed the money as revenue so we can get the exact amount off your tax records. You did pay taxes on it, didn’t you?”
Buddy was silent as he realized he’d been done in.
One of the truckers piped up, “If Buddy sells the boat and gives the money to Mrs. Tillman, we’ll put the word out and people can get in touch with her.”
“That, or I can turn it over to the IRS folks and the feds,” Officer Roberts said to Buddy.
“Okay,” Buddy said. “But what about this bitch here who’s been stealing food from me?”
Grandmother Tillman walked over and slapped Buddy’s face.
“Check with the girl at the cash register,” she said. “Come on, children, we’re leaving.”
As Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna marched triumphantly out the door, Angie held up the slip that Miss Edna had given her earlier.
“Here’s the order, all paid for. Count the cash drawer, if you want.”
Everyone at the counter hooted and jeered at Buddy. Outside, in Grandmother Tillman’s car, they celebrated, too, as they drove away. Grandmother Tillman thought about all the unfairness and bullies in the world. Twice in her life he had gotten the upper hand on them. Once, on the bridge with Ricky Thornton, and again tonight when she slapped Buddy Cole. She realized it was two more chances than most people got, and said a prayer of thanks, while at the same time she asked for forgiveness.
Chapter 21
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
“I heard you two up ‘til all hours last night, chattering like a couple of school girls.”
“Miss Edna was telling me all about Cole’s. It’s amazing what goes on in your home town, right under your own nose, and you don’t even know about it.”
Miss Edna shot a questioning glance at Nate but he shrugged it off. He let his comment work on Grandmother Tillman. If she followed up on it, then he might be able to include her in his plan. If not, then he would have to figure out how to do it alone.
Grandmother Tillman refilled her coffee cup, looked out the window, and seemed more interested in the weather at that moment, rather than anything Nate had said.
“Like what,” she finally asked.
Nate feigned a moment of confusion, as if he had completely forgotten what he had been talking about.
“Oh, a gambling casino,” he said. “I never would’ve thought a town like Davis Corners would have a gambling casino.”
Miss Edna wanted to point out that one slot machine hardly constituted a gambling casino, but she kept still, wondering what Nate was up to.
Grandmother Tillman laughed.
“A gambling casino, here in Davis Corners? What are you talking about?”
Nate related what Miss Edna had told him about Captain Jack, the slot machine in the truckers’ locker room. Grandmother Tillman looked shocked. She discounted Nate’s hyperbole, this certainly was no casino, but it was an incursion that could only get worse. She had heard stories about truck stops that were centers for drug dealers and prostitution. She certainly would like to see Buddy Cole’s little aberration nipped in the bud.
As Grandmother Tillman felt herself starting to get worked up, she realized she was being artfully manipulated by her grandson. She chose to go along, partly for her amusement, partly to see what he was up to.
“But what can ordinary people like ourselves do about it?” She laced her question with a generous dollop of sarcasm, which Nate missed.
“The ideal solution, if such a thing was possible, would be to get rid of the slot machine and make restitution to those who’d been victimized.” Nate tried to look as if this was the first time he had given this any thought.
Grandmother Tillman was amused by his dramatics.
“I hardly think of those truck drivers in the back room as victims,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“Even so, it wouldn’t be right for Buddy Cole to profit from what he’s been doing,” Nate said.
Grandmother Tillman went to the stove and poured Miss Edna another cup of coffee.
“Revenge is tricky business, you two. It’s like a ditch you dig for your enemy to fall into. You’re as likely to fall into it yourself and break your own neck.”
Nate squirmed at the table, realizing he had been too transparent. He wondered if his grandmother was angry at him for trying to persuade her in such a round about way to help them get even with Buddy Cole. All three of them sat around the table staring silently into their cups. Grandmother Tillman thought about that day at the trailer park, seeing all of Miss Edna’s belongings strewn in front of her trailer. She remembered how humiliating it had been for the young woman.
“No, it’s best to walk away from revenge,” she said. A conspiratorial smile crossed her face. “But shutting down an illegal casino, now that’s a whole other story.”
Nate and Miss Edna squealed like two kids whose mom said they could skip school just this once. Nate laid out his plan to the two of them. Miss Edna was astounded and voted for it immediately. Grandmother Tillman pondered it carefully before admitting it could work. The three of them worked out some last details and decided to do it.
“Your mother’s not going to be real pleased with me if she finds out about this,” Grandmother Tillman said to Nate. “One of the reasons you’re here is so I can keep you out of these kinds of high-jinks.”
“I know,” Nate said. “I’m asking you to get in trouble with me so we can get even with Buddy Cole for how he treated Miss Edna.”
“So be it, then. I’ve always been a sucker for someone who speaks the plain truth.”
A few necessary phone calls were made, and the plan was put in motion.
That evening, around eight, Miss Edna strolled into Cole’s as if nothing in the world had ever happened. She swung by and visited with Angie, the girl working the cash register. They giggled and Miss Edna slipped her something. Pearl, the waitress on duty, sniffed her nose up when she saw her sit at the counter. The truckers all whistled and hollered and asked where she’d been.
“We’ve heard all kinds of stories, Sweetie,” one said. “You been all right?”
“I’ve never been better.” The sincerity in her voice relaxed the men at the counter. “What’ve you been hearing?”
“Nothing you’d want to hear, and nothing anybody believed.”
Pearl sniffed again when the trucker looked at her.
“Sylvester,” Miss Edna called back. Sylvester looked up from the grill.
“What can I get you, girl?” he said.
“What say you and I have our old regular?”
Sylvester threw a couple of t-bones on the grill and smiled. Pearl immediately grabbed her purse from behind the counter and headed toward the Ladies’ room. She stopped by the phone along the way and made a quick call.
Miss Edna joked with the men at the counter and asked about a half dozen of her friends who weren’t there. Truckers had one of the most extensive and reliable communication systems anywhere. A new joke or piece of gossip put out on Monday would work its way over the Interstate and CB network, so that every trucker who worked the regular routes knew it by Wednesday.
“I can’t see you guys from this side of the counter,” Miss Edna said as she moved around to the other side. “This is more like it.”
Pearl came back from the Ladies room.
“Employees only, behind the counter,” Pearl said in a snooty voice. “Since you quit without notice, I’m surprised you’ve got the guts to show your face here at all.”
“Quit?” Miss Edna looked at the truckers.
“Buddy said you went crazy and tore your place up and then quit without giving him any notice,” one of the truckers said.
Sylvester walked out from around the grill with two steak dinners and set them at the end of the counter. Miss Edna walked down and sat across from Sylvester, on the customer side. Sylvester filled two cups with fresh coffee, and they started eating.
Between mouthfuls of t-bone and fries, Miss Edna said , “I don’t suppose Buddy gave any reason why I would go crazy like that and throw all my own stuff out into the dirt and mud.”
“Because he wouldn’t cheat on his wife and children like you asked him to,” Pearl said in her snooty tone.
“And you believed that?” Miss Edna said.
“Why wouldn’t I? It sounds like something you’d do.”
“Let me show you what’s wrong with that story, and it has nothing to do with what I would or wouldn’t do.”
Miss Edna walked down to the end of the counter. She had been making herself a salad and still had a raw onion and a knife in her hand. She laid them down and put her arm around the trucker sitting at the end.
“You married, cowboy?”
“You know I am,” he said.
“Love your wife and kids?”
“You know I do.”
“If I asked you to go to bed with me, would you?”
“In a heartbeat, darling.”
Everybody at the counter laughed, except Pearl.
Miss Edna walked down the counter and repeated the interview in pretty much the same fashion with each trucker.
“See, that’s what’s wrong with Buddy’s story,” Miss Edna said to Pearl. “If I had asked him to go to bed, that horny little toad would’ve done it.”
“Well, I just don’t think...”
“For the love of God, Pearlie, we’re talking about Buddy, here. He’d screw a woodpile if he thought there was a snake in it.”
Once again, everybody laughed. Miss Edna was enjoying being her old self again.
“Speak of the horny little devil, and up he pops,” she said when she saw Buddy’s truck pull up outside. He got out of the truck and stomped into the diner.
“Lookee who’s here, like she’s the queen bee. I thought you left town.”
Buddy went behind the counter and walked down to the end where Miss Edna and Sylvester were eating. While he was doing that, Nate slipped into the diner and grabbed the key to the truckers’ locker room off of the wooden statue by the cash register. Miss Edna saw him and looked at the end of the counter where she had left the onion. Nate scooted by, right behind Buddy, grabbed the onion and headed back to the locker room.
“I should’ve called the police on you, you owed me thirty days notice on your trailer or one month’s rent.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” Miss Edna said.
“Felt sorry for you, I guess. Fine way you repay me, sneaking back here and eating my food.”
“Right, I snuck in through the front door, after all, you left it open. Oh yeah, you also left all the lights on and all these people in here. And I seem to remember that this is a restaurant. People eat food in a restaurant.”
“I should call the police now,” Buddy said.
“No need to, here they are.”
Ernie Roberts, the policeman who had interrogated Nate about Grub Hanley walked into the diner. He took his hat off and gave a general nod to the crowd at the counter. The argument came to an awkward silence. He sat down alone in one of the booths and Pearl went over to take his order. Miss Edna went back to eating her t-bone.
“How did queen bee here order her steak?” Buddy called over to Pearl.
“Didn’t order a steak. Didn’t order anything.”
“Hear that, Officer Roberts? The lady here is eating food she didn’t order and didn’t intend to pay for. What’re going to do about that?”
Roberts didn’t have a chance to answer. Nate came running out from the back room, bawling like a baby.
“That machine took my money. It took my quarters I saved to go to the movies.”
He ran over to Grandmother Tillman, who had walked into the diner at just that moment.
“What machine, child? Don’t cry. What has you so upset?”
Everybody stiffened to attention. The sudden appearance of Grandmother Tillman was like the school principal walking into the poker game in the boys’ lavatory. Buddy Cole looked at the statue by the cash register and panicked when he saw the key for Captain Jack wasn’t there.
Officer Roberts walked over to Nate.
“Calm down, son. What’s wrong?”
“I was playing with that machine in the back, the one with the pretty wheels that go around, and it took all my money.” Nate continued to bawl profusely, and he hoped Officer Roberts wouldn’t detect the strong onion aroma on his cheeks. The general atmosphere of the diner smelled so heavily of grease and onions, however, that no one could have detected what little Nate added to it.
Officer Roberts went back into the truckers’ locker room and returned.
“What’re you doing with a slot machine here?” he said to Buddy.
Grandmother Tillman went into hysterics.
“A slot machine? A slot machine? You have gambling where young children can lose their lunch money and allowances?”
The entire diner was silent and everyone was waiting to see how Buddy got out of this one. Buddy smiled confidently.
“Not a real slot machine, a toy one. Why if you’ll look again, you’ll see there’s a sign that says it’s for entertainment, not gambling.”
“But it took my money,” Nate said though his blubbering.
“All you have to do is tell me how much you lost, that is, how much you played with, and I give it right back to you.”
The policeman looked at Grandmother Tillman. “If that’s the case, I’m not sure any law’s been broken,” he said.
Buddy gave Nate the eight quarters he said he’d put into the machine. “Just like the sign says,” he said with a smug smile.
“You’ve never given me my money back,” one of the truckers said. “I’ve put twenty bucks into that thing over the last two years.”
“Same here, I never got anything back.”
And so it went all along the counter.
“Well, you should’ve asked,” Buddy said.
“We’re asking now.”
Buddy looked at Officer Roberts. “This is silly, how would I know how much money people have put into that thing. Everybody and his brother’d start showing up asking for money they never lost.”
“What’s the name of that bass boat of yours?” Miss Edna said.
“Captain Jack’s Loot,” one of the truckers said. “That’s where all the money is. Sell that damn boat and give us our money back.”
