“Come in for a nightcap?”
“Naw, I’d better get on. Mother’ll be expecting me.”
He reached out and gave my ponytail a teasing tug. “Out there on the field tonight, with your hair tied up in that red ribbon, you looked about fourteen again.”
I grabbed my glove, leaned over to give him a goodnight kiss on the cheek, and opened the door.
“Deb’rah—?”
I looked at him inquiringly.
He hesitated, then turned the key in the ignition. “Let me see if I’n get a little closer to the door so you don’t get wet.”
“Don’t bother.” I opened the truck door wide and stepped out into the downpour. “Feels good.”
I held my face up to the sky and let the warm rain pelt my face. I was instantly soaked to the skin with my clothes plastered to my body, but since I was going straight in the bathtub anyhow, what difference did it make?
“You’re crazy, you know that?” said Dwight. “And you’re getting my seat wet.”
I laughed and slammed the door. He waited with the lights on till I dug the keys out of my pocket and let myself in the house, then gave a goodnight toot of his horn and drove off through the rain.
I’d forgotten to leave my answering machine on, so there was no way to know if Kidd had tried to call.
CHAPTER | 3
Husbands lost their wives and wives their husbands, and the elements were only merciful when they destroyed an entire family at once.
September 1—Edouard missed us completely. Down from a category 4 hurricane to a category 3, and heading out to sea. (Note: Make a chart that shows all 5 categories on the Saffir-Simpson scale.) Winds still up to 100 knots but dropping.
Tropical Storm Fran reclassified yesterday as a hurricane. 22°N by 63°W, winds at 70 knots and gathering strength. Tracking west-northwest at about 7 mph. Tropical depression #7 has moved off the African coast out into the Atlantic and is now called Tropical Storm Gustav.
Stan paused and compared his maps to those in the newspaper. His were slightly more up-to-date because the newspaper went to press with Fran’s position as of eleven p.m. last night, while he had the radio’s report from only a few minutes ago.
The radio was old and the original aerial had long since been replaced by a straightened wire hanger, but it had shortwave capabilities and when atmospheric conditions were right, it really did pick up stations far beyond the range of his regular AM/FM radio and tape player. In bed at night, he kept it tuned too low for his mother to hear and he often fell asleep with voices whispering foreign languages past the static, into his ear. Spanish and French, and occasional bursts of Slavic or German, twined through his sleeping brain and dreamed him into worlds beyond Cotton Grove.
The radio had come into its own with this science project. Its weather band made keeping up with all these hurricane movements almost as easy as watching the weather channel on his friend Willie’s television.
Too bad Mama was so against television, Stan thought wistfully. (And good thing she didn’t know that this radio could pick up the audio of some local TV stations.) Still, it was sort of fun to pinpoint the storm’s positions just by listening and to try and guess where they’d be at the next reading. Right now, if Fran kept going straight, it’d hit between Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville, yet forecasters were beginning to predict that it’d turn north before that and could make landfall between Charleston and Wilmington by the end of the week if it didn’t get pushed out to sea sooner.
He read over the sheets he had photocopied from a reference book at the county library over in Dobbs before the ball game yesterday, then began to write again, conscientiously casting the information he had gleaned into his own words. Intellectual honesty was one of the few things Dad preached about at home and Stan frowned in concentration as he wrote, skirting that fine line between plagiarism and honest summation.
NOTES: Here’s how tropical storms strengthen into hurricanes: Warm air rises, cold air sinks. Warm humid air rises from the tropical waters of the Caribbean. As it rises, the water vapor condenses and forms clouds. That releases heat, which warms the upper air around it and that makes the upper air rise even higher. More air [cooler] flows down to the water surface to replace the rising air [warmer] and that starts a spiral of wind around a center of rotation. These storm winds speed up as they near the eye and form spiraling bands. Each band is like a separate thunderstorm and the heaviest are the ones that surround the eye.
He had already begun to consider the problem of constructing a 3-D model of a hurricane. Bands of cotton arranged in spirals on top of a map of the ocean? Build up the Caribbean Islands with a salt and flour dough that he could paint green?
He scissored the weather map from the paper and dated it for his growing file of clippings, then neatly refolded that section and carried it back to the living room.
The house was wreathed in Sunday silence as he stepped into the hall. Dad would be thinking out tonight’s sermon, Mama would be talking in low tones with her prayer partner at the dinner table or on the back porch, her Bible open between them. No sound from Lashanda’s room. She’d probably fallen asleep on the floor in the middle of her dolls.
The carpet let Stan move so noiselessly that his father did not stir when he entered the room and laid the paper on the coffee table with the rest of the Sunday pile.
The big man’s breaths continued deep and regular, never quite breaking into a snore, but heavier than if he were awake. The soft leather Bible lay open on the arm of his lounge chair. Several index cards had fluttered to the floor. Ralph Freeman seldom wrote out his sermons, but he did make notes of the points he wished to cover. Stan tiptoed closer to the lounge chair, torn between wanting to look on his father’s face without being seen, yet feeling vaguely guilty at doing so.
Was this what the Bible meant when it condemned Noah’s son for looking upon Noah’s nakedness? Because even though Dad was certainly dressed in suit pants, white shirt and tie, there was something naked about his face with the lines smoothed out, his eyes closed, his mouth relaxed.
For one confused moment, Stan wished he were a little kid again so he could crawl onto that lap, lay his head against that crisp white shirt and hear his father’s heart beating strong and sure.
Seeing him like this with all the tension gone out of his body made Stan realize how much things had changed since they moved to Colleton County this spring.
Especially in the last month.
And it wasn’t just because Balm of Gilead had been burned to the ground six weeks after they arrived. The person who set the fire had nothing against them personally or the church either and was now locked up in a Georgia penitentiary. Dad knew before they came that he was called to help Balm of Gilead’s congregation raise a bigger, finer church and he’d been excited about it. Made them excited, too.
Not Mama though.
She hated to leave Warrenton but she hadn’t tried to talk Dad out of it when he brought it to family council. “I’m called to be your wife,” she’d said. “If you’re called to go down there, then it’s my duty to go with you.”
“I would hope it’s more than duty,” Dad had teased, but Mama hadn’t smiled back.
“If we’re moving, then I’d better get some boxes tomorrow,” she’d said. “Start packing.”
“If you don’t want to do this, Clara, tell me.”
“No, it’s fine,” she’d said.
Looking at his father’s sleeping face, the worry lines smoothed out for the moment, Stan realized that it wasn’t fine, hadn’t been fine even before they left Warrenton. More and more, it was as if he and Dad and Lashanda were in a circle together and Mama was on the outside with her back to them.