Marcus said mildly, “I expect it’s a bribe. He thinks I should accept the Halls’ case.”
The young man stared openly now, then turned back to the lake and the fish with a quiet “Huh.” A few more casts, then, “Gloria had a wild streak in her. She’d hide it good, then something’d set her off. Man, it was like night and day. You ever met her daddy?”
“Last Sunday.”
“What’d you think of him?”
Marcus was abruptly caught by something his grandmother used to say. “He struck me as a man uncomfortable with his own hide.”
Oathell laughed once, a quick bark, but it rang through the quiet air long after the sound was gone. To Marcus it felt like an unexpected compliment. “That’s Austin Hall, all right. But he loved that girl of his. Loved her like a straightjacket, it seemed to me. Sometimes the fit got too tight, and Gloria’d just go crazy.”
“Is that why she went to Georgetown?”
“Partly. Girl was smart, could’ve gone anywhere.” An angry flick of the rod. “I didn’t want her to go. We were young, sure, but I was ready to settle down. We tried to make it, me here at Nash Community College and her up there in the big city. Like to have drove me crazy, trying to keep tabs on the woman. Didn’t like to think about her going wild up there, with me …” Another angry flick of the pole. “That spring I asked Gloria to marry me. She said no way was she ready. We fought. She broke it off.” Another cast. “Maybe she’d already met Gary, but I don’t think so. She says that didn’t happen for another year after we broke up.”
Marcus stopped pretending to pay attention to the water. “Gary?”
“Gary Loh. Oriental guy, Chinese parents, born in this country. Med student up at Georgetown. Man had it all. Looks, brains, money. Ran some kinda campus outreach for a local church.” A glance at Marcus, flicking like the lure. “You a religious man?”
“No.”
“Hear you went to Deacon’s church last Sunday. How’d you find it?”
“My ears are still ringing.”
Another barked laugh, quiet this time. “I hear you. Gloria didn’t have time for no church until this Gary started sniffing around. Then every time she came home it was God this and God that, like to drive you crazy. Then something happened, I’m not sure exactly when it was, maybe a year back. They broke up is what I heard. I tried to get back with her. She wasn’t having none of it.”
Marcus set down his pole and turned to face the stern. His movements were slow, deliberate. He inspected Oathell, who continued casting and reeling, the motions as constant as breath. “How long ago did you two break up?”
Oathell flung the lure far out over the water. “Six years.”
The young man was handsome, even with his features pinched by pain kept fresh with unvanquished love. Oathell was about his own height, a couple of inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and narrow waist. Marcus asked, “What do you do?”
“I’m a technician with IBM out in the Research Triangle. Work on grinding the silicon plates for chips. Been there ever since I graduated from Nash.”
Marcus noticed the slight hunch to the shoulders, realized the young man was dreading a further torrent of personal questions. But Marcus had no desire to cause anyone unnecessary discomfort. So he said, “Why would Gloria take on New Horizons?”
The muscles unbunched, the man took an easier breath. “You know the saying, the thing folks love to hate? That’s New Horizons.”
“So the stories about the way they treat workers are true?”
“Don’t know what you’ve heard, but I imagine they are. Every family in that church has somebody who’s worked over there. And anybody who works for New Horizons is sooner or later gonna come into a story all their own.” He lifted the lure from the water, sat watching the dripping hooks. “My daddy worked there for nineteen years. Hated every minute of it.”
Marcus spoke his thoughts. “So Gloria might have been able to access a lot of in-house data through her contacts inside the church.”
“I reckon that girl could’ve gotten her hands on just about anything she wanted.” The pinched expression returned. “Hard to find anybody at that church who doesn’t love Gloria.”
Marcus thought of his own contact with the company on the hill. “Even so, a lot of people rely on New Horizons for their paychecks.”
Oathell shot him another glance, this one as dark as the waters beneath their boat. “We’ve got a lot of practice eating the bread of folks we despise.”
SEVEN
When Marcus arrived at church that second Sunday, it was to the sound of thunder.
Four young women stood on the stage behind the podium, rapping out a message about going astray. The amplified music was so loud he could not hear most of the words. Marcus tried to slip into the back row, but smiles and little hand motions invited him forward. There was none of the sullenness he found on every street corner in Edgecombe County, none of the silent watchfulness. Gentle hands patted his back as he moved toward a seat in the middle of the congregation.
The discomfort he had known the previous Sunday did not return. Not even when the young pastor came to the lectern, raised his hands in benediction, then invited the congregation to welcome the newcomers. Not even when a woman three times his weight turned and engulfed him in lilacs and talcum powder. Not even when her place was taken by a dozen others, all of whom knew his name and welcomed him with an offer of Sabbath peace. Not even when the crowd launched into the next song, and Marcus slid quietly back into his seat.
People nodded his way, smiled whenever their eyes met. He was neither the tallest man nor the only white face. And he was far from being the best dressed. By the time the singing stopped and the prayers began, Marcus had come to recognize that the only discord was that which he had brought in with him.
After the service he noticed Alma and Austin Hall in the parking lot and walked toward them. As soon as Austin spotted him, he turned and walked away. Marcus halted in front of the big-boned woman and said, “I’m sorry I trouble your husband.”
“It’s not you, Mr. Glenwood.”
“Call me Marcus, please.”
“It’s not you,” she repeated, her voice as sorrowful as the gaze that followed her husband’s retreat.
“I was wondering if I could come by and speak with you today.”
“I have a board of trustees meeting that runs all this week. I’ll be tied up in strategy sessions the rest of today and most of tomorrow. Could we just take a turn here?”
He followed her through the parking lot, observing how people noted their closeness and turned away politely. He moved through a tumultuous crowd, yet was shielded even from the children. Parents steered the littlest ones aside; the older children took swift note of their elders’ reactions and pretended the pair was not even there. “The people here think a lot of you.”
“Gloria was one of their own,” Alma said matter-of-factly. She waited until they had reached the path that bounded the cemetery to ask, “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“You do not have a case against New Horizons.” It was not how he had intended to express himself. But the day continued to reverberate with an authority that permitted no glossing over his message. “I’ve spent a lot of hours going through the evidence. And I am telling you here and now, there is no motion I could prepare that would result in a positive verdict.”
Alma Hall continued along the gravel path. The cemetery’s waist-high fence was a derelict affair, with many of the iron rods eaten through and weeping rust. The path itself was weed-strewn and unkempt. Thistles and honeysuckle scrambled over the fence and climbed the oldest headstones. The air was scented with wildflowers and blackberries. Families walked the interior ways, pausing now and then to look down at graves and talk quietly among themselves while the children sang and danced about. The atmosphere was subdued yet happy, a pleasant realm of memories and peace.