True Fires (8 page)

17

In the busy First Baptist parking lot, K. A. DeLuth, dressed in his crisp Sunday seersucker and signature white hat, squires Birdilee to the rider’s side of their ranch truck.

Charm bracelet jingling, Birdilee puts one hand on his arm, the other on her own small linen-and-net Mamie Eisenhower hat, and hoists herself up and onto the big bench seat with a quiet “Thank you.”

Rounding the hood to his side, DeLuth notes with pleasure the number of cars bearing red-white-and-blue “RE-ELECT SHERIFF DELUTH” bumper stickers. Quite a few folks wave in his direction. As he waves back, he sees a pair of local boys grin and mimic his jabbing salute. He stops, squares his shoulders, and gives them the evil eye. With secret delight, he watches the silliness slide off their faces, their eyes widen. He holds them in the clench of his gaze a moment longer then, suddenly, winks broadly, shakes a pointing finger in their direction. They shiver in relief and shoot off to find their families.

“Kyle,” Birdilee chides him, “you terrified the poor things!”

“Learned ’em a li’l respect is all,” he replies, inserting the key, pressing the starter.

At their usual Sunday supper at the Lake Esther Inn, the colored waitresses and busboys treat them like royalty, and the local whites either eye them in hushed, nodding recognition or saunter over for an exchange of pleasantries. Privately, DeLuth enjoys the discomfort of his inferiors, interprets their sliding-away glances as the regard he considers his due. Beside him, Birdilee makes no such distinctions. She smiles prettily, nods pleasantly, asks kindly after this one’s mother or that one’s son who she has attended in her role as the local hospital’s chief Pink Lady volunteer. Birdilee has what most people call “a good heart.” Her ability to draw people in, tease a grin out of even the grumpiest or most seriously ill patients—leave them feeling lighter somehow, less weighed down—has always worked to DeLuth’s political advantage. As the Judge often said and, DeLuth assumes, most people think: “K.A., you’re a hard-assed sonofabitch, but anyone married to a sweetheart like Birdilee can’t be all bad, can they?”

“What’s so funny?” Birdilee asks him.

“Nothin’, darlin’,” DeLuth says, stifling himself.

After lunch, DeLuth and Birdilee once again board the truck and head out Route 441 to the Cunningham Groves and Ranch.

“Didn’t see any of ’em at church this morning,” Birdilee says, adjusting the bird-wing window on her side. “You sure this is a good time?” Although Birdilee rarely admits to disliking anyone, DeLuth knows that coarse-talking horsewoman Sarah Cunningham is not one of her favorite people.

“I told Clive we’d drop by for a few minutes. Want to make sure Ol’ Ben’s doin’ us proud,” DeLuth tells her. “Gettin’ good and warmed up for his trip to the Governor’s in January.”

The Cunningham place isn’t near as grand as the Judge’s. The entrance road through the big navel orange grove is washboard clay and gravel. The house under the oaks is a sprawling single-story ranch, not a thing like the courthouse downtown. But the parking yard in the back opens onto cattle pastures instead of more groves. And Cunningham’s cash-on-the-hoof crop of prime Hereford beef makes him, now that the Judge is gone, the richest man in the county.

As DeLuth wheels the truck into place, the screen door on the back porch bangs open and stringy-built Sarah Cunningham, all bones and angles, emerges, crowing, “Oh, Birdilee! I’ve been stuck in the house all damn week with a bunch of sick brats! Come in and give me something to talk about besides green vomit and runny poop!”

Birdilee smiles out the window, turns to DeLuth with a wry, “Don’t be long now,” and lets herself out of the truck.

Across the yard, one foot up on a fence rail, big Clive Cunningham waves DeLuth over. Cunningham’s not especially tall, but he’s broad as a boulder, with a shining bald head atop a mass of shoulders, chest, belly, and hips, too solid to be called fat, with a big booming voice. “Over here, K.A!”

“How’s our boy?” DeLuth asks, nodding at the big Brahma bull inside the fence.

“Ol’ Ben’s been puttin’ on quite a show! And, by the way he’s smellin’ that heifer, you’re just in time for a matinee!”

The men turn and watch the brooding all-white bull nudge the big, brown female’s behind, his great white wattle swaying beneath his chin. The female swishes him with her tail, takes a few mincing steps away.

“You talked to him yet?” DeLuth asks quietly.

“Thought we’d do it together.” Cunningham pivots to bellow at a ranch hand entering the barn. “Dwayne, tell Leroy to get his butt out here!”

