Playing by the Rules: A Novel (25 page)

When he finished looking at the memory, Medford tucked the picture inside his breast pocket and put the album away. Curiosity
made him pick up the book underneath. It was Clement’s high school yearbook—the class of 1929, the year Medford was born and Clement was only eighteen. Such a major undertaking for Clement, who was a young man at the time, to be committed to becoming a parent, especially when he didn’t have to, thought Medford, browsing through the pages.

Thumbing through the yearbook, Medford came upon another group photo. This time the same group was posed on the Lemon City High School steps, alternating boy-girl, boy-girl. Lurleen and Sadie had their arms around his dad, who was standing between them. Willie was holding Ernestine’s hand, Theola was cuddled next to the same unidentified man, and Vernelle was hugging tight onto Bootsie like she wouldn’t let him go. It was funny how they all basically looked the same today except that their features had softened and sagged over time, becoming more rounded, a little less defined, leaving enough evidence that they were still themselves. He slid the photo beside the other one in his breast pocket.

Medford put away the books and moved all the boxes to the floor. And there it was, hiding behind an old medicine cabinet: a wooden crate. It was the only wooden crate on the table, and Medford was excited that it must be the one that originally belonged to him. It was an ordinary, plain crate with nothing unusual about it. It could have come from anywhere, but to him, the wood was worth more than gold and it was the most special crate in the world. Blowing off the dust and cobwebs, Medford found an old rag and wiped off whatever dirt was willing to part from the wood’s crevices. Carrying the crate to the bottom of the steps where he could take full advantage of the direct light, he examined the slats closely, looking for any clues of origins or previous ownership. Just when he was about to give up, a marking on the wood inside the crate caught his attention and he flipped the crate over.

There it was, in fine print that he could barely make out. He rubbed his thumb over the raised stamp and lettering to smooth away any additional dirt and dust to take a better look. He made out the letters S-R-B-C. Then he sounded out the words underneath the letters out loud. “Southern…Regional…Box… Company,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word with distinct clarity. He said it out loud again, thinking it might ring a bell. It didn’t register that there was any company in Lemon City with that name, or for that matter, in Jefferson County—maybe not even in the state of Virginia. Southern Regional Box Company could be anywhere in the world. Obviously, whoever had imported the crate wasn’t able to get the job done locally, and deferred to Rule Number Eight: DO BUSINESS AT HOME FIRST, THEN WITH OUTSIDERS YOU CAN INVITE INTO YOUR HOME, AS A LAST RESORT. Apparently, whoever ordered the crate couldn’t do business at home and had decided not to invite an Outsider in, but rather to deal with one from a distance.

Medford knew it was a long shot, but he wasn’t going to rule out anything. Tomorrow he’d go to the reference section of the library to do some research and look up the SRBC Outsider business. Once he found the location of the company—and he hoped it was still in operation—he’d send a letter to the customer service department. With any luck he’d get a response and be one step closer to tracking down his mother—or not. Either way, he had nothing to lose.

When he walked into his bedroom, he removed the pictures from his breast pocket and carefully placed them inside his dresser drawer. He was so excited about his discovery that he immediately found a notebook and a pen and began his correspondence. There was so much to think about while he waited for Clement to finish his wood project and come inside for the night. There were a lot
of questions about the pictures he wanted to ask and he knew there’d be just as many stories, perhaps as many secrets, too.

It was no surprise to anyone in Lemon City that Nana had her heart set on winning the tomato competition at the Annual County Fair. A hot day in July sent her walking through her garden down the first row of tomatoes, inspecting stems and turning over leaves. She was pleased to find everything just fine. However, walking down the second row she saw something she didn’t like. She spotted a patch of white, then touched the plant and the moving cloud spread its wings and took off like airplanes on a runway. Whiteflies! She couldn’t believe she had those tiny white airborne plant-sucking little pests. Frantically, Nana walked through the remaining rows of her garden, turning over leaves, spotting more clusters of clouds like tiny snowflakes flying up through the air. She ran into the house to fill her bucket with soapy water, grabbed a handful of cotton, and began rubbing the underside of the leaves as best she could, because that was where the bad bugs usually congregated. Then she got out the can of pesticide and sprayed the plants just to be sure she had destroyed all the adult whiteflies. To kill the larvae, before they demolished the rest of her tomato plants, Nana would have to spray the pesticide at least eight times a day for almost a week in order to get rid of them for good.

With as much attention as she’d given her tomatoes and as often as she stood guard protecting them, she didn’t understand how they could be vulnerable to this kind of attack. However, if whiteflies had flown into her garden, she became curious to see if they had made a landing on her neighbor’s property as well. She sneaked over into Ole Miss Johnson’s yard and was astonished to see the tomatoes that had grown to the size of grapefruits, with stalks that drooped like curved umbrella handles due to their
weight. She turned over a few of the leaves, but they all looked clean, perfectly green and not spotted with white at all. Immediately she was furious. The most she could hope for was that the giant tomatoes detach from their stems and drop to the ground like bombs, imploding to the earth to be consumed by crawling land bugs.

“Ernestine, last summer I had your cat sneaking over here. Now I got you,” Ole Miss Johnson said, standing with a broom in her hand. “Ain’t you got no shame?”

“I’m just checking,” said Nana, embarrassed. “I thought you might have what I have. And I was coming over to warn you.”

“What you got?” asked Ole Miss Johnson in a voice more grating than a jackhammer drilling into a brick.

“I got whiteflies,” Nana said, easing her way out of her neighbor’s yard. “Now I hope I got dead ones.”

“You better not bring any of them bugs over here dead or alive!” Ole Miss Johnson yelled. “And don’t bring yourself over here anymore either.”

