Iron Hoop

Author's Comments

2009-06-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

Chapter 23: Small Virtues and Petty Vices

2009-06-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Chapter 22: The Letter

2009-06-07T05:39:00.001-07:00

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

Chapter 21: A Woman of Faith

2009-06-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

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:

Maddie Flanagan
d. 1963
A Woman of Faith

Chapter 22

Chapter 20: Revenge

2009-06-07T05:18:00.000-07:00

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

Chapter 19: Miss Edna's Dinner

2009-06-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

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

Chapter 18: House by the Side of the Road

2009-06-07T04:57:00.000-07:00

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

Chapter 17: Refuge

2009-06-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

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

Chapter 16: The Revival

2009-06-07T04:39:00.001-07:00

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

Chapter 15: Evans Field

2009-06-07T04:23:00.001-07:00

On Saturdays, Grandmother Tillman would command Old Redemption to stay, and then she and Nate would get into her Oldsmobile and drive into Davis Corners. Old Redemption would try to look sad, but his wagging tail would give him away. Nate wondered what kind of mischief Old Redemption got into to while they were in town. He wondered where a dog might go for dis-sanctuary.

In town, Grandmother Tillman would pick up groceries and other items while Nate knocked around. Occasionally he got his hair cut at the same barbershop where Buster, Old Redemption’s sire, and Billy Taggert had hung out. Once, he asked if anybody remembered the old picture of dogs playing cards that had been on the wall, but nobody did. Nate thought about Old Redemption’s wagging tail and figured he wouldn’t make much of a poker player.

The last week in June, they were driving back from town, and Nate saw a billboard that advertised Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade. It said there was to be a tent meeting, featuring gospel singers, Wednesday night at eight-thirty at Evans Field. Every summer, “that tent preacher,” as Nate’s mother called him, came to Davis Corners. Nate’s family never went because his parents were too conservative for this sort of boisterous approach to religion. To them, it was too close to “colored religion.” With that many indictments stacked in its favor, Nate wanted desperately to go.

Nate had been going with Grandmother Tillman to her small church out on State Road Forty-one, which catered mostly to poor, farming families. The services, like the building and the people who came, were plain. They would sing a little, but they mostly listened to the thin preacher describe the various torments that awaited unrepentant sinners. Nate felt that rural people were attracted to that kind of religion because it made life on the farm seem not so bad.

“Can I go to Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade,” he asked directly, because he could do that with Grandmother Tillman. She didn’t have that automatic “no” reflex his mother did.

“Why on earth would you want to go there?”

“I’ve never seen it and I want to see what it’s like,” Nate said.

“Well I have, and I’ve got no desire to do it again.” Nate could tell by the tone of voice that this didn’t meant he couldn’t go, it just meant that she didn’t want to go.

“I could get somebody to take me,” Nate said.

“Who?” Grandmother Tillman sounded suspicious.

“Uncle Henry.”

Grandmother Tillman laughed, and it made Nate think of how young she’d looked in his dream.

“Why not,” she said, still laughing. “When the dog and cat fight, throw in the rooster and holler ‘nurse.’”

Nate had no idea what she meant, but he started laughing too. He figured it must mean that if someone can’t stop something, they might as well escalate it to a level that makes it interesting.

After they got back to Grandmother Tillman’s, Nate unloaded all the groceries. He called Uncle Henry and told him what he wanted to do and told him Grandmother Tillman said it was okay if he took him.

“She put you up to this,” Henry said.

“No, I just want to go.”

Henry was convinced, nonetheless, that it was Grandmother Tillman’s plot to get him into church.

“It’s not a church,” Nate said, “It’s a tent.”

“Same difference.”

“No it’s not,” Nate said. “They’ll be hooting and hollering and faith healing and all kinds of stuff you don’t see in church.”

Eventually, Henry gave in, but only after Nate assured him that they were going for the cultural experience and not for the religion. Wednesday night, Henry showed up in the Caddy and picked Nate up. As they left, Grandmother Tillman put a dollar in Nate’s hand for the collection basket.

“Now it’s a different approach to God, but it’s God all the same. Don’t you two be snickering or acting blasphemous.”

They assured Grandmother Tillman that they’d behave, and they left.

“If this guy takes out a snake and kisses it, I’m leaving,” Henry said in the car.

“They do that?” Nate said with obvious excitement.

“Probably not here, but you go back in the woods and you bet they do.”

“Why?”

“To prove that the serpent, you know, Satan, has no power over them.”

“They ever get bit?” Nate said.

“All the damn time.” Henry laughed. “Just proves that some people still love God, even though he didn’t give them a lick of sense. Me, personally, I think I’d be holding a grudge after I got bit the first couple of times.”

“Don’t they die?”

“The snakes?” Henry said in a mocking tone of voice. “Lord no, they’ve got cast iron stomachs.”

“No, the people they bite.” After Nate said it, he realized that his uncle had been pulling him along.

“Not usually,” he said. “Snake poison works mainly on the brain, making those folks mostly immune to it.”

Nate remembered Grandmother Tillman’s admonition and thought that this conversation was probably not a good start to the evening.

They got to Evans Field and saw the big tent pitched in left field. The infield lights were turned on so people could see their way. Bare electric bulbs were stung up in the tent, casting a yellowish tint on everything inside, especially when compared to the whiter spot lights outside.

They parked the Caddy in the clay and gravel lot and got out. Nate saw a nice looking car parked away from the others and a dark figure leaning against it. The figure pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pecked at a spot on the side view mirror. Nate knew right away who it was.

“Washington.” Nate ran over to him.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the young man from the gas station,” he said in his refined, low tone. Nate realized that he’d never told him his name.

“Nate,” he said awkwardly.

Washington seemed to weigh that new information for a moment, and then nodded his head approvingly.

“Nate,” he said as he extended his hand.

They shook.

“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you,” Washington said.

Nate explained that he was staying at his grandmother’s and this was his night out for good behavior.

“Had your behavior been bad prior to this?”

Nate panicked. Davis Corners was a small town, and the story of his episode with Grub Hanley and Jim Frank’s statue could easily be common knowledge, even among the black people in town.

“I did some things I wouldn’t be proud to admit to,” Nate said.

Washington gave an approving smile and said, “Haven’t we all? I suspect that’s what draws most of these people out tonight.”

They looked around at the crowd chatting outside the tent. Nate could see that his Uncle Henry had connected with some men he knew and was talking with them. Henry saw Nate and made kind of a quizzical look. Nate knew he was wondering who Washington was and probably didn’t remember him from that day at Thompson’s. Nate smiled and nodded back to him.

“What are you doing out here,” Nate asked Washington.

“Chauffeuring Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law, Mr. Caterson,” Washington said, with a strained edge to his voice.

This time Nate had the quizzical look.

“Mr. Wanamaker’s sister thought her husband needed some good, old, bible-thumping religion, but he was more of the opinion that he needed half a bottle of whiskey. The compromise was that I got to drive him here, so he doesn’t smash up the car.”

“Nice car,” Nate said as he admired it.

“It’s the flower car,” Washington said, almost disdainfully. “It’s all right, but nothing like the big car or the hearse.”

Nate remembered that Washington wanted to drive the hearse. “Any luck on getting to drive either one of those?”

“Not yet,” he said wistfully, “But I keep hoping.”

“I’m only thirteen,” Nate said. “I’d be grateful to drive anything.”

Washington laughed. “Oh, but there are big differences in cars, just like there are big differences in people. You wouldn’t hang around with just anybody would you?”

Nate conceded that he wouldn’t.

“Same with me and cars. This flower car, for example—vinyl upholstery, manual windows, no weight to the body. That Cadillac hearse, though, is top of the line. Leather seats, electric windows, heavy body, yet it steers and moves like it weighed nothing. It’s the last ride anywhere for the passenger in the back, so it’s got to be first class all the way. One of these days, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law’s going to get drunk on the wrong day and my chance will come.”

“I believe it will.”

“I believe it too,” Washington said and winked.

Uncle Henry called over to Nate, so he wished Washington good luck and said he’d see him around. Uncle Henry was talking to some men Nate recognized from hanging around Hank Thompson’s.

“Who’s your nigger friend?” one of them said.

“He’s not...”

Nate stopped mid-breath and wondered if he was going to say “nigger” or “friend.”

“He’s Mr. Wanamaker’s driver from the funeral home. He drove Mr. Caterson out here because Mrs. Caterson wanted him to get religion, but he got drunk instead.”

The men all laughed and one of them said, “If you want to know the gossip, ask the hired help.”

Nate and Henry broke off and started walking toward the tent. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Nate felt kind of ashamed, and he thought about the day he’d had coffee in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman.

He looked back at the men and yelled over his shoulder, “And he ain’t no nigger.”

“What was that about?” Henry said while walking quickly away from the men.

“Washington’s a friend of mine. I couldn’t just let the insult lie,” Nate said.

“He wasn’t insulting him. It’s just his way of talking,” Uncle Henry said.

“It wasn’t like he was saying ‘Jim Frank’s nigger,’” Nate said. “He meant it different.”

The two of them shuffled awkwardly for a few steps. Nate’s reference to the statue reminded them both what had been lost between them since Nate had broken it.

“Sorry I embarrassed you,” Nate said.

Henry laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “You didn’t embarrass me, just surprised me a little.”

“Seen Jim Frank lately?” Nate said.

“No, Hattie keeps me working on Saturdays.”

Nate was reminded again how much he’d broken that night he’d stolen Jim Frank’s statue. He and Uncle Henry had become a couple of real homebodies, whose idea of getting wild was going to church on a Wednesday night.

As they crossed through the white glare of the infield lights and toward the yellow air of the tent, Nate wondered what the difference was between “Jim Frank’s nigger” and how that man had said “nigger friend.” He wondered why he had staunchly defended the one in Grandmother Tillman’s dining room, yet had attacked the other. He was trying hard not to admit that maybe there wasn’t any difference.

His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Henry Givens, my word, you’re the last person I expected to run into here.” It was Jeremiah Lightcap.

“Make that the second-to-last if you count yourself,” Henry said. “I’d think faith-healers represent a certain degree of competition for you.”

“Oh, you should always keep an eye on the competition,” Jeremiah said softly, with a smile. “You never know, they may come up with something.”

It was indeed odd for Jeremiah Lightcap to be there, seeing that he was the closest thing Davis Corners had to an avowed atheist.

“How’ve you been,” he asked Nate in a focused way that let Nate know he was referring to that day in his office.

“Fine.”

“I hear you’re spending the summer with your grandmother, helping out on the place and all.”

“Yes, sir,” Nate said.

“Good for you, probably good for your grandmother as well.”

The crowd hadn’t settled in yet, so Jeremiah took out a pack of Camel cigarettes. He offered one to Uncle Henry.

“Hattie’ll kill me if she smells tobacco on me. Besides, Doc, they aren’t good for you.”

Jeremiah shrugged and lit up anyway.

Henry watched the people streaming into the tent. None of them were folks he’d normally run into, although there were some familiar faces here and there.

“This guy reels ‘em in,” Henry said.

“Oh yes,” Jeremiah said. “And before the night’s over, he’ll have reached into the pockets of every simple, believing soul in the crowd.”

Nate felt a little embarrassed about Grandmother Tillman’s dollar bill, which he had in his right pocket. When the time came, he thought, he’d be discreet about slipping it into the basket.

“As a man of science, what do you think about this faith healing stuff?” Uncle Henry said.

“I’m not at all sure that science has any good answers for what science does,” Jeremiah said with a cynical shake of his head, “But at least it has some basis for it, some rationale for what it tries.” He pulled hard on the cigarette and surveyed the tent, now almost filled. “This guy’s just an outright charlatan who works people’s emotions. Spiritually and scientifically, he’s as bogus as a wooden nickel.” He crushed his cigarette vigorously into the gravel. “Not many seats left, you’d better get in. I like to watch from the outside.”

Nate and Henry nodded good-bye and scooted into the tent. They sat in two hard, wooden, folding chairs near the front and settled in for the evening’s entertainment.

Chapter 16

Chapter 14: The Invitation

2009-06-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah Lightcap looked out his office window and watched the dark clouds over the distant hills. For a moment, he thought about Iron Hoop and wondered if water could seep in where the railroad company had sealed its entrance many years ago. He was glad there were only two more patients to see that afternoon.

His nurse stuck her head around the door. “Elaine Collins is on the phone.”

With school out, the principal had too much time to worry about him, Jeremiah thought. “Tell her I’m with a patient.”

“That’s what she said you’d say, and she told me she’ll stay on hold if she has to.” Her look told Jeremiah that she had no patience for this game.

“I’ll take it, thank you.” He picked up the phone with a dismissing nod of his head to his nurse. “I’m in the middle of a delicate surgical procedure and you’re jeopardizing the health of my patient.”

“You’re getting ready to lance a boil on Betty Hayslip’s butt.”

In spite of his melancholy, Jeremiah laughed, caught off guard by Elaine’s candid language and her irreverent attitude.

“It seems my nurse doesn’t quite understand the confidential nature of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.

“No,” Elaine said, “It’s just that Betty has a big mouth and doesn’t care what she talks about over morning coffee.”

“Okay, the procedure isn’t delicate and my patient’s health is not in jeopardy. Still, I have to get to work.”

“Come over, tonight.” She got right to the point.

“Why the sudden invitation?”

“I’m a teacher on summer vacation and I’m bored, I miss you, and besides, if you don’t, you’re just going to sit around and get grumpy and depressed. You always do when it rains.”

“What makes you think I won’t just sit around your place grumpy and depressed?”

“Please come?”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He hung up, relieved that she had called. He put the storm clouds out of his mind and went into the treatment room to see Betty Hayslip. He wasn’t surprised to find her standing instead of sitting.

After he finished with his last patient for the day, Jeremiah swung by home and showered. He shaved and put on fresh clothes. Elaine would’ve been off all day, so he expected that she would be all done up. He felt obliged to be the same. Also, he did it because her voice had sounded special on the phone, and he wanted to look nice tonight. By the time he left his house to drive over to Elaine’s, the storm had come and gone. All that remained were a few large puddles and some small branches strewn about the street and people’s yards. He hated the sound his tires made on the wet pavement. He just wanted everything to dry up and the storm to be completely forgotten.

He got to Elaine’s and he’d been right, she looked fabulous. She was wearing a loose, summer dress and had her hair pulled back with a cotton scarf folded into a band. While all the other women were copying the prim, Jackie Kennedy angular look, Elaine was soft and flowing. The open collar of her dress stopped just short of revealing cleavage, but certainly wasn’t what one would expect of an elementary school principal in a small Southern town.

“You look terrific,” Jeremiah said.

“What, this old thing?” She spun around and her dress billowed out. She did look good and she knew it. “Would you like a drink?”

“I didn’t bring any wine.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got a bottle of bourbon around here some place.” Jeremiah looked a little stunned. “Jeremiah Lightcap, I may be a school marm, but I’m forty-two, I was raised with four brothers, and I have a life. I even smoked a cigarette once.” She stared at him for a moment. “How do you take your bourbon?”

“Ice, just a splash of water.” He watched as Elaine made him a drink and then a highball for herself. He grinned when he took his drink and said, “Only forty-two, I thought you were a lot older than that.”

“Oh, you country boys do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She punched him on the arm. “You’re pretty feisty tonight.”

“Beats grumpy and depressed.”

They sat on the couch and talked and gossiped about the town. Jeremiah hadn’t heard about Nate William’s run-in with Grub Hanley.

“I thought I told you about that. Policeman came by the school and talked to some of the teachers and students. Seems that Grub actually shot at Nate.”

Jeremiah got quiet and pensive for a moment at the mention of the shooting. “Nate told me he was having trouble with Grub. Seemed real interested in his grandfather, too.”

“Well, he’s out staying with his grandmother for the summer. Hopefully, that’ll keep him out of trouble.”

“They find the gun?”

“I don’t think so. They haven’t found Grub Hanley yet. Why do you ask about the gun?” Elaine could see Jeremiah pulling back inside himself as he often did when he just seemed on the edge of opening up. She hadn’t bought this dress and found that old bottle of Early Times just to lose him this early in the evening.

“I just get bits and pieces of what goes on around here,” she said, “But I’ve picked up on some kind of connection between that gun and Nate’s grandfather. Something else seems to run deep, but nobody’s talking to me. What the heck, I’ve only lived here three years, I’m still that outsider from Mobile.”

She got up and freshened their drinks. Jeremiah looked toward the kitchen to see if maybe he’d be saved by dinner. “What’s for dinner?”

Elaine sat back on the couch with one leg tucked up under her. “Maybe nothing if you don’t relax and talk to me a little.”

“What makes you think I know anything about any of this?”

“Betty Hayslip,” Elaine said. Jeremiah was sorry he hadn’t poked Betty harder that afternoon. “She said you knew all about Nate’s granddaddy.”

“What does Betty Hayslip know?”

Elaine got very serious and leaned toward Jeremiah. “Enough to know you’d be moody this afternoon when she heard the weather report.” She took Jeremiah’s hand. “I’m your friend. I got all dolled up and we’re having drinks on my living room couch because I’d like to be more than just a friend. But you’ve got to start giving me little pieces of yourself. You’ve got to give me something to build with.”

Jeremiah took a deep breath and a sip from his drink, and then told her the story about Iron Hoop. He stuck to facts and details, not getting into his own feelings about any of it, but Elaine knew it was a beginning and didn’t press for them. He told her about the gun and speculated that maybe it was the same one that Grub had used.

“What do you figure his grandmother thinks?” Elaine said.

“Mrs. Tillman and I have never spoken of the matter since it happened.”

Elaine wondered how two people joined by such a tragic event could not speak about it and share their common grief. How sad, she thought, that such a young boy had to shoulder such a burden silently, and how it showed on the grown man he had become.

“You’ve always been such a contradiction to me,” Elaine said, as she freshened their drinks once more. “You’re so kind and yet somehow aloof, almost cynical at times.”

They both sat on the couch and sipped their drinks in silence. Jeremiah knew that he would have to ante up more than he already had.

“Ever go to the greyhound races?” he said.

“Once.”

“They say if a dog ever catches that mechanical rabbit they chase, you can never race him again. He knows it doesn’t really matter, and he just can’t put his heart into it.”

Jeremiah took her hand. He wanted to be more than just friends, too. Little pieces of himself weren’t easy to come by, but he was trying to chip at the monolith of his emotions.

“Sometimes, I feel like that greyhound. I think that day in Iron Hoop I caught the mechanical rabbit, and ever since, I just can’t put my whole heart into the race.”

Elaine felt frightened. She had asked for something and he had given it to her. She was frightened by his trust, and she was frightened by her own feelings. She finished her highball and put the glass down. She took Jeremiah’s glass and put it on the table next to hers. “You know what’s the mating call of a Southern belle?”

“What?” Jeremiah was relieved by her lightening up the mood.

“Yoo-hoo, I’m drunk.” Elaine kicked off one of her heels and leaned back into the couch. Jeremiah knew that dinner wouldn’t get burned, there wasn’t any to burn. The invitation had never been about dinner.

Chapter 15

Chapter 13: The Storm

2009-06-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

The Sawatassee River wound through Davis Corners. Its slow but consistent current was made of eddies and backwaters that picked up objects along the way and carried them downstream, snagging them later with deadfalls or just eventually laying them gently back on the bank. In a way, it was like Jim Frank’s, a place for the disconnected trying to be rejoined to something. Some things never made it back to land, but either sank to the river bottom or just kept spinning in the whirls and eddies until they eventually ended up in the ocean. There, they were lost forever.

The day after school let out for the summer, Nate’s mother packed his suitcases, and his father drove him out Gray’s Road across the Sawatassee River Bridge and deposited him at Grandmother Tillman’s. Nate was relieved to be away from his own household for a while, where hardly a word was spoken between his parents and him, except to conduct such necessities as passing the salt or saying goodnight. Nate could hear his mother and father talking after he went to his room and assumed they were talking about him. His mother’s voice had that hurt and shocked quality her face had shown the day the policeman had come. Even though Nate couldn’t make out her words, that tone was unmistakable.

Grandmother Tillman put him in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Her own room was downstairs, so it was like having his own apartment, at least that’s how it felt to Nate at thirteen. From his window, he could look out over the garden and see the Sawatassee River working its way around the edge of the farm and disappearing under the wooden bridge on Gray’s Road. Because of the steep banks, one usually couldn’t see the river’s water until one was almost to the edge. But from Nate’s vantage point on the second floor, he could make out the brown current and its lazy whirls. The constant tug of the current on low branches made them move back and forth in a rhythmic palsy, as if they were giant hands seeking comfort in the cool water. This was better than any room he’d ever had. Even if Grandmother Tillman preached to him out of the Bible for eight hours a day, Nate was glad to have such a place to eventually get back to and be alone.