The crowd started getting riled and Officer Roberts had to yell out for everyone to calm down. He asked Grandmother Tillman what he should do.
“First of all, you’ve got to confiscate and destroy that gambling machine.”
Buddy winced.
“Secondly, some kind of restitution should be made. The easiest way would be for Mr. Cole here to sell the boat, since that’s where the money seems to have gone, and distribute the money in reasonable shares until all claimants have been satisfied or all the money’s gone. I would volunteer to distribute those funds, unless someone feels I wouldn’t be objective or trustworthy.”
Nobody in Davis Corners was going to touch that last challenge, not even Buddy Cole.
“You’ve got no way of knowing that I bought that boat with winnings from the slot machine,” Buddy said.
“There’s another way, then,” Grandmother Tillman said.
This part was outside Nate’s plan, and he was curious what Grandmother Tillman was up to.
“What’s that?” Buddy said.
“Why your tax records, of course. You would’ve claimed the money as revenue so we can get the exact amount off your tax records. You did pay taxes on it, didn’t you?”
Buddy was silent as he realized he’d been done in.
One of the truckers piped up, “If Buddy sells the boat and gives the money to Mrs. Tillman, we’ll put the word out and people can get in touch with her.”
“That, or I can turn it over to the IRS folks and the feds,” Officer Roberts said to Buddy.
“Okay,” Buddy said. “But what about this bitch here who’s been stealing food from me?”
Grandmother Tillman walked over and slapped Buddy’s face.
“Check with the girl at the cash register,” she said. “Come on, children, we’re leaving.”
As Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna marched triumphantly out the door, Angie held up the slip that Miss Edna had given her earlier.
“Here’s the order, all paid for. Count the cash drawer, if you want.”
Everyone at the counter hooted and jeered at Buddy. Outside, in Grandmother Tillman’s car, they celebrated, too, as they drove away. Grandmother Tillman thought about all the unfairness and bullies in the world. Twice in her life he had gotten the upper hand on them. Once, on the bridge with Ricky Thornton, and again tonight when she slapped Buddy Cole. She realized it was two more chances than most people got, and said a prayer of thanks, while at the same time she asked for forgiveness.
Chapter 21
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 19: Miss Edna's Dinner
When Miss Edna heard that Grandmother Tillman’s whole family came every week for Sunday dinner, she insisted on making the meal. Sunday morning, she started preparing fried chicken, mashed potatoes with the skins, and chicken gravy. Of course, biscuits too. In fact, she was in the kitchen rolling out the biscuits, when Hattie and Henry showed up.
“You’re never going to guess what happened,” Hattie said as she burst through the front door. “You know that waitress from Cole’s, that Edna McElroy woman?”
Grandmother Tillman swept into the living room. “I certainly do.” She grabbed her daughter by the arm and started ushering her toward the kitchen. “And how are you today,” she asked Henry so as to keep Hattie from saying more.
Henry was surprised by her solicitous comment and thought for a moment before answering with a weak “okay” to the empty swinging door. Grandmother Tillman had already gotten Hattie into the kitchen.
“Let me introduce you to my house guest,” Grandmother Tillman said graciously. “Edna, this is my daughter, Hattie Givens. Hattie, this is Miss Edna McElroy. She’s staying with me for a few days.”
Miss Edna was covered in flour from the biscuits, but her color seemed robust compared to the ashen pallor that had suddenly come over Hattie.
“I must look a sight,” Miss Edna said, “But I sure am pleased to meet you.”
Hattie’s eyes were as big as the pie plates Miss Edna had set out for dessert. She stared silently at Miss Edna.
“Edna says she’s pleased to meet you, dear,” Grandmother Tillman said coachingly. “The heat tends to slow Hattie down,” she said in a low voice to Miss Edna.
“Yes,” Hattie said haltingly, “I’m pleased as well.”
Out in the dining room, Henry asked Nate, “What was that all about? What’s going on in the kitchen?”
“Miss Edna, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, Hattie’s got an earful about her.”
“No,” Nate said, “I think Grandmother is introducing Miss Edna to Aunt Hattie.”
“How do you mean?”
“As in ‘Edna, this is my daughter. Hattie, this is my good friend Edna.’”
At that moment, Hattie walked out from the kitchen still white-faced and pie-eyed.
“Surely you don’t mean...”
Just then the kitchen door swung open and Miss Edna walked out, calling back to Grandmother Tillman, “Don’t bother, I know where they are.”
She started pulling plates out of the dining room hutch when she recognized Henry.
“Henry, is this your wife I just met?”
Henry’s mouth was as open as Hattie’s eyes were wide. Hattie came over and stood possessively next to her husband. Jim Frank’s statue, with its comic expression, had nothing on these two as they stood there with their eyes bulging and their mouths silently agape.
Grandmother Tillman came out of the kitchen and grabbed some of the dishes that Miss Edna was pulling from the hutch.
“Say yes,” she prompted Henry, and then went back into the kitchen.
Miss Edna looked with consternation at Hattie and Henry. “You should have your aunt and uncle sit in the living room, where it’s cool,” she said.
Nate led the two of them to the big couch in the living room.
Gabriel and his wife, Mary, drove up at the same time Seth did, and they unleashed their kids all at once. This provided enough activity for Nate to avoid getting cornered by his Aunt Hattie to explain what was going on. Meanwhile, each couple repeated much the same scenario that Hattie and Henry had gone through. Within a few minutes, the situation had stabilized to where all Nate’s cousins were outside playing and all his aunts and uncles were in the living room, staring at each other. Everyone was waiting for Nate’s mother to arrive.
They all heard Nate’s parents drive up and Nate went out to greet them. His mother asked if he’d been taking good care of his grandmother, and he assured her he had. His father gripped his upper arm and said that farm life was making Nate stronger. The three of them were growing closer again.
They went inside and Nate’s mother could tell right away that something was different. She stuck her head into the living room and peeked around before saying hello to everyone. She and her husband were usually the last to arrive and she was used to walking into the middle of one of Henry’s raucous stories and finding Hattie and Mary in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman. This time, everyone was in the living room and everything was as quiet as a wake.
“Where’s mother?” she said with an edge of concern in her voice.
Everyone stared silently toward the kitchen.
“I’ll see if she needs any help,” she said haltingly.
Everyone watched as she went through the swinging door into the kitchen and watched as she walked back out two minutes later with that same zombie stare as her predecessors. She sat down on one of the extra, straight-backed chairs Grandmother Tillman put into the living room on Sundays. She tried to talk a couple of times. She would look toward the kitchen and then upstairs. She had grasped the situation more than the others: Miss Edna wasn’t just here, she was living here.
“Uncle Gabriel’s room,” Nate said.
She nodded in appreciation.
Mary glared at her husband, Gabriel, as if his sharing a bed with Miss Edna was in no way diminished by the decades between his getting out of it and her crawling into it.
At that point, Grandmother Tillman walked into the living room. She had everyone’s attention.
“The last couple of days have been very educational for me,” she said quietly. “Miss McElroy’s a guest of mine, a welcome guest, I might add. I’ll remind each and every one of you that his house was always open to your friends and guests, and I always treated them well, regardless of some interesting first impressions.”
She was quiet for a moment. Everyone shifted a little nervously, remembering some of their own strays they had brought home over the years.
“I’ll expect the same from you today.” Grandmother Tillman’s tone suddenly brightened. “Well, Edna’s made a marvelous Sunday dinner for us, and if someone could call in the children and some strong men could help carry plates and food into the dining room, we could get around to enjoying it.”
She smiled and shooed everyone into action. For a moment she had sounded a little like Miss Edna, in the flattering way she had called the men strong in order to get them to help.
Dinner conversation was polite at first, and then downright relaxed. Miss Edna asked Hattie about the broach she was wearing, and Hattie went on and on about the estate sale where she bought it.
“Hattie’ll buy anything someone puts out in their yard on a Saturday,” Henry said. “She tried to buy Mabel Adams’ lawn furniture once while Bud and Mabel were sitting in it having a picnic.”
Hattie elbowed him in the ribs.
“Seriously, she’s got an eye for antiques and can find them in the least expected places,” Henry said, with obvious pride.
“I found you, didn’t I?”
Everyone laughed and Hattie looked over at Miss Edna and winked.
Miss Edna chatted with Seth’s daughter, Katherine, about what she liked to study in school. She complimented Seth on raising such a delightful daughter, without a mother around, and Katherine blushed at the indirect compliment. Clayton made some wisecrack, and Miss Edna gently chided him for making fun of his sister, while adding that she had never had an older brother to look after her and how lucky Katherine must be. Clayton straightened his posture and said that although he liked to tease her, nobody else had better pick on his kid sister. Katherine looked at him with astonishment, she had never heard this protective tone before.
By the time pie was served, Miss Edna had worked her magic on everyone. She found ways to make each one feel special, and in doing so, made everyone else remember how special that person was.
After dinner, the men went into the living room, and Henry wound out a story as usual. The women went into the kitchen to wash dishes and to run over the weekly gossip. A certain event involving vandalism at the trailer court never came up.
As everyone was piling into their cars at the end of the evening, Henry lingered back on the porch with Nate for a moment. He jerked his head toward the inside of the house, where Miss Edna was wrapping up things in the kitchen.
“So, how is it with Miss Edna around all the time?”
Nate could tell he had been entrusted with living a rare experience for his uncle.
“It’s a dream come true.”
Henry smiled and looked relieved. He punched Nate on the arm and left without another word.
Later that evening, Miss Edna came up to Nate’s room. He was lying on his bed, on his stomach, reading about Winston Churchill. Miss Edna sat on the floor so that their heads were at the same level.
“Your family’s real nice.”
“Trust me, they were on their best behavior because of you.”
Nate closed the book.
“You know the story you told me about how you tricked Grub Hanley and got back at him for being mean to you?” Miss Edna had a far-off look.
“Like I could forget.”
“That was real smart, how you thought of all that and made it happen,” Miss Edna said.
“Yeah, and it turned out so well, what with me getting shot at and shipped out here and all.”
“He missed, and this isn’t all that bad, now is it?”
Nate smiled. It felt good to remember that night and to have someone think of him as a hero again. And she was right, living on his grandmother’s farm with Miss Edna wasn’t all that bad. He climbed off the bed and sat on the floor in front of Miss Edna.
“This is going somewhere, isn’t it?” he said.
“I want to get back at Buddy Cole. I know it’s wicked of me, but I do.” Miss Edna was whispering now. “You figured out how to get back at Grub Hanley, I bet you could figure out a way for me to get even with Buddy.”
Nate felt intoxicated. Life on the farm had gotten pretty quiet and, well, dull, Nate admitted to himself. Here was a challenge and a diversion being handed to him. More than that, here was Miss Edna asking him, a thirteen year old kid, for his expertise. He had only done anything like this once before, the incident at Founder’s Hill, and he had botched that one, really. Botched or not, it gave him experience, something others lacked. Such is the way that reputations and resumes are built.
“Tell me everything about the diner, everything about Buddy’s routine. Don’t think about it, just start talking and tell me everything that comes to your head.”
The next three hours were heaven for Nate. He sat and listened to Miss Edna talk about people she knew, things she did, and all the goings on around Buddy’s truck stop.
“Can you help me?” Miss Edna said when she couldn’t think of anything more to tell him.
“You gave me a lot to think about. I think the slot machine is where he’s the most vulnerable. I need to figure out a way to use that against him.”
Nate knew the real value in an adventure was the story it provided afterward. A story about a slot machine named Captain Jack was too good to pass up.
“I knew I could count on you.”
Miss Edna leaned over and kissed Nate on the cheek, then quickly jumped up and left. Nate sat on the floor for another hour, touching his cheek and making a plan.
