Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (14 page)

After dinner, Grace brought Emmeline's tray back to the kitchen. From the looks of the plate, Emmeline had, as usual, eaten very little.

“Your cooking is quite good, Blanche.” Grace set the tray on the table and turned to Blanche.

“Quite good,” my foot, Blanche thought. “Fabulous” is more like it. But she merely nodded her all-purpose nod, which could be interpreted to mean whatever the viewer needed it to mean.

“You must have had a fine teacher.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Blanche knew Grace intended for her to say on, to talk about how she'd learned to cook and from whom. But Blanche didn't want to play the let's-pretend-I'm-interested-in-you-as-a-person game. It might be necessary to Grace's image of herself, but even to keep a low profile Blanche wasn't prepared to go along with the go-long, as Cousin Murphy used to say.

“Have you considered a regular cook's position?”

“I can't stand the constant heat, ma'am. Makes me all dizzy and nauseous.” She managed to keep a straight face somehow. Her sarcasm was totally wasted on Grace who arranged her features into a mask of sympathetic understanding, as though Blanche had said she couldn't be a cook because of some disability. Blanche coughed down the laugh that threatened to betray her. Grace, having discharged her duty to show personal interest in the help, went on to talk about what really concerned her. Blanche both listened to and watched her as she issued her velvet-sheathed orders.

“We like our bed linen changed every three days this time of year.” Grace was flushed, her eyes bright and alert. She spoke with a crispness Blanche had first heard when Grace had opened the back gate to admit Blanche to the house in town. The last time Grace had seemed so sure of herself was when they'd done the meal planning. She's in her element, Blanche thought. For all her rattled, nearly helpless behavior, she likes being in charge. She really believes she's the Mistress of the Manor. Is that why she wants to control Mumsfield's money, to make sure she gets to play
châtelaine
in high style? Although, from what Blanche had overheard, the will-changing business sounded like Everett's idea.

“And please remember, just a hint of starch in Mr. Everett's shirts.”

For one brief moment, their eyes actually met. Blanche was the first to look away. “Yes, ma'am.”

After Grace left the kitchen, Blanche sat down at the table. Was it just that old race thing that had thrown her off when her eyes met Grace's? Her neighbor Wilma's father said he'd never in his adult life looked a white person in the eye. He'd grown up in the days when such an act very often ended in a black person's charred body swinging from a tree. For many years, Blanche worried that it was fear which sometimes made her reluctant to meet white people's eyes, particularly on days when she had the lonelies or the unspecified blues. She'd come to understand that her desire was to avoid pain, a pain so old, so deep, its memory was carried not in her mind, but in her bones. Some days she simply didn't want to look into the eyes of people likely raised to hate, disdain, or fear anyone who looked like her. It was not always useful to be in touch with race memory. The thought of her losses sometimes sucked the joy from her life for days at a time.

But in this case, it was Grace's particular eyes that she'd shied away from. There'd been something in them that was all Grace, which Blanche hadn't wanted to see. She was still sitting at the table when Grace returned to the kitchen.

Now Grace's eyes were wide and red-rimmed. They flitted around the room like trapped birds. Her hands were clenched tightly together, her knuckles stood out sharp and white as bleached bones. Blanche wondered if she'd imagined Grace's calm assurance of a few minutes ago. “Please take the two... gentlemen on the side porch some refreshments.” She spoke more slowly than usual, and, given her appearance and behavior, Blanche was surprised by her even tone of voice.

Blanche fetched napkins, filled a cut-glass pitcher with iced tea, and set it on a large serving tray along with a decanter of
brandy, snifters, and tall, thin iced tea glasses. She could feel, and sometimes see, Grace's eyes on her. They reminded Blanche of a storm she'd once seen building out to sea. The clouds had tumbled soundlessly end over end in the distance, gathering around the heart of the storm. When the storm broke over the beach it had flattened everything it touched. Where was Everett? Why wasn't he playing host to these two gentlemen who'd caused such a reaction in Grace?

Curiosity lightened Blanche's step as she moved through the house. She balanced the tray on her hip while she opened the door and stepped out onto the screened-in porch. There was still some light in the sky, but on the porch deep shadows had already begun to settle in for the night. As she was about to round the corner onto the long side porch, one of the men spoke. Blanche relaxed and imagined her ears to be large, trumpet-shaped organs designed to pick up the smallest sound. What she heard made it clear that the men on the porch were neither gentle nor strangers.

“Bobbie Lee, I don't have that kind of money. And even if I did...”

“'Even if I did,' my ass! You still don't seem to understand what's goin' on here, Everett, ole buddy! I've got you by the short hairs. I can pull your whole life apart with just a few words in the right places, and there ain't jackshit you can do about it but pay up!” The sheriff's voice was full of confidence.

“Who the hell do you think you are, speaking to me like this!” Everett's voice cracked in mid-sentence, like tree bark in a forest fire.

“Can that, ole buddy. You just get my money. That's all you got to do. Or I talk.”

“Do you really think he's going to take a chance on ruining his career for a miserable fifty thousand?” Everett's tone made it clear what he thought of the possibility.

“I know he will,” the sheriff told him. “He's got his own problems. But that ain't none of your business. You just get the cash.”

One of the men struck a match.

“Listen, I've got a lot of connections in and around Atlanta. People who owe me favors. I could get you fixed up down there. You could leave this place, forget about...”

A whiff of cigar smoke wrinkled Blanche's nose.

“We've been through that. I ain't goin' nowhere. I'm the sheriff of this here county, and I like being the sheriff of this county just fine. And that's just the way I intend for things to stay. I ain't leavin' here for some two-bit clerkin' job or drivin' some damn truck! And I ain't about to lose this job!”