Nate unpacked his suitcases into the chest of drawers and closet. The room also had an old, oak table with a ceramic washbasin and pitcher on it and a modest table and chair arranged to serve as a desk. Nate examined the pile of books neatly arranged there. Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, and a biography of Winston Churchill had been assembled, apparently for him. As Nate was thumbing through the books, Grandmother Tillman showed up at the door with a cardboard box in her hands.

“This was your mother’s and your Aunt Hattie’s room,” she said. “You can use any of the others, but this one has the nicest view.”

“No, this is great. I can see the river.”

She laid the box down on the makeshift desk. “There’s no TV here,” she said, in no way apologetically. “I found your Uncle Gabriel’s old radio. You might want it up here with you.”

“Thank you.” Nate pointed to the stack of books. “It looks like you’ve put together a suggested reading list.” He grinned and rolled his eyes, as if the task before him were of Herculean proportion.

“Yes.” She smiled back and said, once again without a hint of apology, “You have this active mind. You can start to learn something about life this summer.”

“You and Uncle Henry certainly put a lot of stock in books,” Nate said.

Grandmother Tillman seemed a little pained by the association. “Yes, well, I’ll give Henry that. He has an active mind too, he just needs to grow up.” She snickered. “Now that you’re up here with me, I wonder who he’s going to play with this summer.”

Nate thought wistfully about his Saturday trips to Jim Frank’s place and knew he would miss them. Grandmother Tillman turned her attention back to the books.

“I don’t think you’ll find these as daunting as you think, young man. There’s plenty of adventure here.” Her face got serious and she put her hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Great literature, history, and life itself are written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains. You’ll find plenty of both in these books.” She walked to the door and turned around. “Morning is chores. I have lots of things for you to do this summer, but I want you to spend two hours reading after lunch everyday. The rest of the time until dinner is your own. After dinner, we’ll talk about what you’ve read that day. There’s plenty of old magazines and jigsaw puzzles around, and as a part of your education, I intend to teach you two-handed canasta. That and the radio and whoever happens to drop by will be our entertainment at night.” She abruptly turned and left.

Nate almost yelled “Yes, drill sergeant,” but thought twice and wisely chose not to.

Nate slipped into the routine of life on Grandmother Tillman’s farm without too much difficulty. He fed chickens, gathered eggs, knocked down an old outbuilding and piled the lumber up by the chicken coop. He moved dirt from places God had put it to places Grandmother Tillman wanted it and did a host of other things that needed doing. Grandmother Tillman seemed to have an endless list, and Nate wondered what she would’ve done, had he not gotten into trouble. Throughout most of the day, his constant companion was Old Redemption, who seemed to have adopted Nate as his newest best friend. He was too old to be frisky, but his company was protective and comforting.

Nate found out that Grandmother Tillman had been right about the books. He was amazed how readable and engaging they were. She’d help him with Macbeth, reading the passages out loud, so he could hear the words flow. And as promised, valor and infamy abounded in all.

Perhaps the best, though, Nate learned to shuffle double decks of cards and cut a deck with one hand. Once, after Grandmother Tillman had shuffled the deck, Nate waived the right to cut.

“Always cut the deck.”

“You’re my grandmother.”

“If you won’t cut your grandmother’s shuffle, you risk insulting the one whose deck you do,” she said. “If you always cut, even your own grandmother, no one can ever take offense.”

So the summer was passing with generous doses of hard work, literary masterpieces, and the finer points of card etiquette. The whole family still visited on Sundays, and things were relaxing a bit between Nate and his parents. His mother would call during the week and they would chat. Nate missed Saturdays with his Uncle Henry and Jim Frank, though. Something else had gotten broken along with the statue. Nate felt that his going to Jim Frank’s would be too awkward. Besides, his uncle never asked him to come any more. It seemed he was barred from the dis-sanctuary—he was in the camp of the righteous now.

Toward the end of June, Nate was in his room reading and watching the first summer thunderstorm building off in the distance. Dark clouds piled on top of darker clouds until it looked like they’d just fall down and squash everything. Nate heard the phone ring downstairs and waited for Grandmother Tillman to answer it. It just kept ringing and ringing, until whoever was on the other end lost patience and gave up. Nate walked apprehensively downstairs. Old Redemption was lying, sort of cowering, in the front hall, and Nate called out tentatively to Grandmother Tillman. The house was deathly silent, yet the memory of the ringing phone seemed to linger in the air, as if someone could have walked into the house at that moment and know the phone had been ringing seconds before.

Nate walked into the kitchen, and there was Grandmother Tillman, staring out across the garden through the back door. Her hands were slowly wringing the apron she was wearing and her lips were trembling.

“Grandmother?” Nate looked past her gaze, over the garden, and could see the hills beyond the farm. Those dreadful looking black clouds came over the hills like a menacing giant that couldn’t be kept at bay, even by so massive a wall. He was frightened by the clouds and by Grandmother Tillman’s agitated state, along with the dead air and the lingering echo of the unanswered phone.

“Grandmother,” he said with his agitation evident in his voice.

She turned and looked at him. She didn’t act startled, like someone who had just been pulled out of a trance. It gave Nate the oddest sensation that he’d been pulled into hers instead.

“How it rained that day,” she said, returning her eyes to the oncoming clouds.

Goose bumps came over Nate when he realized where her mind had been, and he shivered.

“Rabbit run over your grave?” She turned her eyes back to Nate and away from the ghastly clouds.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was so long ago, but when I see those clouds like that, I remember it as if it were yesterday.” She looked at Nate apologetically. “I never went to see him up there. I had the children and all. I could have, someone would’ve looked after them, but I couldn’t bear to see him trapped like that.”

“From what I hear, you wouldn’t have been able to get down there.” Nate didn’t know how else to comfort her.

“That’s what Jeremiah told me. Still...” Her eyes got distant again.

“Why’d granddaddy want his gun?” It was a question only a thirteen year old would be insensitive enough to ask.

“Jeremiah said your granddaddy wanted it in case animals got into the cave when he was alone,” she said in a flat voice.

“That makes sense.”

“Jeremiah and I pretended it did then, too,” she said with a sharp, rebuking glance at Nate. “Never mind that animals don’t go that deep into a cave. Never mind that your grandfather was never scared of any animal in his life. It was a good lie and we pretended to believe it.”

“Then why?”

“The only thing in this world your grandfather was scared of was...” She clutched her apron to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. “Drowning.” She started to cry. “He was afraid of water, of all the stupid things, and he was terrified of the idea of drowning. I knew it was wrong to, but I put that Colt of his in his satchel and sent it to him, knowing full well what he intended to do with it, God forgive me. I did a sinful thing and I let that sinful thing loose into the world and now it’s come back. What goes around comes around and that gun’s loose out there because of me.”

Suddenly, Nate understood everything. The gun Grub Hanley had used to shoot at him was the gun Grub’s father, Luther Hanley, had stolen at Iron Hoop. It was the gun that had been sent on an immoral mission almost forty years ago and now had returned to do its evil deed. Only it was seeking out Nate, instead of his grandfather. Nate now realized Grandmother Tillman hadn’t insisted on his coming to stay with her at the farm just for his reformation. She was protecting him from Grub Hanley and the gun she set loose a generation ago. Old Redemption wasn’t just keeping Nate company whenever he went out, he was guarding him.

Grandmother Tillman sat down and watched out the kitchen window as the rain started to come in sheets. “I let slip that dog of war,” she said, “And now it’s come back after my own. God forgive me.”

The phone rang again and Nate went into the living room and answered it. It was his mother. She sounded worried and said she’d called earlier and no one had answered. Nate assured her everyone was okay. She asked about Grandmother Tillman and said she could get melancholy during rainstorms. Nate reassured her that Grandmother Tillman was okay and told her he looked forward to seeing her on Sunday. They said good-by and hung up.

Nate left Grandmother Tillman alone in the kitchen. He went to his room and watched the storm rage and the Sawatassee River fill up and surge. For the first time he realized how cruel and frightening the world could be and how easily someone could be caught up in its current and be lost.

Chapter 14

Chapter 12: The Grand Reformation

2009-06-07T03:53:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning, Henry Givens came by to take Nate to Grandmother Tillman’s. He was probably in trouble too. After all, he was the one who took Nate to Jim Frank’s every Saturday while he and Jim Frank told tall stories, smoked cigarettes, and drank beer. Nate slid into the front seat and just stared down at his sneakers.

Before Henry put the Caddy into gear, he looked at Nate. “Here’s how I see it. I’ve got seventeen dollars in my wallet and half a tank of gas. We can either make a run for it and take our chances with what we’ve got or we can go over to Mother Tillman’s.”

He gave Nate a poke in the ribs when he didn’t answer.

“I vote for running and taking our chances,” Nate said with a smile half playing on his tight lips.

“That would be the reasonable thing to do,” Henry said, “but I’m afraid I have to do the grown-up thing instead.”

They both chuckled and it felt to Nate as if the world lifted off him for a moment. Being in trouble with someone else is so much easier than going it alone, he thought.

As soon as they crossed the bridge over the Sawatassee River and came into sight of Grandmother Tillman’s, the world settled back on Nate’s shoulders with all its weight. He prepared himself for what he expected to be the worst experience of his life.

They parked in the drive and got out of the car. Old Redemption gave a mandatory bark then settled back to his position in the front yard when he realized who it was. He gave a heavy sigh that blew up the dust by his nose. Henry hollered their arrival from the front porch and they walked in.

“Back here,” Grandmother Tillman called out from the kitchen. Her voice sounded friendly and inviting.

Henry and Nate looked at each other in surprise and shrugged their shoulders. They walked back. Grandmother Tillman was at the stove in a long, purple, velvet robe with a lace collar. Her slate gray hair was pulled back from her face by two barrettes and hung loosely around her shoulders. Nate was used to seeing her with her hair pulled up and pinned back. She looked comfortable and approachable, and Nate almost forgot the purpose of the meeting.

“I’d like some time with Nate, this morning,” she said to Henry in a diplomatic tone. “Could I make you a cup of coffee to take out onto the porch?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll just see if Old Redemption wants to escort me around the farm and chase sticks or something.”

“Don’t let him overdo it.” Grandmother Tillman smiled. “He’s not a puppy by a long shot.”

Henry gave Nate a sympathetic look and quickly exited out the front door. Nate heard him call to Old Redemption and wished he were with them. Grandmother Tillman poured coffee into two large, blue and white china mugs and set them down on the wooden kitchen table. Rings in the table attested that saucers were saved for Sunday dinners in the dining room and not for coffee in the kitchen. Nate had never drunk coffee before and was flattered at being treated in such an adult fashion. Grandmother Tillman set a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of milk on the table.

“I drink mine black,” she said, “But you might like to try it with milk and sugar.”

Nate sipped it black at first. He made a face and quickly added two teaspoons of sugar and finished filling the cup with the milk. He tried it again and kind of liked it. He thanked her for the coffee and set his cup down. He could tell it was time to move to the agenda, and he was ready to get it over with.

“It seems you’re growing up,” Grandmother Tillman said. “You’re becoming independent and quite adventuresome too, I might add.”

Nate squirmed a little in his chair and tried to hide his unease by drinking more coffee.

“I’ve heard all kinds of stories lately, so why don’t we start by you telling me what really happened.”

Nate started to report what he had told the policeman, being equally careful not to say what he’d said to Grub.

Grandmother Tillman pressed, however. “Just what did you say to Grub Hanley?”

“I can’t say it here. I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” Nate stared into his coffee cup.

“That’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.” Grandmother Tillman looked at Nate for a moment. “Any time we do something or say something we’d be embarrassed to have someone else know about, especially if it’s someone we respect or care about, it means we’ve done something wrong. Whenever we feel like we’ve let someone else down, it means we’ve let ourselves down.”

She was quiet for a while and let Nate think about what she’d said.

“But I had to do something. I didn’t know what else... I just didn’t think.” Nate didn’t know how to tell her about how he felt about her and his grandfather, how he wanted to be like them and stand up for himself. “What would you have done, instead?”

Nate wasn’t challenging her, he really wanted to know. Grandmother Tillman could tell that, so she thought about it and gave him her sincerest answer.

“I’d have thrown rocks at him.”

“Rocks?”

“Lots of advantages to rocks,” she said. “You can hurl them from a distance so you still have escape possibilities, and you’re safe from immediate punches. They hurt, and that’s what you’re trying to do, make the bully’s behavior painful to him, instead of to you. Most important, you don’t degrade yourself by throwing rocks. David threw rocks at Goliath.”

Nate was impressed by her answer, but said, “It’s against school rules to throw rocks. I’d have gotten in trouble for that too.”

She shrugged her eyebrows and sipped her coffee. “Nothing’s free. You asked what I would’ve done.” She looked at Nate for a moment. “If you’d thrown rocks at Grub, and we were sitting here and I asked what you had done, could you have looked me in the eye and said ‘I threw rocks at him, Grandmother’?”

Nate thought about it. “Sure.”

“That’s my only point. Pick someone you respect before you do anything, and ask yourself if you could look that person in the eye and admit to it. If the answer’s ‘yes,’ it’s probably the right thing to do, even if it means getting in trouble.”

Nate thought about Grandmother Tillman on the bridge with Ricky Thornton. “Did you point a gun at Mr. Thornton for drowning puppies in the Sawatassee River?” His eyes locked on hers.

“I did, indeed,” she said without blinking.

“They could’ve thrown you in jail for that.”

“Nothing’s free,” she said.

“You really would’ve thrown rocks at Grub Hanley,” Nate said, believing it for the first time.

The two of them laughed. Nate could see Grub running from some girl on the schoolyard as she coolly squinted one eye, took aim, and launched rocks at him. Nate could hear Grub yelp each time one hit him. Knowing Grandmother Tillman, he assumed that more than one would’ve found their target.

Grandmother Tillman’s face got serious again. “Tell me the rest of what happened.”

Nate went through the rest of it, neither afraid nor embarrassed. When he got to the part about Grub shooting at him, Grandmother Tillman asked a lot of questions about the gun. She wanted to know things like what it looked like, how big was it, had it been a revolver, and all kinds of stuff. She seemed disappointed that he hadn’t seen the gun and couldn’t answer any of her questions.

“You could have been killed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“I’ve had a talk with your mother,” she said. “School lets out next week for the summer, and I’d like you to come stay out here on the farm with me for awhile. Seems you have a lot of energy, and farm life would be good for you. I have lots of chores I need help with, and besides, it would give us some time together.”

Nate figured that his mother must have known this yesterday. Part of her attitude probably came from being overridden by her mother. Apparently, Grandmother Tillman wasn’t pleased with how her daughter was raising her grandson, so she was taking over for a while.

“Sure,” Nate said awkwardly. “That’ll be fine.”

They heard Henry come in the front door and Grandmother Tillman hailed him to come back to the kitchen. He saw Nate and gave him a questioning look. Nate just smiled back in a way that said he was okay and it hadn’t been all that bad.

“There’s some unfinished business you need to help Nate with,” Grandmother Tillman said. “I believe he needs to return that wretched statue to Jim Frank.”

Nate had completely forgotten. It was still out on Founder’s Hill.

She looked at Nate. “You have to take it back.”

“But it’s broken.”

“Still, you took it. Now you have to take it back.”

Her tone of voice wasn’t commanding. It was more like she was explaining a law of physics. Nate had to do it, not because she told him to, but because it was the right thing to do.

“I’ll see you boys for dinner tomorrow,” she said and ushered them out the front door.

Henry drove Nate to Founder’s Hill. There was the statue, right where it had fallen that night. Nate was amazed that no one had taken it, but then figured that no one would want it. Henry looked it over and let out a respectful whistle.

“That Grub Hanley’s a pretty cool shooter, considering it was dark and all,” he said.

Nate looked at the statue with its head half blown off, and for the first time, realized it could have been him, in fact, was intended to be him. He felt sick to his stomach.

“Let’s get him in the car,” Henry said.

They carried the statue to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. Henry tied the lid down with some old rope and they headed to Jim Frank’s.

They didn’t speak much on the ride. Nate felt worse now than he had when they’d been headed to Grandmother Tillman’s. Everything else had been abstract and just being in trouble. This was tangible. He had stolen something and broken it.

They got to Jim Frank’s and Nate wanted to die when he saw Jim Frank pop out of the junk reef. Jim Frank didn’t give his usual hoot and greeting, but stood quietly waiting for whatever Nate had to say.

Nate got out of the Caddy and walked up to Jim Frank. “I’m the one who took your statue,” he said right away, so as to get the worst of it over with.

“I see,” Jim Frank said. He had known it was Nate that night. He knew that Nate had come to confess and was letting him do what had to be done.

“The bad part,” Nate wanted to get it all over with, “is that I broke it.”

Jim Frank tugged nervously at his overalls. “Well, let’s see what we got.”

Henry untied the lid and they all stood around, looking at the statue. “Help me get him back on his stump,” Jim Frank said to Henry.

They lifted the statue out of the trunk and sat it back on its usual perch.

“You can’t sit him out like that,” Nate said, in horror.

It looked grotesque with its head half blown away. Its one remaining eye looked to be wide in terror and what was left of his naive grin looked maniacal.

“Why not?” Jim Frank said.

“It’s broken,” Nate said weakly.

“It’s mostly still okay,” Jim Frank said.

“Can’t you just throw it away?”

Jim Frank let out a soft, amused laugh and gestured all around him. “Where would I throw him? I’m the junk man, he’s already been thrown away.”

“But he’s ruined and everyone’ll see he’s ruined.” Nate started to cry. His face burned with humiliation. “It’s ruined.” He tried to get Jim Frank and Henry to understand.

“The statue?”

“No.” Nate cried even harder. “The phrase. Look at him. He’s not happy anymore. Nobody’ll ever be able to say ‘happier than Jim Frank’s ...’ you know what, anymore.

It sank in on Henry and Jim Frank. More than just the statue had been broken, part of Davis Corners had been broken too. Henry started to say something, then stopped. It was true. There was nothing happy about the statue any more, and the phrase no longer made any sense.

Nate made one last appeal to Jim Frank. “Please take him down and put him where nobody’ll see him.”

Only Jim Frank knew, however, where junk belonged in his junkyard. Only he knew the toonickle of that statue.

“But that’s where he belongs,” he said.

It was the same tone that Grandmother Tillman had used when she told Nate he had to return the statue.

He gently touched Nate’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay, and so will you.”

Jim Frank thanked Nate for returning the statue, and Nate and Henry drove off. They didn’t talk about it, but they both knew the end of an era had occurred. The Saturday trips to the junkyard, the cigarettes, and the beer were all tied, somehow, to that statue and its phrase. They were gone as well.

That moment marked the start of the period Nate would call “Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.” With the phrase she hated so much now excised from its tiny culture, Davis Corners was a little less crude, a little less cruel, a little more civilized. And that was only the beginning. As Nate rode in the Caddy, watching the phone poles and rural countryside flicker past his window, he couldn’t help but think that Grandmother Tillman would have the whole summer to dedicate herself to his further improvement.

Chapter 13

Chapter 11: The Policeman

2009-06-07T03:42:00.001-07:00

Nate took it easy over the weekend, feigning recovery from his alleged fever and catching up on the sleep he’d lost. Occasionally he looked out the window to see if Grub was lurking about. Before last night, Grub had been an intermittent school yard menace, more of an inconvenience, actually. At the very worst, he had been an occasional purple tittie-twister at recess. Now that he had stood up to Grub, Nate realized that he would have to be on the alert for him at all times.

Monday came and Nate went to school, wondering if Grub would be there for the next round but hoping that he’d actually gotten rid of him. Gratefully, he saw no sign of the bully.

Bill VanDiver approached Nate with a smirk. “Join Grub for a midnight snack Friday? Sorry I missed it.”

“Yeah,” Nate said, “You should’ve been there to see Grub running away.”

“Yeah right.”

“Ask him,” Nate said. “That is, if you can find him.” Nate shot a furtive glance around the school yard.

Just then, Freddie came up. A small crowd had already started to gather to hear the exchange between VanDiver and Nate.

“It was so cool,” Freddie said enthusiastically.

VanDiver seemed to waiver “Nate says Grub ran away Friday night. Did he?”