Chapter 20
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
“You’re never going to guess what happened,” Hattie said as she burst through the front door. “You know that waitress from Cole’s, that Edna McElroy woman?”
Grandmother Tillman swept into the living room. “I certainly do.” She grabbed her daughter by the arm and started ushering her toward the kitchen. “And how are you today,” she asked Henry so as to keep Hattie from saying more.
Henry was surprised by her solicitous comment and thought for a moment before answering with a weak “okay” to the empty swinging door. Grandmother Tillman had already gotten Hattie into the kitchen.
“Let me introduce you to my house guest,” Grandmother Tillman said graciously. “Edna, this is my daughter, Hattie Givens. Hattie, this is Miss Edna McElroy. She’s staying with me for a few days.”
Miss Edna was covered in flour from the biscuits, but her color seemed robust compared to the ashen pallor that had suddenly come over Hattie.
“I must look a sight,” Miss Edna said, “But I sure am pleased to meet you.”
Hattie’s eyes were as big as the pie plates Miss Edna had set out for dessert. She stared silently at Miss Edna.
“Edna says she’s pleased to meet you, dear,” Grandmother Tillman said coachingly. “The heat tends to slow Hattie down,” she said in a low voice to Miss Edna.
“Yes,” Hattie said haltingly, “I’m pleased as well.”
Out in the dining room, Henry asked Nate, “What was that all about? What’s going on in the kitchen?”
“Miss Edna, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, Hattie’s got an earful about her.”
“No,” Nate said, “I think Grandmother is introducing Miss Edna to Aunt Hattie.”
“How do you mean?”
“As in ‘Edna, this is my daughter. Hattie, this is my good friend Edna.’”
At that moment, Hattie walked out from the kitchen still white-faced and pie-eyed.
“Surely you don’t mean...”
Just then the kitchen door swung open and Miss Edna walked out, calling back to Grandmother Tillman, “Don’t bother, I know where they are.”
She started pulling plates out of the dining room hutch when she recognized Henry.
“Henry, is this your wife I just met?”
Henry’s mouth was as open as Hattie’s eyes were wide. Hattie came over and stood possessively next to her husband. Jim Frank’s statue, with its comic expression, had nothing on these two as they stood there with their eyes bulging and their mouths silently agape.
Grandmother Tillman came out of the kitchen and grabbed some of the dishes that Miss Edna was pulling from the hutch.
“Say yes,” she prompted Henry, and then went back into the kitchen.
Miss Edna looked with consternation at Hattie and Henry. “You should have your aunt and uncle sit in the living room, where it’s cool,” she said.
Nate led the two of them to the big couch in the living room.
Gabriel and his wife, Mary, drove up at the same time Seth did, and they unleashed their kids all at once. This provided enough activity for Nate to avoid getting cornered by his Aunt Hattie to explain what was going on. Meanwhile, each couple repeated much the same scenario that Hattie and Henry had gone through. Within a few minutes, the situation had stabilized to where all Nate’s cousins were outside playing and all his aunts and uncles were in the living room, staring at each other. Everyone was waiting for Nate’s mother to arrive.
They all heard Nate’s parents drive up and Nate went out to greet them. His mother asked if he’d been taking good care of his grandmother, and he assured her he had. His father gripped his upper arm and said that farm life was making Nate stronger. The three of them were growing closer again.
They went inside and Nate’s mother could tell right away that something was different. She stuck her head into the living room and peeked around before saying hello to everyone. She and her husband were usually the last to arrive and she was used to walking into the middle of one of Henry’s raucous stories and finding Hattie and Mary in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman. This time, everyone was in the living room and everything was as quiet as a wake.
“Where’s mother?” she said with an edge of concern in her voice.
Everyone stared silently toward the kitchen.
“I’ll see if she needs any help,” she said haltingly.
Everyone watched as she went through the swinging door into the kitchen and watched as she walked back out two minutes later with that same zombie stare as her predecessors. She sat down on one of the extra, straight-backed chairs Grandmother Tillman put into the living room on Sundays. She tried to talk a couple of times. She would look toward the kitchen and then upstairs. She had grasped the situation more than the others: Miss Edna wasn’t just here, she was living here.
“Uncle Gabriel’s room,” Nate said.
She nodded in appreciation.
Mary glared at her husband, Gabriel, as if his sharing a bed with Miss Edna was in no way diminished by the decades between his getting out of it and her crawling into it.
At that point, Grandmother Tillman walked into the living room. She had everyone’s attention.
“The last couple of days have been very educational for me,” she said quietly. “Miss McElroy’s a guest of mine, a welcome guest, I might add. I’ll remind each and every one of you that his house was always open to your friends and guests, and I always treated them well, regardless of some interesting first impressions.”
She was quiet for a moment. Everyone shifted a little nervously, remembering some of their own strays they had brought home over the years.
“I’ll expect the same from you today.” Grandmother Tillman’s tone suddenly brightened. “Well, Edna’s made a marvelous Sunday dinner for us, and if someone could call in the children and some strong men could help carry plates and food into the dining room, we could get around to enjoying it.”
She smiled and shooed everyone into action. For a moment she had sounded a little like Miss Edna, in the flattering way she had called the men strong in order to get them to help.
Dinner conversation was polite at first, and then downright relaxed. Miss Edna asked Hattie about the broach she was wearing, and Hattie went on and on about the estate sale where she bought it.
“Hattie’ll buy anything someone puts out in their yard on a Saturday,” Henry said. “She tried to buy Mabel Adams’ lawn furniture once while Bud and Mabel were sitting in it having a picnic.”
Hattie elbowed him in the ribs.
“Seriously, she’s got an eye for antiques and can find them in the least expected places,” Henry said, with obvious pride.
“I found you, didn’t I?”
Everyone laughed and Hattie looked over at Miss Edna and winked.
Miss Edna chatted with Seth’s daughter, Katherine, about what she liked to study in school. She complimented Seth on raising such a delightful daughter, without a mother around, and Katherine blushed at the indirect compliment. Clayton made some wisecrack, and Miss Edna gently chided him for making fun of his sister, while adding that she had never had an older brother to look after her and how lucky Katherine must be. Clayton straightened his posture and said that although he liked to tease her, nobody else had better pick on his kid sister. Katherine looked at him with astonishment, she had never heard this protective tone before.
By the time pie was served, Miss Edna had worked her magic on everyone. She found ways to make each one feel special, and in doing so, made everyone else remember how special that person was.
After dinner, the men went into the living room, and Henry wound out a story as usual. The women went into the kitchen to wash dishes and to run over the weekly gossip. A certain event involving vandalism at the trailer court never came up.
As everyone was piling into their cars at the end of the evening, Henry lingered back on the porch with Nate for a moment. He jerked his head toward the inside of the house, where Miss Edna was wrapping up things in the kitchen.
“So, how is it with Miss Edna around all the time?”
Nate could tell he had been entrusted with living a rare experience for his uncle.
“It’s a dream come true.”
Henry smiled and looked relieved. He punched Nate on the arm and left without another word.
Later that evening, Miss Edna came up to Nate’s room. He was lying on his bed, on his stomach, reading about Winston Churchill. Miss Edna sat on the floor so that their heads were at the same level.
“Your family’s real nice.”
“Trust me, they were on their best behavior because of you.”
Nate closed the book.
“You know the story you told me about how you tricked Grub Hanley and got back at him for being mean to you?” Miss Edna had a far-off look.
“Like I could forget.”
“That was real smart, how you thought of all that and made it happen,” Miss Edna said.
“Yeah, and it turned out so well, what with me getting shot at and shipped out here and all.”
“He missed, and this isn’t all that bad, now is it?”
Nate smiled. It felt good to remember that night and to have someone think of him as a hero again. And she was right, living on his grandmother’s farm with Miss Edna wasn’t all that bad. He climbed off the bed and sat on the floor in front of Miss Edna.
“This is going somewhere, isn’t it?” he said.
“I want to get back at Buddy Cole. I know it’s wicked of me, but I do.” Miss Edna was whispering now. “You figured out how to get back at Grub Hanley, I bet you could figure out a way for me to get even with Buddy.”
Nate felt intoxicated. Life on the farm had gotten pretty quiet and, well, dull, Nate admitted to himself. Here was a challenge and a diversion being handed to him. More than that, here was Miss Edna asking him, a thirteen year old kid, for his expertise. He had only done anything like this once before, the incident at Founder’s Hill, and he had botched that one, really. Botched or not, it gave him experience, something others lacked. Such is the way that reputations and resumes are built.
“Tell me everything about the diner, everything about Buddy’s routine. Don’t think about it, just start talking and tell me everything that comes to your head.”
The next three hours were heaven for Nate. He sat and listened to Miss Edna talk about people she knew, things she did, and all the goings on around Buddy’s truck stop.
“Can you help me?” Miss Edna said when she couldn’t think of anything more to tell him.
“You gave me a lot to think about. I think the slot machine is where he’s the most vulnerable. I need to figure out a way to use that against him.”
Nate knew the real value in an adventure was the story it provided afterward. A story about a slot machine named Captain Jack was too good to pass up.
“I knew I could count on you.”
Miss Edna leaned over and kissed Nate on the cheek, then quickly jumped up and left. Nate sat on the floor for another hour, touching his cheek and making a plan.
Chapter 20
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 18: House by the Side of the Road
In the morning, Grandmother Tillman got up before Miss Edna and Nate and made pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Nate could smell the bacon right away when he woke up. When he went into the kitchen, he could smell the pancakes and the warm maple syrup waiting to be ladled onto them. Miss Edna came downstairs with her hair still damp from a shower and wearing one of the dresses Grandmother Tillman had found for her. She looked girlish in the simple, farm dress and wearing no make-up. Grandmother Tillman and Nate both stopped in their tracks when they saw her. She was pretty, but in a different way from the night before. She walked by Nate, and in spite of all the food aromas he could tell she smelled like Ivory soap. At that moment, Nate got his first adolescent crush. He was in love with Edna McElroy.
After they had washed the breakfast dishes, Grandmother Tillman told Nate to take Miss Edna outside and introduce her to Old Redemption. Nate thought it odd that he hadn’t barked the night before when Miss Edna had come up to the porch. He hoped the dog was all right. They found him in the front yard, resting in the shade of one of the whitewashed oak trees. He stood up and lazily sniffed at Miss Edna and gave a tired wag. Nate reckoned that Old Redemption had just known all along that Miss Edna was no threat. She patted him on the head and said some cute, doggie kind of stuff. Old Redemption wagged his tail more energetically and took her into his circle of protection without protest. Nate wasn’t the only one to fall in love with her that morning.
They went back inside and Grandmother Tillman asked Miss Edna how much stuff she had at her trailer. Miss Edna thought about it for awhile and said there wasn’t much that she needed to take, mainly clothes and make-up. She said she ate mostly at the diner and didn’t have much in the way of household goods. Grandmother Tillman threw a couple of empty suitcases in the trunk of the Oldsmobile and two cardboard boxes in the back seat. The three of them got into the front, Miss Edna in the center and Nate by the window.
Grandmother Tillman said that as long as they were in town, she was going to take care of some business at the bank. Grandmother Tillman still had that farm economy that didn’t believe in wasting gas. If you were going to make a trip into town, take care of all your chores. She probably would’ve gone grocery shopping, too, except that they needed the room in the car for Miss Edna’s things.
Miss Edna and Nate stayed in the car while Grandmother Tillman went inside the bank. She didn’t slide over, but stayed sitting right next to Nate. He was excruciatingly aware of every place their bodies touched. Finally, she shifted a little so she could face Nate while she talked.
“Your grandmother is the most interesting lady I’ve ever met.”
Nate agreed with her.
“I thought I’d die last night when you told me who she was, but she’s the kindest person, and so easy to talk to.” She looked confused for a moment. “Why’s she being so nice to me?”
