The Qualities of Wood (23 page)

‘Wow,' Vivian said.

‘Along the way, they convinced two farmers to bring their tractors and a long, flat bed on wheels that they normally used for transporting fruit. When they reached the school, the lava was getting near and ash was falling like snowflakes. Pheola kept going back inside for children and in the end, they saved most of them. She suffered scorch burns on her arms and legs and she lost some sight in one eye. The other mothers pulled her away as the lava rolled down the hill. They could barely see through the black air. There were three children and the young teacher left inside; one was Pheola's oldest daughter.'

‘How awful. They just left?'

‘There wasn't anything they could do. The farmers convinced her that the building would stand. They promised to go back after the lava receded, but the town was evacuated that evening. The first eruption was minor compared to the second one the next day. Every building in their small town was leveled, every tree razed and every living thing killed.'

‘Mom, that's a terrible story.'

Her mother inhaled sharply. ‘But you should see this woman, Vivian. I felt so
small in her presence. She was so matter-of-fact about what she did, almost embarrassed when I told her how impressive and inspiring her story was. Anyone would've done the same, she told me, and it still wasn't enough.'

‘Where are the rest of her children now?' Vivian asked.

‘Here and there, around the country. Most of them are doing well. She lost another daughter in an automobile accident, but the rest have lived long, full lives. She's got twenty-two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.'

‘What about her husband?'

‘Mr Roundtree died about ten years ago. Heart attack. Pheola said they threw him a big party for his seventieth. One of her sons has a house out in the country, and most of the family gathered there. She showed me a picture, everyone lined up and her and Mr Roundtree in the center, sitting on chairs. Remarkable woman.'

‘Sounds like it,' Vivian said.

‘So that's where I've been. What have you been doing out there? How's the house coming along?'

‘We're planning a yard sale. Dot and I have started organizing and labeling everything.' She realized immediately how mundane this sounded after her mother's story.

‘Did you see anything I might want?'

Vivian laughed. ‘I don't think so, unless your style of clothing has changed dramatically since I saw you.'

‘No, still the same boring professor look.'

‘We're hoping for a good turnout. There's a big reunion in town that weekend.
Maybe some of those attending will drive out here.'

‘What kind of reunion?'

‘The family name is Clement. William Clement founded the town. His descendants have a lot of power around here. They own just about everything: the newspaper, the radio station, restaurants. In the town plaza, there's a big bronze statue of William Clement on a horse, like he was a war hero.'

‘Was he?'

‘What?'

‘A war hero?' her mother asked.

‘No. In fact, he moved here just about the time the Civil War was breaking out.'

‘You're saying he avoided service?'

‘I don't know. There's such a lack of objectivity about him that I find myself reading between the lines, looking for things to fault him with. They've been running historical pieces on the town and the Clement family in the newspaper, but it's all propaganda.'

‘So how did he set about founding a town?'

Vivian shrugged. ‘The usual way. He brought in engineers to design the downtown area and he financed several of the early buildings. He started the first bank and helped people start farms and businesses. Most of the early real estate development projects have his stamp all over them. Even in recent years, Clements have built the town's hospital and started a historical museum.'

‘That would make a good book,' her mother said. ‘You have to admire people like that, Vivian.'

‘People like the Clements?'

‘I don't know about the whole family, but you have to admire William Clement for his vision and accomplishments. To pick up and move your family across the country and start a new life, to put your money and your hard work into something you believe in – it's rare.'

‘You hardly know anything about him,' Vivian protested.

‘Just what you told me, but it's enough. The man built an entire town. Do you know what that takes? People who act on their plans, people who make changes. Like Pheola. She's a hero because she acted, without anyone inciting her to do it. She changed her life. Many people talk a great deal about what they would have done, what they could do, what they might do. It's action that matters, that defines heroes.'

Vivian couldn't remember the last time she had had such a long conversation with her mother. But she felt an underlying intent to her mother's words and it made her uncomfortable.

‘It's my one big regret, Vivie. I never did anything.'

‘What do you mean? You've traveled all over, you've written all those books…'

‘But I never did anything. Never fought for anything, never built anything, never made anything.'

‘You made me.'

‘Yes.' She paused. ‘I know you may not always think so, but you're lucky.'

‘Why?'

‘We've always encouraged you to learn. I may not have done anything to make the world a better place, but I have really enjoyed my life of learning. My father didn't
want me to go to college. He didn't think I needed to, because I was a girl.'