The big bull bumps the heifer again, this time laying a heavy head on her rump. He rises up to ride her but, again, she skitters away.

“Go, Ben!” Leroy Russell applauds, as he swaggers across the yard, his hat pulled deeply down against the sun.

“Slow start this mornin’?” Cunningham booms at his ranch hand whose looks are pretty-boy. Overlong blond hair curls around his ears and onto his shirt collar.

Leroy Russell wags his head and rolls his eyes in that way that says “hangover,” then, lifting a pointy chin at the two big men, asks, “What’s up?”

“Heard you and the boys lit a li’l bonfire last night,” Cunningham says, soft.

“Well,” Leroy laughs, “had us some hundred-proof panther piss, one thing led t’another.”

DeLuth has turned profile, his attention deliberately on Ol’ Ben. Without looking at Leroy, he asks, “How long you been livin’ in this county?”

“All my life, Sheriff, you know that.”

“And, at any time, in that entire life, can you recall a crossburnin’ on any one of the tree streets downtown?” DeLuth’s tone is without warning loaded, like he spotted something over yonder and is taking aim.

“Can’t say as I can.” Leroy’s turned cautious.

“Downtown’s a white section, boy. The Mayor lives there. The President of the Daughters of the American Revolution lives there.”

“My mother lives there,” Cunningham adds.

“And”—DeLuth turns to face him full-bore—“a little ol’ hen in a big boardinghouse lives there, practically dead of fright this morning.”

“C’mon, now.” Leroy laughs nervously. “We’s just havin’ a li’l fun.”

“Fun’s for East Town, boy.” DeLuth says it sharply. “Or down by the river. Or out in the woods. But there ain’t no fun on Elm Street.
Ever!
You got that?”

“But, we’s jus’—”

“I know what your lousy ass was tryin’ to do. And, I told you to leave him alone, I’ll settle his hash. This here’s a Law ’n’ Order county—I’m the law and you had your orders. You cross me again, you’ll be choppin’ weeds in chains for life. Understand?”

Leroy’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down in a hard swallow. He drops his eyes and chin in a silent nod.

“And lay off the panther piss,” Cunningham adds. “Nothin’ worse than a chef gettin’ fat off his own cookin’.”

“Yessir,” Leroy mumbles.

A sudden, surly snort draws the men’s attention to the field where Ol’ Ben, top lip cocked back, has reared up in earnest, one thousand pounds of male intention on hind hooves. His big red dong, the size of a baseball bat turned backward, sways briefly above the heifer’s hind end then, with a savage jab, thrusts deeply home. The heifer, shaken, locks her forelegs in front, struggles to stay steady as the great bull covers her. His heavy front hooves paw the soft hide around her hips, raise raw pink crescents which weep bloodred tears. His huge head strains straight up, groaning, teeth bared, eyes wild and rolling. His big fatty neck hump jerks, the sagging white wattle jiggles. Then, almost as abruptly as he got on, Ol’ Ben grunts and slides off. The heifer, with a low, ragged whimper, shudders head to toe and wobbles weakly away.

DeLuth averts his eyes from Ol’ Ben’s dong (drooping wearily now, spent) and looks right, past Cunningham, intending to tell Leroy that he could use a haircut. But the young man’s gone, disappeared into the barn, or one of the other ranch buildings.

“Like I said,” Cunningham nods, “quite a show. And, he ain’t shootin’ blanks neither. Got all but ten of my heifers in calf production already, ’nother week and . . .”

While Cunningham rambles on about his herd, DeLuth’s mind sticks on the words “shootin’ blanks.” It’s loaded terrain, primed by the very public fact that, despite ten years of marriage, he and Birdilee remain childless. Of course, the public word is some sort of female problem on Birdilee’s part but his wife, a schooled nurse, has always sidestepped details. Then there’s the additional matter of Lynette Thompson, the seventeen-year-old who, back in ’43, the year he and Louis made All-American, got an all-expenses-paid trip (courtesy of the Judge) to the doctor in Jacksonville who took care of such things. Publicly, DeLuth got bragging rights but, privately, he knew he’d never touched the girl or impregnated anyone.

“. . . sure wish I could talk you into selling him,” Cunningham’s still going on about Ol’ Ben.

“Sell Ben?” DeLuth turns to Cunningham, flashing his you-know-me-better’n-that grin. “Ol’ Ben’s like family to me, Clive. Love that bull like a brother.”