When Everett spoke, his voice was so low Blanche had to lean forward to hear it. “You ought to think it over, Sheriff,” he said. “Sometimes it's better to run than to stay and fight.” All the uncertain boyishness was gone from his voice, replaced by something much more adult and dangerous.

The sheriff laughed. “Everett, you ain't got the balls to make good on that threat.” The sheriff's voice wasn't quite as sure as his words.

The sound of one of the men walking toward her end of the porch set Blanche in motion. She turned the corner and set the tray on a small table between two white-painted rattan chairs. She looked at the two men from the corner of her eye. They'd both discovered a deep interest in looking out at the pond. They ignored her, except that they didn't speak while she was present.

She longed to listen from around the corner on her way back to the kitchen, but Grace might be waiting there for her, wondering what was taking her so long. If she got caught eavesdropping, and the sheriff remembered where it was that he'd recently seen her...Still, she waited a few more moments, but she couldn't out-wait their silence.

Grace was gone from the kitchen when Blanche returned, but the air was still heavy with her presence. Blanche moved about with the automatic movements of the domestic robot of many women's dreams, while her mind went about its own affairs.
She wiped the countertops with more elbow grease than was warranted, and wondered what story Everett would tell Grace in order to get the money for the sheriff, as Blanche was sure he would. If Grace dumped him, he might have to make his own way in the world. That would never do. Blanche folded and refolded the dish towel until its ends met perfectly. She set the chairs just so in relation to the table. What a household! More slipping and sliding than a drunk on ice skates. She'd been more right about the sheriff and Everett than Nate had given her credit for, but she still had no idea what Nate was hiding. She wished she could have a good long talk with Miz Minnie instead of having to wait for Ardell's report. It would do her good to talk with Miz Minnie.

In an African history and culture course she'd taken at the Freedom Library, back in the sixties, Blanche had learned that among some African peoples, there were wise women elders who chose the chiefs and counseled them. Had Miz Minnie been born among such a people, she would undoubtedly have been one of those women. Miz Minnie knew a good portion of the private affairs of practically every black person in her community. In times of trouble, almost everyone found themselves talking with Miz Minnie. Some folks just went to see her, and spilled their pain out on her scrubbed wooden floors and handmade rag rugs, and let her soothe them with wise words and sassafras tea. Other people met her seemingly by accident and found themselves telling all their business, although they'd never planned to do such a thing. Everyone came away fortified. Blanche could just see her in her grease-stained cotton house dress, mincing along on fat-heeled feet in oversized men's bedroom shoes, hard-pressed hair done up in greasy gray curls that peeked out from under her ever-present head scarf, her lower lip packed with snuff.

Because she knew the black community, Miz Minnie also had plenty of information about the white one. Blanche wondered if people who hired domestic help had any idea how much their employees learned about them while fixing their meals,
making their beds, and emptying their trash. Did it ever occur to the kind of women for whom she worked that they and their lives were often topics of conversation and sometimes objects of ridicule or pity among the help's friends and families? She locked the back door and went to the front of the house to see if anyone wanted anything else before she went up to bed.

In the middle of another dream about buses—hundreds and thousands of buses zooming up a steep hill, their tires humming like a million bumblebees—she was suddenly wide awake. She didn't need to go to the toilet, she wasn't thirsty, and all was quiet. But the half-memory of a dull thump flickered in a corner of her mind. She separated the cacophony of a country night into its various parts: crickets rubbing their hind legs together, frogs inflating their throats, a faint breeze in the boughs of the pine trees, the sound of something rolling slowly over gravel.

She flung back the covers and scrambled out of bed. She was out the door of her room and down the hall as fast as she could move. She made it to the window in time to see the limousine rolling down the drive, lights and motor off.

There was something dreamlike about the scene out the window. The almost fluorescent pink azalea blossoms were pale lights floating in the dark. The car was densely black against the silvery green foliage. A slow-moving monster sneaking up on somebody, she thought.

As she watched, the driver lowered the window, put an elbow on the windowsill, then leaned out and looked back at the house. The moonlight streamed into the opened window and struck Everett full in the face just before the limousine was swallowed by the deeper darkness beneath the trees that lined the drive. When he reached the bottom of the drive, he turned on the headlights. The treetops made lace doilies against the sky.

Of course, there was no sleep waiting for her when she got back to bed. She lay staring at the square of midnight blue out her window.

Everett was probably on his way to tell his lady friend that they were on the verge of being exposed if he didn't pay the sheriff off. Blanche wondered who the woman was. Probably someone with whom Grace was friendly, if not a close friend of hers. Blanche had seen it so many times it no longer amazed her—people too rich to worry about being fired from their jobs or evicted from their homes who seemed to seek the threat of total disaster that poor people sought to avoid. They achieved this state of risk by screwing their husband's brother or their wife's closest friend. Blanche had watched bored, listless employers grow energetic and bright-eyed from the thrill of putting the horns on their mates with the help of someone who was a part of their intimate circle. Blanche shook her head and sucked her teeth and eventually drifted off to sleep.

EIGHT

I
n the morning, Blanche fiddled with the radio dial until she found a station that promised news. Most mornings, she tried to listen to the news before she left for work. But most mornings, she was too busy pressing a dress for Taifa to wear to school, polishing Malik's shoes, and getting herself ready to go to work to give more than half an ear to the early-morning news. This morning, making biscuits for her employers' breakfast was the distraction. It took her a few moments to understand what the man was saying. She stopped in the middle of forming the biscuit dough into a ball and turned to stare at the radio as though it were a television set. Her hands hung limply over the bowl. Bits of dough clung to her fingers.