Nate told her how his grandmother had saved Old Redemption on the bridge, and without going into detail, he told he how she was protecting him from Grub Hanley. He didn’t tell her, though, how he thought it was all tied in, somehow, to Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.
“So you, me, and Old Redemption are all strays she’s taken in.”
“We were all in danger.”
Danger,” Miss Edna said mysteriously. “Each of us in harm’s way, somehow.”
“Yes, we were all in harm’s way.” The phrase pleased Nate, especially coming from Miss Edna.
“I’m not scared any more,” Miss Edna said. “I’ve been scared, and I didn’t really know it until now, when it went away. It’s like having a toothache so long you forget about it, and then one day it goes away, and you realize it had been there, nagging at you.”
Nate didn’t know what she was talking about, but she seemed relieved and happy, so he was too. It was bizarre for him to be sitting in the car talking to her. It was Miss Edna, yet not Miss Edna. She seemed ten years younger than when she was at Cole’s. He realized that she was probably only twenty-two or twenty-three years old. She looked even younger as they both sat in the car waiting for Grandmother Tillman to come back. People walked by and gave them only the most casual of glances, two kids waiting in the car.
Grandmother Tillman came back and they drove over to the trailer park where Miss Edna lived. Grandmother Tillman abruptly stopped the Oldsmobile, and they all stared in shock.
“Oh, my God,” Miss Edna said.
The area right in front of her trailer looked as if a tornado had hit a yard sale. Her clothes had been thrown out and lay scattered all about. Dresses lay in heaps, yanked out of closets in armloads and tossed out the door. Underwear and small stuff was more spread out, as if the drawers had been pulled from the dresser and used to catapult the belongings into the yard. And most amazing of all, there were about two hundred phone books strewn about the place.
People were gathering, pointing, and whispering among themselves, and Miss Edna put her hands over her face in mortification. There was everything she owned, including her underwear, laying in the dirt for people to gawk at. Nate’s attention was riveted on the phone books. They got out of the car and Grandmother Tillman sent the onlookers away while she and Mill Edna started to gather up the clothes.
“Just get everything picked up for now,” Grandmother Tillman told her, “We’ll get it cleaned up and sorted out when we get back home.”
Tucson, Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Des Moines, Mobile. They went on and on. Small phone books too. Gastonia, Sumter, Lakeland. A lot of them had holes in the upper left corners and had doodles written all over dog-eared pages. Nate figured those came from public phone booths. Cheyenne, Omaha, Chickasaw, Tallahassee. Miss Edna’s trailer was at the top of a slope and the books had cascaded and slid more than the clothes, probably because they were heavier. Looking at them scattered down the hillside gave Nate the impression of some sort of outdoor convention or modern sermon on the mount, with banners identifying where the various delegations had come from. Biloxi, Meridian, Nashville, Wilmington, Little Rock.
“What do you want me to do with these?” Nate gestured at the books scattered all around.
Miss Edna looked at the mess and quit stuffing muddy clothes into the suitcase. Some of the books’ pages flapped noisily in the brisk wind that had picked up. Things that belong inside look terribly stupid sitting outside, laying on the dirt, getting blown around and all.
“That sonofabitch,” she said, and then started to cry quietly.
Nate went over to her and put his arms around her, the way he had seen Grandmother Tillman do it.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. Nate was tall for thirteen, a little taller than she was, so they stood there while she cried on his shoulder. She still smelled like soap, and Nate could feel his shirt getting wet from her tears. Whatever these books had been for, they were gone now. There were too many for a refugee’s backpack.
Miss Edna and Grandmother Tillman finished packing up what stuff they could, and they got back into the Oldsmobile. They started driving off and Miss Edna looked back. Grandmother Tillman stopped the car and all three looked back together. The trailer door was open and the phone books dotted the hill, their pages still waving like white surrender flags.
“Funny how someone can make you feel like trash,” Miss Edna said.
Grandmother Tillman grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “If you were trash, young lady, none of this would’ve happened.”
They sat there, wondering what they could say or do that would bring what had happened to some kind of closure, so they could move on.
“To hell with the sonofabitch,” Grandmother Tillman said and put the Oldsmobile in gear.
Miss Edna squealed and said, “Amen.” They drove off and didn’t look back any more.
When they got back to Grandmother Tillman’s place, the two women got the washing machine going and tried to salvage what they could of the dresses and clothes. Miss Edna was quiet, not in a depressed way, more of a reflective way. She didn’t seem to be dwelling on her losses, she looked more like someone taking stock, inventorying what she still had.
That night, over supper, Miss Edna said, “Well, I guess I’ve got to figure out where I go from here.”
“Judging by your phone book collection, I’d say you’ve given it some thought before,” Nate said.
“Hush,” Grandmother Tillman said.
She was right, It wasn’t for Nate to bring up. Apparently, it wasn’t time for Miss Edna to, either. She ignored his brashness.
“Cole’s was such a low class place,” Miss Edna said. “It was a restaurant, but they didn’t respect food.”
Grandmother Tillman looked genuinely interested in the remark and asked Miss Edna to explain.
“Start with his sign, for instance,” she said. “Here’s this big sign sixty feet or so up over the highway, and all it says is ‘Eats.’ Buddy said that was because the truckers were doing seventy and he had to get the message to them in a hurry.”
“I always hated that sign. ‘Eats’ has such an ugly sound,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“That’s what I thought too, but that’s the way Buddy was, and that’s the way his food was. Quick and low class. Something someone could quickly shove in their maw and stay alive a while longer.” Miss Edna had a few more bites of Grandmother Tillman’s supper. “You sure are a good cook.”
“Thank you. I’ve always liked to cook.”
“I’m going to open my own place someday,” Miss Edna said after staring thoughtfully into her plate. She looked up. “And it’s going to have a long name, so that folks’ll have to slow down and take a while to read it. And when they come in, they’ll be willing to take time to enjoy the food and the company of other travelers.”
“What’ll you name it” Grandmother Tillman asked.
“I don’t know. I just know it’ll be a long name and it’ll be pretty and friendly like.”
“You should name it Miss Edna’s” Nate said.
“Too short.” She snorted as if he’d given a stupid answer in class. “My momma used to read me a poem that said ‘He lived in a house by the side of the road and was a friend to man.’ I think I’ll name it The House by the Side of the Road.”
“That’s a lovely name,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“It’ll remind me of my momma and you too. It’ll remind me of this house by the side of the road and what a friend you were.”
Grandmother Tillman put her knife and fork down and put her hands into her lap. “Thank you, Edna.”
“What kind of food will you serve,” Nate asked.
“Southern cooking. Friendly, southern cooking. Lots of it and with biscuits on the side. As many biscuits as someone wants. And I’ll walk around and visit with everyone and make sure everything’s okay, and fill their coffee cups and get them more honey for the biscuits if they need it.”
Everyone sat, quietly imagining such a restaurant with Miss Edna doing just what she’d described.
“You should do it, then,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“Where would I get the money?” Miss Edna laughed.
“Find a banker a little before lunch time and tell him what you just told us.”
They all laughed. Miss Edna looked as if she were going to argue the point, but didn’t. She made a cute little sound instead that meant she’d give it some thought.
Chapter 19
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
After they had washed the breakfast dishes, Grandmother Tillman told Nate to take Miss Edna outside and introduce her to Old Redemption. Nate thought it odd that he hadn’t barked the night before when Miss Edna had come up to the porch. He hoped the dog was all right. They found him in the front yard, resting in the shade of one of the whitewashed oak trees. He stood up and lazily sniffed at Miss Edna and gave a tired wag. Nate reckoned that Old Redemption had just known all along that Miss Edna was no threat. She patted him on the head and said some cute, doggie kind of stuff. Old Redemption wagged his tail more energetically and took her into his circle of protection without protest. Nate wasn’t the only one to fall in love with her that morning.
They went back inside and Grandmother Tillman asked Miss Edna how much stuff she had at her trailer. Miss Edna thought about it for awhile and said there wasn’t much that she needed to take, mainly clothes and make-up. She said she ate mostly at the diner and didn’t have much in the way of household goods. Grandmother Tillman threw a couple of empty suitcases in the trunk of the Oldsmobile and two cardboard boxes in the back seat. The three of them got into the front, Miss Edna in the center and Nate by the window.
Grandmother Tillman said that as long as they were in town, she was going to take care of some business at the bank. Grandmother Tillman still had that farm economy that didn’t believe in wasting gas. If you were going to make a trip into town, take care of all your chores. She probably would’ve gone grocery shopping, too, except that they needed the room in the car for Miss Edna’s things.
Miss Edna and Nate stayed in the car while Grandmother Tillman went inside the bank. She didn’t slide over, but stayed sitting right next to Nate. He was excruciatingly aware of every place their bodies touched. Finally, she shifted a little so she could face Nate while she talked.
“Your grandmother is the most interesting lady I’ve ever met.”
Nate agreed with her.
“I thought I’d die last night when you told me who she was, but she’s the kindest person, and so easy to talk to.” She looked confused for a moment. “Why’s she being so nice to me?”
Nate told her how his grandmother had saved Old Redemption on the bridge, and without going into detail, he told he how she was protecting him from Grub Hanley. He didn’t tell her, though, how he thought it was all tied in, somehow, to Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.
“So you, me, and Old Redemption are all strays she’s taken in.”
“We were all in danger.”
Danger,” Miss Edna said mysteriously. “Each of us in harm’s way, somehow.”
“Yes, we were all in harm’s way.” The phrase pleased Nate, especially coming from Miss Edna.
“I’m not scared any more,” Miss Edna said. “I’ve been scared, and I didn’t really know it until now, when it went away. It’s like having a toothache so long you forget about it, and then one day it goes away, and you realize it had been there, nagging at you.”
Nate didn’t know what she was talking about, but she seemed relieved and happy, so he was too. It was bizarre for him to be sitting in the car talking to her. It was Miss Edna, yet not Miss Edna. She seemed ten years younger than when she was at Cole’s. He realized that she was probably only twenty-two or twenty-three years old. She looked even younger as they both sat in the car waiting for Grandmother Tillman to come back. People walked by and gave them only the most casual of glances, two kids waiting in the car.
Grandmother Tillman came back and they drove over to the trailer park where Miss Edna lived. Grandmother Tillman abruptly stopped the Oldsmobile, and they all stared in shock.
“Oh, my God,” Miss Edna said.
The area right in front of her trailer looked as if a tornado had hit a yard sale. Her clothes had been thrown out and lay scattered all about. Dresses lay in heaps, yanked out of closets in armloads and tossed out the door. Underwear and small stuff was more spread out, as if the drawers had been pulled from the dresser and used to catapult the belongings into the yard. And most amazing of all, there were about two hundred phone books strewn about the place.
People were gathering, pointing, and whispering among themselves, and Miss Edna put her hands over her face in mortification. There was everything she owned, including her underwear, laying in the dirt for people to gawk at. Nate’s attention was riveted on the phone books. They got out of the car and Grandmother Tillman sent the onlookers away while she and Mill Edna started to gather up the clothes.
“Just get everything picked up for now,” Grandmother Tillman told her, “We’ll get it cleaned up and sorted out when we get back home.”
Tucson, Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Des Moines, Mobile. They went on and on. Small phone books too. Gastonia, Sumter, Lakeland. A lot of them had holes in the upper left corners and had doodles written all over dog-eared pages. Nate figured those came from public phone booths. Cheyenne, Omaha, Chickasaw, Tallahassee. Miss Edna’s trailer was at the top of a slope and the books had cascaded and slid more than the clothes, probably because they were heavier. Looking at them scattered down the hillside gave Nate the impression of some sort of outdoor convention or modern sermon on the mount, with banners identifying where the various delegations had come from. Biloxi, Meridian, Nashville, Wilmington, Little Rock.
“What do you want me to do with these?” Nate gestured at the books scattered all around.
