Unless I’m in town.
He’s always so happy to hear her voice that he doesn’t seem to notice how her calls pick up when I’m down and I’m too smart to point out this recurring coincidence.
But this time he wasn’t speaking in his indulgent-father tones.
“Just fine,” I heard him say with country politeness. “And you?... That’s good... Yes, she’s right here.”
He handed me the phone. “Your brother Andrew. Sounds serious.
My heart turned stone cold and a silent prayer went up—Dear God, no!
Andrew’s nine brothers up from me. He hates any show of emotion and while he did plenty of catting around in his own day, he’s like the rest of the boys in wishing I’d quit mine and settle down. Even so, despite his relatively recent respectability, he’d never take it upon himself to confront me head-on about my love life. I could think of only one reason why he’d call me here.
(Please not Daddy. Not yet.)
“What’s wrong, Andrew? Is it Daddy?”
“Daddy?” My brother’s voice came gruffly over the line. “Naw, Daddy’s fine. It’s A.K. He’s really stepped in it bad this time, Deb’rah.”
A.K. is Andrew’s oldest child by his third wife. He’s seventeen now and will be a senior in high school this fall if Andrew and April can keep him from quitting. Unlike his sister Ruth, A.K.’s not much for the books. Too near like Andrew used to be, from all I’ve heard.
“What’s he done now?” I asked apprehensively. I’ve been on the bench long enough to see some of the messes a seventeen-year-old can step in and A.K.’s already dirtied his feet a time or two.
“I swear I feel like taking my belt to his backside. He knows better’n this.”
His paternal exasperation couldn’t mask the worry coming to me through the line.
“What’d he do?” I asked again.
“You know old Ham Crocker?”
I said I did, even though Abraham Crocker must have died around the time I was born.
“Well, A.K. and a couple of his buddies sort of busted up his graveyard Friday night.”
“What?”
“They got hold of some beer and I reckon they got drunk enough to think it was funny to knock over the angel—you know the one on Ham’s mama’s grave?—and then Charles or Raymond, one had a can of spray paint. A.K. swears he didn’t do no writing, but he’s charged same as the others.”
“Charged?”
“Yeah. Bo Poole sent a deputy out to bring him in this morning and me and April don’t know what to do. John Claude’s gone off to Turkey.”
He made it sound as if Turkey was the dark side of the moon and an outlandish place for a Colleton County attorney to visit under any circumstances.
“Did you call Reid?” I asked, since Reid Stephenson is John Claude Lee’s younger partner.
“I thought maybe you could come and take care of this,” he countered.
Though no kin to the sons of my father’s first marriage, John Claude and Reid are both cousins on my mother’s side and they’re also my former law partners, but the boys have never quite trusted Reid the way they trust John Claude. Maybe it’s because John Claude has silver hair while Reid’s two years younger than me. Or maybe it’s because Reid’s personal life is such a shambles and John Claude’s stayed respectably married to the same woman for thirty years.
“Call Reid,” I said firmly. “He knows us and he’ll do just fine.”
“But can’t you—?”
“No, I can’t.” I thought I’d made it clear to him when A.K. got caught with marijuana a second time after John Claude had made the first offense go away. “I told you that last year, remember? Judges aren’t allowed to represent anyone or give legal advice.”
“Not even to your own family? Now that just don’t make no sense.”
Incredulity was mixed with suspicion and right then’s when I knew my weekend was over. If I waited till tomorrow morning to drive back as I’d originally planned, Andrew and the others would think I cared more about my own pleasure than a brother’s need, even though there was absolutely nothing I could do except hold his hand and April’s while Reid did all the work.
“His probation’s not up yet on that marijuana possession, either, is it?” I asked.
“And he got hisself another speeding ticket last night,” Andrew admitted glumly. “I swear I’m gonna lock that boy up myself.”
I was ready to hand him a key. A.K.’s not really a bad kid but bad luck and bad judgment aren’t helping him these days.
It was going to take all Reid’s skills and a kindhearted judge.
“Try not to worry,” I told my brother. “I’ll be there just as soon as the speed limit lets me.”
“I ain’t worried,” he said doggedly. “It’s his mama that’s worried. But you’ll get him off, right?”
“I’ll do everything I can,” I hedged, since I clearly wasn’t getting through to him about the legal restraints on my help. “I’ll call Reid myself and he’ll have A.K. out of jail before I get to Kinston, okay?”
“Okay. And, Deb’rah?”
“Yes?”
“I’m really sorry ’bout messing up your weekend.”
So was I, but there was no point grousing about it. If you have to do something you don’t want to, you’re not going to get any Brownie points unless you do it with a willing air. The Lord’s not the only one who loveth a cheerful giver and holdeth it against you if you aren’t.
My only sour compensation was rousting Reid from his bed and hearing a woman’s sleepy complaints at being awakened so early. Eventually Reid agreed to go see what Bo Poole, our longtime sheriff, and District Attorney Douglas Woodall had in mind for A.K., but he wasn’t happy about it.
“This is not how I was planning to spend my Sunday morning,” he grumped.
“Tell me about it,” I said heartlessly.
Kidd wasn’t happy about it either, but he’d had to cancel out a couple of times himself because of Amber’s last-minute demands, so he tried to be a good sport.
He poured me a mug of coffee for the road, stowed my overnight case in the back of my car, and even managed a crooked smile as he watched me fasten my seatbelt, but his voice was wistful.
“You ever wish you were an only child?”
“Frequently,” I sighed.
Old Highway 70 between New Bern and Kinston used to be as straight as a piece of uncooked spaghetti and fun to drive even if it was only two lanes and complicated by the small towns of Tuscarora, Cove City and Dover. The new highway is a well-divided four lanes and bypasses the towns, undulating lazily through flat monotonous stands of wax myrtle and marsh grass, then on past Weyerhaeuser pulpwood farms, every tree the same height and as regularly spaced as pickets in a fence.
Traffic was spotty this early in the day. By mid-afternoon it’d be one pickup or minivan after another pulling boats of all sizes and configurations back to Raleigh, Durham or Greensboro. At eight-thirty on a Sunday morning, though, most vehicles were heading east and I had the westbound side of the highway pretty much to myself.
Plenty of time to think about the aggravation of being at the beck and call of eleven older brothers.
Not to mention their wives and children.
Knowing that every time I turned around, the turning was endlessly discussed and dissected.
Nevertheless, I’d lied when I told Kidd I wished I was an only child. I’d had a taste of it my eighteenth summer, the summer Mother was dying, and I didn’t like it one little bit.
All the boys were caught up in their own lives then—several of them newly married or lately divorced, babies coming thick and fast, crops to house. That was their excuse anyhow. Mainly it was that they were too inarticulate with grief to talk to me or Mother.
She scared them the way she blazed with urgent purpose that summer. So many things to set in order before she died, from boxes of loose snapshots to closets full of shoe boxes, to secrets that no one wanted to hear except me.