“Bullock.” His voice was neutral as he nodded to Jason.
“King.” Jason’s voice was equally neutral, but I finally had an answer to whether or not he knew his wife had been sleeping around.
And with whom.
Like a nervous hostess smoothing over an awkward social lapse, I found myself chattering about the accident, about Jason’s part in helping to rescue Clara Freeman and how lucky she was to have been found before drowning.
“You live around here?” Jason Bullock asked bluntly.
Now that he mentioned it, what was Millard King doing on this back road at this hour?
“Just down in Makely,” he answered easily. “But my brother lives over in Fuquay, so I’m up and down this road a lot. You say she went in this afternoon sometime? I sure didn’t notice when I came through around eight. ’Course, it was still raining then.”
“Oh look!” I said. “There’s Lashanda’s baby doll.”
I went over and pulled a soggy brown rubber doll from the car. As I did, I saw something lumpy on the floor beneath the steering wheel. Clara Freeman’s pocketbook. I gathered it up, too, thinking that I’d carry it to the hospital with me tomorrow morning.
The two men circled the car.
“It’s amazing,” said King. “The car doesn’t seem to have a scratch on it.”
“Dry it out and it should be good as new,” agreed Bullock.
My brother Robert came over, put the car in neutral and closed the doors. “What you planning to do with the car, Dwight? Want me to tow it over to Jimmy White’s garage?”
“Would you mind?”
“Naw, but he ain’t gonna be up this time of night.”
“That’s okay. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow.”
As I climbed up to the glassed-in cab of the big tractor with Robert, I saw King and Bullock walk to their separate cars. I guess they didn’t have much to say to each other.
Not tonight anyhow.
* * *
Jimmy’s garage was only a couple of miles away and the car pulled easily, so we were there in ten minutes. Not surprisingly, the building was dark and silent, as was Jimmy’s house out back, behind a thick row of Leland cypresses.
I helped Robert unhitch the car. We left the key in the ignition switch, although I did detach it from Clara’s keyring. When we climbed back into the tractor cab, I stuck the keyring in Clara’s soggy handbag and tucked it back under the tractor seat so I could hold on.
Now that we weren’t towing the car, Robert put it in gear and soon we were jouncing briskly across rutted dirt lanes. The tractor is air-conditioned and has an AM/FM radio, but Robert keeps the tape deck loaded with Patsy, Hank and George.
“Ain’t no country music on the radio no more,” he said. “Hell of a note when country stations don’t play nothing but Garth Brooks and Dixie Chicks and think that’s country.”
We rode through the night harmonizing along with Ernest Tubbs and Loretta Lynn on “Sweet Thang,” a song that used to really crack me up when I was six.
CHAPTER | 14
“Prepare for the worst, which is yet to come,” were the only consoling words of the weather bureau officials.
The calls started at daybreak.
“You got you plenty of batteries laid in?” asked Robert.
“Batteries?” I asked groggily.
“They’re saying we’re definitely gonna get us some of that hurricane. You want to make sure your flashlight works when the lights go off.”
“We got an extra kerosene lantern,” said his wife Doris, who was on their extension phone. “How ’bout I send Robert over with it?”
Less than ninety seconds after they rang off, it was Haywood and Isabel.
“Don’t forget to bring in all your porch chairs,” said Haywood.
“And fill some milk jugs with clean water,” said Isabel.
“Water?” I yawned.
“If the power goes, so does your water pump.”
Seth and Minnie were also solicitous of my water supply.
“I’ve already got both bathtubs filled,” Minnie said. “This hot weather, you want to be able to flush if the electricity goes out.”
I hadn’t lost power since I moved into my new house the end of July, but it wasn’t unusual when I was growing up out here in the country. It seldom stayed off more than a couple of days and since we heated with woodstoves that could double as cookstoves, no electricity wasn’t much of a hardship in the winter. More like going camping in your house. Especially since it was usually caused by an ice storm that had closed school anyhow, so that you got to stay home and go sliding during the day, then come in to hot chocolate and a warm and cozy candlelit evening of talking or making music around the stove.
Summer was a little worse. We never had air-conditioning so we didn’t expect to stay cool even when the electricity was on, but running out of ice for our tea and soft drinks was a problem. And two days were about as long as you could trust food from the refrigerator in hot weather.
I emptied the ice bin into a plastic bag so that my icemaker would make a fresh batch. And I dutifully filled my tub, kettle, and a couple of pots with water since I had no empty plastic jugs on hand.
Daddy drove through the yard with my newspaper and said I ought to come over and stay at the homeplace till the hurricane had passed.
I pointed out that my new house had steel framing and was guaranteed to hold up under winds of a hundred and seventy miles an hour, “So maybe you should spend the night with me.”
“Mine’s stood solid through a hundred years of storms and Hazel, too, and it ain’t never even lost a piece of tin.” The mention of tin must have reminded him of the house trailer Herman’s son Reese was renting from Seth because he added, “Reese is gonna come. And Maidie and Cletus.”
Now a hurricane party was a tempting thought and I told him I’d let him know.
After he left and before someone else could tie up my line, I picked up the phone to call Kidd even though he was probably already gone. And then I put it back down again, more than a little annoyed. After all, shouldn’t he be worried about me? The way Fran was lining up, Colleton County was just as likely to get hit as New Bern. Couldn’t he find a spare minute to see if I was okay?
No?
Then he could damn well wonder.
With all the distractions, I was halfway to Dobbs before I remembered Clara Freeman’s purse and Lashanda’s doll. No time to go back for them if I wanted to check past the hospital before going to court.
* * *
At Dobbs Memorial, it was only a few minutes past eight but the intensive care unit’s waiting room was jammed with Balm of Gilead members. A couple of Ralph Freeman’s colleagues from the middle school where he taught were there, along with some ministers from nearby churches. I greeted those I recognized and learned that Clara Freeman was in critical but stable condition. They had operated on her early this morning to relieve the pressure on her brain but it was too soon to make predictions, although Ralph was with the surgeon now.
Mingled with the hospital smells of antiseptics and floor wax were the appetizing aromas of hot coffee and fast-food breakfast meals—sausage biscuits from Hardee’s, Egg McMuffins, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts—nourishment for people who’d evidently been here since Mrs. Freeman was brought in last night.
Stan and his little sister were seated against the far wall and I went over to them.
“Stan, Lashanda, I’m so sorry about your mother.”
“Thank you, Miss Deborah,” the boy said.
Before he could say anything else, the large elderly man who sat beside him said, “Stanley, will you introduce this lady to me?”
It may have been couched as a request, but the tone sounded awfully like an order to me.
“Yes, sir. This is Judge Deborah Knott,” he said with touching formality. “Miss Deborah, this is my grandfather, the Reverend James McElroy Gaithers.”