“Yeah,” Freddie said. “After he shot at us and we chased him.”

“Us? He shot at me,” Nate said. “You and Skip were hiding off in a whole different area.”

“Actually, he shot at Jim Frank’s nigger.”

The allusion to gun play and the mention of Davis Corners’ most noted icon galvanized the crowd. Everyone started asking questions at once. Freddie started to answer, but backed off in deference to Nate when he saw the glare Nate aimed at him. This was clearly Nate’s moment and Nate’s story.

Nate told the story pretty much the way it had happened, but with the embellishments the boys had added afterwards in the car. He sounded like his Uncle Henry, the way he paused when he wanted the listener’s imagination to churn a while, before he supplied more detail. He used his eyes to work the crowd, just like his Uncle Henry did on Sunday afternoons in Grandmother Tillman’s living room, trying to pull each listener in. Nate was a hero because he had driven away Grub Hanley. More important to him now, however, was that he had a story people wanted to hear.

Nate’s classmates wanted to know how he’d come up with the plan and how it felt being shot at. He lied, of course, about how it felt. He couldn’t tell them that it hadn’t felt like anything when it happened. He couldn’t tell them that he was out of danger by the time he realized he’d been in it. So he told them that he’d felt like he was going to be killed for sure and that his whole life had raced before his eyes.

“Wow,” Margaret Haynes said, “Just like they say it happens.”

At every opportunity over the next few days, Nate kept getting drafted to tell the story to different audiences. He was a celebrity, and by the end of the week, just about everyone in Davis Corners knew the story, either having heard it first-hand from Nate or retold by someone else. Nate started to get nervous about his newfound notoriety. For one thing, he liked the idea of Grub Hanley thinking he was dead. For another, he didn’t want his parents hearing about it, because then he would be dead. Most of all, though, he didn’t want Grandmother Tillman or Washington hearing about it. He felt that he would die of embarrassment if either of them knew. For Grandmother Tillman, he was embarrassed by the language, for Washington, he was embarrassed by the association with Jim Frank’s statue.

When Nate rode his bike home after school on Friday, his nervousness went to panic as he saw his father’s car and a police car in the driveway. Optimistically, he wondered if there’d been a death in the family, but he knew it was somehow related to his adventure at Founder’s Hill.

He walked into the living room and saw his parents sitting stiffly on the couch. A police officer in a brown uniform was sitting on a straight-backed chair taken from the dining room. Nate’s mother had a look on her face that expressed both shock and hurt at the same time, as if someone had just slapped her. It intensified slightly when Nate walked in, as if she had been posing with it, but was now turning it on for real, the way an actress might turn on her character just before she walked on stage. Nate’s hopes for a death in the family evaporated. That look could only mean he was in serious trouble.

“This police officer has some questions for you,” she said. “And when he’s through, your father and I have a few of our own.”

The police officer said, “I’m investigating something that may be harmless or which could be serious, so it’s important that you tell me the truth. Your parents here want you to tell the truth, that’s what they’ve taught you, isn’t it?”

Nate admired the officer’s technique and wondered if he’d learned it in police school. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“A young man’s missing,” the police officer said. “Grub Hanley hasn’t been seen since last Friday night. We think he’s just run away, but I understand that you might have some information that would corroborate that.”

“Why do you think that?”

“We’ve talked to Miss Collins, the principal from your school, and she said there were lots of stories going around that you and Grub were involved in an incident Friday night.”

Nate’s mother sucked in her breath and held it. Since the officer hadn’t actually asked him a question, Nate tried just staring back at him in silence. After three seconds he cracked.

“Yes, sir. I saw him Friday night.”

Nate’s mother let out a gasp and his father shifted on the couch.

“What happened?” the policeman said.

Nate told a censored version of the story, how Grub had been bullying him on the school yard and saying only that he’d cursed at Grub. The policeman nodded at that, and Nate assumed he’d already picked up the details in other interviews. He hoped the policeman wouldn’t make him say exactly what he’d said to Grub. Nate quickly went on with the rest of the story, not identifying who picked him up and gave him the ride. He told what happened at Founder’s Hill. His plan sounded incredibly stupid to him as he recounted it in his living room to three grown-ups.

“He ran away when he heard the others shouting,” Nate said. “I think Grub thinks he’s killed me and he’s run away.”

After a long silence, Nate’s mother said, “I don’t know what to say. We’ve tried to raise Nate to be a responsible person and now it’s like I don’t even know who this boy is, sitting here telling this incredible story.”

“Don’t feel too bad, ma’am,” he said. “These are the kinds of teenage high-jinks young boys get into.”

They sat there talking about Nate is if he wasn’t there, and it made him feel like a little kid.

The policeman finally turned to Nate. “Good job of telling the truth. I think you’re right. Grub’s just run away, either afraid or embarrassed.” He wrote some notes in a little spiral-bound memo pad and stood up. “The next time you’re being bothered by a bully, tell your parents or teachers. They know how to handle those sorts of things.”

Nate wondered how his mother would’ve handled it. Maybe she would’ve told him to tell Grub to get his own lunch money, and to tell him that Nate’s father worked hard to give Nate lunch money and it wasn’t intended for the likes of Grub. Nate was sure that would’ve gotten him tittie-twistered to death. And the teachers were as scared of Grub as the kids were. Nate thought about telling that to the policeman so he could see that Nate had done the only thing he could have, that he did what his grandfather would’ve done.

“Yes, sir,” he said contritely.

The policeman handed Nate a business card. “Or call me, if you want. Just remember, there’s no need to take things into your own hands.”

Nate looked at the card. Officer Ernie Roberts it said, and it gave the phone number for the Davis Corners police department. Nate thanked him and put it in his pocket.

As he was leaving, the policeman told Nate’s parents, “Don’t be too hard on him. Grub Hanley’s a white trash bully. Nate had no idea what he was dealing with.”

Nate was sorry to see the policeman go. As corny as he was, he had seemed to be on Nate’s side. Nate felt that the policeman was glad that Grub had gone and was grateful to Nate for having caused it. Nate’s mother shut the door behind the departing officer and marched back into the room. She squared up in front of Nate.

“How could you do this to us?” she said. “Do you have any idea how mortifying that was to have the police come to our home, park in front of our house, where all the neighbors could see, and tell us that our son had been involved with a gun and some hooligan when we thought you were home in bed?”

Nate tried to make some kind of answer, but was taken aback by his mother’s suddenly shifting the emphasis of the crime from his cursing in school yards and sneaking out of the house and almost getting killed to the fact that he had put them into a socially embarrassing situation.

“It’s not so much what you’ve done to me,” she said, “Although God knows how this has broken my heart. I’m more concerned about what it has done to your poor father.”

Nate’s father looked up with surprise and curiosity.

“The complete lack of respect you’ve shown to him in doing this.”

Nate didn’t understand, and apparently from his father’s look of initial bewilderment, he didn’t either. But if his wife dictated that he was hurt and disrespected, then who was he to question. He immediately put on an expression of hurt pride and feelings.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Nate’s mother said. “Is that all you have to say?”

Actually, Nate had a lot he wanted to say. For one thing, he wanted to tell her that this was about him, not her. She always had the spotlight, he wanted to tell her. This was his turn. It was his story and she was trying to take it away from him. Once, he remembered, she had caught him with a pocketknife he had traded for, and she took it away. That knife had made Nate feel neat. He would open it and watch the light gleam off its blade. He’d heft it in his hand and wave it slowly in the air. He felt good with that pocketknife and she’d taken it away. Now she was taking his story away. She was making it about her, and she was the one telling it, not Nate. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t have it, it was his.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys.”

“Well, this is a fine time to start thinking about us.”

Nate knew there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t set up a counter attack.

“Maybe you should’ve thought about our feelings when you snuck out in the night.” She turned and let out a deep, quavering sigh, then calmed herself. “Your grandmother called, and I had to tell her everything.”

Nate was horrified and wondered how much the policeman had already told her before Nate got there.

“I can’t tell you how upset she is.”

“Then why’d you tell her?”

“Because some of us don’t believe in lying and deceiving our parents,” she said. “She wants to see you tomorrow.”

Nate’s sense of dread intensified. He could take what his mother was doing because he could distance himself from it. He wasn’t prepared to go through this with Grandmother Tillman.

“Why do I have to see Grandmother Tillman?”

“I think she wants to tell you herself how disappointed she is.”

Her tone was taunting. Nate figured that she’d gotten chewed out pretty badly herself. The very fact that he was being summoned by Grandmother Tillman showed that she wasn’t confident that her daughter could handle it. It gave Nate a small degree of compensation, knowing that his mother had gotten demoted a little.

She sighed. “I just hope you’re satisfied.”

There was a sharp, metallic edge to her voice, and Nate wondered what had ever become of the pocketknife she had taken away from him.

Chapter 12

Chapter 10: Founder's Hill

2009-06-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

Nate kept reminding himself that he came from adventuresome stock as he gathered the things he needed from the garage: a rope, a shovel, and an old moving tarp. He put them in a canvas duffel bag and hid it in the bushes outside his bedroom window. He sneaked back into the house, where he was supposed to be napping, and could hear the television in the living room. His mother was alternately watching soap operas and cooking dinner. School had been out for twenty minutes, so Nate started making noise to let his mother know he was awake. He was expecting Freddie to call and report on how it had gone with Grub.

The phone rang.

“I’ve got it.” Nate picked it up in the hall.

“You owe me big time,” Freddie said. “Grub was so mad that you weren’t there that he gave me a purple tittle-twister.”

“Big deal, I get one a week.”

“It hurts,” Freddie said.

“No lie, Sherlock. You tell Grub what I told you?”

“Who’s on the phone?” Nate’s mother said.

“Freddie Edwards. He’s telling me what I missed in school today.”

Freddie said, “That’s when he gave me the purple tittie twister. He was insulted that, one, you didn’t show up today and two, you had the nerve to challenge him to a fight.”

“What did he say?”

“The good news, I guess, is he said he’d be there.”

“Yeah? What else?”

“The bad part is he says he’s going to kill you.”

“Wow,” Nate said.

“Also, I think half our class is going to be there.”

“Perfect,” Nate said. “Skip going to be able to help with his car?”

“Said he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“There’s something about an adventure. People just want to join in.”

“I think it’s the part about you getting killed that’s attracting everyone,” Freddie said.

Before hanging up, Nate reminded Freddie to show up at ten o’clock and to drive up with the car lights off.

Nate’s father got home at about six o’clock, and he and Nate’s mother went into their Friday evening ritual. Nate’s father took off his suit coat and pulled several bottles down from a tall cabinet in the kitchen. He then mixed himself a martini and made his wife a Manhattan. They sat down in the living room and Nate’s mother brought him up to date on all the gossip for the week. She always presented a curious blend of real people from her actual week and fictional characters from the soaps. Her husband never realized that and thought Davis Corners was populated with all these people having affairs and such. He would get up and freshen up their drinks two or three times and then they would sit down at the table with Nate for dinner.

The strong drinks usually put his parents out by nine o’clock, and Nate was relieved that this Friday was no exception. Everyone said good-night and retired to their rooms. Nate sat by his window, however, scanning the street for Freddie and Skip.

Shortly before ten, Nate saw Skip’s car come around the corner and turn its lights off. He slipped out the window, relieved to have his plan underway at last. He grabbed the duffel bag he’d hidden in the bushes and ran quickly to meet Skip and Freddie. He threw the duffel bag in the back seat and crawled in next to it.

“Parents asleep already?” Skip said incredulously as he looked at the dark house.

“For an hour, already.”

Nate thought, lets hear it for Friday night cocktails.

“What’s in the bag?” Skip looked into the back seat.

“Stuff for tonight,” Nate said, trying to sound mysterious.

“I hope for your sake you’ve got a bazooka in there,” Skip said. “Shall we go?”

“We need to go by Jim Frank’s place first.”

“What do we need from there?” Skip said.

“It’s hard to explain. Let me put it all together and I’ll show you.”

Skip put the car in gear but turned around one more time before letting out the clutch and moving on. “Did you really tell Grub Hanley to eat you know what?”

His tone of voice showed a grudging admiration for the daring of the deed, while at the same time showed a scorn for its stupidity. Nate winced at hearing the words referred to even indirectly. In spite of his newly-found bravado, Nate still couldn’t get over his years of upbringing and was embarrassed by what he’d said.

“Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

Skip pulled away, shaking his head and assuring Nate that Grub was going to kill him for sure.

The boys shot out State Road Forty-one and got to Jim Frank’s place. Nate told Skip to turn the lights off as they pulled into Jim Frank’s driveway. Nate was doubly amazed that not only was he being this bossy with Skip, who was three years older than Nate, but that Skip was taking it.

Skip turned off the lights and they rolled slowly up the dark driveway. Nate could hear every rock in the dirt road crunch slowly under the tires as they inched their way up. He could see a small dim light on inside Jim Frank’s house, but he couldn’t tell if Jim Frank was up and about or not. Skip stopped the car.

“What now?” Skip said.

Nate looked at Freddie. “Get out and help me get the statue.”

“We ain’t stealing Jim Frank’s nigger, are we?” Freddie said. “You never said we were going to steal stuff.”

“We’re not stealing it, we’re just borrowing it for awhile. It’s like he’s going with us on the adventure.”

Skip said, “Yeah, like I’m sure you called ahead and told Jim Frank we’re taking his statue out for a ride. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll drive up real quiet with our lights off, so we don’t wake you.’”

“He’ll never know it was gone, let’s go.” Nate shoved Freddie. They snuck up to the statue and Nate wrapped a tarp around it so it wouldn’t get chipped. The statue wasn’t as heavy as he’d expected. Somehow, he’d thought it would weigh as much as a real person. They put it into the back seat and Nate slipped in next to it.

Skip watched all this and chuckled at Nate and the statue sitting next to each other. “I don’t know which of you has the widest eyes right now.” He started the engine and slowly pulled out the driveway. Nate looked back one last time before they got onto State Road Forty-one and thought he could see a small, red dot of light glow bright, then get dim on Jim Frank’s porch.

They got to Founder’s Hill around ten forty-five. Plenty of time, Nate thought. It looked as creepy in the moonlight as Nate had hoped it would. It wasn’t much of a hill, but with its lone, dead tree on top, it could give one goose bumps just seeing it.

A local ghost story told about a lynching that had taken place many years back. The story said that some folks had hung a black man for stealing grain from the feed store where he worked. It had later come out that the owner’s son had been selling the grain on the side. The story went on that the tree had died out of grief for being part of an innocent man’s death. Of course, the story had the mandatory clause that on some nights you could see the ghost of the man hanging from the limb, and if the wind was right, you could hear him moan. Everyone in Davis Corners knew the story, and Nate was banking on Grub knowing it.

Freddie and Nate carried the statue up to the base of the tree and Nate went back for the canvas duffel bag. He pulled out the shovel and started digging a hole right beneath a big limb that stuck out straight from the tree’s trunk. Meanwhile, he had Skip move the car where no one would be able to see it. Freddie and Nate took turns for about forty minutes digging the hole. Finally, when Nate thought it was deep enough, he had Freddie help him lower the statue into the hole.

“Going to tell us what you’re doing?” Skip said.

“Just a minute.” Nate took the rope out of the duffel bag and made a noose on one end. His Uncle Henry had taught him how to do it, emphasizing that there had to be exactly thirteen loops above the noose part. He put the noose around the statue’s neck and threw the rest over the limb.

“Okay, here’s my plan. I’m going to hide behind the tree and hold onto the rope. When Grub comes up, I’m going to pull hard on the rope and moan. When Grub sees the statue rise up swinging and he hears the moaning, he’ll think it’s the ghost of Founder’s Hill.” Nate looked at Skip and Freddie triumphantly at first, then hesitantly.

“What happens after that?” Skip said.

Nate didn’t say anything.

“You don’t know what happens after that,” Skip said. “That your whole plan?”

“No,” Nate said defensively. “Grub’ll get scared and run away and we’ll tell everyone and he’ll be so ashamed that he’ll leave town or something, like his daddy did.”

“I don’t think so,” Skip said with a mixture of pity and disdain in his voice. “I think he’s going to beat the crap out of you and make you eat shit.” He looked at Nate for a few seconds and then grabbed his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Nate looked at Freddie.

“He’s right,” Freddie said.

Nate thought about the dream he’d been having and about how his grandfather looked at him when it was Nate’s turn to sing.

“You guys go on. I can’t.”

He knew Skip was right. It was going to be awful, but it would be awful on his terms and part of his plan.

Skip looked at him in disbelief and shook his head. “Well, you’ve certainly been a sport.”

Nate hoped that no one else from school would show up, but if they did, that would just be part of it. As it turned out, no one did. Davis Corners was a small town, and grade school kids being out at midnight didn’t happen too easily. He hadn’t even asked how Freddie had pulled it off.

It got close to midnight, and Freddie and Skip hid where they could witness everything. Nate took his position behind the tree.

After a while, Skip called out in a hoarse whisper, “Somebody’s coming.”

Nate looked around the tree and could see a dark shape walking toward the hill. In the moonlight, he could recognize the walk. It was Grub Hanley.

“You up there, butthole?”

Nate make an audible but noncommittal sound. He could hear Grub coming closer.

“You’ve done it now, butthole,” he said. “I brought a little surprise for you, a little something you can eat.”

Nate shuttered as he sat behind the tree. He repeated the noise to draw Grub closer.

“So, butthole, what’s it going to be?”

Nate could tell he was about twenty feet away. It was now or never. He pulled on the rope and made a howling kind of moan. In case Grub didn’t fall for it, he pulled the rope again and felt the statue swing and oscillate at the other end of the rope.

Grub said, “Eat this.”

There was a loud pop and a crashing sound like plates breaking. The rope went slack in Nate’s hand.

“He’s got a gun,” Skip yelled. “The bastard’s killed Nate.”

Just as Skip finished yelling, Nate could smell the gunpowder. He could hear Freddie and Skip scrambling down the back of the hill.

“Witnesses,” Grub said, almost under his breath.

Nate heard Grub scuffling down the other side of the hill. He lay there for a moment, totally confused. Then the events replayed in his mind and he realized what had happened. Grub had brought a gun and had shot the statue. The slack rope in Nate’s hand testified to the fact that there was nothing at the other end.

Nate thought to himself, Grub thinks he’s killed me and he’s run off because he thinks there were witnesses.

Nate began to laugh. Freddie and Skip had been right, he thought, it was the stupidest plan ever. Yet, it had worked out, thanks to Grub bringing a gun.

“Holy cow,” Skip said. He had come back and was staring at Jim Frank’s statue.

Nate peeked around the tree and could see the statue sitting next to the hole he and Freddie had dug. Half its head was gone, leaving just half of a smile and one, eerie eye staring at the boys. With half of the head missing, the noose had slipped off and the statue had fallen to the ground. Even so, the only damage seemed to have come from the gunshot, nothing else was broken. It finally sank in on Nate that Grub had come to kill him, and would have done a neat job of it, judging by the statue.

“Let’s get out of here,” Skip said in a voice just on the edge of panic.

The three boys ran to the car. Several minutes and several miles later they exploded into laughter and an incoherent babble, as all three of them recounted the story to each other at the same time. It was a great story, Nate thought, as he heard each of them put some new spin on the details. Grub, in the story, now approached inch by inch as Nate waited with excruciating patience saying “just a little further” to himself at each step. The statue surged out of its hole like a missile out of its silo and swung toward Grub, its eyes seeming to expand as it swung closer. Grub pulled the pistol cowboy style from his hip and shot with panic-filled eyes. Skip and Freddie chased him away screaming “murderer, murderer.” It was a great story, Nate thought. It was his story.

Skip and Freddie dropped Nate off and he sneaked back into his room through the window he’d left open. For a moment he panicked in the dark room and thought Grub was there, lurking in the corner. He let out a muffled yell and turned on his light. It was just some clothes draped over his dresser mirror. He turned the light off and sunk into his bed. He fell into a dreamless sleep, exhausted, yet at peace with himself.

Chapter 11

Chapter 9: The Stolen Bag

2009-06-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

The next morning, Nate was awake and waiting for his mother when she came to wake him. “I don’t feel so good.”

She didn’t take much convincing.

“I’m not surprised. I think you’ve had a fever on and off this week. I’m going to take you by Doctor Lightcap’s and have him look at you”

She watched Nate closely. Usually, if he tried to play hooky, that threat would bring about a predictable recovery.

