Nobody Said Amen (37 page)

“Well, well, well.” Jimmy’s eyes met Luke’s. “Tryin’ to sort it out.”

“My caller said the senator was going to call his old friend J. Edgar Hoover and clear the brush away, straighten out any misunderstanding.”

“And what do you guess the senator’d like me to do to help him ‘sort it out’?”

Lucas nodded. “I thought you might be interested.” He stood up and moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. “Young Timmy Kilbrew is announcing he’s putting his hat in the ring for Congressional representative from Magnolia County.”

Jimmy Mack nodded. “So that’s it.” He leaned back in his chair, half smiling at Claybourne. “I remember Timmy Kilbrew when he came to the Freedom House in ’64, wanting to find out what we were doing. He was one of the few whites from Shiloh who had the guts to come and ask. And I remember his cousin, Bobby Joe Kilbrew. I’m sure you remember him, too, Claybourne. He served time for the conspiracy to kill Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Yeah, I remember the Kilbrews.”

Claybourne flushed. “There are black sheep in every flock. But the Kilbrews are an old family down here, Mack, and they’ve been good for the senator’s long political career. I’m sure you can understand that Sterling’d like to help Oscar Kilbrew’s young nephew.”

Jimmy followed him out into the sunshine and locked his office door. “So having a strong, successful black businessman running for the same seat would be . . . ”

“Foolish.” Luke said.

“Inconvenient?”

“Counter-productive.” Luke paused as he reached his car. “It would likely make it difficult for the senator to sort out the difficulties with your funding. And that would be bad for the Magnolia County housing and—”

“And for the J. Mack Construction Company.” Jimmy shook his head and grinned at Claybourne. “Not like the old days is it, Lucas? Can I call you Lucas? Back when I was organizing on Tildon’s plantation, the senator would have told Timmy Kilbrew’s daddy at the Klan what was necessary and that would be that. Now we got all this foolishness like elections.”

Luke said quietly, “Yes, we do. But it doesn’t have to be foolish.”

Jimmy chuckled. “Never did. I always wondered what all the fussin’ was about.”

For Willy, Dick Perkins had been the escape from the web of Mississippi constriction she had always longed for—a prince out of the west, knowing in the way that the men at the Shiloh Club were not, amused to share his outside world with an ardent and captivating listener. Perkins had been a sent-from-heaven Baedeker for Wilson Claybourne, who longed to know the things he knew. Tell me about New York. And tell me about the theater, and tell me about skiing at Aspen, about chamber music at Telluride, about riding in the Rockies, and did you really know Duke Ellington? Tell me about the Savoy Ballroom! For Willy, Perkins’s presence at any time in any setting had always been felt, acknowledged only in her most private musings, when she was most alone and the dream of outside seemed almost in touch. Not once had she cheated on Luke. Not yet. But if she ever really ventured outside, she knew the hand that would reach for hers would be the hand of Dick Perkins.

Willy’s telegram had made him laugh. He could almost see her as she’d gone to the high counter at Western Union. “Hi, Vera darling,” she would’ve said. “Be an angel and send this right out. Got a Prince Charming waitin’ to get it!” And Vera would have gone to the key to send it, grinning. “That Willy Claybourne is a caution!”

From the beginning, for Perkins it had been a dance without words, a meeting not quite a meeting, a flirtation without real consequence. By nature he was a reticent suitor, and any amorous longings since Helen’s death had remained unspoken, unacknowledged, and unfulfilled. It wasn’t guilt. Who was he cheating? He had married young, and was untutored in the cotillion of bachelorhood. Sex outside of the comfortable marital frame he’d known and enjoyed was simply behavior outside of his experience. Yet the attraction to Willy Claybourne was real, seeding thoughts about his friend’s wife that he could control but not suppress. He’d known it to be so from that first brush with Willy at the Shiloh Club, from the first dance at Fatback’s Platter, a full decade gone. He knew his role to be “the good friend of the Claybournes,” the man made welcome to the gentried insularity of the affluent Delta world by their inclusive generosity. He was the available companion for the single women at the Claybourne dinner parties, the seasoned traveler who could show them Acapulco, the buddy who would hunt quail with Luke, the outsider who had come and profited with them from the largesse of the Delta. So how could he long so for Luke’s wife? For ten years the dance had continued, the flirtation without real consequence. And now there was this telegram:

Dear Prince Charming:

This hapless damsel is in great distress. If you still love me, please rescue. Can I come to your castle?

