Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble: A Novel (15 page)

That evening, as I told Sam and Lloyd about the house call that Granny had made, Mr. Pickens phoned, asking for Sam.

“Is everything all right?” I asked as Sam hung up.

“Apparently not,” he said wryly. “James and Brother Vern got into it before Pickens got home, and now James insists on moving back to his apartment. Pickens wants help getting him up the stairs.”

“I’ll help,” Lloyd said, hopping up to get his coat.

“How’s James going to get up those stairs?” I asked. “He can barely hobble to the bathroom as it is.”

“I know,” Sam said, shrugging on his coat, “but he’s bent on trying it. Maybe Granny’s doctoring really has helped.”

Deciding to go with them, I wrapped up against the cold and rode with them to the Pickenses’ house. When Mr. Pickens let us in, the house was silent—no babies crying, no television preacher ranting, no bell tinkling from James’s room. The quiet seemed ominous, as if everything were poised to cut loose at any minute.

“Thanks for coming,” Mr. Pickens said. “I don’t know what else to do but get him up there. Hazel Marie’s putting the babies to bed, but she tried all afternoon to talk him out of it. She’s pretty upset about James being out there by himself, but he’s determined to go. Says he’ll crawl if that’s the only way to get there.”

We all trooped back to James’s room and found him sitting on the side of the bed, Sam’s bathrobe and one tennis shoe on, the other shoe sticking out of a full shopping bag on his lap. He was ready to go.

“You sure about this, James?” Sam asked.

“Yessir, I am,” James said, his face stretched thin with determination—and, it seemed to me, hurt feelings. “Mr. Sam, you know I’m not one to stay where I’m not wanted, an’ I been tol’ my welcome already wore out ’round here. Lloyd,” he said, holding the bag out to him, “you take care of this for me. It’s got all my val’ables.” Lloyd nodded and, with a serious look on his face, accepted the bag as if it indeed held valuables. He clasped it close, the papers inside rustling against his chest.

“Look, James,” Mr. Pickens said, “Vernon Puckett does not speak for us. You know we want you and we want you right here where we can take care of you. This is your home.”

“Nossir.” James shook his head. “My home’s out the door and up them stairs out yonder. That ole preacher man want me outta here, so I’m gonna go. I like it better up there anyway.”

“But,” Sam said, “what if you need help once you’re out there? Don’t you think you’d be better off to stay where you can be looked after?”

“Nossir, I done thought it all out. Y’all jus’ help me one time up them stairs, an’ I won’t be no more trouble. An’ Miss Hazel Marie don’t have to come look after me—the bathroom is real close up there, an’ she don’t have to climb no stairs, either. Somebody can just slide trays halfway up an’ I’ll crawl down an’ get ’em. I won’t be no trouble. An’,” he said, pushing himself off the bed with his left hand and balancing on one foot, the Ace-bandaged one held high, “that ole man can stop pickin’ on her an’ on me.”

There was nothing for it but to help him outside and up the stairs to his apartment over the garage, Sam and Mr. Pickens on either side of him. Lloyd had run ahead and turned up the heat, leaving the shopping bag on James’s bed, then he ran back to bring up an armful of pillows.

We got James settled and turned to leave, looking back at him propped up in his own bed, his bag close beside him, the remote on his lap, a glass of water and the phone on a nearby table. I didn’t feel good about leaving him alone, but truthfully I couldn’t have lived in the same house with Brother Vern, either. Lloyd had made another trip to the house, bringing back a bag of Doritos, an apple, and two bottles of Sprite.

“It’s all I could find, James,” he said. “But I’ll go to the store for you tomorrow. You might need some snacks.”

“I ’preciate it, Lloyd. You a good boy, an’ I’m gonna do something real good for you one of these days, see if I don’t.” He lay back on the pillows and sighed. “An’ for Miss Granny, too, ’cause if it wadn’t for her I wouldna made it up here. Y’all leave me my walkin’ stick real close, an’ I’ll be all right.”