“That’s a good idea,” Nate said. Ever since hearing Jim Frank’s story about Iron Hoop, Nate had wanted to hear Doctor Lightcap’s version. His eagerness to see the doctor reinforced his mother’s conclusion that he was genuinely sick.

About mid-morning, Nate’s mother loaded him into the car and took him to Doctor Lightcap’s office. After they’d waited in the sitting area for an hour, the nurse called Nate in. At first, his mother got up to come also, but the nurse said that at Nate’s age he should see the doctor alone.

“Tell him about the fever sweats at night,” his mother said.

Nate waited for a few minutes in the examination room, looking at a poster that showed the inside of the human ear. He wondered why the poster was there and who would care about such a thing. Then he figured out that his Uncle Henry would probably look the whole thing over and take in every fact. He hadn’t had any Saturday lectures on the human ear, so he assumed that Uncle Henry’s health had been running pretty good lately.

Doctor Lightcap came in, wearing a starched, white, lab coat with his stethoscope hanging out of the breast pocket. He carried Nate’s file folder. Even without his white coat, he would have looked like a doctor, with his Vitalis hair, bifocals, and ruddy, scrubbed skin.

“Well, what do we have today?”

He started poking and feeling while Nate explained that he’d been sweating at night and having funny dreams. He asked if Nate felt bad now. Nate told him he felt fine. Everyone knew that Doctor Lightcap was the most honest and straightforward man in the world. Lying to him would be almost sacrilege.

He listened to Nate’s heart and lungs for a minute through his stethoscope, and then put it back in his pocket. “What kind of dreams you having?”

“I dream about my granddaddy.”

Doctor Lightcap paused for a moment. “What happens in these dreams?”

Nate told him about the dreams and described the awful feeling when it came his turn to sing. “Sometimes it feels like everybody knows what I’m supposed to sing and they just want to see if I know it. Other times, it feels like they expect me to make up new words and they’re all curious to hear what they are. Either case, I never know what the right words are.”

Doctor Lightcap looked at Nate calmly but intently. “I dream about your granddaddy every now and then, too.” He watched Nate for a reaction. “I knew your granddaddy,” he said in a low, distant voice.

“I know. Jim Frank told me.”

Doctor Lightcap’s eyebrows went up a little when Nate said that.

“He told me how you tried to save my granddaddy.”

Doctor Lightcap took Nate’s wrist and felt his pulse. “Didn’t do such a good job at it, did I?”

Nate couldn’t tell if there was rancor in his voice or not.

“Well,” he said in his doctor voice, “You don’t seem too sick to me. Is there a test in school today?”

Nate explained the problem he had with Grub Hanley. He didn’t tell Doctor Lightcap exactly what he had said to Grub on the schoolyard, he was too embarrassed about it. None-the-less, Doctor Lightcap saw his predicament.

“Those Hanleys were pretty much a worthless lot from the get-go,” he said.

Nate saw his opportunity. “What was in the canvas bag that Luther Hanley stole at Iron Hoop?”

Doctor Lightcap leaned back and stared at Nate for a moment. He had put that experience away years ago and didn’t want to get into it again. “Old Jim Frank’s quite the story teller, it seems. It wasn’t any of my business then and it’s none of yours now.”

Nate noticed that he hadn’t said he didn’t know. “Jim Frank says you were mad about it.”

“Jim Frank’s a gossipy old fool with too much time on his hands.”

Nate was certain that Doctor Lightcap knew what was in that bag. He stared at him and said nothing. Doctor Lightcap finally gave in. “It was your granddaddy’s Colt pistol.”

Nate was amazed at how close to violence his grandparents had lived. His parents had pencils, pinking shears, and briefcases. His grandparents had guns.

Doctor Lightcap got up from his chair. “What are you going to do about Grub? You can’t play hooky forever.”

“I’m making a plan.”

“Good luck,” he said. “I’ll tell your mother, in the meanwhile, that you’re just going through puberty so she’ll leave you alone.”

Nate laughed. He knew puberty would keep his mother from quizzing him any further. Doctor Lightcap winked.

On the way home, Nate’s mother stopped by the drug store to pick up some aspirin for his fevers. Nate sat in the car while she went inside. He was still working on his plan for dealing with Grub Hanley when he saw a face he knew in the side mirror.

“Washington,” he said as he leaned his head out the window.

Washington was startled and looked around. Then he saw Nate’s head sticking out of the parked car and immediately recognized him. He walked over to the car.

“I’m glad you’re still in town.” There was an awkward moment when neither of them could think of anything to say. “Maddie Flanagan hasn’t tried to run you over any more, has she?” They both laughed.

“Miss Flanagan never tried to hit me,” Washington said reproachfully. “She was aiming at the chicken truck. The chicken truck tried to hit me.”

They laughed again.

“What are you doing these days?” Nate said.

“I’m working,” he said in an upbeat tone. “You know, it never would’ve occurred to me to seek employment at a funeral parlor. Took your fresh, young mind to see that connection.”

“You working at Wanamaker’s?” Nate was not only happy for Washington, he was excited that a grown-up had taken a suggestion of his.

“The very place you recommended,” Washington said. “Think I startled them at first by just going up and knocking on the door and asking for work. I convinced Mr. Wanamaker, though, that it would add elegance and charm to their funerals to have a colored attendant.”

“You have a tuxedo and stuff like that?”

“Oh yes. I’ve got tuxes, black suits and caps for driving, all that stuff. They’re not going to let me drive the hearse, though. Mr. Wanamaker said it wouldn’t be fitting.”

Washington made a snooty face and turned his nose up. He and Nate both laughed.

“I’m waiting. My break’ll come, and I’ll get to drive the big car. It’ll be like the old days, sitting up front in the deep, leather seat with the power windows and all. Only difference’ll be the passenger in the back won’t have much to say.”

Washington missed driving a big, fancy car. It wasn’t the status of it, he just truly appreciated the quality of the experience—mechanical and aesthetic.

“Ever look at a fine painting, one you thought was the prettiest thing you ever saw?”

Nate thought about the question. “Yeah, there’s this one I like of a bunch of people sitting in the park on a sunny day. Everybody’s sitting on the grass, looking at a lake.”

Washington leaned over and touched Nate’s arm. “For me, driving an expensive automobile with its engine in tune and its wheels aligned would be like you stepping into that painting and smelling the grass and hearing the waves. It’s art you experience.”

Nate had never heard anybody talk about a car like that. “I hope you get to drive that hearse,” he said.

Nate’s mother walked up and had a panicked look on her face when she saw Washington leaning over talking to Nate.

“You there, what do you want?”

Nate immediately explained. “This is Washington. I met him last week at Mr. Thompson’s. He almost got hit by Miss Flanagan.”

“Well, Mr. Washington, you’re in good company. Everybody in town’s almost been hit by Maddie Flanagan.”

“So I hear, ma’am.” Washington smiled broadly.

Her panicked look started to evaporate. The distributed terror of Maddie’s driving was a momentary bond. Besides, she was no longer surprised by whom Nate met when he was out on his junkets with his Uncle Henry. “You from around here?”

“New in town, ma’am. Working for Mr. Wanamaker.”

Nate noticed that Washington spoke more simply when he spoke to Nate’s mother than when he spoke to Nate. He was confused by this sudden change and didn’t like this Washington as much as the refined, witty one. Nate thought it would’ve been the opposite, a person would speak more simply when he spoke to a child and be more refined when he spoke to the grown-up. Then Nate understood. Washington wasn’t talking to Nate’s mother like she was a child, he was acting like he was the simple and childish one. It was how Nate’s mother expected black people to be. Washington was acting the part for his own protection from this woman who panicked when she saw him leaning into her car. For the first time, Nate began to understand why his grandmother hated that statue out at Jim Frank’s place so much. It didn’t show how black people were, it showed how some people wanted them to be. That’s what made it wrong, he thought.

Thinking about the statue helped Nate put the final piece of his plan together. He knew how he would deal with Grub at Founder’s Hill.

Chapter 10

Chapter 8: The Words

2009-06-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Nate slipped into the recurring dream he had been having all week. He dreamed he was at Grandmother Tillman’s and the whole family was standing around an old, upright piano in the middle of the living room. Jim Frank was playing a hymn Grandmother Tillman used to sing to Nate, and everybody was singing along. Nate noted how green the trees were that grew next to the Sawatassee River as he looked at them through the long windows in Grandmother Tillman’s living room. The old glass distorted the shapes of their branches and made them look like rippled, green smears, so that the windows looked like long, impressionist paintings hanging on the wall.

Grandmother Tillman and Nate’s grandfather were in the dream, but they were both young. Grandmother Tillman’s usual pulled back, gray hair was loose and full of auburn curls. Nate’s grandfather looked like the picture Grandmother Tillman kept of him on the mantle, strong and slender with bright eyes. Grandmother Tillman had her arm around her husband’s waist, and Nate got a disconcerting sense of sexuality from her casual posture. In contrast, his parents looked old, haggard, and separated. His father wasn’t singing and his mother kept looking fretfully at her parents. Then, Nate’s grandfather sang a solo in a clear, beautiful voice, looking up the whole time he sang. At the end of it, though, he looked right at Nate, and Nate could tell that everyone was waiting for him to sing the next verse. But Nate didn’t know the words. It was awful, everyone’s eyes looking at him in anticipation and him not knowing what words he was supposed to sing.

“Time to get up, you’re going to be late for school again. That’s twice this week. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, you never used to be this hard to get up.” Nate’s mother pulled the covers back. “Good Lord, you’re soaking wet. Do you have a fever?”

She touched his forehead and Nate could tell from the warmth of her hand that his head felt cool to her touch.

“I’m fine,” he said, relieved to be awake. “It’s just getting warm at night, now. I’ll have to start sleeping with less covers.”

It was Thursday, and this was the third time Nate had dreamt this scene since hearing Jim Frank’s story on Saturday. He always woke up when it came his time to sing, but not before experiencing that horrible, anxious feeling of having forgotten the words or never having learned them. It gave him a deep sense of being disconnected from the others.

Nate got dressed and skipped breakfast. His mother had gotten very solicitous abut his health since he started having theses sweating sessions at night, and facing her questions at the breakfast table felt too much like staring at all those people around the piano in his dream.

At school, Nate dozed through his geography and world history lessons, making up for the uneasy rest the night before. The recess bell woke him up and he found Freddie waiting for him in the schoolyard. The schoolyard was divided into two distinct areas: the blacktop next to the school and the field. The blacktop had swings, slides, and drinking fountains and was where the younger kids played. Teachers routinely patrolled the blacktop. The field had a chicken wire backstop in the far corner for playing baseball and was closed in by a high, chain-link fence. Teachers never went onto the field unless a fight broke out. By the time a teacher got out there, though, the outcome had been decided. In short, the field was where academe quit and real life took over. Freddie and Nate avoided it for the most part.

Nate was still slowly waking up from his nap, listening to Freddie go on about whether the emerging curves under Margaret Haynes’ dress were really breasts or not, when Nate saw his eyes suddenly get wide.

“Hey, butthole, give me some money,” Grub said, as he pushed Nate in the back.

Nate calculated whether or not he could make it to the sanctuary of the school building if he ran. He figured his chances were fifty-fifty at best.

“Leave me alone.”

As Grub mimicked him, Nate remembered Jim Frank’s story about Grub’s father and Nate’s grandfather. He could hear Luther Hanley saying “bat-food for sure” in the same evil voice. Nate wished Jim Frank had punched him.

“I said give me your money, butthole.”

“Go away,” Nate said weakly.

What Nate hated most about Grub was that he made him hate himself for being weak. Nate knew his grandfather wouldn’t have been weak like this. He was a man who climbed down holes when everyone else was scared. Grandmother Tillman wouldn’t take this kind of abuse. She’d hit him back with a serving spoon or point a rifle at him. Why were they strong and why was he weak? He blamed his parents for not being poor and not forcing him to live the hard life that would have made him strong. He blamed his father for not having gotten himself killed when Nate was a baby, so he would’ve had to fend for himself and be tough. Mostly, though, he hated Grub Hanley for rubbing his face in it. Grub didn’t want Nate’s money, he just wanted to show everyone how weak and chicken Nate was.

“What’s it going to be, butthole, your money or a purple tittie-twister?”

“Give him your lunch money, stupid,” Freddie said hoarsely. Nate looked over and saw that Freddie was staring at him with intense eyes. All the other kids had gathered around and were staring, too. Nate felt like that part in his dream when his grandfather and everybody just stood there, staring at him. Just as he was about to explode with the agony of it all his mouth involuntarily opened.

“Eat nigger shit,” he said impulsively and louder than necessary given how close Grub was to him.

Everyone stood in stunned silence. Nate was more surprised and shocked than everyone else. These were the two worst words he knew, words he had been trained and retrained never to say, and here he had just said them together. In an insult right in Grub Hanley’s face, no less!

Grub’s face went pale, then started getting red as he sucked in short, jerky breaths. His Neanderthal, neural networks were wrestling with this latest input, and he was having trouble putting the visual message that it was Nate talking and Nate’s lips moving with what his ears were hearing. Nate looked at Freddie, whose mouth was wide open in astonishment. Finally the full impact of what Nate had said and to whom he had said it sank in on all three of them, and they screamed in unison: Grub in rage and Freddie and Nate in terror.

Nate ran, but in his panic he didn’t run toward the school building. He ran into the field instead, where there was only Grub law. He made it to the backstop and realized he was cornered. He spun around and Grub stopped right in front of him.

Nate collapsed to his knees. “Please don’t kill me. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that, I swear I didn’t mean it.” Nate was terrified and crying.

Grub stood there with his legs spread apart, contemplating just how he was going to kill Nate. From his groveling position on the ground, Nate could see the school building as he looked through Grub’s legs. He knew that no teacher could cross that distance in time to save him. In desperation he scurried forward between Grub’s legs and got up and ran. If he could get to the school building, he would be safe. He could see the kids cheering and parting a way for him as he heard Grub huffing behind him. Truly believing that he would be murdered if Grub caught him, he pulled away and made it to safety, just as the bell sounded the end of recess. Everyone ran into the school building, except Grub, who stayed in the yard, bent over with side cramps and confused by humiliation for the first time in his life.

Nate quickly washed up before going into class again. He was flushed with fear, exhilaration, and from the exertion of running. He was ashamed of what he had said. He thought about Grandmother Tillman and how she hated those words when they were used by themselves, he was horrified by what she would think of him saying both together. He never would be able to face her if she ever found out. He was further ashamed that he had groveled and begged for his life in front of the whole school. He wanted to run away, but he knew that Grub was somewhere on the outside, confused and wounded. He wasn’t ready to take his chances with that. He decided to try to slither unnoticed into class, completely unprepared for what was to happen next.

As Nate walked into the classroom, all the kids cheered and applauded. Boys who wouldn’t pick him to be on their baseball team without being compensated with a point spread were calling his name. Girls were smiling appreciatively at him. He was a hero.

Bill VanDiver, the uncontested social leader of the school, slapped him on the back and said, “Nice mouth. Kiss your girlfriend with that same mouth?”

Margaret Haynes giggled.

Nate realized that they were as much in awe of what he’d said as to whom he’d said it. He had always been the prim, momma’s boy of the playground. That phrase coming out of Nate Williams was news enough, his saying it to Grub Hanley made it a tabloid headline. His Uncle Henry would sometimes say, “It’s not what the talking dog says that’s so astonishing, it’s the fact he talks at all.” Nate thought in this case the opposite was true in spades. The school was astonished that he had spoken back to Grub, and equally astonished by what he had said. The prissy mouthed momma’s boy had uttered what had turned out to be the atomic bomb of playground insults for an all-white school in 1963. The fact that he’d run, cried, groveled, and begged for his life didn’t seem to diminish his stature. The ensuing scramble for safety hadn’t detracted from the initial bravery of his act. It was merely perceived as common sense.

Nate was intoxicated by his new popularity. Actually, it was notoriety, but at thirteen, with Margaret Haynes giggling and smiling at him, the distinction was small and quickly overlooked. These words he’d been forbidden to use all his life had suddenly given him power. The remorse about what he had said started to lift as he enjoyed the status it brought him. The question of what else might come along with that status had not yet started to nag at him.

At three o’clock, school let out and Nate was reminded in his euphoria that Grub Hanley hadn’t just gone away. Nate still had to get home. He and Freddie usually walked their bicycles to where their paths parted, so they had longer to talk. That day they rode fast. They got to where Nate’s street pulled off and Nate waved good-bye to Freddie, telling him that he’d call him later.

As Nate passed by the large elderberry bush that grew next to the neighborhood drainage ditch, Grub jumped out and grabbed the handlebars of his bike. He wrestled it to a stop the same way a cowboy would’ve wrestled down a roped calf in a rodeo.

He grabbed Nate and said, “Relax, butthole, I’m not going to do anything to you, here.”

Nate didn’t feel relaxed.

“Just want you to know that I’m going to kick your butt tomorrow in front of all your friends. And I’m going to bring a little something for you to eat.”

Grub gave Nate a parting swat to his head.

That night, Nate called Freddie and told him what had happened.

“What’s he going to bring?” Freddie said.

“What do you think?”

“Maybe you should tell your parents.”

Nate didn’t want to do that, but not for the obvious reasons. He didn’t belong to them anymore. Something had skipped a generation, he realized, and he was connected to his grandparents, somehow especially to his grandfather. Something important had happened in the schoolyard. Somewhere beyond the fleeting notoriety, beyond the shallow acceptance of his peers, and in spite of the trash talk, he’d stumbled onto something of substance. He liked himself for having stood up to Grub. It hadn’t been pretty, and it hadn’t worked out like in a story, but it had been real and he’d stood up to the bully. Nate knew he wouldn’t tell his parents, he was on his own.

“I’ve got a plan,” Nate said.

He could feel Freddie’s astonishment on the other end of the phone.

“What kind of plan?”

“I’ve got to get rid of Grub.”

“You’re going to kill Grub Hanley?” Freddie said.

“No, pencil-neck, I’m going to get him to leave town,” Nate said.

“How?”

“I still have to work out the details, but I need your help.” Nate knew that whatever it took, he couldn’t let Grub Hanley get to him at school the next day. “I’m going to skip school tomorrow. You find Grub and tell him I’ll fight him at midnight at Founder’s Hill.”

Founder’s Hill was Davis Corners’ creepy spot. It was a tall hill in the middle of otherwise flat ground with a single, gnarled oak tree right on top. It was the center of ghost stories and myths handed down over generations. He knew that Grub couldn’t turn down a challenge to a fight.

“What if he decides to kill me instead?” Freddie said.

“He won’t,” Nate said with unwarranted assurance. “Here’s what else I need. Can you get your brother to come by and pick me up at ten o’clock tomorrow night?”

“Your parents won’t let you out that late.”

“I’m not going to tell them, Einstein. Just get Skip to do this for me.”

Okay, okay,” Freddie said, “But what’s your plan?”

“Tomorrow at ten o’clock. Pull up outside with your lights off, and I’ll tell you then.”

Nate hung up and started calculating how he could pull this off.

Chapter 9

Chapter 7: Captain Jack

2009-06-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

In contrast to the meandering Sawatassee River and the two-lane State Road Forty-one, the Interstate was a wide slash across the outskirts of Davis Corners that carried fast cars and big trucks. At the single exit that metered traffic into and out of Davis Corners was a tall sign that simply said “Eats,” and at its base was Cole’s Truck Stop.

Buddy Cole felt the sign’s message had to be simple enough for people to read and comprehend while going seventy miles per hour. He had wrestled between “Eats” and “Gas” since his truck stop offered both. Nate’s Uncle Henry had suggested that he go with the latter, since it described both.

It was early afternoon and Buddy was patrolling the truck stop, wearing his usual John Deere baseball cap and greasy work pants. A chrome chain securely anchored his wallet to his belt. He went into the diner, sat down at the end of the counter, and waved to Sylvester, the cook, indicating that he needed a cup of coffee. Edna McElroy saw the gesture and told Sylvester she had it.

The diner had a long counter and two rows of booths. One row of booths lined the windows and one hugged the adjacent wall. The counter was where the truckers sat, and the booths were where the locals sat. No one enforced the convention, but it worked out that way most of the time. The other waitresses were content to let Edna handle the counter, because it saved them from having to deal with the coarse truckers. Edna liked it that way. She could handle the truckers, and they tipped better than the booth folks did.

“Here you go, boss-man.” Edna passed the coffee to Buddy from the other side of the counter. She leaned over the counter to inspect the chain attached to Buddy’s wallet. She could see Buddy looking down the front of her uniform as she did.