‘I didn't know that.'

‘I think he came to grips with me eventually. I venture to think that he might have been proud, in his own way.'

‘Mom?'

‘Yes?'

‘What would you have done?'

‘What?'

Vivian pressed the phone into her ear. ‘You said that you never did anything. If you could start again, what would you do?'

Silence clung heavy to the air, like thick paint on canvas.

‘I don't know,' her mother finally said. ‘I don't know.'

The fires in the south began the following day, or at least, that was the first day Vivian read about them in
The Sentinel
, which still was delivered only on Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays. The heat was constant and unforgiving. Katherine knew a woman with a swimming pool, a fellow volunteer down at the grammar school, and a few times, she picked up Dot and Vivian and they went over and swam.

Lonnie had begun to prepare the outside of the house for painting, but none of them could bear the idea of beginning the work. It was too hot to work inside, too. Twice, Vivian went to matinees in town with Lonnie and Dot. The old theater didn't have air conditioning either, but it was cool and dark inside. Lonnie talked them into seeing an action movie about the end of the world, and during the ‘Tribute to Classics Week' in honor of the upcoming town festival, they watched a musical.

The heat wave continued for almost two weeks, right up until the week of the yard sale, the week that Clements began to arrive for the reunion.

Lonnie decided to cook a whole chicken in the ground. He purchased a huge clay pot, even bigger than the one he used for making his cobbler, and he simmered the bird in a concoction made up of a half-bottle of cheap white wine, the juice from two oranges, and a variety of herbs and spices the identity of which he would not divulge but which Vivian's nose recognized to be dominated by the distinctive aroma of cilantro.

Vivian helped Lonnie carry his supplies to the woods while Dot lingered in the shower, refreshing herself after another sticky, warm night. Nowell was in the study as usual. Vivian transported the chicken, still snug in its plastic wrap and sealed with small metal staples, and Lonnie carried his cooking utensils and the mysterious brown bag of ingredients.

‘Feels like it's going to break,' he said as they rounded the house.

‘The bag?' she asked.

‘No, the weather.'

There were patches of dry, straw-colored grass that crackled loudly underfoot. Nowell still hadn't mowed the shorter sections and he hadn't done anything about the knee-high parts further back. On a couple of occasions, Lonnie had offered to take a look at the rusty old mower in the shed, but Vivian turned him down each time. It was a silent war she waged with Nowell, like the times she still opened the windows in the study. He promised to cut the grass and she'd hold him to it.

As Vivian clutched the chicken against her chest, a timid breeze tested the air.
Lonnie was right: the morning was cooler than it had been for a while. They approached the thick line of trees, and she heard the soothing rustling of their leaves overhead. Once in the shade, the chicken felt cold against her body and she transferred its weight to both hands.

Set about fifty feet back and at an angle from the place where they had entered the woods, Lonnie's cooking spot consisted of two landmarks: an unimpressive shallow hole lined with ash-covered charcoal, and the roundish boulder on which he instructed her to set the chicken. He moved the used pieces of charcoal to the edges of the pit and filled the center with dark, shiny pieces.

Vivian looked through the trees in the direction of Mr Stokes's house. She hadn't been in the woods since the night she trespassed on his property, the night she entered his house. ‘We should have been sleeping out here,' she told Lonnie. ‘It's so much cooler.'

Leaning over the pit, he looked up at her, grinning. ‘I did sleep out here, remember?'

‘Just that once?'

‘You said yourself, it's nice and cool.'

She shuddered. ‘There are too many noises out here.'

‘That damn rooster clock in the house just about ticks itself off the wall.'

‘I'd rather be hot than eaten alive,' Vivian said.

‘I think the weather is finally breaking,' he said again. ‘Bring me the bird.'

Vivian lifted the chicken from the smooth rock and carried it to Lonnie. He lifted it and bit into a section near its headless neck, ripping the plastic wrap with his teeth.

‘Lonnie!'

‘What?' He spit fragments onto the ground.

She watched him place the bird in the clay pot and pour the ingredients from a Tupperware bowl on top. The liquid was orange in color and filled with dark, floating bits.

‘Is that cilantro?' she asked, whiffing at the air.

He looked surprised.

‘Oh, come on,' she said. ‘Enough with your secret recipes, already. Don't you want me to be able to cook for your brother?'

‘No, I want him alive.'

‘Very funny. I know that's cilantro.'