Miss Edna looked at the mess and quit stuffing muddy clothes into the suitcase. Some of the books’ pages flapped noisily in the brisk wind that had picked up. Things that belong inside look terribly stupid sitting outside, laying on the dirt, getting blown around and all.
“That sonofabitch,” she said, and then started to cry quietly.
Nate went over to her and put his arms around her, the way he had seen Grandmother Tillman do it.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. Nate was tall for thirteen, a little taller than she was, so they stood there while she cried on his shoulder. She still smelled like soap, and Nate could feel his shirt getting wet from her tears. Whatever these books had been for, they were gone now. There were too many for a refugee’s backpack.
Miss Edna and Grandmother Tillman finished packing up what stuff they could, and they got back into the Oldsmobile. They started driving off and Miss Edna looked back. Grandmother Tillman stopped the car and all three looked back together. The trailer door was open and the phone books dotted the hill, their pages still waving like white surrender flags.
“Funny how someone can make you feel like trash,” Miss Edna said.
Grandmother Tillman grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “If you were trash, young lady, none of this would’ve happened.”
They sat there, wondering what they could say or do that would bring what had happened to some kind of closure, so they could move on.
“To hell with the sonofabitch,” Grandmother Tillman said and put the Oldsmobile in gear.
Miss Edna squealed and said, “Amen.” They drove off and didn’t look back any more.
When they got back to Grandmother Tillman’s place, the two women got the washing machine going and tried to salvage what they could of the dresses and clothes. Miss Edna was quiet, not in a depressed way, more of a reflective way. She didn’t seem to be dwelling on her losses, she looked more like someone taking stock, inventorying what she still had.
That night, over supper, Miss Edna said, “Well, I guess I’ve got to figure out where I go from here.”
“Judging by your phone book collection, I’d say you’ve given it some thought before,” Nate said.
“Hush,” Grandmother Tillman said.
She was right, It wasn’t for Nate to bring up. Apparently, it wasn’t time for Miss Edna to, either. She ignored his brashness.
“Cole’s was such a low class place,” Miss Edna said. “It was a restaurant, but they didn’t respect food.”
Grandmother Tillman looked genuinely interested in the remark and asked Miss Edna to explain.
“Start with his sign, for instance,” she said. “Here’s this big sign sixty feet or so up over the highway, and all it says is ‘Eats.’ Buddy said that was because the truckers were doing seventy and he had to get the message to them in a hurry.”
“I always hated that sign. ‘Eats’ has such an ugly sound,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“That’s what I thought too, but that’s the way Buddy was, and that’s the way his food was. Quick and low class. Something someone could quickly shove in their maw and stay alive a while longer.” Miss Edna had a few more bites of Grandmother Tillman’s supper. “You sure are a good cook.”
“Thank you. I’ve always liked to cook.”
“I’m going to open my own place someday,” Miss Edna said after staring thoughtfully into her plate. She looked up. “And it’s going to have a long name, so that folks’ll have to slow down and take a while to read it. And when they come in, they’ll be willing to take time to enjoy the food and the company of other travelers.”
“What’ll you name it” Grandmother Tillman asked.
“I don’t know. I just know it’ll be a long name and it’ll be pretty and friendly like.”
“You should name it Miss Edna’s” Nate said.
“Too short.” She snorted as if he’d given a stupid answer in class. “My momma used to read me a poem that said ‘He lived in a house by the side of the road and was a friend to man.’ I think I’ll name it The House by the Side of the Road.”
“That’s a lovely name,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“It’ll remind me of my momma and you too. It’ll remind me of this house by the side of the road and what a friend you were.”
Grandmother Tillman put her knife and fork down and put her hands into her lap. “Thank you, Edna.”
“What kind of food will you serve,” Nate asked.
“Southern cooking. Friendly, southern cooking. Lots of it and with biscuits on the side. As many biscuits as someone wants. And I’ll walk around and visit with everyone and make sure everything’s okay, and fill their coffee cups and get them more honey for the biscuits if they need it.”
Everyone sat, quietly imagining such a restaurant with Miss Edna doing just what she’d described.
“You should do it, then,” Grandmother Tillman said.
“Where would I get the money?” Miss Edna laughed.
“Find a banker a little before lunch time and tell him what you just told us.”
They all laughed. Miss Edna looked as if she were going to argue the point, but didn’t. She made a cute little sound instead that meant she’d give it some thought.
Chapter 19
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 17: Refuge
Nate’s summer continued in its languor of chores, reading, and two-handed canasta. He was getting bored, however, and missed his weekly visits to Jim Frank’s place. Those were, he felt, gone forever, their magic broken along with Jim Frank’s statue and the phrase that had made it an integral part of Davis Corners’ culture. He realized that Davis Corners was the better for being without them. In spite of his Uncle Henry’s and his own protests to the contrary, he had come to realize that the statue and its phrase were mean to black people. He hadn’t thought so until he met Washington. Until then, black people had been no more real to him that ceramic caricature in Jim Frank’s front yard. Still, both the statue and the phrase had smacked of something, and he had broken them. Davis Corners may have been the better, but Nate wasn’t feeling like much of a hero.
One Thursday night, Nate was drawing a card when someone knocked on the front door. Actually, it wasn’t so much like a knock. It was more like a finger tapping on the glass side-pane next to the door. It was a tentative, plaintive sound, not the demanding tone of solid wood being pounded by knuckles. Grandmother Tillman’s eyes darted quickly to the hall closet, and Nate wondered if that was where she kept her rifle. The pitiful tapping came again and Grandmother Tillman, finding no threat in its meek sound, walked straight past the closet and opened the front door. The living room light spilled out onto the porch and onto a disheveled, young woman in a tight, red dress torn at the shoulder. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and she kept shifting nervously from foot to foot. Nate recognized her right away. It was Edna McElroy, Miss Edna, from Cole’s Truck Stop.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m stranded and I wondered if I could use your phone to call someone for help.”
Miss Edna stood in the doorway with her head tossed back, trying to maintain her dignity while she asked a stranger for help. Suddenly her lower lip began quivering and then she started sobbing. Grandmother Tillman immediately went to her, put her arm around her, and pulled her into the house, all the while murmuring, “There, there.”
Although Nate was thirteen and a male, he knew instinctively this was the universal feminine drill for “been done wrong by a man.” As Grandmother Tillman led Miss Edna past Nate toward the living room, he could smell heavy perfume and just a background of beer and tobacco. It reminded him of Jim Frank’s porch and its smell of lighter fluid, Pall Malls, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Grandmother Tillman took Miss Edna to the couch and sat next to her with her arm still around her. Miss Edna continued to sob and Grandmother Tillman told Nate to go make coffee. While Nate was out of the room, Grandmother Tillman asked Miss Edna if she had been hurt, but by the way she said the word ‘hurt,’ Miss Edna knew she meant ‘raped.’ Between the sobs, she said no.
Nate came back and announced that the coffee was brewing. He slumped off to the side, hoping not to be sent out of the room. Grandmother Tillman looked at the scratches and red marks on Miss Edna’s neck and arms.
“Looks like you had a bit of a struggle with someone.”
Miss Edna quit crying. She looked at Grandmother Tillman and then rolled her eyes.
“Buddy Cole,” she said, then shook her head.
This was the same Buddy Cole that owned Cole’s Truck Stop. He was married and had three kids, one of them in Nate’s class at school. Nate expected Grandmother Tillman to shoo him out of the room now, for sure, but she didn’t.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Edna said while putting her hands up in resignation. “What’s a fool girl doing going out with a married man she works for.”
Grandmother Tillman cleared her throat awkwardly and said, “Well, I wasn’t thinking any such thing. Truth is, I barely know this Mr. Cole and I can’t say that you and I have had the pleasure of being introduced.”
Miss Edna and Nate both giggled. Miss Edna was embarrassed for being so stupid as to just come into a stranger’s house and blurt out such intimate details. Nate giggled because he realized that Grandmother Tillman had never seen Miss Edna before and didn’t know she’d been talking to the woman who’d been the topic of so much lurid gossip at Sunday dinners.
“Allow me the honor, ladies.”
Nate stepped closer and made the introductions, thinking to himself that this was throwing in the rooster and hollering ‘nurse’ for sure. The two women looked stunned for a moment and stared at him with blank expression.
“We’ve never formally met,” he said to Miss Edna, “But I know you from the diner. My name is Nate Williams.”
Miss Edna sat up straight and said to Grandmother Tillman, “Oh my, I’ve heard so many people talk about you.” She blushed when she realized how that sounded. “Oh no, I mean, you’re a real respected person in Davis Corners, and, oh dear, you must be thinking the most dreadful things about me right now.” Miss Edna pulled back on the couch.
Grandmother Tillman smiled and took Miss Edna’s hand. “You’re not the first person to stand at that door and ask for help. As far as that goes, you’re not the first woman with man problems to show up on my porch. I’ve never regretted what help I could give and I’ve certainly never thought the less of anyone who needed it.”
Nate watched all this and reckoned that Grandmother Tillman was delighted to have Davis Corners’ last icon of vice right here in Reformation Central, so to speak. In turn, Miss Edna seemed delighted to have found a safe refuge for the moment, not realizing that the machinery of her rehabilitation was already grinding. Nate was tempted to think she was happier than... well, she was naively happy.
The three of them went into the kitchen and Nate poured the fresh coffee into three large mugs. He couldn’t believe that he still hadn’t been sent to his room. He guessed his presence was benign and passive, like Old Redemption’s. Whatever the reason, he was grateful to be this close to Miss Edna and breathe air laced with her aroma. Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna sat at the large kitchen table, while Nate stood off, trying to stay inconspicuous.
“My own opinion aside,” Grandmother Tillman said, “It sounds as though you think you’re being foolish to go out with Mr. Cole.”
Miss Edna laughed. “I’m not sure with Buddy I had much of a choice. Tonight was the first time. Buddy’s been after me to go out with him for a long time, but I always put him off. Hell, he’s potbellied and he’s got three kids.”
Grandmother Tillman’s back stiffened a bit and Miss Edna quickly apologized for her language.
“Today, at work, he told me that his wife was out of town with the kids at her mother’s and that if I didn’t go out with him, I could just find another place to work.” Miss Edna looked down into her coffee mug and fiddled with the handle a bit. “I don’t know how to do nothing but wait tables and flirt,” she said in a tiny voice. “Cole’s is the only place I can make a living doing it. So tonight I went out with him, and we drove around and had some beers and talked and stuff. He wanted to go to my place, but I said no, people would see us and talk, so he drove us way out here into the country and we parked down by the river. Well, he got real pushy, if you know what I mean, and when I put him off, he said ugly things about me and what he thought I did with the truckers.”
She started crying again. Grandmother Tillman waited and said nothing.
“Mrs. Tillman, people think I’m real wild, and, truth is, I’m no goody two-shoes, but I don’t fool around like people think. I like to dress up and look pretty, and I like to flirt with the men in the diner, and hell yeah, oops, I’m sorry, once in a while I go out on a date with someone, and if I like him we might neck, but I’m not what Buddy said.”
To Nate’s surprise, Grandmother Tillman didn’t get the least bit uneasy at Miss Edna’s frank talk about her social life.
“Well, I got out of his truck, and he drove off saying I was fired. I saw your lights from the road and here I am.”
Grandmother Tillman said, “You’d better stay here tonight. Buddy’s got no wife to check in with and he knows where you live, I suppose.”
Miss Edna’s face took on one more layer of despair. “He’s not only my boss, he’s my landlord. Now I got no job and probably no home, either.” She started sobbing again.
Grandmother Tillman turned to Nate. “Go make the bed in your Uncle Gabriel’s old room. Miss McElroy will be staying with us for awhile, until we can sort this all out.”
Nate’s mouth dropped open.