Nana went back home, and as a matter of precaution asked her husband to take her to the gardening store to get yellow sticky strips. Whiteflies were attracted to yellow, and the glue on the strips would put an end to their reign of terror. Meanwhile, her only saving grace, the only light that came out of the situation, was that she still had enough healthy tomatoes left to compete.

It was late August, a week before the Annual County Fair, when the rains came down like floods of fury. When the clouds retreated, the sun emerged to dry out the earth and soak up the moisture like a sponge. Counting down the days, Nana went out into her yard for one of the last times this summer. After careful inspection she was relieved to find that her whiteflies were gone, but was shocked to discover that the skin on some of her tomatoes
had started to crack. Now that a few of her tomatoes had radial scars, she felt she was about to lose it herself and finally crack up too. She threw her hands up in the air and asked, “Why?” Anger made her pluck off one of the damaged tomatoes and throw it across the fence into her neighbor’s yard, hoping Ole Miss Johnson’s tomatoes might also become cursed. It wasn’t like her to lose her temper, but the exercise in pitching made her feel good. Frustrated and exhausted, Nana plopped down on her stool and decided all the cracked tomatoes shouldn’t go to waste. Saint was by her side and already feasting on the wounded. Nana removed a damaged tomato from its stem, shined it against her smock, and bit into it. There was something soft and squishy inside her mouth that tasted like more than just a juicy cavity. When Nana looked down at what she was eating, she noticed half its body squirming in place. She screamed and gagged and spit out the other half. Saint, terrified by his master’s bloodcurdling reaction, ran clear to the other side of the yard. Nana was so totally disgusted by the worm and by the odds against her winning in this year’s Annual County Fair that she threw another tomato over the fence. After that last setback, she couldn’t take it anymore and needed to separate herself from the thought that whatever could go wrong, would. With only a week left to go, she speculated there were enough healthy tomatoes left in her garden to make her chances of winning from halfway decent to fairly good. She had to be optimistic, if only because things couldn’t get much worse.

Summer took its time to get to Lemon City, but when it finally arrived, it flew by faster than a red-crested cardinal flitting from one dogwood tree branch to the next. The long-awaited Annual County Fair was here and the day couldn’t be more perfect. The sky was pastel blue streaked with white clouds. The warblers and sparrows seemed to flap their wings to the bass while the hawks soared to the melody that the ragtime band played at the front gate at Founder’s Park, where the looming statue of the five Founding Fathers stood above the crowd. Sounds of laughter, chatter, and joy from all ages came together to blend with the music to create one long, muffled rumble of fun. Lemonites were bustling about in all directions, taking advantage of everything the fair had to offer from amusements to food to entertainment. The town was 109 years old today, and there were still two or three folks who were around when Lemon City was first born.

The first thing Ruby Rose saw when she got inside Founder’s Park was the first thing she wanted. Jeremiah handed her the cotton candy and gave the vendor five cents. When she finished putting
her face into the pink puff that disintegrated into her mouth, she asked her brother for a candy apple. That’s when the sugar kicked in and she wanted to bounce from ride to ride. Jeremiah stopped at the booth and bought a roll of tickets, and Ruby Rose grabbed his hand and dragged him to a sign out front that read “The Whip.”

Ruby Rose screamed the whole time she was on the ride until her voice felt like it belonged to a frog. When the ride stopped, her legs were wobbly and she felt like she was walking on rubber bands and leaned on Jeremiah for support. The Ferris wheel across the way looked safe enough, and Ruby Rose pushed Jeremiah with her body until he moved in that direction. The problem was, the Ferris wheel didn’t go around fast enough for Ruby Rose and when it stopped at the top and her feet were dangling in midair, she was bored. While she was hovering over the ground, she got a good view of the roller coaster clanging its way up the track and descending with such speed that the people’s heads snapped back and their mouths stayed in a steady scream position until the ride stopped. Ruby Rose wanted to go on the roller coaster next, and when the Ferris wheel let them down she had to convince Jeremiah to go with her and not to be a chicken. Flapping her arms and clucking, she poked her neck in and out, pretending to be poultry, and Jeremiah chased her all the way to the back of the roller-coaster line.

Louise and Elvira were at their usual bake-sale booth collecting money for cakes, cookies, and pies. This year their table displayed carrot cake, black walnut pound cake, apple cake, pineapple upside-down cake, lemon pound cake, and Mississippi mud cake. As for the pies, there were apple, green tomato, lemon meringue, blackberry, sweet potato, and pecan.

Every time Elvira cut a slice from a pie or cake for a customer, Louise noticed that she didn’t waste any crumbs and ate them off
the table or picked them off the plate. Whenever Elvira served someone, she served herself. It was the fact that she was consuming leftovers at the rate of every three customers that was giving Louise cause for concern. Ever since Elvira had eaten those extra lemon cookies they made a while back, Louise could see the pounds adding on and swear her sister-in-law’s sweet tooth and craving for junk food was getting worse.

Billy was patrolling the perimeter of the park from his car and then decided to get out on foot. He was reflecting on how the winter had blown the Outsiders onto his grandparents’ front porch nine months ago and how the story checked out that Jeremiah kidnapped his sister. It was all in print on the front page of the
Richmond Review
, almost word for word the way the Outsider had told everyone after dinner. It was true that Jeremiah was a “wanted” man; however, back then Billy hadn’t seen any harm in taking what was rightfully yours. Lately, however, he did see the harm in Jeremiah spending too much time with his sister, and he thought the Outsider should lighten up on his visits. As Billy was heading over to the bake-sale booth, he thought that perhaps the Outsider had even overstayed his welcome in general.

Sitting at a picnic table in the shade of a sycamore tree, Granddaddy and Clement were engaged in a close game of chess.