“I’ve never figured out what you’re guarding so carefully down there, your wallet or your pants. Beats me what you’ve got in either that you’re so proud of.”

The truckers at the counter all laughed.

“Want to see?” Buddy said.

“Well, show me the wallet first. If there’s nothing in there, there’s no point in going much further.”

Once again the men at the counter laughed. Edna turned her sarcasm on them next, knowing not to make her boss the butt of too much kidding.

“I see you boys all have your stuff chained down too.” Edna strolled down the counter looking over at the wallet chains and letting the truckers catch a glimpse of the lace fringe on her bra. “Good thing, too. Don’t know if I could control myself otherwise.”

Edna clutched her breast with her hand as if fighting off a fainting spell. The gesture brought the sightseeing to an end. As a professional waitress, Edna knew that cheesecake was best served in small portions.

“Is Captain Jack in today” one of the truckers asked Buddy.

Captain Jack was the code name for the slot machine that Buddy kept in the trucker’s locker room. The locker room was reserved for long haulers and had a shower and two cots, along with a small bank of six lockers. Along one wall were a toiletries vending machine, a condom machine, and Captain Jack. Gambling was illegal, but the state troopers who came into Buddy’s place never went into the truckers’ locker room. On the off chance that they might, Buddy had put a sign over Captain Jack that said, “For Entertainment Only. Not For Gambling.” Buddy said this would protect him from any prosecution. Over the condom machine, someone had scrawled, “Don’t buy this gum, it tastes like rubber.”

Buddy saw the pass key for the locker room in its usual place: next to the cash register, hanging on the arm of a wooden statue of an old sea captain wearing yellow foul-weather gear. “Looks like the captain is available.”

The trucker left Edna a seventy-five cent tip and started to head back to the locker room.

“Hey, lucky,” Edna said. She tossed one of the quarters from her tip to the trucker. “Play this one for me. I hear you got the touch.” This usually worked for Edna. Most of the truckers would cough up another fifty cents of their own money rather than come back and tell her they’d lost.

Buddy continued to sit at the end of the counter and looked over some paperwork. “Sure seem to go through a lot of steaks.”

He looked at Sylvester, but Sylvester just kept working at the grill.

“Sylvester,” Buddy said, “Why do we go through so many steaks?”

“People like steak,” Sylvester said. “Town folks eat them for dinner, mostly, and truckers like to eat them with breakfast.”

Buddy looked around and grumbled. “Nobody eating steak now.”

“It’s lunch.”

“Well, I’m going to be keeping on eye on it from here on. Just looks like I go through a lot of steak.”

Sylvester turned around and said, “They’re not going through me, if that’s what you mean.”

Actually, every night right before Sylvester would get off his shift, he liked to treat himself to a steak dinner. If Edna was on duty, he usually made her one too. One of the other waitresses, a sour crone named Pearl, had gotten jealous and told Buddy, but he hadn’t been able to catch Sylvester at it yet. He hoped that this little warning would stop it.

Meanwhile, a black sedan pulled off the exit ramp and into Cole’s parking lot. In it was the Reverend Ralph Johnson, passing through Davis Corners to sign some contracts for his traveling ministry. Davis Corners was usually a good stop for his tent revival, and he was here to finalize arrangements for this year’s circuit. Cole’s was a good meeting place for traveling salesmen and itinerant businessmen.

He was getting out of his car when Maddie Flanagan came screeching into the spot next to his in her Bel-Air. He pulled himself back in and quickly shut his door to avoid its being ripped off. Maddie stared at him with her trademark open look that seemed to ask if he had something to say, while at the same time suggesting it would be best if he didn’t.

Johnson just smiled at Maddie and observed her plastic Jesus on the dashboard. He got back out of the car and watched as Maddie labored to get herself out. “Good-afternoon, ma’am.”

Maddie shuffled to the diner and grumbled as Johnson held the door for her. Maddie sat at the counter, fully accepted by the truckers because she could spit tobacco juice farther and more accurately than any man there.

Johnson looked around, found an empty booth, and sat down. Ricky Thornton came in a few minutes later and joined him.

“Who’s the old gal at the counter?” Johnson said.

“Maddie Flanagan. She’s a real hoot.”

The Irish name and the plastic Jesus, in all probability, meant Catholic, and Johnson doubted that he’d seen her at one of his tent revivals. “Interesting driving style.”

“Don’t get folks around here going on Maddie’s driving. They say the only thing’s kept her alive is that plastic Jesus of hers.”

“Well, the Lord protects those who place their faith in him,” Johnson said.

Ricky Thornton gave him a quizzical look, then nodded. He had a tendency to forget that Johnson was a preacher.

The two men discussed this year’s rental arrangements for Evans Field, a property that Thornton managed. It was where the local VFW softball league played on Friday nights. The base paths were maintained more by wear and tear of the runners than anything a grounds keeper did. A backstop made from old power poles and chicken wire protected what bit of a crowd would sit in its rickety bleachers. It had night-lights and a large parking lot, though, which made it suitable for Reverend Johnson’s tent revival. Most of the details had been already worked out in the mail or by phone. Today’s meeting was mostly just to get the paperwork signed.

“How’s your ministry doing this year?” Thornton paused at the word ‘ministry.’ He was going to say ‘business’ but thought that might sound inappropriate.

“We’re doing well.”

“It’s just that people seem to be turning away from religion.” Ricky blushed a little. “Not that I’m in a position to gauge. Can’t say I attend services regularly.”

Johnson smiled. “The more they turn away from religion, the more they want to come to these tent revivals. They feel a need to get back what they’ve lost. I guess that’s why we call them revivals.”

“Huh, never thought of it like that.” Thornton blushed a little deeper, feeling like he’d said something stupid.

Ricky Thornton and Ralph Johnson finished signing their papers and Johnson convinced Thornton to pick up lunch. He told him it could be a double deduction, a business expense and a religious donation. Thornton did it only because he was picking up an easy commission on this one.

Johnson made sure Maddie was still sitting at the counter and left. He wanted to be sure he wasn’t going to share highway time with her. He pulled back onto the Interstate and headed toward Henderson, where he had to make similar arrangements. He thought about what Ricky Thornton had said about people giving up on religion and about his own reply, how it helped the revival business. He’d never thought about it that way either. If that were true, he thought to himself, he ought to capitalize on it more. As he drove, he worked on a new sermon for this summer’s circuit, a theme of lost faith refound.

Back at the counter, Maddie ordered coffee and a piece of pie. When the pie came, she just stabbed at it for a while.

“Look like you got the whole world on your shoulders,” Edna said.

Maddie would’ve jumped on anyone else for intruding on her thoughts, somber though they were. She liked Edna, though, something about her brashness or maybe the way she manipulated the men around her without their even noticing.

“Young, innocent thing like you got no idea how heavy the world can be at times.”

Edna looked away. Buddy pushed behind the counter and rubbed up against her as he passed by.

“Innocent? Edna? You need to get out more,” Buddy said to Maddie.

Maddie stared at him as she shoved a little snuff into her mouth.

Edna pulled away from him, annoyed as much by his butting in as by his physical contact.

“If it’s getting too hard to squeeze by, maybe you need to lose some weight.”

“Maybe you need to be a little nicer to me.” Buddy’s tone had a dirty edge to it.

Maddie spit into a paper Dixie cup. “Maybe you need to get your head out of your pants,” she said to Buddy.

“What would you know about what’s in a man’s pants?” Buddy said and walked away grumbling.

Maddie smiled and Edna smiled back. Picking on Buddy had taken Maddie’s mind off of her own troubles for a moment. “Keep your eye on him,” she warned Edna.

Meanwhile, the trucker who’d gone back to the locker room came back out and gave Edna a dollar. “You’re right. I got the touch today.”

Edna thanked him and tucked the dollar bill away.

“You’re not still getting them with that, are you?”

“Hey, stick with what works.”

“What I want to know is when did Captain Jack start paying off in dollar bills.”

Edna laughed. “Trust me. Captain Jack pays off in all kind of ways. You seen buddy’s new bass boat out back?”

“Can’t say I’ve been that lucky.”

“Name written right on the back, Captain Jack’s Loot. Tell me where Buddy got the money to buy that,” Edna said.

Maddie and Edna laughed and shook their heads.

---

While Maddie was finishing her pie at Cole’s, Julius Wanamaker was just sitting down to lunch at his kitchen table. A lot of people thought the undertaking business was a cold one, but it suited Julius just fine. His house was right behind the funeral parlor, so he was able to come home everyday to a lunch his wife made, and in general, the pace of the business was slow and easy to keep up with.

It had been getting harder lately, however, partly because Davis Corners was growing and more people were dying and partly because his only assistant was his wife’s brother, who was becoming less and less reliable.

“Where’s Jimmy,” he asked his wife. There was to be a wake for old Mrs. Hayden that night, and Julius had been counting on his brother-in-law to get the viewing parlor set up while he finished preparing the deceased.

“He called and said he’s feeling poorly today. He’s going to try to get in this afternoon.”

Julius knew there was no use in getting into it with his wife. Jimmy was a drunk, and everybody knew it. But Julius loved his wife and she loved her brother and that was that. Jimmy was his burden.

Julius was finishing off his iced tea when he heard someone knock on the kitchen’s screen door. His wife looked past him in the direction of the door and got a curious look on her face.

“There’s a colored man at our back door,” she said.

Julius got up and went to the door. He spoke to the man through the screen.

“Colored funeral home’s over on Baker Street, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Thank you, sir, but no.” A soft, refined voice answered Julius from the other side of the screen. I’m here on less urgent business. I rang at the parlor, but it seemed that nobody was there.”

“Nobody who could hear you, at any rate,” Julius said. He laughed at his own reference to Mrs. Hayden, whose body was in the basement laboratory.

Julius opened the door, feeling it was rude to stand there and talk through the screen. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Washington, and until recently, I was employed for a number of years by a gentleman in Charlotte as his butler, chauffeur, and personal assistant. I’m looking for employment with someone who could use those kinds of skills.”

“I’m afraid I don’t need a butler. That’d be a bit higher style than I’m accustomed to.”

“My former employer was fond of entertaining, and I could be helpful with preparing and managing the events of the funerals.” Washington noticed that Julius didn’t immediately object.

“Also, I see that you have a hearse and what seems to be a flower car parked out back here. You may even have a family car for the procession to the cemetery. I maintained all my employer’s vehicles, including keeping them washed and waxed.” Washington didn’t point out that the hearse currently could use sprucing up. None-the-less, the point wasn’t lost on Julius, who had asked his brother-in-law to take care of it yesterday.

Julius walked through the open door so he wouldn’t be standing in the house while Washington stood outside. This was getting down to talking business, and men should do that face-to-face.

“I can’t afford to take on a big expense, cash-flow couldn’t stand it.” Julius nodded toward the funeral parlor. It was a large, two-story, ante-bellum house, painted white with black shutters. “I could set you up over there with a room on the second floor, throw in lunches and a small salary.”

Julius not only liked the idea of having some dependable help, he thought having a colored attendant at the services, greeting people and escorting them to the viewing parlors, would add some class to the operation.

The two men agreed on a weekly wage, and Julius got Washington situated in the funeral parlor. Washington went right to work, first getting the parlor set up for Mrs. Hayden’s wake and then washing the hearse for the next day. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as attending to one of Charlotte’s leading racketeers, but in many respects it wasn’t all that different. He had fine cars to take care of and a beautiful house to live in. He even had it all to himself, with the exception of the deceased transients who occupied the basement laboratory and first floor parlors. Given the indictments that had been made against his former boss, he thought that aspect of his new environment might not be all that different from his former one.

Chapter 8

Chapter 6: Iron Hoop

2009-06-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

With much less fanfare than Maddie Flanagan, Nate and his Uncle Henry pulled out of Hank Thompson’s and went on to Jim Frank’s place. When they got there, Jim Frank and Henry went through their normal routine of greetings, opening cans of beer, and lighting up smokes. Nate idly examined the hubcaps nailed to the porch, while the two men talked about how Jim Frank configured his junk. When Nate got to the back edge of the porch, he leaned against the rail and looked around the corner. There, hanging on the side of the house, was an old, rusted hoop. It looked like the kind of hoop that held barrel staves together, or it could’ve been the rim of a small wagon wheel. One thing was certain, it had been on the wall for a long time, judging by the rust stains that ran down to the ground.

Nate reached over and pulled it off the wall and examined it. It was heavy and solid and still substantial in spite of years of rusting away.

“What’s this?”

Henry stopped talking. He had never noticed the hoop before, either.

“What’s that?” he said, “An old wheel or something?”

For a long time, Jim Frank just stared silently at the circle of rust in Nate’s hand, until Nate thought he’d burn his fingers with the Pall Mall.

“Iron Hoop,” he said and looked away.

Slowly a look of recognition came over Henry’s face. “You mean from that old cave?”

No one in Nate’s family talked about Iron Hoop Cave much, except in hushed tones and when they thought the children couldn’t hear. It was definitely forbidden to bring it up around Grandmother Tillman. It was where her husband had died in an accident. Nate had asked his mother about it once and she had said that it upset Grandmother Tillman and not to bring it up ever again. Now he was holding something solid in his hands that had to do with it, and he wanted to know more about the cave and what had happened.

Nate looked at Jim Frank. “Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell,” he said with a shrug. “There was this old cave back in the woods, just a creep hole at the top. Could hardly tell it was there.” Jim Frank tugged and pulled at his tee shirt. “It was hard to see, so someone set this iron hoop above the entrance so you could find it. Folks called it Iron Hoop Cave because of it.”

Jim Frank took the iron hoop out of Nate’s hands and hefted it for a second before putting it back on the wall. “Like I said, wasn’t much to tell.”

“I mean tell me about my granddaddy. Tell me how he died.”

Holding the hoop reminded Nate of how he felt when he heard the story about Grandmother Tillman aiming her rifle at Ricky Thornton. Both smacked of adventure. Nate had always thought of himself as dull and insignificant. He saw his father: quiet, bland, and always sitting passively and silently on the edge of things. He assumed he would be the same. Last Sunday, however, he had found out that his grandmother pointed rifles at people and he had just now been holding something that made Jim Frank uneasy and not want to talk about Nate’s grandfather. It might be that he could’ve inherited something from his grandparents, this mysterious association with adventure. He felt that he had to know the story of Iron Hoop and how his grandfather died.

Jim Frank said, “It’s been laid to rest many years now. Let it be.”

“I need to know about my granddaddy and Iron Hoop Cave.”

Nate sounded confident, like a long-lost heir demanding the keys to his boarded-up estate. There was something in the story that belonged to him, and he had a right to it. It might tell him where he’d come from and maybe who he could be.

Jim Frank sat down heavily in his caned chair. “Well, Henry, you’d better pass me another beer and light me up a fresh cigarette.”

Henry hurriedly obliged. He struggled with the lighter and was almost as excited as Nate. Obviously, Hattie had never talked to him much about it either. For a moment, the air smelled again of beer, tobacco, and lighter fluid.

“Your granddaddy worked for the railroad, riding around on one of those hand-cars, inspecting tracks and supervising repair crews. He was a slender, wiry man, and when he wasn’t pumping one of those hand-cars around, he loved to slither and shimmy down holes in the ground.”

Nate reached around and pulled the hoop off the wall. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the porch and laid the hoop in front of himself. He wanted it there just so he could look at it and touch it while he listened. Henry and Jim Frank looked at it and nodded. They understood.

“Well, your granddaddy would usually take two or three of us young fellows with him when he felt like exploring. I guess we were your age.”

Nate felt even more connected now to the hoop and drew it closer to himself.

“He’d take some carbide lamps and other stuff from the railroad equipment shed—they had lots of stuff for working in tunnels—and we’d dive down into these old caves around the area.”

“What’s a carbide lamp?” Nate asked. He’d been well trained in his Saturday rides with his Uncle Henry to ask leading questions.

“Carbide’s a crystal kind of stuff,” Jim Frank said. “Drop it in water and it gives off a gas that burns with a bright light. Coal miners and tunnelers used these carbide lamps to light their way underground before there was battery-powered lamps. You’d fill the lamp with water and drop some carbide in it. There was a little pin valve where you could regulate how much gas flowed out, and you’d light the gas there. You could adjust the brightness of the lamp by regulating the flow of the gas.”

“Like a kerosene lantern,” Nate said.

“Yeah, but safer and easier,” Jim Frank replied, “Because you didn’t have to lug any fuel around, just a small can of carbide and some water. Anyway, your granddaddy would bring some of these lamps home with him sometimes, and he’d take some of us caving.”

“Did Seth, Louis, or Gabriel ever go,” Henry asked.

“They were too small,” Jim Frank said. “Mrs. Tillman would never allow it. She said it was bad enough to have to clean the cave mud out of her husband’s clothes without having to clean up a bunch of small boys, too. Mainly, though, I think she was worried that something would happen to them.”

Jim Frank continued with the story. “Three of us went out with him that last time: me, Jeremiah Lightcap, and Luther Hanley. You know Jeremiah Lightcap, Nate, that’s Doc Lightcap. You probably don’t remember Luther Hanley, he’s been long gone out of Davis Corners for awhile now, but you know his youngest boy, Grub.”

Nate was awestruck. He never would have imagined those three people being associated with each other, nevertheless with his grandfather. Jim Frank saw his open mouth.

“I know it’s hard to imagine the town doctor and the town junkman being friends when they were boys, but we were. Jeremiah wasn’t much to speak of back then. It wasn’t until after your granddaddy died that Jeremiah got serious about his own life. As for Luther, none of us liked him. He was mean spirited, but your granddaddy was a nice fellow who wouldn’t turn anybody away.

“It was a real hot day in August and we thought we’d just do some light exploring, you know, just to get into the coolness of the caves, more than anything. There was no air conditioning back then, and caves stay at sixty-something degrees all the time. It was a great way to cool down in summer.”

As Nate listened to Jim Frank, he remembered how he and his parents used to go to the movies on Saturdays at the Roxy when it was the only air-conditioned building in town. He could imagine the cool air of the caves and how his granddaddy and Jim Frank probably felt when they got down deep enough to feel it.

“We poked around in this one cave for awhile when your granddaddy suggested we explore Iron Hoop on the way back. Iron Hoop was a tough cave, a long crawl on your belly getting in and a lot of tight squeezes along the way. It opened up real nice after a quarter mile or so and was your granddaddy’s favorite cave because not many people ever went there. That tough crawl at the beginning kept them away, I reckon.

“We drove over to Iron Hoop, and your granddaddy went right in and the rest of us crawled after him. We all worked up a sweat getting through the first set of squeezes and were sitting around letting the chill of the cave set in when your granddaddy spotted something he’d never seen before. In the bottom of this bowl-like depression we were sitting in was a tiny opening between two rocks. He told us he thought it could lead to a big chamber. Your granddaddy was always pushing through small crawl-ways, looking for big rooms no one had ever discovered before. Jeremiah asked your granddaddy why he thought so.

“’Look around,’ your granddaddy told him. Me, Luther, and Jeremiah all looked. It was mostly mud and rock, the usual cave stuff—a little damper maybe—but there were all these leaves and acorns on the floor.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Same question I asked your granddaddy,” Jim Frank said. “Your granddaddy laughed at me and said they had to come from up top, unless we remembered passing any oak trees since we climbed in there. So I asked how they got down into the cave.

“He explained to us that the cave must flood when it rained and the water carried the leaves and acorns down there.

“Jeremiah asked him where the water went and your granddaddy smiled and pointed to the crack between the two rocks. ‘It’s got to go down there,’ he said, and that’s why he believed there was a chamber if we squeezed far enough.

“Well, none of us boys were real excited about going down that little crack, but your granddaddy was all determined to push it and find that chamber. We told him we’d wait while he explored it first. That’s all it took for your granddaddy, once he saw that we were scared, it made him all the more determined to do it himself. He backed into the crack. Your granddaddy always backed through the tight spaces, said there was less chance of getting trapped that way, God rest his soul.”

Jim Frank drank slowly from the Pabst Blue Ribbon can, as if in memorial to Nate’s grandfather.

“We kept hollering to him to make sure he was all right. He’d got about fifteen feet in when we heard a muffled sound like one or two rocks moving. We heard your granddaddy cuss so we figured he was all right. It made us giggle to hear him swear. Your granddaddy was a righteous man.”

That made Nate remember something his Uncle Henry had told him on one of their Saturday rides. The ash from his Pall Mall had gone down his shirt when he tried to flick it out the open window. He had said “goddamn” as it burned his neck. Nate had never heard him curse before, and his astonishment had shown.