“I couldn’t, ma’am,” Miss Edna said. “I’m a stranger to you. I’ve got no right to impose.”
“A stranger? Hardly.” Grandmother Tillman shot a sideways glance at Nate. “Why, we’ve even been properly introduced.” She smiled and rubbed Miss Edna on the shoulder. “Humor this old widow, girl, I’ve never turned anyone away, from puppies to grown hobos. I’d hate to start with a young woman all alone in the world.”
Miss Edna made a little whirlpool in her coffee cup by swishing the coffee around. She looked into the cup and softly repeated “alone in the world.”
“Not tonight.” Grandmother Tillman hugged Miss Edna. “We’ll get your things tomorrow. You just get a good night’s sleep.”
Nate got Miss Edna’s room ready, thinking all along that Uncle Henry wasn’t going to believe this. Grandmother Tillman brought out some clothes and towels. Having raised two daughters, she had things stored away that she was able to pull out. Grandmother Tillman told Miss Edna goodnight, then went down the hall to Nate’s room.
“One simple rule,” she told him, “What goes on and what gets said in this house stay in this house. Miss McElroy’s under my protection and I intend to protect her from gossip and rumor mongers, as well as brutes.”
Nate assured her that he understood.
Her posture softened and she said, “I’ve no idea how I’m going to explain this to your mother and your Aunt Hattie.”
Chapter 18
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
One Thursday night, Nate was drawing a card when someone knocked on the front door. Actually, it wasn’t so much like a knock. It was more like a finger tapping on the glass side-pane next to the door. It was a tentative, plaintive sound, not the demanding tone of solid wood being pounded by knuckles. Grandmother Tillman’s eyes darted quickly to the hall closet, and Nate wondered if that was where she kept her rifle. The pitiful tapping came again and Grandmother Tillman, finding no threat in its meek sound, walked straight past the closet and opened the front door. The living room light spilled out onto the porch and onto a disheveled, young woman in a tight, red dress torn at the shoulder. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and she kept shifting nervously from foot to foot. Nate recognized her right away. It was Edna McElroy, Miss Edna, from Cole’s Truck Stop.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m stranded and I wondered if I could use your phone to call someone for help.”
Miss Edna stood in the doorway with her head tossed back, trying to maintain her dignity while she asked a stranger for help. Suddenly her lower lip began quivering and then she started sobbing. Grandmother Tillman immediately went to her, put her arm around her, and pulled her into the house, all the while murmuring, “There, there.”
Although Nate was thirteen and a male, he knew instinctively this was the universal feminine drill for “been done wrong by a man.” As Grandmother Tillman led Miss Edna past Nate toward the living room, he could smell heavy perfume and just a background of beer and tobacco. It reminded him of Jim Frank’s porch and its smell of lighter fluid, Pall Malls, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Grandmother Tillman took Miss Edna to the couch and sat next to her with her arm still around her. Miss Edna continued to sob and Grandmother Tillman told Nate to go make coffee. While Nate was out of the room, Grandmother Tillman asked Miss Edna if she had been hurt, but by the way she said the word ‘hurt,’ Miss Edna knew she meant ‘raped.’ Between the sobs, she said no.
Nate came back and announced that the coffee was brewing. He slumped off to the side, hoping not to be sent out of the room. Grandmother Tillman looked at the scratches and red marks on Miss Edna’s neck and arms.
“Looks like you had a bit of a struggle with someone.”
Miss Edna quit crying. She looked at Grandmother Tillman and then rolled her eyes.
“Buddy Cole,” she said, then shook her head.
This was the same Buddy Cole that owned Cole’s Truck Stop. He was married and had three kids, one of them in Nate’s class at school. Nate expected Grandmother Tillman to shoo him out of the room now, for sure, but she didn’t.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Edna said while putting her hands up in resignation. “What’s a fool girl doing going out with a married man she works for.”
Grandmother Tillman cleared her throat awkwardly and said, “Well, I wasn’t thinking any such thing. Truth is, I barely know this Mr. Cole and I can’t say that you and I have had the pleasure of being introduced.”
Miss Edna and Nate both giggled. Miss Edna was embarrassed for being so stupid as to just come into a stranger’s house and blurt out such intimate details. Nate giggled because he realized that Grandmother Tillman had never seen Miss Edna before and didn’t know she’d been talking to the woman who’d been the topic of so much lurid gossip at Sunday dinners.
“Allow me the honor, ladies.”
Nate stepped closer and made the introductions, thinking to himself that this was throwing in the rooster and hollering ‘nurse’ for sure. The two women looked stunned for a moment and stared at him with blank expression.
“We’ve never formally met,” he said to Miss Edna, “But I know you from the diner. My name is Nate Williams.”
Miss Edna sat up straight and said to Grandmother Tillman, “Oh my, I’ve heard so many people talk about you.” She blushed when she realized how that sounded. “Oh no, I mean, you’re a real respected person in Davis Corners, and, oh dear, you must be thinking the most dreadful things about me right now.” Miss Edna pulled back on the couch.
Grandmother Tillman smiled and took Miss Edna’s hand. “You’re not the first person to stand at that door and ask for help. As far as that goes, you’re not the first woman with man problems to show up on my porch. I’ve never regretted what help I could give and I’ve certainly never thought the less of anyone who needed it.”
Nate watched all this and reckoned that Grandmother Tillman was delighted to have Davis Corners’ last icon of vice right here in Reformation Central, so to speak. In turn, Miss Edna seemed delighted to have found a safe refuge for the moment, not realizing that the machinery of her rehabilitation was already grinding. Nate was tempted to think she was happier than... well, she was naively happy.
The three of them went into the kitchen and Nate poured the fresh coffee into three large mugs. He couldn’t believe that he still hadn’t been sent to his room. He guessed his presence was benign and passive, like Old Redemption’s. Whatever the reason, he was grateful to be this close to Miss Edna and breathe air laced with her aroma. Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna sat at the large kitchen table, while Nate stood off, trying to stay inconspicuous.
“My own opinion aside,” Grandmother Tillman said, “It sounds as though you think you’re being foolish to go out with Mr. Cole.”
Miss Edna laughed. “I’m not sure with Buddy I had much of a choice. Tonight was the first time. Buddy’s been after me to go out with him for a long time, but I always put him off. Hell, he’s potbellied and he’s got three kids.”
Grandmother Tillman’s back stiffened a bit and Miss Edna quickly apologized for her language.
“Today, at work, he told me that his wife was out of town with the kids at her mother’s and that if I didn’t go out with him, I could just find another place to work.” Miss Edna looked down into her coffee mug and fiddled with the handle a bit. “I don’t know how to do nothing but wait tables and flirt,” she said in a tiny voice. “Cole’s is the only place I can make a living doing it. So tonight I went out with him, and we drove around and had some beers and talked and stuff. He wanted to go to my place, but I said no, people would see us and talk, so he drove us way out here into the country and we parked down by the river. Well, he got real pushy, if you know what I mean, and when I put him off, he said ugly things about me and what he thought I did with the truckers.”
She started crying again. Grandmother Tillman waited and said nothing.
“Mrs. Tillman, people think I’m real wild, and, truth is, I’m no goody two-shoes, but I don’t fool around like people think. I like to dress up and look pretty, and I like to flirt with the men in the diner, and hell yeah, oops, I’m sorry, once in a while I go out on a date with someone, and if I like him we might neck, but I’m not what Buddy said.”
To Nate’s surprise, Grandmother Tillman didn’t get the least bit uneasy at Miss Edna’s frank talk about her social life.
“Well, I got out of his truck, and he drove off saying I was fired. I saw your lights from the road and here I am.”
Grandmother Tillman said, “You’d better stay here tonight. Buddy’s got no wife to check in with and he knows where you live, I suppose.”
Miss Edna’s face took on one more layer of despair. “He’s not only my boss, he’s my landlord. Now I got no job and probably no home, either.” She started sobbing again.
Grandmother Tillman turned to Nate. “Go make the bed in your Uncle Gabriel’s old room. Miss McElroy will be staying with us for awhile, until we can sort this all out.”
Nate’s mouth dropped open.
“I couldn’t, ma’am,” Miss Edna said. “I’m a stranger to you. I’ve got no right to impose.”
“A stranger? Hardly.” Grandmother Tillman shot a sideways glance at Nate. “Why, we’ve even been properly introduced.” She smiled and rubbed Miss Edna on the shoulder. “Humor this old widow, girl, I’ve never turned anyone away, from puppies to grown hobos. I’d hate to start with a young woman all alone in the world.”
Miss Edna made a little whirlpool in her coffee cup by swishing the coffee around. She looked into the cup and softly repeated “alone in the world.”
“Not tonight.” Grandmother Tillman hugged Miss Edna. “We’ll get your things tomorrow. You just get a good night’s sleep.”
Nate got Miss Edna’s room ready, thinking all along that Uncle Henry wasn’t going to believe this. Grandmother Tillman brought out some clothes and towels. Having raised two daughters, she had things stored away that she was able to pull out. Grandmother Tillman told Miss Edna goodnight, then went down the hall to Nate’s room.
“One simple rule,” she told him, “What goes on and what gets said in this house stay in this house. Miss McElroy’s under my protection and I intend to protect her from gossip and rumor mongers, as well as brutes.”
Nate assured her that he understood.
Her posture softened and she said, “I’ve no idea how I’m going to explain this to your mother and your Aunt Hattie.”
Chapter 18
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 16: The Revival
Nate and Henry sat in the tent and listened to the hubbub of the crowd. The noise level dropped a bit when a large woman in a blue, full dress with puffy sleeves walked to the front and sat at an old, upright piano. Three other equally large women, in similar dresses, came up and stood in front of a big microphone next to the piano. All four had lacquered hair piled high above their heads, and from the picture poster outside the tent, Nate knew these were the Gospelenes.
The woman at the piano broke immediately into a pounding introduction that silenced everyone in the tent. She played in a stride style. Both hands would come close together at the middle notes on the down beats, then fly to extremes, high and low, to strike accent notes and chords on the upbeats. The three women at the microphone didn’t sing at first, rather, they swayed their large hips in rhythm with the music. They eventually did sing “Come, All You Sinners, into the House of the Lord.”
As the song seemed to be winding down, a lone figure entered the front of the tent and stood, staring appreciatively at the Gospelenes, rhythmically tapping his fingers on a large, black book he held in his hands. He wore a suit the color of vanilla ice cream and had coal black hair, slicked back and just slightly in need of cutting.
A soon as the song ended, he jumped forward and shouted, “Welcome, indeed, all sinners into this tent, which tonight is, in fact, the house of the Lord.”
He put his hands up deferentially and waved off potential praise or attack and held his book up over his head. Printed on the cover in large, gold letters, was the single word “Bible.”
“Not because of what I or these marvelous songbirds of Christ have brought, but because Jesus himself said that ‘where two or three of you are gathered in my Father’s name, there, too, will I be.’”
He eyed the crowd and walked the front perimeter. He shook hands with three people in the front row and asked loudly, “Have you come tonight in God’s name?”
They each answered yes.
He waved the bible in the air, paced vigorously in front of the congregation, and shouted, “Amen then, we know by his own words that Jesus himself is here with us tonight.”
The crowd erupted with amens, and Nate felt goose bumps run up and down his back. It felt as if a presence had suddenly joined the tent. Even Henry squirmed uneasily in his seat.
“I am the Reverend Ralph Johnson, and these four ladies, who joyfully sing the praises of the Lord, are the Gospelenes. Together, we welcome all of you to this Faith Crusade.”
The woman at the piano made a quick run on the bass keys and the Gospelenes sang “Jesus at the Door, Let Him in, Let Him in.” The rhythm this time was a counterpoint with the piano player’s hands pumping up and down in alternate patterns like pistons. People clapped along and some joined in on the second and third choruses, after they learned what the words were. Nate’s face was warm and he clapped along too. Henry was content to merely tap his toes.