The last thing Mr. Pickens did right before closing the door was to tell James to use the phone if he needed anything. Shaking his head as we started toward the house, Mr. Pickens said, “I don’t like this one bit.” Then he sighed heavily and went on. “Especially since it probably means we’ve got Brother Vern for good.”

Maybe not,
I thought.

On my way to retiring for the night, I tapped on Lloyd’s partially open door, then stuck my head in. “Bedtime, honey.”

“Yes’m,” he said, blinking, as he looked up from his computer. “I’m almost through here.”

“Don’t stay at it too long. You’ll ruin your eyes.”

He grinned at me, wished me a good night, and turned to peer again at the computer screen. I went to bed.

After turning over for the upteenth time that night, I slipped out from under the covers and, grabbing a robe against the chill of the house, tiptoed out of the room to go downstairs. Sam moaned as I left, but I knew he’d sleep better without my thrashing around half the night.

I went into our new library and stood close to the fireplace, where the last of the embers still glowed. I didn’t turn on a lamp, for the room was lit by a huge harvest moon, seemingly hanging right outside the window. Besides, my thoughts needed the dark, and I welcomed the shadows that flitted across the room, as the wind, which had picked up considerably, whipped through the trees and bushes in the yard.

I went to the side window and looked out, seeing how bright the street and yard were in the moonlight. A Comanche moon, I thought, and shivered, thinking of the pioneers who had dreaded those bright nights when painted bodies slipped across the plain to wreak devastation. Pulling my robe closer, I went back to the fireplace, took a chair, and thought of closer perils.

The recipe book was growing apace by this time, and I should’ve been elated by its progress. I wasn’t. I had lost my enthusiasm for it, and wondered why I didn’t just wrap up the whole project and quit. Hazel Marie had too much on her hands to take on anything else, and as far as her learning to cook was concerned, this wasn’t the time to teach her. She could just offer grilled cheese sandwiches and cold cereal. Serve that often enough, and James would get well and Brother Vern would leave.

Or Mr. Pickens could bring in take-out food, except he wasn’t at home long enough to bring in anything. At any minute he would have to pick up and leave on another case—insurance fraud or whatever. It was the whatever that worried me. . . .

I sat up and looked around—a noise, a sliding shuffle. On the stairs? In the kitchen? Was somebody else up in the middle of the night?

I sat still, waiting to hear it again, then decided it was the wind. But it wasn’t. The lock clicked on the kitchen door, then I heard the soft sound of the door being eased closed. I hopped up and ran to the window overlooking the backyard. Just as I got there, a small figure dashed from the corner of the house and ran across the yard toward the gate behind the arbor.

Lloyd! What was he doing sneaking out of the house at midnight? Where was he going? I started to rap on the window, then knew he wouldn’t hear it or, if he did, it would scare him to death.

What to do? Go wake Sam? Get dressed and go after him? No, he’d be gone and out of sight before I turned around good. I ran from the room as a dozen awful possibilities ran through my mind. I’d heard of children slipping out of the house to party somewhere, or to meet and drive around looking for trouble, or to see a girlfriend. But Lloyd didn’t have a girlfriend. Did he?

I snatched Sam’s raincoat out of the pantry, pulled my bedroom slippers on more tightly, and headed out the door, fast on his heels. Running across the yard, the wind whipping through the huge coat, my robe, and my nightgown and playing havoc with my hair, I had one thing on my mind—where was he going? Oh, and what would he do when he got there?

Pushing through the back gate and getting scratched by branches of a forsythia bush, I popped out onto the sidewalk. Looking both ways, I caught a glimpse of a dark figure rounding the corner a block away. His mother’s house, I thought with relief, then thought better of it. If that was his goal, why at this time of night? Would it frighten her if he showed up unexpectedly? Wake up the babies? The whole house? What was so urgent that he would rush through the night to get there?

I hurried after him, staying in the shadows as much as I could, not wanting him to know I was sneaking after him. But I had to see where he was going. For all I knew, he’d veer off to somebody else’s house or hop into a car on the street. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him—it was that I didn’t trust whoever he might be meeting.