“Don’t be a man who curses loosely,” Henry had said, “Otherwise you won’t have anything to say when something really pisses you off, like a piece of fire blowing down your neck.”

As Nate listened to Jim Frank’s story, it struck him that his grandfather was probably glad he’d saved his cuss words for then.

“We hollered down to him to see if he was okay and to find out what had happened, and he called back to us that he was stuck.” Jim Frank stopped and drew hard on the Pall Mall. “We all kind of laughed at the idea of him being stuck. The idea that he might be in any kind of danger hadn’t struck any of us. We sobered up, though, when we realized that at least one of us was going to have to go in and help him. I guess we all realized it at the same time and quit laughing. Finally, Jeremiah said he’d go down and get him out. He slithered into the crack headfirst, pushing his carbide lamp and a coil of rope ahead of him. All we heard for the longest time was huffing and groaning and cuss words. None of it seemed funny anymore; we were getting scared.

“Luther was a regular pain in the ass during all of this, going on about how your granddaddy was trapped and wasn’t ever going to get out and describing how he’d die slow and miserable. He kept saying as how your granddaddy was bat-food for sure. I was just about to hit him when we saw Jeremiah’s feet pop out of the crack. We pulled the rest of him out and asked how things looked.

“He said fine but that your granddaddy had got himself stuck good. It seemed that as your granddaddy was backing through a tight squeeze, he kicked a big rock loose and it wedged right behind his knee so he couldn’t straighten his leg out. With his leg cocked like that, he couldn’t go further in or pull himself out. Jeremiah said that the rock had slipped in there like the last piece of a puzzle and had locked him in just as pretty as you please.

“I asked Jeremiah what we were going to do and Luther Hanley kept saying it didn’t make any difference, your granddaddy was bat-food for sure. Jeremiah said we were going to have to dig him out. I said I’d go get picks and shovels, but Jeremiah said there wasn’t enough room to swing a pick and it was too rocky for shovels. He told me to go get a hammer and some chisels, that’s all there’d be room for.”

“We took turns for four hours chipping away in that crawl hole. It was terrible, just getting to your granddaddy was hard. Once we reached him, there was hardly any room to move or get a good swing with the hammer. You were really just swinging with your wrist so you couldn’t put any strength in it. The rock around him was hard too, and wasn’t giving in any. Finally, we realized it was more than we were going to be able to get done, so we decided to go to town for help. We got out of the cave and it was almost dark. Jeremiah told Luther to stay and keep animals out of the cave and to keep checking on your granddaddy. He told me to get to town and let the sheriff know what had happened. He said he was going to see Mrs. Tillman to let her know and to get some food and blankets. I drove your granddaddy’s car into town, and Jeremiah ran over to see your grandmother. We were only about a mile and a half from your granddaddy’s farm. None of us envied him the job of telling her what was going on.

“Well, the sheriff got a bunch of men together as a rescue team and we headed back to Iron Hoop. Word got around pretty good and by ten that night, half the town was out at the cave. There were torches and campfires everywhere. It looked like a carnival. It turned out that none of the men could fit into the crawl space where your granddaddy was trapped, so me and Jeremiah were the ones who had to keep going in. We still didn’t make any headway, but we got food and water to your granddaddy and got a blanket around his shoulders to keep him warm.”

“How was my granddaddy during all this?”

“Sometimes his spirits were high, and he’d be optimistic and joking about how stupid it was to get stuck and how embarrassed he was that everyone from town would be outside the cave when he came out. Other times, he’d get sullen and quiet. A cave’s a cold, clammy place to be stuck in. It’ll get you down. For a while he just quit talking altogether. He had this one outburst of anger while I was picking at the rock. It scared me, I thought a chip had hit him in the eye or something. He screamed and cussed and thrashed real hard and I thought for a moment his rage would shake him free.”

Jim Frank paused, with a far-away look.

“It didn’t. He got real quiet after that and then looked up at me. It was the last thing I was ever going to hear him say. He smiled and said real soft, ‘It’s the cruel indifference of it that gets me’.”

“What’d he mean?”

Jim Frank stroked his pointed chin and said, “I’ve wondered about that a lot. I think he meant that he could’ve understood it better if the cave would’ve had a mind and had been out to get him or if some mean person had pushed the rock. That way, at least, there would’ve been a reason he was going to die, even if a bad one. As it was, it had nothing to do with him. He was dying at the hands of dumb luck and laws of nature, and neither even knew or cared that he existed.”

After a pause and a heavy sigh, Jim Frank said, “I left him sleeping and went up top to take my turn resting. It had turned daylight, but it was a grim and gray daylight. A storm was moving in and folks were packing up and heading back to town. I couldn’t find Jeremiah. Luther Hanley said he’d gone to see Mrs. Tillman. She had the kids to tend and couldn’t come to the cave. Luther was grinning and pointing at the thunderclouds rolling in. ‘Going to get wet and deep down there when that downpour hits,’ the sonofabitch said, while grinning about it. I was just about to hit him for sure when Jeremiah showed up. He was breathing heavy and looking at the clouds. Apparently he’d run all the way from Mrs. Tillman’s. He had a canvas satchel over his shoulder. He said we had to try one more time to get him out before it rained. I swear he had no more said it when a big clap of thunder shook us and it started raining. It was a doozy, too. You could tell it was going to come down in a big way. Jeremiah gave me the satchel and told me to bring it. He grabbed the tools and headed into the cave. For some reason I grabbed the iron hoop on the way in and brought it with me, so I gave the satchel to Luther Hanley to carry.

“We got down to the crack where your granddaddy was, and Jeremiah asked me for the satchel. I turned and then realized that Luther Hanley wasn’t there. By that time, water was starting to come in and flow down the crack. I heard your granddaddy moan. Jeremiah gave me a real mean look for not having the satchel and started backing down into the crack. I begged him not to go. I’m sorry, but I figured your granddaddy was a goner for sure and I didn’t want to lose Jeremiah. Our own situation in that cave wasn’t all that safe either, with the water already starting to come in. Jeremiah told me he was going to have your granddaddy grab his legs and that he was going to crawl out with your granddaddy hanging onto him.

“He was down there forever, and I could hear them both struggling and hollering with the effort. Then I heard the water coming. I hollered to Jeremiah to get out of there. It hit like someone had opened up the gates of a dam. It went from a trickle to a torrent in seconds, all of it pouring down that crack. All I could do was reach down the crack and hope I could help Jeremiah out. I still had that iron hoop, so I shoved it down the crack and held on for dear life. Finally I felt Jeremiah grab onto it, and I pulled with everything I had left. Out he came, but alone.”

Nate just sat there a moment. His grandfather had drowned, stuck hopelessly and meaninglessly in Iron Hoop Cave. He shivered, even though it was a hot afternoon on Jim Frank’s porch.

“We barely got back to the top ourselves. The sheriff asked us how it was and Jeremiah told him everything was all under water.”

“Jeremiah asked me what the hell had happened to the satchel. I told him I’d given it to Luther to carry, so I could bring down the iron hoop. Seeing as how the hoop had helped save his life, there wasn’t much he could say to me about it. We looked for Luther Hanley, but he was long gone.”

“What was in the satchel?”

“Honestly don’t know,” Jim Frank said. “I asked Jeremiah and he said he didn’t know either, but I think he did.”

“What happened after that?” Henry said. “What did you do about his body?”

“After the storm, we tried to go down, but the crawl-way had caved in. Your granddaddy’s buried in Iron Hoop Cave,” Jim Frank told Nate. “Some men from the railroad sealed it up a few days later, and nobody’s been down it since. I kept the iron hoop, so I reckon nobody even knows where the cave is anymore.”

Nate picked up the hoop and felt its coolness. He wondered if part of the cave’s coolness had soaked into it. He turned it full circle through his hands, so he’d be sure to touch where Jeremiah Lightcap had grabbed it for his life’s sake.

“Thank you,” Nate said.

Chapter 7

Chapter 5: Washington

2009-06-07T02:30:00.000-07:00

The rest of the week dragged out for Nate. At school, all the students’ minds were on the upcoming summer vacation, and the teachers were just plain worn down from the year. They weakly pretended to teach, and the kids, in turn, checked their behavior just short of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Saturday eventually came and brought Nate's Uncle Henry and the yellow Cadillac to carry him to Jim Frank’s place for the afternoon. At Thompson’s, Nate was filling up the gas tank and Henry was inside visiting with Hank Thompson when Maddie Flanagan’s heavy, blue Chevy skidded in, nearly taking out Nate, the Caddy, and the two gas pumps. The Chevy came to rest next to the number two pump in a rolling cloud of oyster-shell dust. Maddie looked at Nate and casually spit a stream of tobacco juice into the crushed oyster shells.

Hank Thompson strolled out of his store with Henry close behind. Maddie’s unorthodox approaches were routine, but not devoid of interest nor undeserving of comment.

“Nice landing,” Hank said. “You know, a lesser person would’ve slowed down before turning off the highway into where flammable liquids are stored and dispensed in large quantities.” The oyster-shell dust swirled for a few more seconds and then settled down. “I’m surprised Plastic Jesus there doesn’t have one hand over his eyes.”

Maddie leaned her head out the window and spit another stream of tobacco juice into the ground. She just stared back openly at Hank Thompson.

He continued. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find him hitchhiking on the side of road one day, tuckered out from the stress of riding with you.”

Maddie idly rubbed some dust off the statuette. “Me and Plastic Jesus do fine.” She swung the door open and lifted her legs out, dropping them heavily onto the ground.

“You ought to think about getting rid of that car and getting an automatic,” Henry said. “That clutch has to be tough on your...” he paused.

“Old legs,” Maddie finished the sentence for him. “Sound like Doc Lightcap.”

“You been to see the doctor?” Hank Thompson sounded concerned.

“You a cop?” Maddie sat and rested from the strain of putting her legs out. “Yeah, I seen the doctor.”

“What’d he say?”

“None of your damn business.” Maddie shifted herself forward and spit some more tobacco juice.

Hank Thompson waited. Maddie had a way of being contrary. If someone asked her the time of day, she’d probably tell them to go to hell, then say it was three o’clock.

“He said I’m old and might not get much older, then he charged me five dollars. Give me a dollar’s worth of gas while I use your rest room.”

She got out slowly and shuffled heavily to the side of the building where the rest rooms were.

“I can get it,” Nate said. The Caddy’s tank was full so Nate called out the total to Hank Thompson, who went back inside with Henry. Nate pumped a dollar’s worth into Maddie’s car.

Maddie came back while Nate was putting the cap back on the tank. “That’ll be a dollar.”

Maddie gave Nate that same open, blank look she’d given Hank Thompson earlier. “I know how much a dollar’s worth costs,” she said while making a taunting face at him.

She shoved a crumpled dollar at Nate, started the Bel-Air’s engine, and jerked out onto State Road Forty-one without looking. A chicken truck coming the other way honked and swerved, just barely missing her and sending a black man, who was walking on the shoulder, diving for safety into the nearby ditch.

Hank Thompson came out again. “Damn, that old gal’s going to blow my place up one day.”

The chicken truck was still slightly careening as the driver brought it back under control.

“There’s a man in the ditch over there,” Nate said.

“Good Lord,” Hank Thompson said,” She’s killed someone.”

Nate was about to say that he didn’t think so when the man’s head appeared.

“You okay,” Hank asked.

The man carefully inventoried himself. He was dressed in a well-fitting, black suit, and he carried a worn, but expensive, leather suitcase. In fact, everything about him seemed to be high quality and expensive. He pulled out a white handkerchief and dusted off his polished shoes.

Hank Thompson pulled up mid-stride and stood, taking the stranger in. “That was Maddie Flanagan. She’s kind of a terror on wheels.”

The black man spoke in a soft, refined voice, and merely said an exaggerated “Oh” as if Hank’s explanation made everything perfectly clear.

Hank Thompson laughed awkwardly, realizing that if someone had just nearly been impaled on the grill of a chicken truck, the explanation left a little to be desired. “Okay?”

“I seem to be in one piece,” the soft, refined tone replied. “Excuse me, sir, I’m new in town and could benefit from knowing where people of color gather and where work may be found.”

Nate was fascinated by the man and the way he spoke. He wasn’t like anyone Nate had ever seen or heard before. The black man spoke respectfully to Hank Thompson, but maintained his own sense of dignity throughout.

“What’s your name?” Hank said.

The stranger started to answer, then paused, wondering how this related to his question, then answered, “Washington.” It wasn’t clear if that was his first or last name.

“What work do you do,” Hank Thompson asked.

The black man smiled. “I’m a gentleman’s gentleman, currently without gentleman.”

Hank Thompson’s face was blank.

“That’s to say, I’m an unemployed butler and chauffeur.”

Hank Thompson chuckled and Henry laughed outright.

“Not much butlering to be had in Davis Corners,” Hank Thompson said, “But you can find the colored section of town just on the other side of Governor Street, about three miles down this road.”

“I’m not limited to butlering,” Washington said, pausing a little around the word ‘butlering.’ “Any enterprise requiring a man of social manners and the ability to maintain its vehicles would be appropriate.”

Hank Thompson looked back at Henry and both men shrugged.

“Three miles down, ’cross Governor Street, maybe somebody there’ll be able to help,” Hank said.

Hank Thompson and Henry went back inside.

Nate thought that Washington looked hot standing on the side of the road, dressed in black. “Want some water?”

Washington crossed the road. “Yes, thank you.”

Nate liked him. He liked the way Washington had kept the upper hand in the conversation without getting Hank Thompson mad at him. Nate thought about his encounter with Grandmother Tillman on Sunday and was now embarrassed by the position he had taken about Jim Frank’s statue.

Nate turned on the faucet and picked up the hose used to fill radiators. He let some water run out until it turned cool. Meanwhile, he made a paper cup by folding over the bottom of one of the disposable oil funnels Hank Thompson kept out by the pumps and filled it for Washington. Washington seemed not only grateful for the water but also appreciative of how Nate had avoided the indignity of making him drink from the hose.

“What happened to your gentleman?”

“A grand jury indicted him and froze his funds. Wealth ill-gotten is precariously kept.”

“Aren’t any rich folks in Davis Corners,” Nate said.

“Yes, well, the service industry certainly is depressed these days by the absence of those willing and able to pay to be served.”

Nate laughed.

“I amuse you?”

Nate blushed. He hadn’t meant to make fun. “No, well yeah. I mean it’s just I never heard anyone talk like you. You talk so fancy and all.”

Washington raised one eyebrow. He was tempted to probe whether his being black made it amusing to Nate. He sipped on the water and let it go, instead.

“Perhaps there’s a museum or some kind of cultural center here,” Washington said.

“Not in Davis Corners.” Nate thought for a few minutes. “You fix cars?”

“Maintain them would be a more accurate description. I can tune an engine, change the oil, and keep a vehicle looking like something you’d want to be seen in.” Washington sounded nostalgic. “But I’m not a mechanic, if that’s what you were asking.”

“Sounds like you like working around nice cars.”

“There’s so little quality and craftsmanship left, so little that’s of value.” Washington let out a sigh. “A luxury automobile is about the last example of where aesthetics and engineering come together to create true elegance.”

“You mean like my uncle’s Cadillac?”

“The Cadillac is a fine car, but it’s the low end of what I’m talking about.” Wahington’s face lit up. “I’ve driven Cadillacs, Bentleys, and Rolls Royces. All the top-of-the-line limousines, I’ve driven them.”

“Ever wish they were yours?” Nate said.

“No one owns quality. You can experience it, appreciate it, and take care of it, but nobody can own it. Most of the people I drove for never appreciated what they had. For one thing, they were riding. A person riding can’t know how smooth the gears shift or how well the vehicle handles. They’re riding, thinking about other things, not concentrating on the road and the vehicle.”

Washington finished the water and carefully disposed of the cup. He gave Nate a look that invited any more questions or suggestions.

“I hope you find a new job,” Nate said.

“Thank you.”

Washington turned and starting walking in the direction Hank Thompson had pointed him.

Nate got an idea. “Wanamaker’s.”

Washington turned and looked at Nate.

“It’s the funeral home,” Nate said. “They have big cars and everyone’s always dressed up nice like you.”

“Funeral home,” Washington said, his refined voice now having a thoughtful, or perhaps rueful, tone. “And where might I find Wanamaker’s?”

“Same direction,” Nate said. “You’ll pass it before you get to Governor Street.”

“Well, thank you, young man,” he said and headed toward town.

Nate watched him for a while as he walked away, getting smaller and smaller the farther he got. He wondered if Washington would find work in as unlikely a place as Davis Corners or would he just keep drifting on. Nate thought that if he kept drifting, he’d just keep getting smaller and smaller, as he was doing now, until he would just disappear altogether.

Henry slammed open the screen door and strolled out with his cigarettes and beer in a brown bag. “We’re burning junk time, let’s roll.”

Chapter 6

Chapter 4: Grub and Maddie

2009-06-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

Nate actually looked forward to going to school on Monday. At first recess, he grabbed his friend, Freddie Edwards, and told him about the serving-spoon beating Grandmother Tillman had given his Uncle Henry the night before. Freddie had pale freckles and straw-like hair that clumped in patches all over his head. Like Nate, he was scrawny and awkward, so their friendship was unencumbered by distractions, such as playing sports or spending time with girls. Nate also tried to retell the story of Old Redemption, but it didn’t seem as good as when his Uncle Henry had told it.

“Think your grandmother would’ve shot Mr. Thornton if he’d dropped Old Redemption into the river?”

“No doubt in my mind,” Nate said. “You should’ve seen her with my uncle. If she could get that mad with family just over a word, I know she could’ve shot Ricky Thornton over a dog.”

Margaret Haynes walked by and Nate froze for a moment, thinking she was going to say something to him. Margaret was just breaking into puberty. In the last few months, she had shot up several inches so that she was now a little taller than Nate. Other changes in her body were just beginning to show, and Nate was surprised by his recent fascination with her. She walked right past him and Freddie as if they were old, familiar billboards along a country road, paying just enough attention to avoid collision and no more.

Freddie saw the anticipation rise up in Nate and then dissipate. “Dream on,” he said after Margaret had passed.

Nate shrugged. “Just wish I knew what I was dreaming about.”

Nate and Freddie admitted their ignorance about sex only between themselves. Around the other boys, they laughed at all the jokes and innuendoes as if they knew what they meant. The week before, Bill VanDiver had asked Freddie which had more hair in it, his comb or his toothbrush. All the other boys had laughed and so Nate and Freddie had joined in. Only later did they admit that they had no idea what he’d meant.

All of a sudden, a hand grabbed Nate’s shoulder. “Hey, butthole, what’re you looking at?”

Nate jumped reflexively. It was Grub Hanley, the school bully, an eighth grader going on sixteen. He rarely showed up at school, and when he did, it was usually to extort lunch money or inflict pain on the other kids.

“Slug for flinching.” Grub promptly hit Nate on the arm.

Nobody knew what Grub’s real first name was. It actually might have been Grub, after all, his family was the low-life of Davis Corners and could’ve conceivably christened a child after insect larva. He was a big boy with black, greasy hair and the wispy start of a mustache. His clothes were soiled and smelly, and half a shirttail was always hanging out. Time with Grub was time spent wishing you were somewhere else.

“Got any money?”

“Pick on the little kids,” Nate said. He hoped that Margaret Haynes had moved on and wasn’t watching.

“Hey, butthole,” Grub said, while putting Nate in a headlock, “I asked if you had any money.”

Grub called everybody “butthole” and only “butthole” and repeatedly “butthole.” It wasn’t so much that it was his favorite insult, it was more likely the only insult his limited brain capacity could store. Over the years of being bullied by Grub, Nate had acquired a distaste for the word equal to Grandmother Tillman’s distaste for the disputed phrase about Jim Frank’s statue.

“Don’t have any money,” Nate gasped out through the choke hold.

“Purple tittie-twister.” Grub reached inside Nate’s shirt and twisted his nipple.

“Stop it.” Nate sounded like he was going to cry.

“How ’bout a squirrel, butthole?”

Being ‘squirreled’ consisted of a boy having his testicles jostled and squeezed until he threw up.

“Got a dollar in my pocket,” Nate said right away.

Grub frisked Nate’s pockets and took the dollar. He gave Nate’s nipple one last twist and let him go.

“You’re such a butthole,” he said and left.

“Why do I take that crap?” Nate said. He was just barely holding back his tears.

“Because he’d kill you if you didn’t,” Freddie said. “He’s bigger than you. What can you do?”