Lonnie put the lid on the dish and nestled it among the briquettes, which were smoldering. He walked to a nearby tree and pulled a branch down. The wood cracked as he pulled it from the tree; the branch left a greenish, gaping wound in the trunk. He laid it over the hole, secured the edges with two fist-sized rocks, then wiped his hands on his pants.

‘Won't that catch fire?' she asked.

‘Too green,' he said. ‘Ready?' He put the wrapper into the brown bag.

‘Why don't you do this closer to the house?' she asked.

‘I like the idea of roughing it.'

When they reached the edge of the trees, Vivian paused. ‘You're not afraid out here? I mean, after what happened?'

‘What happened?'

‘Chanelle Brodie. Don't you ever think about it?'

‘No.' He pushed past the trees into the sunlight.

A vision of the young girl, her body splayed on the rock like a cloak thrown carelessly over a chair, flashed in Vivian's mind. She had imagined it so many times, the mud-caked sneakers lifeless on the ground, the fingers curled back, the weighty, smooth boulder, that she sometimes forgot that the detailed mental picture was the work of her imagination and not of her memory.

She followed Lonnie onto the grass and struggled to keep up with his long strides. ‘It's strange to be out here,' she continued, ‘so close to the place where someone died.'

Lonnie crumpled the bag in his large hands. ‘I never think about it.'

‘Do you think it was an accident?'

‘That's what they say.'

‘I know,' Vivian said, ‘but they found her in a strange position.'

Lonnie stopped ‘What do you mean?'

‘Her arms were at her side, like this.' She demonstrated.

‘So?'

‘If someone fell forward, they would try to break the fall, like this.' She held her hands up near her chest.

They had reached the garbage can beside the house. Lonnie asked: ‘Who told you that?'

‘Someone at the newspaper office. Don't you think that's strange?'

‘I don't think anything about it. They have experts.' He opened the lid of the trashcan and pushed the wadded brown paper bag down on top of the garbage.

‘In a small town like this, you think they have “experts?”' They stepped onto the
front porch.

‘I think it depends how fast you were going,' Lonnie said.

‘What do you mean?'

He closed his eyes in a show of patience. ‘If you were running very fast and you tripped, I think you'd find yourself on your face before there was time to do anything.' He lifted his arms and turned his palms upward. ‘Besides, do you think your arms would do you any good? I mean, if the impact was so strong?'

‘I guess you're right,' she said. ‘People fly through windshields headfirst.'

‘Exactly.'

She thought about what he had said and it seemed to make sense. If your momentum was so great that you had no time to react. ‘What do you think of Mr Stokes?' she asked.

He lowered his voice. ‘First you ask me if I think there was something fishy about that girl's death and now you ask me my opinion of Mr Stokes. Very subtle, Vivian.'

‘Just forget it.'

‘Tell me what you mean.' He watched her face.

She signaled him to the corner of the porch. ‘Nobody in the town sees Mr Stokes for years. We move here and all of a sudden, he's everywhere. He showed up the evening that they found her, the Brodie girl. You had just left that day and I had just arrived. Then the day Mrs Brodie was here to see where they found her, here he comes again. And he followed me in the woods one time, scaring me to death. Then you run into him and he gets invited on your fishing trip, and he's here when we come home that night.'

‘I didn't ‘run into' him, Vivian. I went over to his place because I wanted to ask
him about his meat smoker.'

‘But he was out there, lingering around.'

‘On his own property!'

‘Never mind,' she said. ‘I just wanted to know what you thought of him.' She tried to walk toward the door, but Lonnie grabbed her arm lightly, just above the elbow. She jerked her arm away and when she saw the startled then humiliated look on his face, she immediately regretted it. They were both thinking of the night at Beverly's.

‘If you must know,' he said in a low voice. ‘I think he's pretty strange. He always seems to be sizing people up. That's his nature, I guess. Sometimes he looks suspicious. I don't mean that he looks like he's done something; I mean he looks at others in a suspicious way. But that's just my point of view, which isn't good for two cents because I hardly know him and shouldn't be talking in the first place.'

‘I was just curious,' she said weakly.

Lonnie leaned towards her. ‘You've been watching too many crime shows, Vivian. The police think it was an accident, that's what they said. Hell, Sheriff Townsend is a good friend of the mother, and he's not nosing around.'

‘Who's out there?' Dot called. A few seconds later, her face appeared at the screen door.