It was cold and I wasn’t dressed for it, but I was too concerned for Lloyd to give it much thought. The wind would die down, then a gust would almost pin me to the fence around the Baldwins’ yard. A stoplight danced in the wind away off down the street, and power lines bounced above my head. The worst of it, though, was when the wind billowed Sam’s raincoat out like a sail, then breezed all the way up my nightgown while whipping my hair all over my head and into my face.

As Lloyd drew near his mother’s house, I hurriedly closed the distance between us. I wanted to get just near enough to see him safely into the house, then I’d go home. I stopped behind the large oak tree on the edge of the yard, recalling a time when Lloyd and I had done the same thing in the same place some while ago, and peered around to make sure he went inside.

As much as I strained to see into the shadows on the front porch of the dark house, I couldn’t make out a thing. In fact, I’d lost sight of Lloyd altogether. Thinking he might have gone to the back door, I edged onto Hazel Marie’s yard and slipped beside Mr. Pickens’s low-slung sports car. Where did that boy get to?

Maybe he’d cut through the yard and was now high-tailing it to somebody’s house two blocks over. I’d never find him if that was the case.

Bent against the wind, I held my coat close, and ran for the back corner of the house. Stooping over to look around the edge, I hoped to see him going in the back door. But I didn’t. As the moon slid behind a bank of clouds, the whole world went as black as pitch and, feeling safe in the dark, I gradually stood up. Peering intently all around the backyard, I saw no movement, heard no sound.

Until there was a soft tap-tap-tap against James’s door up on the landing of the stairs beside the garage, and there stood Lloyd waiting to get in.

I couldn’t make out the door opening, but James’s lowered voice wafted across the yard. “Come on in here, boy. I was ’bout to give you up.”

Lloyd went in, the door closed, and all was dark again. Then a yellowish light appeared behind the drawn shades on James’s windows.

I didn’t know whether to stay or to go. What in the world were those two doing? They couldn’t be up to any good if Lloyd had to sneak out in the dark of the night to do it. I stood there, about to freeze to death, wondering if I should wake Mr. Pickens. Or just go up there myself, knock on the door, and demand to know what was going on. But would Lloyd ever trust me again if he knew I’d followed him?

The thing to do, I told myself, was to find out what they were doing without letting them know I was doing it. With that in mind, I scurried over to the garage and started climbing the stairs to the apartment, hoping to be able to see inside or at least to hear something.

The stairs weren’t all that steep, but the higher I climbed, the more the wind gusted around me. I gave up trying to keep my hair from flying everywhere—it was already sticking straight out from my head—and concentrated on getting it to the landing without making any noise.

When I was two or three steps from the landing, the door swung open and, just as I was rising up out of the shadows on the stairs, Lloyd, backlit by lamplight, started to walk out. He came to an abrupt halt, his mouth falling open in shock. Then he let out a high-pitched scream that filled the night with ripples of terror, scaring me so bad that I fell back against the railing. Behind him, James yelled and tried to come to his aid but tumbled out of bed as Lloyd jumped back inside and slammed the door. Lights came on in the Pickenses’ bedroom, then the hall, and I knew Mr. Pickens was going for his shotgun.

I stumbled down the stairs, half running, half sliding, grabbing the handrail to keep from falling, then ran across the yard and out onto the sidewalk. I ran as fast as my bedroom slippers would let me, panting with every breath, as I heard doors slamming and Mr. Pickens yelling, “What’s going on out there! James, you all right?”

I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to explain. Thoroughly ashamed of mistrusting Lloyd, I wanted to be home where I could pretend I’d never been out.

Hurrying inside my own house, breathing heavily, I sideswiped a kitchen chair, then limped to the pantry to hang up Sam’s coat. Brushing my hair back with my hands, I determined that if Velma ever used that new hairspray on me again I’d stop going to her. Nothing is worse than hair that’s stiff as a board in a windstorm.

I raced up the stairs, wondering if Lloyd would stay at his mother’s or be right behind me to finish the night here. Once in bed, I cowered on my side, frozen half to death but afraid to snuggle up to Sam. One touch of my cold feet and he’d hit the ceiling.