The Cotton Queen of Magnolia County.

The cotillion was over.

He watched her step from the cab, her blond hair floating in the breeze that moved across the lawn from the Gulf. When she stepped back to look at the casino, she spotted him on the balcony and grinned. “Hey, Prince, can a poor white girl come into the kingdom?”

“What’s a poor white girl doing at a gambling casino? I think I’ve got to check your credit rating. I’ll be right down.” He smiled and waved her toward the front door.

Perkins took her bag and embraced her. “I’m so glad to see you, Willy.” He stepped back and gazed at her. “You look terrific.”

She smiled. “You always make me think I look terrific. Maybe that’s what friends are for.”

He answered her smile with his own. “From what I read in the telegram, it was more than friends.
If you still love me, can I come to your castle?
The answer is yes.” He took her in his arms, and for the first time he kissed her.

When he’d led her to the terrace, she moved to the rail overlooking the Gulf, watching the slow caravan of shrimp boats returning to the wharves beyond the grove of palmettos. “Lordy, lordy. You live with this all the time? It’s almost heathen it’s so beautiful.”

“It’s never looked more beautiful to me than just this minute.” When she turned to face him, he repeated quietly, “Never.”

Willy moved from the rail and settled on the edge of the brightly striped chaise. “I’ve never had to play games with you, Dick. You’ve known all my secrets from the day you arrived from Colorado. You knew I loved you from way back. I guess I always will. But the friendship part is the most special of all. You know I’ve loved Luke, and you know he’s loved me. But he’s not been ready to be the good friend I need. You’ve been that from the get-go.”

“I wanted to be, Willy, from the time I first met you. And we did become wonderful friends. I knew you loved Luke. In a lot of ways, I did, too. It’s why I never thought of moving between you. But that was then, Willy. You’re here now because you decided to come.”

She looked at the glinting water that was making smudges of the shrimpers as they moved across the setting sun. “It’s more lovely than I ever dreamed. Willy McIntire is a long way from home.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s hard to picture Shiloh, and, looking at you, it’s hard to picture Luke. And now I don’t know what to do.”

“Times change, life changes.” He gently raised her face. “We have to change with it.”

She nodded. “It’s all about change, isn’t it? You manage it so wonderfully well.” She rose and walked thoughtfully to the far edge of the patio, watching the last boat as it disappeared behind the trees. She turned and leaned back against the railing, “I struggle and struggle with it. And Luke, dear Luke, is just bewildered by it and hangs on to what used to be certain.”

Perkins said, “He’s like you, born and raised Mississippi White, Willy. Change is hard, real hard. It’s tough biting the bullet if you’re a Luke Claybourne. And he’s had a lot of bullets to bite these last years.”

“I know that. I came out of that soil, and growin’ up was slow and hard. And there wasn’t much change possible for me for a long time. Not till somebody noticed and said, ‘You’re pretty, Willy McIntire.’” Her laugh was tight and brittle. “Pretty! Let me tell you, Prince, pretty in Mississippi can take you a very long way. It can take you from choppin’ cotton for shares at the Stennis plantation to sellin’ cotton at the Claybourne plantation. And then you discover you are forty-three and that you can see in a way that you never could before, and pretty isn’t enough.”

He reached for her now and held her very close. “What is enough, Willy?”

Wrapped in his arms, her voice was muffled. “That’s what I came to find out.”

She followed him as he carried her bag to his apartment. When she hesitated at the door, he grinned. “This is my room, the one with the etchings. Yours is through that connecting door.” She entered a room filled with sun and the sound of lapping water. A large bowl of hyacinths on the bed stand scented the salt breeze that ruffled the curtains. She sat on the edge of the bed and breathed deeply. “Not a lot of incentive to ever leave this room, Prince.”