Nate thought about his grandmother. She was smaller than Ricky Thornton and smaller than Uncle Henry, yet she’d stood up to them. She wouldn’t have let Grub Hanley bully her. Nate knew if he talked to his parents they’d just tell him to notify one of the teachers. The teachers wouldn’t do anything, they were just as scared of Grub as he was. He wondered what Grandmother Tillman would’ve done.
---
Across town, Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap was worrying about a different kind of bully. This one was a disease with a long, fancy name and was holding a woman named Maddie Flanagan in something stronger than a headlock. Actually, it was killing her, and this morning, Doctor Lightcap had to be the one to tell her.

Jeremiah Lightcap ran a simple, family practice, mostly giving out shots, delivering babies, and mending people’s parts that got torn or broken. Debilitating nerve diseases weren’t part of his mainstay, and he had checked his test results and diagnosis with some of his more sophisticated colleagues in Birmingham. Everyone had concurred.

Maddie Flanagan was a no-nonsense woman, somewhere in her fifties, and plain as a gray, weathered board. She was every bit as strong as Grandmother Tillman, but with none of her graciousness. “Tough old gal” is how Jeremiah Lightcap had described her over the phone to one of the other doctors. Not quite tough enough he thought as he looked over his notes and got ready for his appointment with her.

“Morning, Maddie,” he said as he walked into his office where she was waiting.

Maddie said nothing in return. It was obvious what part of the day it was, and besides, she was there to get information, not give it.

Jeremiah laid it all out for her in about three sentences. She was sick, she was getting sicker, and she was going to die and nobody could do anything about any of it.

Maddie stared straight at him while he spoke and took it in. “You lay it on the line, Doc, I’ll give you that,” she said when he was done.

Jeremiah Lightcap was noted for that. He was almost cynical in his dogged obsession with the literal truth. This trait didn’t make him popular. He was a man who’d say another man was wrong if he was, and he’d tell someone they looked silly if they did. On the other hand, he was Davis Corners’ final arbiter when objectivity was needed. Whatever else, Jeremiah Lightcap was a man who wouldn’t lie about anything.

“I can recommend some medication that will comfort the symptoms, but that’s all I’m going to be able to do.” His voice was kind, and it softened the starkness of his words. “I want you to make appointments with my nurse to come in every three weeks.”

Maddie looked at him with her own silent brand of cynicism. The only reason she was here was because her situation was desperate. She had come in for the first time a month ago when the sluggishness in her legs had gotten to the point where she was having trouble walking and even driving her car. If he wasn’t going to be any real help, she wasn’t going to waste her time coming back.

Maddie left the office and struggled back into her blue, ’53 Chevy Bel-Air. She adjusted the plastic statue of Jesus on the dashboard and said a quiet prayer. Maddie’s plastic Jesus was a familiar sight around Davis Corners. It was one of those religious statuettes with magnets in the feet, popular when cars had lots of steel and people had lots of faith. There weren’t many of them around any more, a sign of declining metal content in cars or in people’s faith. At any rate, between Maddie Flanagan and her Bel-Air, there were plenty of both, so plastic Jesus rode where the view was good. She wondered why he let her get into this mess and if, somehow, he’d get her out.

Jeremiah Lightcap waited a few minutes before seeing his next patient. He parted the curtains in his office and watched Maddie get into her car. He watched her adjust the plastic Jesus and he wondered if her faith was helping her take the news. He envied people with faith, he had none himself. His last attempt at it had been many years before and had left him disappointed.

He picked up the phone and called the school, the same one Nate attended. He asked for Elaine Collins, the principal.

“Elaine Collins here, how can I help you?”

“It’s me,” he said.

“Is everything okay?” It was unusual for Jeremiah to call her at school.

“Yes, everything’s fine. Just doing yucky stuff.”

It was all Elaine could do to suppress a chuckle. Here was a fifty-something-year old doctor using the word “yucky.” She knew it must be something emotional. Jeremiah was beyond being bothered by blood and bodily functions.

“Would you like to come over tonight?” Elaine said.

“I have to make a run to the hospital. After eight okay?”

“I’ll make us some dinner, bring a bottle of wine.”

Jeremiah rarely reached out. Elaine doubted that he’d open up about whatever it was that had bothered him enough for him to call. Still, she liked being there for him, even if it meant just being company.

Jeremiah showed up at eight-thirty with a bottle of wine someone had given him for Christmas. He didn’t know much about wine.

“It’s red,” he said, “I hope that’s okay.”

“Cork, no screw-top? Good boy.” Elaine put the bottle on the table. “I made roast, red is perfect.”

Jeremiah joined Elaine in the kitchen. “Dating on a school night, will the neighbors talk?”

Davis Corners was a small town. Everyone knew the town doctor was seeing the elementary school principal. Still, they were careful how they conducted themselves, in public and in private. They were friends, sweethearts even, but they had not become lovers.

“Long as we stay in the kitchen and living room and walk past the windows periodically, we should be okay.”

They both laughed. They were middle-aged professionals, and this small-town attention about their relationship seemed so adolescent.

“You sounded down on the phone today.” Elaine opened up the channel in case Jeremiah wanted to talk.

Jeremiah poured some wine and let it bite for a minute on the tip of his tongue. “Terminal patient. A doctor’s so damn useless in something like that.”

Elaine knew not to ask who. Had they been married, she felt Jeremiah could confide more freely. As it was, it would be a breach in the doctor-patient confidentiality for him to say.

“How’d they take it?”

“Okay, so far, but sometimes it takes a couple of days to sink in.”

“How’re you taking it?” she said.

“I’m a doctor, I deal with it. It’s part of the job.”

He took another sip of wine, this time a little deeper than before. Elaine knew this was as much as he was going to say. Even though it weighed on him, talking about it was not his way of dealing with it. She sometimes wished they were lovers, then she’d have a way to help, and he’d have a way to reach out without talking. Unusual, she thought, that she was the one who was ready and he was the reluctant one.

Jeremiah had certainly thought often about their becoming lovers. Issues of morality and reputations aside, he was afraid that being intimate with her would open up more than he wanted to let go.

So they ate dinner, instead, and talked about things that didn’t matter. He kissed her good-night under the front porch light and drove home.

Chapter 5

Chapter 3: Jim Frank's Statue

2009-06-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

Dinner that Sunday was one of the family’s favorites: chicken-in-rice, heavily seasoned with black pepper, with succotash as the vegetable and freshly baked buttermilk biscuits. Conversation was largely chitchat, nothing unusual, until dessert was served. Dessert was homemade apple pie, courtesy of Hattie, who suddenly turned the conversation to local gossip.

“I heard the strangest thing about one of the waitresses who works at Cole’s,” she said.

Henry brightened. “Edna McElroy?”

Hattie shot an inquisitive glare his way. “Why, there must be a dozen waitresses out there at some time or another. Why did this Edna McElroy’s name come to you so quickly?” She recharged for a moment. “And why are you so familiar with the last names of waitresses out there? To my recollection they only have their first names on their name tags.”

“I was just guessing, just trying to take part in the conversation.”

“Not everything that goes on at Cole’s involves that McElroy woman and not every conversation needs your taking part in it.”

“Well, who was it about, then?” Seth said.

“Edna McElroy.” Hattie shot one more look at her husband. “I heard that you can hardly get around her trailer because she’s got these stacks and stacks of telephone books.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Grandmother Tillman said.

“From Betty Talmedge. Her husband went out there to unclog a sink for her. He has a maintenance contract with the trailer park. He told Betty that there must be phone books from about two-hundred different cities, all stacked up inside the trailer.”

“I wonder where she got them,” Gabriel’s wife, Mary, asked.

Nate wondered to himself why she had them.

“She has her truck driver friends pick them up for her,” Hattie said, with a slight sideways kick to her jaw and an arch to her eyebrows.

“Why would she collect telephone books?” Grandmother Tillman said.

Nate perked up, hoping the conversation would go in that direction.

“Think she has that many truck driver friends?” Nate’s mother said.

“Gracious,” Hattie said, “I’d think she’s the Teamsters’ calendar girl by this time.”

Everyone at the table laughed.

Grandmother Tillman said, “I’ve always believed that a life of too much partying somehow masks a broken heart. Instead of gossiping about the poor girl, we should feel sorry for her.”

Grandmother Tillman passed a sweeping glance across the entire table, lingering for a moment on her daughter Hattie. “I think the poor thing is pitiful.”

Halfway working on a bite of pie, Henry drawled, “Personally, I think she’s happier ‘n Jim Frank’s nigger.”

Everyone cringed. Hattie’s mouth dropped open.

“Henry Givens,” Grandmother Tillman’s voice was sharp and scolding. “Don’t you ever use that word in my house. There are two words I won’t abide under my roof and that one’s by far the worse.”

“It’s just a phrase. Everybody in the county says it,” Henry said.

That was nearly true. The phrase had been around Davis Corners for as long as that statue had been in Jim Frank’s front yard.

“No disrespect is intended to colored people.” Henry said.

“How can you say no disrespect is intended,” Grandmother Tillman said, “When the word itself is so horribly vulgar and that dreadful statue’s a disgraceful caricature meant to poke fun at a whole race?”

In spite of her fully Southern upbringing, Grandmother Tillman was Davis Corners’ resident liberal, especially on the issue of race. It was not so much a social issue with her as it was just about treating people right. Her husband had been killed in an accident when their children were still young, and Grandmother Tillman had made do as a single mother raising a family and managing a farm. She knew firsthand the hardships of being poor and fighting stereotypes.

“That’s not fair,” Henry said. “You know I don’t harbor a thing against colored people. It’s just an expressive phrase for certain things.”

Everyone at the table knew Henry was in a losing battle and wished he’d drop it before it got any worse. Anyone raised by Grandmother Tillman knew there would be no compromising on this issue. Henry had married into the family decades ago, but obviously hadn’t caught on yet.

“I assure you I don’t know what you mean,” Grandmother Tillman said.

“Well, it just calls to mind that boy so happy to be sitting there fishing in the dirt, without any chance of catching anything,” Henry said. “If you mean it in a nice way, it means someone is making the best out of a bad situation. In an ugly way, it means they’re too stupid to know any better.”

“You can say something else,” Grandmother Tillman said. “You can say ‘happier than a pig in mud’.”

“But that statue of the boy fishing in the dirt is such a visual metaphor,” Henry said. He hoped the intellectual sound of ‘visual metaphor’ would add some legitimacy to his argument.

“If you must refer to that wretched statue, say ‘happier than Jim Frank’s lad’ or something like that.”

“It wouldn’t be as good.” Henry was almost pouting.

“I don’t see why not,” Grandmother Tillman said, in a tone that meant the subject was closed.

“It just doesn’t smack,” Nate said mostly to himself, just barely loud enough for anybody to hear. In the silence following Grandmother Tillman’s last remark, however, everybody did.

The whole family looked at him as if he were the deaf-mute child who had just spoken for the first time. Sylvia’s mouth dropped open this time. She was mortified by her son’s outspoken behavior.

“Excuse me?” Grandmother Tillman said.

Nate was as surprised as everyone else by his statement. He realized, though, that there was no turning back now, so he continued.

“Just doesn’t smack. The original phrase smacks of something. I don’t know how to explain it, but saying ‘happier than Jim Frank’s lad’ doesn’t smack. It’d be like taking the black pepper out of the chicken-in-rice, it just wouldn’t smack.”

“Fine,” Grandmother Tillman said. She was not used to having her language corrected by anyone, certainly not by a child. “What would you say?”

After a long pause, Nate shrugged and said, “I guess I’d just leave it at happier ‘n Jim Frank’s nigger.”

Grandmother Tillman’s face went white with rage. She reached out with the long serving spoon and rapped first Nate and then Henry on the knuckles. “There,” she said to Henry, “You’ve got the children saying it in my house.”

The rap caught Henry by surprise. “Shit!” he said.

That was the other word Grandmother Tillman wouldn’t abide. A general melee broke out that consisted of Grandmother Tillman beating her son-in-law with the spoon, while Sylvia grabbed Nate by his ear.

“I’ll give you something that smacks,” Sylvia kept saying to her son.

Meanwhile the other cousins were herded into their cars and taken home.

During the ride back to town, Sylvia Williams went on, asking Nate whatever had possessed him to talk like that to his grandmother, and did he have any idea how embarrassed she was. All the chewing-outs Nate ever got from his mother eventually came back to that one theme: how she’d been made to look bad in front of others. Nate’s father was characteristically silent.

Nate himself wondered what had gotten into him. Tonight was probably only the second time in his life he had ever said that word, and the first time had gotten him royally spanked. Grandmother Tillman had ingrained a revulsion for that word in her children and her grandchildren. Obviously, she had not been as effective with her son-in-law Henry. To Nate, though, it just didn’t seem so bad in the context of Jim Frank’s statue, and that’s why he had come to his Uncle Henry’s defense. The way he saw it, the phrase dealt only with Jim Frank’s statue, not with black people in general.

A duplicate version of the same conversation was occurring in the yellow Cadillac.

“I can’t believe you said that word in my mother’s house,” Hattie said.

“Which one?” Henry felt a bump rising on his head where Grandmother Tillman had landed a particularly hard knock with the spoon.

“Either. You can save that trash talk for when you go to the junkyard and smoke cigarettes and drink beer.” Hattie glared at Henry.

“It’s just a phrase. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“We heard your explanation at dinner. Maybe that waitress at Cole’s finds that kind of talk cute, but in my family, we find it rude and vulgar.”

Henry kept quiet. Not only was he in the doghouse, this one was split-level. On one level was the language, on another was Miss Edna. It was times like these that made him long for a dis-sanctuary.

Nate got home and retreated to his room. As he lay in bed, he thought about Grandmother Tillman pointing a gun at Ricky Thornton. Before witnessing her confrontation with his Uncle Henry at the dinner table, Nate would’ve said that Grandmother Tillman had obviously been bluffing with the gun that day. He had seen an anger and resolve in her eyes tonight, though, the same that Ricky Thornton must have seen, and was now willing to bet that she’d have shot him.

Chapter 4

Chapter 2: Grandmother Tillman's Place

2009-06-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

Outside of Davis Corners, Gray’s Road crossed the Sawatassee River on a sturdy, two-lane, wooden bridge. This intersection marked the border where town turned to country, and just beyond it was Grace Tillman’s farm. Out of a combination of respect and affection, she was known throughout all of Davis Corners simply as Grandmother Tillman.

Grandmother Tillman’s was the place where her own family went when it needed to be family: deaths, holidays, and Sunday dinners. The two-story, wooden house was plain, but spacious, and neatly painted white with long, green shutters. Oak trees shaded the front yard and had their trunks whitewashed for three feet up from the roots. The whitewash was to prevent bugs from getting into the trees, but they reminded Nate of the fancy pork chops with paper covers that Grandmother Tillman made every Easter. She didn’t work the farm any more. She leased most of the acreage to neighboring farmers, but still maintained a large garden, several chickens, and Old Redemption.

Old Redemption was a large mongrel that was absolutely devoted to Grandmother Tillman, and he was her constant companion on the farm. He was the ugliest dog Nate had ever seen, but his Uncle Henry swore to him that the father had been twice as ugly. Old Redemption was older than Nate, which in dog years made him considerably old. Still, he got around and at least took on a protective posture and mustered a single bark when strangers approached. The first sign of a friendly response from Grandmother Tillman, though, and Old Redemption would gratefully sag back down to wherever he’d been lying and give a dismissive grunt.

The first ones to get to Grandmother Tillman’s this Sunday were her son Gabriel and his family. His wife, Mary, went into the kitchen to help while their two, small daughters, Katherine and Theresa, played on the porch. Grandmother Tillman’s other son, Seth, showed up soon after. Seth was a widower with two children, Elizabeth and Clayton.

Clayton was a year younger than Nate and had big, fleshy lips. Nate couldn’t stand him because his sole conversational skill was saying “oh yeah” to whatever Nate or his other cousins said. Then he’d claim to have done more, seen bigger, or gone farther. Elizabeth was eleven months younger than Clayton and hardly ever spoke.

“Cat got your tongue?” Gabriel chided his niece as she sat quietly in the living room. She saw Clayton in the hallway and just smiled politely and shrugged. She knew that any response would earn a taunt from her brother and any attempt at conversation would be immediately outdone.

Grandmother Tillman had a third son, Louis, who had died. Her only other children were her two daughters, Hattie and Nate’s mother, Sylvia.

Hattie and Henry showed up next, followed soon by Sylvia with Nate and his father. Everyone slipped into their Sunday routines, the women working in the kitchen, the men talking in the living room, and the cousins playing in the yard. Nate was old enough now that he hung around his uncles. They took their suit coats off, sat in the living room with its high ceiling and tall, open windows and told stories. As Nate listened, he watched the curtains float out and waft back with the pleasant, spring breeze. He could smell the grass outside and could just catch the more distant scents of the Sawatassee River and the chickens. All of these blended with the signature odor of Grandmother Tillman’s house, a smell of age, wood, and roominess. Nate’s father sat with them, but didn’t join in. He was a man with no past to speak of and little presence, which made Nate’s flamboyant uncles with their colorful stories seem all the more fascinating to him.

“Lord, I couldn’t believe Old Redemption was still alive when I drove up,” Seth said.

“The ugly ones live forever,” Henry said. “Out of spite, I reckon.”

“You said Old Redemption’s father was even uglier,” Nate said. “What was he like?”

Seth started a slow, deep, coughing laugh. His face gradually turned redder and redder. “You remember that old dog?” It was a subtle invitation to Henry to tell one of his stories.

“Buster,” Henry said. “Belonged to that retarded fellow that lived at Annie Becket’s boarding house.” The invitation had been accepted. Everybody settled a notch deeper into Grandmother Tillman’s living room couch and chairs, ready to listen to Henry’s story.

“Billy Taggert was a simple-minded man in his forties, and Annie Becket, mostly out of kindness, let him stay for free in the utility room at her boarding house. She gave him room and board, looked after him, and in return, he did chores and heavy lifting around the place.

“Well, somehow he got hold of this mangy dog, ugliest thing you’d ever want to see, and the two were just inseparable. Billy, who hardly said ‘Boo’ to anyone, would sit and talk to that dog for hours. And the dog seemed to listen. He’d watch Billy’s face, wag his tail, and every now and then give Billy this big lick. Annie let Billy keep him, ’cause she figured that Billy had little enough as it was. He named it Buster, and Billy and Buster went everywhere together.”

“How ugly would you say Buster was?” Seth said, more as a setup than anything else.

“Oh this dog was ugly,” Gabriel said. “He looked like a mud fence after a rain.”

Everyone laughed at Gabriel’s description.

“I remember him,” Seth said, as he squinted his eyes. “His legs were way too short for his body.”

“That’s the whole problem,” Henry said. “Nothing on that dog fit with anything else. Like every gene in its heritage had combined in the worst possible way. That dog was a gene cesspool.”

“Didn’t Billy and the dog hang out at Johnson’s barber shop all the time?” Gabriel said.

Henry smiled. “Old man Johnson, who ran the shop, had one of those pictures of dogs dressed up like people and playing cards. This one had a big Great Dane or something raring back in a chair and pulling in his winnings while all the other dogs were throwing in their cards. Billy would park Buster outside on the sidewalk and would sit next to that picture for hours, talking under his breath and squinting at it. I think he liked to pretend that it was Buster winning the big hand.”

“I remember that picture,” Seth said. “Had some kind of cute caption or something under it.”

“Every dog has its day,” Gabriel said.

Henry agreed and continued the story.

“Ricky Thornton came into the shop one day all full of himself. Kicked Buster out of the way and started giving Billy a hard time about his dog. Ricky owned the place, I don’t know if y’all knew that, kind of funny little deal. He’d originally rented space above the shop for his accounting business and handled Johnson’s books. He let Johnson get himself into a cash bind, then bought him out and made him fire the other barber, Jim Halloway.”

All of the men, who had individually done business with Ricky Thornton, nodded their heads. It certainly sounded like the way Ricky would have done it.

“Anyway, he’s giving Billy this hard time telling him that he ought to kill Buster and just put him out of his misery.”

“Was Buster sick,” Nate asked.

“No, just ugly as sin.” Henry shrugged. “I guess Ricky felt anything that looked that bad must feel that bad.

“Then he started to make this really big deal about his own dog, Princess Davidia, and how valuable she was and how he was going to breed her and make a lot of money off the pups. He was going to take her to a kennel in Birmingham and have her bred with some hoity-toity dog named Jefferson’s Delight. The whole idea of dogs getting married—that’s how we explained it to Billy—made Billy laugh, and he went back to squinting and jabbering at that picture.