As soon as the song ended, the Reverend said, “This is a Faith Crusade, and we’re here to talk about and act on our faith.” He paced and then stopped mid-stride as if a thought had just come to him. “Three questions come to my mind about faith: What is it? Where does it come from? And how can I get me some?”
The crowd laughed at how he said the last question.
“Well, for those of you who just came to talk about faith, let me get right to the answers, so you can get home to your sofas and quit having to sit on these hard, old excuses for chairs we’ve provided tonight.”
Everybody laughed again.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s face turned serious and he snapped crisply, “Faith is the absolute knowledge that God wants what’s best for you. It comes from God, and if you want it, you get it just by the reaching out and taking it.”
The whole crowd was silent as the preacher paused.
“There, it’s just that simple, you can all go home now.” He turned to leave the tent, then pivoted abruptly back toward the congregation. He used one hand to point his bible at the crowd and put his other hand on his hip. “It’s just that simple if you think faith is something you just talk about.” He grinned and said, “Some of you were getting excited there for a moment, thinking we were going to get out early.”
The crowd laughed once more.
“The truth is, faith you just talk about is a shallow, empty faith. To be true faith, it must be something you act on.”
Someone in the back of the tent said, “Amen,” and people shuffled in their chairs.
“Consider the story about Jesus walking on the water at the Sea of Galilee. As the apostles saw him and wondered at it, Jesus put out his hand and beckoned to Peter to join him.” He stretched his hands out to the crowd in demonstration. “Just like Jesus invites all of you tonight to have faith in him and act on that faith.”
Several more amens came from around the crowd.
“Was it enough for Peter to sit in the boat and marvel at the miracle of Jesus walking on water? Did Jesus say, ‘Make yourselves comfortable while I walk around on this water for awhile?’” He paused and the tent was quiet except for the sounds of the moths crashing into the bare bulbs strung throughout the tent. “No, Jesus beckoned to Peter to join him. He asked Peter to act on his faith. And Peter did act on that faith, and he stepped onto the Sea of Galilee, and he walked on water.”
Lots of amens rose up around the tent. Some listeners had their eyes shut, as if in rapture.
“And then what happened?”
He paused for a moment and spoke so softly that everyone had to strain to hear.
“Peter lost his faith.” He then repeated it loudly, punctuating each syllable like a hammer striking a nail. “He lost his faith.” He swept his bible over the crowd. “He quit acting on his faith and immediately began to sink into the water.” He then pulled his hands back and clutched at his chest. “And when we quit acting on our faith, don’t we begin to sink?”
The crowd became animated with rocking, amens, and a general murmuring of assent.
“We sink into depression, we sink into drinking, we sink into mean spiritedness, we sink into lust.”
He paused while everyone put themselves into one or more of the categories he had described.
“How sad this story would be if Peter had just kept sinking and had drowned, how desperate our lives would seem.”
The absolute silence in the crowd testified to the level of desperation in the tent.
“But Peter cried out, ‘Help me, Lord.’” The preacher reached his hand out, imploringly, to the crowd. “He cried, ‘Help me, Lord,’ and what did Jesus do?”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson waited with his eyes shut until someone in the tent could bear the tension no longer and muttered tentatively, “He saved him.”
“He saved him,” the Reverend Ralph Johnson shouted. “Jesus grabbed Peter’s hand and pulled him from the Sea of Galilee, because Peter had acted on his faith and had prayed to God when he was weak. And when Peter acted on his faith and prayed to Jesus, He saved him.”
The tent erupted with hallelujahs, amens, and all manner of praying.
“Tonight, some people here are in pain and are sinking. They need Jesus, but are afraid to act on their faith. I beg you to come forward and act on that faith. Ask Jesus to help you tonight.”
There was a tense silence and nothing happened.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson closed his eyes and prayed, “Lord, I feel the pain and desperation in this tent tonight from so many of your children. I feel it in particular from one who has a secret pain she’s been afraid to talk about. I also feel the pain of a man who is wearied from acting like he’s strong enough on his own, but knows he needs your help. I now feel the fear of someone who’s almost ready to ask for help, because there’s no one else. She’s afraid to ask, because she doesn’t know what she’ll do if you don’t answer. She has no one else to turn to. Give that person the strength now to come forward and receive that help from you.”
A murmur spread from the back of the tent and everyone looked back. Maddie Flanagan was limping towards the front. The Reverend Ralph Johnson didn’t speak, he just walked a few steps into the aisle to meet her and stared at her with compassionate eyes.
In a hoarse, broken voice Maddie said, “My legs are getting weak and the doctor says I’m dying.”
The crowd groaned sympathetically. Nate looked for Doctor Lightcap at the edge of the tent, but couldn’t find him.
“I’ve prayed, but it’s done no good.” Her voice seemed reproachful, yet pleading at the same time.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson squinted his once compassionate eyes into beacons of interrogation. “Who did you pray to, Jesus or some plastic statue you thought could take his place?”
The crowd gasped, and Maddie’s face went white. Everyone wondered how he could’ve known about Maddie’s plastic Jesus.
“No plastic Jesus can fix your legs, only the real Jesus, who lives not on your dashboard but in your innermost heart.” The Reverend Ralph Johnson cranked his voice up and started stressing every syllable. “Believe in THAT Jesus and act on THAT faith and you shall be healed.” He reached out to Maddie, and she fell into his arms. In a soothing, almost motherly, sing-song he said, “Pray with me now, have faith, act on that faith, and be healed.”
Maddie Flanagan let out a sound that was part scream, part sob, and part shout of relief. She pulled out of the Reverend Ralph Johnson’s arms and twirled in the aisle, stopping occasionally to jump with joy. The tent went crazy with jubilation. People clapped, some shouted, “Hallelujah,” and even Nate shouted out, “Amen,” in the spirit of it all.
The preacher gave a quick eye-check to the Gospelenes, who immediately sang “I Have Walked on Galilee’s Flood” while the congregation clapped and Maddie Flanagan twirled. The Reverend Ralph Johnson stood by and clapped, too, while he watched Maddie dance. After that, there was more healing, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law gave up the drink, and there was more singing and preaching. Finally, they passed the collection baskets, which came back brimming with bills, after the Reverend Ralph Johnson explained that giving gifts in time of hardship was one way of acting on your faith, thus assuring that your prayers would be answered.
When it was all over, people poured out into the parking lot, shaking hands, slapping backs, and showing all kinds of fellowship in general. Nate and Henry found Jeremiah Lightcap and they huddled out of the way.
Henry said, “Christians or not, they’ll run you into a ditch to get back onto the highway. Let’s stay put for awhile until the parking lot clears.”
Maddie Flanagan jaunted past them and over to her Bel-Air parked a few rows away.
“Maddie,” Jeremiah called out.
“Don’t be giving me any of your talk,” she said. “I’m healed.”
“Just don’t overdo,” he said softly.
“Leave me alone,” Maddie shouted at him. She reached into her car and pulled the plastic statue of Jesus off her dashboard. “You’re just like this plastic statue. You’re both fake and I don’t need either of you.”
She turned and hurled the statue out into the dark outskirts of the parking lot. She gave a last defiant look at Jeremiah, and then sped away in a cloud of dry clay and a spray of gravel.
There was an embarrassed silence for a moment. Henry nodded his head in the direction where the plastic Jesus had disappeared into the dark.
“Well, at least you got fired in good company,” he said.
The man who had said “nigger friend” earlier walked by and slapped Jeremiah Lightcap on the back. “Looks like you don’t have all the answers, Doc,” he said in a taunting tone of voice.
Jeremiah turned on his heel and started walking toward the tent, which was just about empty now.
Inside the tent, the Gospelenes were packing up their music and putting moving pads on the piano. The Reverend Ralph Johnson was giving directions to some young men who were folding up chairs and stacking them in wooden moving crates. Jeremiah Lightcap strode right up to him and squared off, as if he were going to challenge him to a fight.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson looked up and gave a half-smile. “Well, well, Jeremiah, at last you step in from the edge of darkness and into the light.”
“You pulled ‘em in pretty good tonight,” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah,” the preacher said. “Seemed to have gotten one or two of yours in the net as well.”
“One in particular,” Jeremiah said tightly. The one with the nerve disease that’s affecting her legs and is working its way up to her lungs. You put her into a state of euphoric remission and sent her out dancing months off her life expectancy.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s easy demeanor hardened and he took on the same squared-off posture that Jeremiah Lightcap had. “Maddie Flanagan, I know. Fine, she’s dying. We’re all dying. And when it happens, she’s not going to be any the deader for the euphoria I gave her tonight.”
“She’ll be dead sooner though,” Jeremiah said.
“That may be true, but did you make her any more alive than what you saw here tonight? For all your treatment and medicine, were you able to make her better?” He let his questions sink in for a moment. “Just what the hell have you done for her that’s so damn valuable?”
“I deal in truth, not illusions,” Jeremiah said. He was shaken by the question. It hit too close to home, it was too aligned with his own cynicism.
“I saw you got well compensated tonight.” Jeremiah said. He knew it was a weak come-back.
The preacher’s half-smile and easy demeanor came back. “And just when did you quit charging for your services?”
Jeremiah stared back at him for a moment and then the fight visibly went out of him. He slowly turned and started walking away, when he stopped and straightened his sagging posture. He turned. “But I’ll be here tomorrow with these people, and you’ll be gone.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson watched Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap leave, and his face softened. He had beaten a man better than himself and took no great pleasure in it. He called out after him, too softly for anyone to hear, “I’ll give you an amen on that, brother.”
---
Grandmother Tillman had cake and iced tea waiting for Nate and Henry when they got back to her place. They all sat on the porch and Nate told her about the evening. He talked about the people who had been healed or who had sworn off drink or lust. Grandmother Tillman commented how there seemed to be a general air of redemption in Davis Corners, ever since that dreadful statue had been broken. Nate looked at the porch floor uncomfortably.
Henry said, “I think you’re right.”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate both looked at him in shock. He laughed at their expressions.
“I’m merely agreeing that it’s true, I’m not saying I like it. The only thing of any interest left in this town is Miss Edna.”
Grandmother Tillman’s eyebrow went up reproachfully. “I still say there’s a broken heart hiding there.”
“I don’t think so,” Uncle Henry said. “Lord knows I’ve looked hard enough, and there’s not much she hides in that general neighborhood.”
That comment ended the evening with Grandmother Tillman telling her son-in-law Henry he had no sense of decency and shooing him home, but all the time laughing in spite of herself. As Nate watched him and the yellow Caddy disappear into the darkness, he thought nostalgically about their visits to Jim Frank’s place. He thought that except for the beer and cigarettes, tonight’s trip hadn’t been all that different.
Chapter 17
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
The woman at the piano broke immediately into a pounding introduction that silenced everyone in the tent. She played in a stride style. Both hands would come close together at the middle notes on the down beats, then fly to extremes, high and low, to strike accent notes and chords on the upbeats. The three women at the microphone didn’t sing at first, rather, they swayed their large hips in rhythm with the music. They eventually did sing “Come, All You Sinners, into the House of the Lord.”
As the song seemed to be winding down, a lone figure entered the front of the tent and stood, staring appreciatively at the Gospelenes, rhythmically tapping his fingers on a large, black book he held in his hands. He wore a suit the color of vanilla ice cream and had coal black hair, slicked back and just slightly in need of cutting.
A soon as the song ended, he jumped forward and shouted, “Welcome, indeed, all sinners into this tent, which tonight is, in fact, the house of the Lord.”
He put his hands up deferentially and waved off potential praise or attack and held his book up over his head. Printed on the cover in large, gold letters, was the single word “Bible.”