‘Hi, honey,' Lonnie said.

‘Where were you two?'

‘Vivian helped me carry that chicken out to the cooking hole.'

‘I'm afraid that was my job,' she said to Vivian, ‘but I decided to sleep a little later. This hot weather is draining me, you know? I feel so tired all the time.' She opened
the door for them and Vivian followed Lonnie into the kitchen.

‘Are you sure that you know what you're doing with that chicken?' Dot asked.

‘What do you mean?'

‘What about salmonella or E. coli, which is it? I'm not sure that you can slow-cook chicken.'

‘Do you really think I would poison you?'

‘Not on purpose,' she said.

Vivian snickered from where she stood at the coffee pot.

‘Your faith in me is unbelievable,' he said. ‘Both of you.' He left the room, grumbling all the way down the hall.

Vivian walked across the kitchen and pulled back the curtain to the study. ‘Nowell?'

He turned his head and smiled.

She walked over to the desk and squeezing herself onto his lap, pressed her face against his.

‘What's all this for?' he asked.

‘I don't need a reason, do I?' She glanced at the computer screen, which was filled with typing. One exclamation at the center of the page jumped out at her:
‘What is it that you want?'
She couldn't imagine anyone shouting the phrase; it was so formal and awkward. ‘How's it going?'

‘Good,' he said. ‘I'm about three-quarters through the first draft. I have to start thinking about tying up all the loose ends. Are you just about ready for the yard sale?'

‘I think so. The ad actually starts in the newspaper today. They don't print on
Tuesdays or Thursdays, so it'll run today and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tomorrow night we'll have to start setting up.'

‘Sounds good. Do you need me to pick up anything in town?'

‘Just those tables. Katherine said she'd meet you tomorrow at the grammar school at three-thirty.'

‘How many am I supposed to get?'

‘They're those long tables they use in the auditorium, so five should be plenty. We'll lay the rest of the stuff out on the grass. Yard sales aren't supposed to be high-class affairs.'

‘Will Lonnie be around to help me with the tables?'

‘I think so. You haven't talked to him since your argument?'

‘Of course I've talked to him.'

‘But you're still angry. You're cooped up in here like always, but now, even when you're around, you hardly speak to anyone. And Lonnie's been going out almost every night, sometimes after we're all in bed, I think.'

‘What do you mean, “going out?”'

‘He meets up with those guys. I guess they go down to the tavern. Dot seems pretty upset about it.'

‘Don't start getting involved in their business, Viv.'

‘I'm not, but it's affecting you so it affects me.'

‘Lonnie going out has no effect on me whatsoever.'

She stood up. ‘So there isn't a strain between you over that stupid shirt?'

‘Maybe we've both been preoccupied.'

‘With what?'

‘I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm trying to write a book here. Dani's starting to set up stuff for the fall, maybe some book signings…'

‘But you haven't finished,' Vivian said.

‘We're going to promote
Random Victim
again before this one's released. I need to have the first draft done.'

‘You never said…'

‘Viv!' His voice was stern. ‘I'm telling you now. Dani wants me to do a signing in the city at the end of September, then about five more in a tri-state tour. That's all she has planned for now, to start off locally. She thinks there'll be a regional interest we could capitalize on.'

Vivian got up and walked over to one of the tall bookshelves. It reached almost to the ceiling. Her eyes fell on a long line of encyclopedias, a shelf stacked with yellowed paperback westerns, and then a set of books entitled
Myths, Legends, and Phenomena
. Each book of this last set had a similar navy blue cover and a smaller title in jarring, neon letters. Vivian noticed one near the center on UFO's and wondered if Lonnie had seen it.

Nowell said, ‘I've still got to go through those. I'll do it tonight.'

‘I could take a look at them first,' she offered.

‘No, that's alright. I'll take them down tonight and bring out the ones I don't want.'

She spun around. ‘What am I supposed to do while you're running around with Dani?' The moment the words left her mouth, she was sorry. She wasn't jealous in that way. She was more upset with his secrecy and his tendency to be completely self-involved.

‘I don't know, Viv. I hadn't thought about it. You see, I've been busy writing this goddamn book.'

‘I didn't mean – look, it's just that we haven't been alone since Dot and Lonnie got here. I haven't said anything before, but you told me they were staying for two weeks.'

‘You're jumping from one subject to another.'

‘It's all related! We need time to work things out and it's next to impossible in this environment. You've been completely unavailable.'