“That night, there was a big poker game at Annie Becket’s. There were a bunch of us who used to get together about every two months and play cards, smoke cigarettes, and drink a few beers. Annie would make sandwiches and put out crackers, and we’d pull two bits for the house out of every pot. It gave us a place to go and gave Annie a couple of extra bucks.

“Annie got a little behind in getting ready that night, so she asked Billy to feed Buster. All he had to do was open the can of dog food and put it into Buster’s bowl. Well, to Billy’s simple mind, all the cans looked alike and he grabbed a can of chili and beans by mistake. Buster sure seemed to love it, so he gave him a second and third can. Meanwhile, Annie was making sandwiches and didn’t notice any of this was going on.”

Everyone shifted in pleasant anticipation. The story was now set like a loaded gun. All that remained was to see how a master marksman like Henry Givens would shoot it off.

“A bunch of us got there, and we’re playing and all, and Billy Thornton shows up and wants to play. We didn’t mind his money so we let him into the game. It was cold that night, and he was wearing a denim jacket, which he put on the coat rack in Annie’s big front hall with all of our stuff. Geez, all he could talk about again was Princess Davidia and how she was going to have this Jefferson Delight’s pups and how much they’d be worth. To you and me this would’ve just been a dog, you know, something to go hunting with, throw a stick to and all that, but to Ricky this animal was an investment. I asked him how he knew Princess Davidia had been saving herself for old Jefferson. He got all huffy and went into this long, detailed description of a ten-foot high fence he’d put around her kennel and how he kept it locked up with a chain and padlock.

“Billy just sat around and watched us with his eyes all squinty. I think he was pretending we were the dogs in the picture. All of a sudden, I heard this muffled sound and I looked down and saw Buster. I didn’t think much of it until Hank Thompson got this funny look on his face and asked what the god-awful smell was.”

The other men chuckled and quickly looked to make sure that the women were preoccupied in the kitchen, then Henry continued with the story.

“Well, old Buster let off another couple of rounds of ripe, chili-bean air-biscuits and everybody scrambled. Annie came in to see what all the commotion was about and the smell stopped her dead in her tracks. ‘Get that dog out of here,’ she yelled, and then started opening windows and lighting candles.

“Billy was panicked by this time, so he grabbed Buster and started pulling at him. Annie yelled at him to put on his coat, she had to take care of him like he was a child. So, he grabbed his old denim jacket off the rack and took Buster outside.”

Henry paused for a second.

“At least he thought it was his jacket. When he got Buster outside and calmed down, he must’ve realized that he’d grabbed Ricky Thornton’s by mistake. Guess he put his hands in the pockets and found Ricky’s key ring with the key to the padlock on it. Well, apparently Billy decided at that moment that poor Buster had been the town joke for too long and deserved better, at least once in his life. If Princess Davidia was good enough for Jefferson what’s-his-name, she was good enough for Buster. And that night, between chili-bean salvos, Buster was treated to prime, pure-bred setter.”

Henry had to wait while everyone laughed. Seth got into that deep cough-laugh of his again, so Hattie stuck her head in the door to ask if everything was all right. Everyone assured her it was and she went back into the kitchen.

“Ricky took Princess Davidia down to Birmingham the next day and fixed her up with Mr. Delight. Apparently the union took place, Princess Davidia became pregnant, and Ricky spent the next few months calculating his return on investment. Unfortunately, when the pups were born, Ricky realized that Princess Davidia had dallied, and it was obvious with who. I heard that he went by Annie’s place to kill either Billy or Buster, it wasn’t clear, but Annie stepped in and stopped it, in either case.”

Everyone kept laughing. They all knew how pompous Ricky Thornton was. It was easy to imagine his fury at having been done in, in his mind, by the town idiot.

Henry’s voice got very soft. “What he did do, though, was take those pups to that bridge right out there and start dropping them one-by-one into the river.”

Everyone sat absolutely still. As funny as the story had been, it now turned tragic and eerie as they thought of those puppies drowning so close to where they now sat.

Henry spoke to Nate. “Your grandmother saw what was going on from her garden and went down there to stop him. All but one had been drowned by the time she got to Ricky Thornton, but she was intent on saving that one. She was dead serious, too. Ricky Thornton told someone that Mother Tillman aimed her rifle square between his eyes.”

Nate’s eyes got wide and he sat straight up. He couldn’t imagine his grandmother even owning a gun, much less aiming it at someone.

“Oh yes,” Gabriel said, seeing Nate’s astonishment. “Your grandmother’s quite the shot. There was many a night there wouldn’t have been supper on the table if she hadn’t gone out into those fields out back and shot a rabbit or a couple of squirrels. And every drifter down the line knew not to try to intimidate that widow woman who lived out in the country or they’d see the business end of that rifle of hers.”

“Anyway,” Henry said, “Ricky Thornton surrendered the remaining pup, and it’s been the devoted companion of your grandmother ever since. She named him ‘Redemption’ since he’d been saved. As he got on in years, the ‘Old’ got tacked on.”

Everyone shifted from their frozen positions, let their breath out loudly, and nodded their heads. This was the equivalent to applause for a story well told. Hattie could be heard out back fussing at Clayton for picking on Theresa and Karen. Since none of the kids were hers, Hattie was always the designated arbiter of Sunday disputes between the cousins. She told everybody to come in and start cooling off and cleaning up. That summons generally meant that dinner was about fifteen minutes away from being served.

Chapter 3

Chapter 1: Jim Frank's Place

2009-06-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Jim Frank had what it took to be a junk man—he saw value in everything. He collected things other people threw away in the hope that someone else would come around to wanting them again. Things that no one wanted again just became part of Jim Frank’s place.

Everybody in Davis Corners had made a trip to Jim Frank’s place, just off State Road Forty-one, at least once. Most went to drop something off, usually grateful just to be rid of it, but some would haggle for a fair trade or money in return for what they had brought. Others went to find an old part, spare lamp, or some odd what-have-you, so that Jim Frank was able to scratch out a living. Over the years, though, more items had been left than had been taken away, so his place had become a sprawling junk-reef of rusting cars and machinery, spotted enameled appliances, old furniture, and racks of used clothing put out on sunny days.

Jim Frank negotiated most of his deals from the sagging gray porch attached to the front of his house. He would sit in an old caned chair, alternately stroking his pointed, grizzled chin and pulling at the soiled, white tee shirt under his faded overalls. His reedy voice would whine in a sharp twang as he artfully avoided showing disdain for the offer while at the same time showing no interest in it either. Anyone who had hauled an item out to his place would have no desire to lug it back. Likewise, anyone who was looking for something at Jim Frank’s place was already at desperation’s end. There were no competitive bids or comparative shopping if circumstances had landed you at Jim Frank’s place.

The porch on which these transactions took place was covered with over a hundred unmatched hubcaps, as if their chrome was the precious metal that backed the vague currency in which Jim Frank did his commerce—this exchange of other people’s discards. Jim Frank had never sold or traded one of these hubcaps to anyone. Nonetheless, every time he caught a glimpse of glittering metal in a weedy ditch or at the edge of a sandy field, he would stop his dilapidated pick-up, search out the hubcap, and take it home to be nailed up on his porch. Other people wouldn’t waste their time by stopping on one of those old farm roads to pick up a dented hubcap. Jim Frank, however, knew that time was lost no matter what you did. A hubcap, on the other hand, was something that lasted.

But something else was lurking among the debris than just the cast-off possessions of Davis Corners. There was the secret about how Wes Tillman had died and how that death would reach out to his grandson, Nate Williams, now four decades later.

---

On Saturday afternoons, Henry Givens would pick up his wife’s nephew, Nate, and the two of them would head for Jim Frank’s place. They would cruise down State Road Forty-one in Henry’s 1957 Cadillac, pulling into Thompson’s Gas Station and Grocery Store along the way for provisions. Thompson’s was a whitewashed general store with a crushed oyster-shell driveway and two gas pumps in front. It had a screen door with a worn-out spring so that it swung open too easily and too wide, making a slow, raspy sound before it hit against the outside wall. Then it wouldn’t slap shut until ten seconds later, just long enough to forget about it, so that it would startle you when it finally did. Hank Thompson would let Nate fill up the Cadillac’s weekly tank of gas while Henry went inside and bought a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. When they’d get back in the car, Henry would let Nate open up the cigarettes and light one for him. Nate would use the Cadillac’s lighter and always left a smoldering hunk of tobacco on the red-hot coil. Then they’d roll down State Road Forty-one with the uncle pulling on a Pall Mall and flying the Caddy and the nephew savoring the combined smell and taste of gasoline and tobacco.

This particular Saturday was in May of 1963, and Nate was thirteen years old. The school year was just about over. Nate looked out the window and watched the edge of the road zip by, allowing himself to be pleasantly hypnotized by its blurred shoulder and the sound of the Caddy’s tires on the blacktop.

“Every man needs a dis-sanctuary,” Henry said, rousing Nate from his trance. He let out the smoke from a long drag off a Pall Mall. “And Jim Frank’s place is mine.”

Dis-sanctuary was a word Henry had made up. He felt that if a sanctuary was a holy place where a man could go to be protected from the wicked, a dis-sanctuary was a wicked place where a man could go to be protected from the righteous. In Henry’s case, righteous meant his wife, Hattie, and being wicked largely meant smoking Pall Mall cigarettes and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer on Saturday afternoons.

In Davis Corners, wicked also included Miss Edna, the flirtatious waitress who worked at Cole’s truck stop. Henry’s only enjoyment other than visiting Jim Frank’s place was occasionally sitting at the counter at Coles bantering with Miss Edna and glancing furtively at the cleavage she so artfully deployed.

Nate was still confused about sex. He had a notion that something went on below the waist between married people, but the details were vague. Even so, he could tell that whatever sex was, Miss Edna must somehow be close to the heart of it. She wore a tight, pink uniform with a flash of a red slip showing through the slit at the bottom. Sometimes, if she leaned over just right to lay down a cup of coffee, the gap between the top buttons on her uniform would part just enough to show the lacy edge of a bra of the same color and enough cleavage to make a man miss his mouth with his fork and hurt himself. There wasn’t a trucker in the Southeast who hadn’t wished for that top button to pop—Henry, too, for that matter.

“One of these days,” he said, “that top button’s going pop right off and put my eye out.” He squinted one eye shut. “It’ll be worth it, though. I’ll still have one good eye left to catch that fleeting glimpse of heaven in red lace.” He looked at Nate for a reaction.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be looking at that stuff,” Nate said.

Talking about sex with a grown-up embarrassed Nate, even if it was just his Uncle Henry, who just barely met the criteria for grown-up in spite of his thinning gray hair and spotted hands.

“If the woman didn’t want us looking at her underwear, she’d wear white undies like everybody else. There’s no reason for a woman to wear colored underwear if she doesn’t mean to be seen in it.”

Nate could see no reasonable counter to his uncle’s argument and went back to staring at the rolling north Alabama farm country passing evenly by his open window. Henry and Nate talked about a lot more on these trips than just Miss Edna. During these drives, Henry had taught Nate how steam engines worked, laid out in vivid detail all of the major battles of the Civil War, and introduced him to Aristotle’s Poetics. Henry had quit school when he was just a little older than Nate in order to help support his family. He had tried to make up for what he had missed by educating himself, and in fact, had probably acquired more knowledge dropping out of school than he would have by staying in. He read constantly and was in the habit of picking up a volume of the encyclopedia at random and reading wherever he opened it. He would process this new information by lecturing Nate at the end of the week in the Caddy. It made sense, then, that most of their Saturday conversations had alphabetical themes. One week the topics would all start with the letter “t” and another week they all began with “b.” Today, however, Henry was stuck on “e” for Edna.

“Miss Edna’s different from the normal breed of women,” he finally said.

She was certainly different from the women Nate knew, namely, his mother, Aunt Hattie, and Grandmother Tillman. He couldn’t imagine any of them wanting to be seen in their underwear—be it red, white, or blue.

“Most women want to take what’s free and fun-loving in a man and domesticate it right out of him, the way they’d housebreak a dog.” While the great feminist minds of Nate’s generation were growing up, he was visiting junkyards with his Uncle Henry. It would take Nate the next thirty years to repair his relationships with women.

“Miss Edna likes men the way they are. She laughs at their jokes, listens to their stories, and you know, wears red underwear.” Henry winked to suggest something by his last comment.

“If Miss Edna likes men, how come she’s not married,” Nate asked.

Henry laughed and smoke came out his nose. “Miss Edna’s not the kind of girl you marry.”

What Henry wasn’t saying outright was that Miss Edna seemed like she enjoyed “doing it.” Not that anyone was known to have actually “done it” with her or knew about her doing it, it’s just that she had an air about her of one who “did it” and liked it. Everybody in Davis Corners just assumed she did. Henry enjoyed believing she did. In fact, it was an important belief in his life—the way accounting clerks read cowboy novels out of a need to believe there are adventurous lives, even if those lives are not their own. In addition to being confused about the biological mechanics of sex, Nate was equally befuddled by this duplicity about sex and marriage: If married people did it—in fact were supposed to do it—why would a man be against marrying a woman who liked to do it?

They came up to Jim Frank’s place and the topic of Miss Edna and Nate’s adolescent fog about sex were put away for a while. Henry pulled off the highway and slowly drove up the rutted, dirt driveway, being careful not to spring the Caddy’s wheel alignment. Jim Frank mysteriously appeared from somewhere in the junk-reef and waved them in.

“You old junk dog,” Henry said. “How’s it going?”

“Got any better, I couldn’t stand it,” Jim Frank said with a slight grin and shake of his head.

Jim Frank gave Nate a quick nod and mumbled his name. That pleased Nate and he blushed noticeably. If he’d been with his parents, he’d have just been the kid-in-tow and would’ve been ignored. Being with his Uncle Henry, though, gave him a status more approaching adulthood, and therefore, he warranted a nod and a mumbled acknowledgment. Nate gave a nod and a mumbled “sir” in return. Jim Frank had no last name that anyone knew of. No one called him just “Jim” or “Mr. Frank.” It was always “Jim Frank” if you were a grown-up or “sir” if you were a kid.

Henry pulled two cans of beer from the six-pack’s cardboard carton and opened them with a church-key Jim Frank kept tied to the porch rail. It was the kind that had a triangular can opener on one end and a bottle opener on the other. There was the crisp sound of cutting metal followed by a whoosh and a small rush of foam as the point dug into each can top and opened the first hole. The second hole only made the cutting sound of the sharp church key tearing the thin metal top of the can. He passed one of the cans to Jim Frank, and both men drew hard on the first sip then softly let out the mandatory exclamations that accompanied the first cold beer of the week. Henry tapped the pack of Pall Malls until two or three fanned out, and he offered a smoke to Jim Frank. The men each took one, and the way Jim Frank ran his fingers appreciatively up and down the tightly packed cylinder of the cigarette belied that he was more accustomed to roll-your-owns. Jim Frank lit both of them with an old, burnished Zippo he pulled out of the bib pocket of his overalls. For a moment the air was heavy with the smell of tobacco smoke and lighter fluid reminding Nate of the smell and taste of lighting his uncle’s cigarette at the gas station. Henry laid the red pack of cigarettes on top of the unopened beers, now sitting between the two men on the porch floor. This gesture established that the beer and cigarettes were common property and dispensed with the embarrassing need to say “please” and “thank-you” every time.

“Any business this week?” Henry said. He wasn’t being personal and Jim Frank knew not to take it as such. Henry loved to look at Jim Frank’s new acquisitions and hear the stories that usually accompanied them, and Jim Frank enjoyed showing and telling.

“Picked up a washer/dryer set from Mabel Adams this week,” Jim Frank said with a nod pointing to the west side of the junk reef.

They walked off in the direction of where the appliances could be viewed.

“You gonna to be able to salvage anything useful off them,” Henry asked.

Bud Adams, Mabel’s husband, owned the Davis Corners hardware store, and Henry couldn’t imagine he’d let go of machinery if there were anything still useful to it.

“No need to salvage anything,” Jim Frank said. “Bud says they both work fine. Mabel just wanted new.” Jim Frank pulled back a tarp that he had spread over them. “Bud wanted twenty-five dollars for the pair, but I could tell he needed them out of there, so I hedged.”

“Oh yeah?” Henry smiled. “What’d you haggle him down to?”

Jim Frank cocked his jaw and rubbed his chin. “Didn’t give him nothing, and Miss Mabel tipped me a dollar after I put them on my truck.” After a second he grinned widely. “Bud helped, but she didn’t give him nothing.”

Henry laughed. “Old Bud’s not much of a negotiator, is he? It’s a wonder his hardware store’s still in business.”

Jim Frank looked serious for a moment, then his face relaxed. “Well, Bud and Miss Mabel like ‘new.’ Maybe that’s why he does okay with the store—everything’s new in a store.” He seemed genuinely relieved by having found an explanation.

“How come you put the washer and dryer here?” Henry was always fascinated about Jim Frank’s way of sorting things in the junkyard. “What’s the ‘toonickle’ to it?”

Toonickle was a private word between Henry and Jim Frank. Henry had once asked him what the paradigm was that determined where things went. Henry liked important-sounding words like “paradigm.” Jim Frank thought he’d said “pair of dimes” and had allowed it was only a “two-nickel” system at best. Henry had been delighted by the response and decided that “toonickle” was a fine word, meaning an informal model not defined enough to be a paradigm.

“Easy enough toonickle to this one,” Jim Frank said. “I already had this other old washing machine here, so I put these two next to it.”

“How come not way over there next to that other washing machine?” Henry pointed to another washer twenty-five yards away. Every Saturday these two men played this game with each other.

“That washer needs a motor,” Jim Frank answered matter-of-factly. “So I put that washer next to that old Rambler, where I took out a motor—the one I sold to Skip Edwards for that old jalopy he was working on.”

“This other washer need a motor,” Henry asked.

“Don’t know, it don’t work.” Jim Frank shrugged. “Probably does.”

“Why don’t you put it with the other broken one?”

“This one was here first,” Jim Frank said.

“Well, when the other one came in, why didn’t you put it here? That way all your washers and dryers would be in the same place.” Henry needed things to be structured.

“The other one needed a motor, so I put it next to the Rambler,” Jim Frank said patiently.

“The problem is you’ve got two themes going at once. You’ve got some stuff arranged by what they are and some stuff arranged by what they need. How’s a person going to find anything?”

“They just have to ask me.”

Henry was beaten at today’s game. The only possible comeback would be to ask what would happen if Jim Frank wasn’t there, but Jim Frank was always there. Jim Frank’s place was just an extension of the man himself.

Jim Frank, Henry, and Nate went back to the porch and the men opened two more beers and lit up another couple of Pall Malls. As usual, Henry started picking on Jim Frank about his statue.

“When you going to give that poor boy a decent pond to fish in?”

Henry was referring to the old, ceramic statue of a black boy fishing. Jim Frank had set the statue on a stump in front of his porch and had put an old hat on its head and a cane pole in its hand. Someday he planned to dig a goldfish pond in front of the statue, but for now, all he had gotten around to was laying out stones where the edge of the pond would be. The statue had bright, wide eyes and a broad grin. It made a sadly comical sight, this boy so happy to be fishing in a dust pond. The statue had been there and that way as long as folks in Davis Corners could remember.

“He’s doing all right for now.”

The men finished their beer and a couple more cigarettes. Henry grabbed the back of Nate’s neck and said, “Better be getting this one back to his folks before they think I’ve sold him to the Gypsies.” Everyone said good-bye and Henry nodded over to the cigarettes and beer. “Hattie’ll kill me if I bring that stuff home. Get rid of it for me would you?”

Jim Frank made a mock conspiratorial glance around and waved okay.

Henry and Nate didn’t talk much on the ride back. Nate thought about the Pabst Blue Ribbons and the Pall Malls left back on Jim Frank’s porch and appreciated how delicately a charity had been given and taken without embarrassment.

When they got to Nate’s house, Henry simply said, “Tell your folks I said ‘hi’ and I’ll see everybody tomorrow at your grandmother’s.” Nate thanked his uncle for the afternoon and told him he hoped he’d tell a story at Grandmother Tillman’s the next day. Henry was a funny storyteller, but all he said was that Hattie wouldn’t have any of that. Nate waved and watched him fly off in the Caddy, and he wondered which story his uncle would pick.

Chapter 2