I thought I’d never get to sleep, not only for listening for sounds of Lloyd returning, but also because so many thoughts were running through my head. What were Lloyd and James up to? How would I explain my presence to the boy? How would he feel about being spied on? On and on it went, until I woke with a start and found the bed empty beside me and the clock reading almost nine on Wednesday morning.

Lord help me,
I thought as I hopped out of bed. Not only would I have to come up with an explanation for Lloyd, but I was going to be late for LuAnne’s second cooking lesson at Hazel Marie’s.

I hurriedly dressed, all the while dreading the coming day, and went down to the kitchen.

“Sorry I’m so late, Lillian,” I said. “I didn’t sleep well, then ended up oversleeping.” Looking around and finally coming fully awake, I went on. “Where’s Sam? Did Lloyd eat here or at his mother’s? I don’t need any breakfast, Lillian. I’ll get something at Hazel Marie’s. I’ve got to get going. LuAnne’s probably already there.”

“Jus’ slow down,” Lillian said. “Miss Hazel Marie called and say you don’t need to come. Miz Conover already been there and dropped off her roast ready to go in the oven. Miz Conover say Miss Velma working her in this morning to do her color over ’cause she don’t like how it turn out the first time, so she don’t have time to give a lesson. An’ Mr. Sam, he go eat breakfast with his friends downtown, an’ I guess Lloyd, he stay at his mother’s last night, so he in school now.”

“Oh, yes, I guess he did.” That wasn’t a good answer because Lillian raised an eyebrow. She knew that I always knew where Lloyd spent the night. “I must’ve had a worse night than I realized, so I’m just as glad not to have to watch another cooking lesson, which wasn’t much of a lesson the way LuAnne did it the first time. But she has some nerve to be so high-handed about the second one.

“Anyway, I hope Sam comes home with all the news in town. That bunch he has breakfast with every week seems to know everything that goes on.” Trying to change the subject because I didn’t want to discuss the previous night with anyone until I’d explained myself to Lloyd. If I
could
explain myself—I still didn’t know how I’d manage that.

And that’s the way the morning went, Lillian watching me from under her eyebrows and me pretending I didn’t have a care in the world. Until Hazel Marie called.

“The babies are down for a little while,” she said, “but I had to tell you what happened last night. We had some excitement!”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Well,” she said as if settling in to tell the tale, “somebody screaming woke us up and J.D. was out of bed in a flash. He ran outside and, lo and behold, it was Lloyd, who’d been scared to death by somebody trying to break into James’s apartment. Can you believe that!”

“My goodness,” I said, sounding properly concerned. “Who was it?” I asked only because it was the normal question to ask, but not wanting an answer.

“Nobody knows! James said he got only one eyeball on it and he thought it was somebody in a Halloween costume, and Lloyd said it looked like a witch to him.”

A
witch
! I would’ve been insulted if I hadn’t suddenly realized that I was in the clear. Nobody knew I’d been there! Thank you, Lord.

“Ooh,” Hazel Marie said, “I’m still shaking at the thought of somebody sneaking around the house. I mean, I know it’s October but it’s not Halloween yet. J.D. looked everywhere, but he didn’t find anything, but we sure didn’t sleep well after that.”

“I can imagine,” I murmured. “But, Hazel Marie, what was Lloyd doing there? He went to bed here last night.”

“That boy,” she said with a sigh. “I never know whether to be proud of him or be mad at him. He said he got worried about James being up there by himself and decided to run over to check on him. But in the middle of the night? Anyway, he stayed on over here—I started to call and let you know but he said you were sound asleep. But let me tell you this. After we got James up to his apartment last evening, nothing would do but Uncle Vern had to have the downstairs bedroom. So I had to change the sheets and straighten up in there so he could move in. I didn’t have time to clean Lloyd’s room after Uncle Vern left it, so Lloyd ended up on the sofa again. I tell you, it’s like musical beds around here.”

