Second Chance (33 page)

But Judy is the one now who I have to think about. Judy, who became not an artist, but a seller of art, who pays the people of the mountain cheap and sells to the people of the city dear. Someone who masks the dangers by saying, Look, your life isn't ugly—it can be beautiful. Pretend that things haven't changed. Lie to yourself. Pretend it's a hundred years ago when people hand crafted tools from wood, when women quilted every day, when artists did no more than proclaim how wonderful was the world and God's creations.

Ignore the filth, the pollution, the destruction of the earth, the things of which art can speak and scream.

Because things like that don't sell, do they, Judy? No, truth doesn't make you money.

Well, it's time to get your spirit back. Time to find your soul again.

Time for golden oldies.

Chapter 28

Frank McDonald was feeling hassled even before Woody Robinson called him and told him that he was sure that Keith Aarons was the terrorist known as Pan. Judy was late getting home, the kids were tearing around the house like banshees, the dog had just thrown up a whole bowl full of Kibbles 'n Bits on the dining room carpet, and he just realized that he had forgotten to put the chicken in the oven at 4:00, as Judy had instructed.

"What the hell are you talking about?" was his first reaction, as he held the phone with one hand and, with the other, picked up chunks of vomit with a paper towel. "You told me about this before, Woody. You were full of shit then and you're full of shit now. Keith was dead then, he's dead now."

"No he's not. The body was a kid named Ben Wallace.”

“Horseshit. He ran off to the coast."

"And never turned up again? I also learned that Keith was identified after one of the killings—by an Iselin graduate, who later died mysteriously."

"How mysteriously?"

"A car crash."

"Oh yeah, real mysterious. Probably drunk—that's why he kept seeing dead guys."

"It was a she, and she wasn't drunk. And there's another thing—"

"What?"

"Oh, I just got some dog barf on my fingers. What's this other thing?"

"In one of his notes, Pan paraphrases
Steppenwolf
.”

“So?"

"That was Keith's favorite book."

"Shit, that was a lot of people's favorite book. It doesn't mean a damn thing."

"Not until you remember that Pan wasn't in our other life, Frank—and then it means
everything
."

Frank wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and dropped the mess he had cleaned up into the waste can. "Well, hell," he said cavalierly, "maybe it's this Ben Wallace you're talking about. Maybe he's Pan."

"If he is, that only means that bringing Tracy and Dale back—but Tracy specifically—still created Pan, whether it's Ben Wallace or Keith."

Frank sighed and sat on the kitchen floor, his back against the cabinets. "Look, pal. You've got Tracy, you've got your kids, and that's great. Eddie and Dale have got each other, and
that's
great. We also have Pan, and that's not so great. But it's life. It's real. It's the way things are
in this world
, and it's the way they've always been to everybody but eight of us. So don't kill yourself with this. What's done is done, and it can't be changed back to the way it was before."

There was a long silence on the other end. "Can't it?" Woody finally said.

"No, it can't. Now look, I'd love to feel guilty with you some more, but I just heard the car pull in. Judy's got an opening tomorrow, she's wired as hell, and I've got no time to commiserate about metaphysics."

"But, Frank—"

"Enjoy what you have, my friend. God's been good to you, huh? He gave you a second chance. Don't crap all over it because you're too happy. Forget it, Woody. Just forget it and enjoy, okay?"

"Christ, I've tried to. I've known this for two weeks, Frank, and I've tried to forget about it, just hold it in until it dissolves or goes away or something. But it
doesn't
go away, and I had to talk to somebody who'd understand."

"I don't understand, Woody, and I don't want to. I don't even want to think about it—"

"Frank, do you know how many people have been killed by—”

“
No
, man, and I don't
want
to know!"

The back door opened and Judy came in, her attaché case under her arm. Frank thought she looked puzzled.

"Hey," he said into the phone, "I
gotta
go. Now just
relax
, will you? And forget it, huh?" Woody said nothing. "There's no trying involved, man. Just
do
it. Forget."

"Okay." The voice sounded weak, farther away than California. "Yeah."

"That's my man. Give my love to Tracy. Bye." And he hung up.

"Woody?" said Judy.

"Yeah. He's still whacked out. I don't know if he can't deal with happiness or what." He kissed his wife lightly. "So where've you been so late?"

She gave a little laugh. "I
 
. . . don't know. It's like I lost some time somewhere."

"What? First Woody, now you?"

"No, it's
 
. . . I mean, I was on the elevator in the parking garage, and I stepped off, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the car. And at least twenty minutes had gone by."

"Well, are you all right? Somebody knock you out or what?”

“No, no, I'm fine."

"You still have your money?"

"Oh yeah. I don't remember seeing anyone. But all of a sudden there I was behind the wheel, and it was twenty minutes later."

"
Dammit
, Jude, you've been working too hard. I told you, you need to take a break, a week off. Trish can run the gallery by herself."

"I don't know," Judy said. "Maybe you're right."

Frank was amazed to get that much of a concession out of her. Usually when he criticized her workaholic nature she shot him down immediately.

"After the opening tomorrow," she said, "I'll take a week. Maybe I'm just tired. I mean, I feel tired tonight . . ."

They went to bed earlier than usual, and Judy complained, just before she fell asleep, of an ache in her arm. When Frank examined it, he thought he saw a small mark, but couldn't be sure.