“Not because of what I or these marvelous songbirds of Christ have brought, but because Jesus himself said that ‘where two or three of you are gathered in my Father’s name, there, too, will I be.’”
He eyed the crowd and walked the front perimeter. He shook hands with three people in the front row and asked loudly, “Have you come tonight in God’s name?”
They each answered yes.
He waved the bible in the air, paced vigorously in front of the congregation, and shouted, “Amen then, we know by his own words that Jesus himself is here with us tonight.”
The crowd erupted with amens, and Nate felt goose bumps run up and down his back. It felt as if a presence had suddenly joined the tent. Even Henry squirmed uneasily in his seat.
“I am the Reverend Ralph Johnson, and these four ladies, who joyfully sing the praises of the Lord, are the Gospelenes. Together, we welcome all of you to this Faith Crusade.”
The woman at the piano made a quick run on the bass keys and the Gospelenes sang “Jesus at the Door, Let Him in, Let Him in.” The rhythm this time was a counterpoint with the piano player’s hands pumping up and down in alternate patterns like pistons. People clapped along and some joined in on the second and third choruses, after they learned what the words were. Nate’s face was warm and he clapped along too. Henry was content to merely tap his toes.
As soon as the song ended, the Reverend said, “This is a Faith Crusade, and we’re here to talk about and act on our faith.” He paced and then stopped mid-stride as if a thought had just come to him. “Three questions come to my mind about faith: What is it? Where does it come from? And how can I get me some?”
The crowd laughed at how he said the last question.
“Well, for those of you who just came to talk about faith, let me get right to the answers, so you can get home to your sofas and quit having to sit on these hard, old excuses for chairs we’ve provided tonight.”
Everybody laughed again.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s face turned serious and he snapped crisply, “Faith is the absolute knowledge that God wants what’s best for you. It comes from God, and if you want it, you get it just by the reaching out and taking it.”
The whole crowd was silent as the preacher paused.
“There, it’s just that simple, you can all go home now.” He turned to leave the tent, then pivoted abruptly back toward the congregation. He used one hand to point his bible at the crowd and put his other hand on his hip. “It’s just that simple if you think faith is something you just talk about.” He grinned and said, “Some of you were getting excited there for a moment, thinking we were going to get out early.”
The crowd laughed once more.
“The truth is, faith you just talk about is a shallow, empty faith. To be true faith, it must be something you act on.”
Someone in the back of the tent said, “Amen,” and people shuffled in their chairs.
“Consider the story about Jesus walking on the water at the Sea of Galilee. As the apostles saw him and wondered at it, Jesus put out his hand and beckoned to Peter to join him.” He stretched his hands out to the crowd in demonstration. “Just like Jesus invites all of you tonight to have faith in him and act on that faith.”
Several more amens came from around the crowd.
“Was it enough for Peter to sit in the boat and marvel at the miracle of Jesus walking on water? Did Jesus say, ‘Make yourselves comfortable while I walk around on this water for awhile?’” He paused and the tent was quiet except for the sounds of the moths crashing into the bare bulbs strung throughout the tent. “No, Jesus beckoned to Peter to join him. He asked Peter to act on his faith. And Peter did act on that faith, and he stepped onto the Sea of Galilee, and he walked on water.”
Lots of amens rose up around the tent. Some listeners had their eyes shut, as if in rapture.
“And then what happened?”
He paused for a moment and spoke so softly that everyone had to strain to hear.
“Peter lost his faith.” He then repeated it loudly, punctuating each syllable like a hammer striking a nail. “He lost his faith.” He swept his bible over the crowd. “He quit acting on his faith and immediately began to sink into the water.” He then pulled his hands back and clutched at his chest. “And when we quit acting on our faith, don’t we begin to sink?”
The crowd became animated with rocking, amens, and a general murmuring of assent.
“We sink into depression, we sink into drinking, we sink into mean spiritedness, we sink into lust.”
He paused while everyone put themselves into one or more of the categories he had described.
“How sad this story would be if Peter had just kept sinking and had drowned, how desperate our lives would seem.”
The absolute silence in the crowd testified to the level of desperation in the tent.
“But Peter cried out, ‘Help me, Lord.’” The preacher reached his hand out, imploringly, to the crowd. “He cried, ‘Help me, Lord,’ and what did Jesus do?”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson waited with his eyes shut until someone in the tent could bear the tension no longer and muttered tentatively, “He saved him.”
“He saved him,” the Reverend Ralph Johnson shouted. “Jesus grabbed Peter’s hand and pulled him from the Sea of Galilee, because Peter had acted on his faith and had prayed to God when he was weak. And when Peter acted on his faith and prayed to Jesus, He saved him.”
The tent erupted with hallelujahs, amens, and all manner of praying.
“Tonight, some people here are in pain and are sinking. They need Jesus, but are afraid to act on their faith. I beg you to come forward and act on that faith. Ask Jesus to help you tonight.”
There was a tense silence and nothing happened.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson closed his eyes and prayed, “Lord, I feel the pain and desperation in this tent tonight from so many of your children. I feel it in particular from one who has a secret pain she’s been afraid to talk about. I also feel the pain of a man who is wearied from acting like he’s strong enough on his own, but knows he needs your help. I now feel the fear of someone who’s almost ready to ask for help, because there’s no one else. She’s afraid to ask, because she doesn’t know what she’ll do if you don’t answer. She has no one else to turn to. Give that person the strength now to come forward and receive that help from you.”
A murmur spread from the back of the tent and everyone looked back. Maddie Flanagan was limping towards the front. The Reverend Ralph Johnson didn’t speak, he just walked a few steps into the aisle to meet her and stared at her with compassionate eyes.
In a hoarse, broken voice Maddie said, “My legs are getting weak and the doctor says I’m dying.”
The crowd groaned sympathetically. Nate looked for Doctor Lightcap at the edge of the tent, but couldn’t find him.
“I’ve prayed, but it’s done no good.” Her voice seemed reproachful, yet pleading at the same time.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson squinted his once compassionate eyes into beacons of interrogation. “Who did you pray to, Jesus or some plastic statue you thought could take his place?”
The crowd gasped, and Maddie’s face went white. Everyone wondered how he could’ve known about Maddie’s plastic Jesus.
“No plastic Jesus can fix your legs, only the real Jesus, who lives not on your dashboard but in your innermost heart.” The Reverend Ralph Johnson cranked his voice up and started stressing every syllable. “Believe in THAT Jesus and act on THAT faith and you shall be healed.” He reached out to Maddie, and she fell into his arms. In a soothing, almost motherly, sing-song he said, “Pray with me now, have faith, act on that faith, and be healed.”
Maddie Flanagan let out a sound that was part scream, part sob, and part shout of relief. She pulled out of the Reverend Ralph Johnson’s arms and twirled in the aisle, stopping occasionally to jump with joy. The tent went crazy with jubilation. People clapped, some shouted, “Hallelujah,” and even Nate shouted out, “Amen,” in the spirit of it all.
The preacher gave a quick eye-check to the Gospelenes, who immediately sang “I Have Walked on Galilee’s Flood” while the congregation clapped and Maddie Flanagan twirled. The Reverend Ralph Johnson stood by and clapped, too, while he watched Maddie dance. After that, there was more healing, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law gave up the drink, and there was more singing and preaching. Finally, they passed the collection baskets, which came back brimming with bills, after the Reverend Ralph Johnson explained that giving gifts in time of hardship was one way of acting on your faith, thus assuring that your prayers would be answered.
When it was all over, people poured out into the parking lot, shaking hands, slapping backs, and showing all kinds of fellowship in general. Nate and Henry found Jeremiah Lightcap and they huddled out of the way.
Henry said, “Christians or not, they’ll run you into a ditch to get back onto the highway. Let’s stay put for awhile until the parking lot clears.”
Maddie Flanagan jaunted past them and over to her Bel-Air parked a few rows away.
“Maddie,” Jeremiah called out.
“Don’t be giving me any of your talk,” she said. “I’m healed.”
“Just don’t overdo,” he said softly.
“Leave me alone,” Maddie shouted at him. She reached into her car and pulled the plastic statue of Jesus off her dashboard. “You’re just like this plastic statue. You’re both fake and I don’t need either of you.”
She turned and hurled the statue out into the dark outskirts of the parking lot. She gave a last defiant look at Jeremiah, and then sped away in a cloud of dry clay and a spray of gravel.
There was an embarrassed silence for a moment. Henry nodded his head in the direction where the plastic Jesus had disappeared into the dark.
“Well, at least you got fired in good company,” he said.
The man who had said “nigger friend” earlier walked by and slapped Jeremiah Lightcap on the back. “Looks like you don’t have all the answers, Doc,” he said in a taunting tone of voice.
Jeremiah turned on his heel and started walking toward the tent, which was just about empty now.
Inside the tent, the Gospelenes were packing up their music and putting moving pads on the piano. The Reverend Ralph Johnson was giving directions to some young men who were folding up chairs and stacking them in wooden moving crates. Jeremiah Lightcap strode right up to him and squared off, as if he were going to challenge him to a fight.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson looked up and gave a half-smile. “Well, well, Jeremiah, at last you step in from the edge of darkness and into the light.”
“You pulled ‘em in pretty good tonight,” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah,” the preacher said. “Seemed to have gotten one or two of yours in the net as well.”
“One in particular,” Jeremiah said tightly. The one with the nerve disease that’s affecting her legs and is working its way up to her lungs. You put her into a state of euphoric remission and sent her out dancing months off her life expectancy.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s easy demeanor hardened and he took on the same squared-off posture that Jeremiah Lightcap had. “Maddie Flanagan, I know. Fine, she’s dying. We’re all dying. And when it happens, she’s not going to be any the deader for the euphoria I gave her tonight.”
“She’ll be dead sooner though,” Jeremiah said.
“That may be true, but did you make her any more alive than what you saw here tonight? For all your treatment and medicine, were you able to make her better?” He let his questions sink in for a moment. “Just what the hell have you done for her that’s so damn valuable?”
“I deal in truth, not illusions,” Jeremiah said. He was shaken by the question. It hit too close to home, it was too aligned with his own cynicism.
“I saw you got well compensated tonight.” Jeremiah said. He knew it was a weak come-back.
The preacher’s half-smile and easy demeanor came back. “And just when did you quit charging for your services?”
Jeremiah stared back at him for a moment and then the fight visibly went out of him. He slowly turned and started walking away, when he stopped and straightened his sagging posture. He turned. “But I’ll be here tomorrow with these people, and you’ll be gone.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson watched Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap leave, and his face softened. He had beaten a man better than himself and took no great pleasure in it. He called out after him, too softly for anyone to hear, “I’ll give you an amen on that, brother.”
---
Grandmother Tillman had cake and iced tea waiting for Nate and Henry when they got back to her place. They all sat on the porch and Nate told her about the evening. He talked about the people who had been healed or who had sworn off drink or lust. Grandmother Tillman commented how there seemed to be a general air of redemption in Davis Corners, ever since that dreadful statue had been broken. Nate looked at the porch floor uncomfortably.
Henry said, “I think you’re right.”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate both looked at him in shock. He laughed at their expressions.
“I’m merely agreeing that it’s true, I’m not saying I like it. The only thing of any interest left in this town is Miss Edna.”
Grandmother Tillman’s eyebrow went up reproachfully. “I still say there’s a broken heart hiding there.”
“I don’t think so,” Uncle Henry said. “Lord knows I’ve looked hard enough, and there’s not much she hides in that general neighborhood.”
That comment ended the evening with Grandmother Tillman telling her son-in-law Henry he had no sense of decency and shooing him home, but all the time laughing in spite of herself. As Nate watched him and the yellow Caddy disappear into the darkness, he thought nostalgically about their visits to Jim Frank’s place. He thought that except for the beer and cigarettes, tonight’s trip hadn’t been all that different.
Chapter 17
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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