“It certainly sounds it,” I agreed, feeling better and better as I realized I would not be called to account. Except, I mused, I wasn’t overly convinced of Lloyd’s reason for slipping out of the house to make a midnight visit.

In spite of my increasing qualms about continuing with the recipe book and cooking lessons, especially after learning that LuAnne hadn’t followed the rules, I found myself in a tight spot early that afternoon. After stewing half the day over how to redeem myself with Lloyd—in case he’d realized sometime during the day exactly who that witch had been—Corinne Neely, a member of the Lila Mae Harden Sunday school class and a renowned busybody, called. She just knew I’d want to know that Miss Mattie Freeman’s feelings were hurt because I hadn’t asked her to contribute a recipe, especially since I’d gotten recipes from everybody else in town.

I tried to explain to Corinne that I was having second thoughts about the whole project and, besides, I had collected only a few recipes, and they were from nowhere near everybody in town.

“Yes, but,” Corinne said, “Miss Mattie’s eyes tear up every time she thinks of being left out. I knew you’d want to know.”

Well, no, I hadn’t wanted to know, but, sighing, I capitulated and agreed to include Miss Mattie. With Thurlow and now Miss Mattie knocking down my door with recipes in hand, I decided that maybe the thing to do would be to continue with the cookbook idea, but leave off the lessons. Besides, who would want either Miss Mattie with her walker or Thurlow with his dog in their kitchen?

So to that end, I decided to call Miss Mattie as if she were next on my list and make no mention of Corinne Neely’s meddling. Actually, I always telephoned before calling on Miss Mattie. Of course, it’s only a courtesy to phone before visiting anyone, but with Miss Mattie it was a necessity. She took a morning nap and an afternoon nap every day of her life, so if you wanted to see her you had to let her know you were coming by so she’d be up.

Miss Mattie was somewhere in her upper eighties—I don’t know how far up, since the precise number of one’s years is never a matter for discussion. She was a wide woman—not overweight, just one of those women who’d been born wide and stayed that way. Her legs, slightly bowed, were like toothpicks and she used to spend a lot of time adjusting her stockings, which tended to sag and bunch around her ankles. Now she simply let them sag and bunch.

Miss Mattie’s mind was still as clear as a bell most of the time, but her body was giving out on her. She couldn’t get around very well, although the walker she used was a great deal of help to her. Not to anyone else, though, because she couldn’t see well enough to watch where she put the walker’s legs—which, like as not, could be on your foot. And, bless her heart, she had the worst time getting up out of a chair. So whenever she went to a party—she never turned down an invitation—she’d find the most comfortable chair in the house and sit there until it was time to leave. And that was always a sight to see, for she would grasp the arms of the chair and start a rocking motion, back and forth, working up enough momentum to catapult herself out of the chair.

And every Thursday morning that rolled around, Miss Mattie went to Velma’s for her ten o’clock hair appointment. Only the direst necessity could prevail on those of us who knew her schedule to also be driving on Thursday mornings. I think I’ve mentioned that Miss Mattie couldn’t see well, but she could drive. Or rather, she did drive, whether she could see or not. Velma’s Cut ’n’ Curl was only about ten blocks from Miss Mattie’s house, with one left turn to be made on the trip. And one stoplight, which Miss Mattie totally ignored because it had been up for only ten years or so and she wasn’t used to it. But off she’d take at a quarter to ten, and woe be to anyone between her and the beautician’s chair. She could barely see over the steering wheel, so her head was always cocked up, turning neither to the right nor to the left, steering straight for Velma’s.

I made it a policy to stay home on Thursday mornings, but one morning I had to be out and, I know you won’t believe this, but that new sheriff had assigned a patrol car to the intersection where Miss Mattie consistently tooled through the stoplight—red, yellow, or green, it didn’t matter.

At first, I’d thought the police officer was there to give her a ticket, but that wasn’t the case at all. He was there, standing in the middle of the intersection, to wave her safely through, regardless of the color of the light.

I decided, then and there, that my vote would always go to that sheriff, who understood and sympathized with the limitations of age.