~*~

September 14, 1993
:

I think she recognized me, just for an instant as she turned, before I slapped the chloroform over her face. It didn't matter, though. I told her to forget, just as I told her to forget everything else I said until 5:00 tomorrow afternoon, an hour after the opening. I injected her as carefully as possible. I didn't want her to hurt, to be concerned, to go to a doctor. I want what happens to be a total surprise, for her and for everyone else.

Now on to Cleveland, and
Sharla
.
Sharla
, who I loved. I never found another woman with her strength of will, with such purity of purpose. She believed in her people, but not to such an absurd extent that she shut others out. Her lover, after all, was a white boy.

But she turned her back on her people. Taught a few years in the inner city, then maybe couldn't take it anymore, turned her back and went and taught good little white children from good white families.

When I saw her lying there that night at Woody's party, I felt as though time had really turned back. But now there was something about the way she wore the clothes that she believed in back then, something that said she believed no longer, that it was just a costume, that she could as easily have dressed up like a princess or a fairy or a majorette or something else equally white. And then when I found what she was doing, who she was teaching, I knew that she had sold out too.

Thus my rationalization for what I must do. Now she pays, and by making her pay I not only protect myself, but I thicken my skin even further, forge upon my flesh another layer of that armor of ruthlessness.

~*~

The show at the
Buckhead
Folk Art Gallery was the season opener, so Frank McDonald understood his wife's tension. Its title was "The Fall Sampler," since it showed several of the best pieces of the artists who were due to have their own shows later in the year Last fall's sampler had been a huge success, with front page coverage in the Constitution's Style section. It had greatly expanded the mailing list, and the gallery's sales had increased by 150% over the previous year.

This fall, Judy had added five new artists to the gallery. She had discovered two at rural craft fairs, and had lured two from other galleries, but her prize was
Bridie
Finch.
Bridie
was a robust, heavyset woman from
McCaysville
, a small town on the Tennessee border. Frank had liked her the first time he met her, several weeks ago, when she drove her husband's pickup truck, its bed stacked with quilts under a plastic tarp, to the McDonald's house.

Bridie
was the real McCoy, a mountain woman born and bred, who used traditional patch designs because she knew no others, and fabric left over from dresses and blouses and yes, quilts that her aunts and her mother and grandmothers had made.

Judy had found
Bridie
Finch three months before, shortly after returning from the party in Iselin. She was driving to a flea market and craft show near Blue Ridge, but had taken a wrong turn and had to ask for directions at a general store with gas pumps outside. The man she assumed was the owner told her how to get back to Route 5, and she was just about to pull away when she saw a small, hand lettered 5 x 7 inch card in the window. She was barely able to make out the word QUILTS, for the sun had bleached the letters to nearly the same shade as the yellowed sign.

Judy joked later that the odds were that whoever had put up that sign was long dead, but she rolled down the window and asked the man, who turned out to be
Bridie's
husband Arthur, if he did indeed have any quilts for sale.

"
Bridie
does," the man said, pointing a grimy finger into the woods behind the store. "In the house."

The whole place looked, Judy told Frank, like something out of
Deliverance
. Old cars were up on blocks, gaunt dogs lay in the shade as though they were dead, or snuffled amid piles of boards and sticks, as if hoping to drive out something they could eat. She felt certain that if she got out of the car and walked up to the house, she would never be seen again, and the Volvo would be up on blocks and rusted in a month or two.

But
QUILTS
was the magic word that would send Judy through a legion of chainsaw-wielding rednecks, so she parked, walked up the dirt trail to a small one-story cabin, and knocked.

The instant she saw
Bridie
Finch's face, she knew she had nothing to fear, and when she saw
Bridie's
quilts, she had everything to gain. There were seven of them that
Bridie
pulled out of a large, painted-grain chest, all stunners, capable of bringing $1500 each from browsers in her gallery, and far more from her regular clientele.

When Judy asked if she had any more,
Bridie
said a flock of them, out in the shed in storage chests Arthur built to keep the squirrels from them, but they couldn't get to them right now because Arthur had a lot of farm equipment parts piled in front that he'd have to move first.

Judy asked her how much she wanted for them, and
Bridie
told her a hundred and twenty-five each, except for the big one, which was a hundred and fifty.

"My God," Judy said. "That's all? Where are you from, lady?"

Bridie
smiled, and gestured to the room they were in, the mountain they were on, her life. "I'm from right here," she said, and Judy understood.

She told
Bridie
she would take all seven quilts and pay her three hundred dollars for each, and would pay another three hundred when each quilt sold. She also asked to represent her exclusively.
Bridie
was grateful, but not amazed. Judy told Frank it was as if she had always known the quality of her quilts, but had merely been waiting for someone else to come along and validate them.

There were thirty-eight quilts in the bed of the truck
Bridie
drove to Atlanta. All were superbly crafted, with tiny quilting over nearly every inch. The colors varied from bold and brash to subtly rustic.
Bridie
had, thought Judy, the best eye for combining colors she had ever seen. She was quick to offer
Bridie
a handsome commission agreement which
Bridie
was as quick to accept.

And now, four hours before the sampler's opening,
Bridie
was at the gallery, beaming at the five quilts she and Judy had chosen to show. Arthur, her husband, trailed behind her, head down, plainly uncomfortable in his suit. Frank noted with amusement that the tightness of Arthur's clothes, the narrow lapels, and the broad, colorfully figured tie made him look oddly in vogue, and he wouldn't have been at all surprised if Arthur was mistaken for one of the city's more quirky art critics. The sour expression of disapproval the man wore did nothing to dispel that image.