He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

For three days, Willy navigated the world of Richard’s Rook. Perkins kept her at his side at every meeting as the opening of the Rook got nearer. “Meet my dear friend, Wilson,” he’d say to the decorators, the architect, the advertising committee, the sound engineer, the lighting expert. “Are you enjoying Gulfport?” they’d ask. “The Rook is going to be something special down here, don’t you think? Gonna be like Café Society Downtown in New York! Richard’s got great taste.” And they’d look at her admiringly and smile. Perkins would beam. For Willy, it felt like being back at the Club in Shiloh, when Luke was introducing her as “my bride, the Cotton Queen.”

The days were a welter of blueprints and schedules, paint samples and frantic phone calls. When is Nefertiti arriving? How do I reach her? And how do I handle the billing? And is the apartment across the hall ready for her? Perkins was racing, dashing from crisis to crisis, insisting on results. Willy was increasingly aware that he hardly looked back. He assumed she was following in the wake of these events in his exciting new life. The evenings were a lot better. Perkins was once again the sympathetic friend who had listened and counseled Willy for a decade. What was different now was that Perkins was an advocate, rather than an intermediary in the Claybourne household. He yearned for the intimacy with Willy that he had so long envisioned. “I love being with the most adorable woman I know. I even love having everyone envying me for having you with me. I love you, Willy.”

She placed her hand on his, moved by the simple words. “And you know I love you.” Her voice was hushed and her eyes sought his. “But I’m a clueless woman in my forties, Dick, with two children, a jealous husband, and a career working with desperate, nearly defeated women in a Mississippi prison.” Her hand moved to touch his face. “So what am I doing here with you?”

“Being Willy. Being the most adorable woman I know.”

That night she moved into his room. Over coffee the next morning she asked the question again. “So what am I doing here with you?”

He had laughed. “Being adorable.”

She walked to the window, brushing back the curtain, gazing at the wheeling gulls that swept by the edge of the sand. “Adorable, like Mary Magdalene!” She turned, a half smile on her face. “Jesus would not be approving of what I’ve been doing with you.”

“I’m not so sure.” Perkins folded his arms, smiling and quizzical. “In my Colorado Sunday School they taught us that Jesus hates the sin but loves the sinner. It’s hard to think of last night as a sin, though. They didn’t change the text in your Delta liturgy, did they?”

She rejoined him at the table. “No. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a wagon load of guilt under this gorgeous suntan.” Her voice was tender.

“Last night didn’t surprise either of us. And we weren’t surprised that it was wonderful, like we’d imagined it would be.” She frowned. “But there are other powerful things in my life, like Luke, like Alex, like Benny.”

Perkins put down his cup and regarded her. “So that’s the
but
I keep hearing through all this Biblical sweet talk?”

She nodded. “There is a
but
.” Disconsolate, her voice was nearly inaudible. “It’s because I don’t know where I belong.”

He rose, clearly annoyed. “Just hold it, Cotton Queen. You came here out of choice. You made a decision to come and be with me. I thought that was a grownup decision you made about where you wanted your life to go.”

She stared at his angry face. “But . . . ”

“No ifs, ands, or buts, Willy. Are you telling me that this was just a fling for you? That you came here to get laid, to find out if I was a better lover than your husband? Is that what’s going on?”

“That’s mean, Dick, and not fair. I came here thinking I would find some answers, but what I’m finding are more questions.” Her voice broke. “Help me, Dick.”

“I thought you knew you wanted to close one door and open another. That’s what decisions are, Willy; they’re choices we make. I made a decision when I left Colorado to go to Mississippi. I made another decision when I left Shiloh to come here. And I thought your ‘Dear Prince Charming’ telegram was the decision you had made. Or are you just testing the waters?”

She murmured, “The waters are wonderful, but that still doesn’t tell me what I need to know.”

“And what exactly is that, for God’s sake?”

“I need to know where I fit. I need to know where Willy McIntire Claybourne belongs.”

Perkins struggled to control his temper. “Your kids are growing up like kids grow up, Willy. You’re not going to stop loving or supporting them, nor is Luke. But Luke has never given you the recognition and respect you deserve. His idea of you is the perpetual Cotton Queen, the trophy wife, perfectly dressed and the life of the party.”

“And yours?”

“I’ve seen you as the woman you’re becoming: intelligent, curious, adventurous, a woman who has been seeking to expand her horizons. And I’ve seen you as strong and decisive, someone who knew what she wanted. But now—” He hesitated.