18

Daniel presses flat to the floor of the unfinished cabin, playing possum. His eyes are squeezed shut but his ears are wide open, straining to hear Pap and Aunt Lu talking softly on the dark porch.

“She didn’t say
any
thin’?” Aunt Lu’s wondering about Miz Betty, their boardinghouse lady.

“She tried to smile purt, like nuthin’ was wrong, but her face was all puffed up and worried like. When I thanked her for the stay, she teared up considerable, couldn’t talk atall. I told her I knowed she’s a good-hearted woman and we hain’t carryin’ no grudge,” Pap says.

“And Miss Lila?”

“She’s rared up like a polecat fixed to spit.”

“Will says there’s bad blood ’twixt her and that Sheriff.”

“They go back; that’s for dang shore.”

“Franklin, maybe I ortn’t say it, but these younguns don’t belong in th’ middle of somebody else’s fight.”

Daniel hears the scratch, flare, and draw of Pap lighting his pipe. The creak of wood tells him Aunt Lu’s decided to rock awhile.

It’s shore been a quare day,
Daniel thinks, what with Miss Lila showing up outta nowheres in her big green field truck and asking for a word, private like, with Pap.

Pap and Uncle Will driving off with her—with nary a word of what for—and, a few hours later, coming back with all their things from the room at Miz Betty’s boardinghouse, and the big storage barn out back.

Somebody had added a sack of Cora the Cook’s thumbprint cookies “for the children,” and, boy, were they good! And there was a note to ’Becca from Miss Bunny Collins saying “good luck” and she was “going to miss having y’all around the house.”

While Daniel helped Pap and Uncle Will unload the truck, Aunt Lu had got busy tacking up oilcloth over the open windows of their unfinished cabin and had the girls sweep the floor free of sawdust “so’s to make it more homelike.” Together, they set up Mam’s chester drawers, the plank-board worktable, the hardwood chairs, the sleeping pallets, and the hickory-seat rockers on the porch.

Except for the back wall, which still needs chinking, and the roof, which is nearly done, the cabin’s just fine. At least for him and Pap. ’Becca remains across the way at Uncle Will and Aunt Lu’s place, tucked in between the girl cousins.

After the sun went down, and the air turned chill—maybe Floridy has a fall after all—Aunt Lu cracked open Mam’s big cedar chest and hauled out Daniel’s wool coverlet from up home. The coverlet smells of cedarwood and the wildflowers Mam used to jar by the window and hang off the rafters to dry by the fire.

Like it was yesterday, Daniel remembers the day last fall Mam called him out to the porch to admire the valley view.

“Ain’t Mother Nature spread out the purties’ coverlet ye ever saw? Reckon I could try and make ye one in jus’ them colors. Ef ye’d like me to, that is,” she’d said.

The very next day, she had Pap set up her big loom right in the corner. And the rest of the fall and winter had been filled with her careful spinning and dyeing of the wool, her squint-eyed mumbling over the lines and numbers on her pencil-drawn pattern, the setting of the woof, and, for nights on end, the back and forth song of the shuttle and tramping of the treadles. His memories sting bittersweet. The taller that bright red, orange, and yellow coverlet grew on her loom, in the intricate pattern she called Jacob’s Ladder, the smaller Mam got until, at the end, she tweren’t hardly more than a shrunken shadow, all eyes and teeth and knobby fingers, tying off the knots.

On the porch, Aunt Lu stops her rocking. “Franklin, tell me that thing the Sheriff said ’bout ’Becca’s nose.”

“He said he didn’t fancy the shape of it.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, why? She hear somethin’ diff’rent?”

“Who knows? She hain’t talkin’.”

“What d’ye mean?”

“That girl hain’t said a word for days. I seed it on Friday and figured it’d pass. But, it’s been three days now and nary a word, not even to the girls.”

Pap’s answer is the slow deliberate creak of his rocker.

“T’other thing is, she’s taken to coverin’ it and squeezin’ it on the sly, like she’s shamed and tryin’ to make it smaller.”

Pap’s rocker stops. “I’m shamed to say I hain’t noticed none of it.”
Me neither,
Daniel thinks, feeling the awful twinge of his promise to Mam to “look after yer sister.” Pap takes a deep draw on his pipe. “I’ll speak to her tomorr’ mornin’. I ’preciate your help, Lu. These younguns—”

“Miss their mamma.” Aunt Lu finishes it soft. “We all do.” Daniel hears her stand and step lightly off the porch. “ ’Night now,” she calls.

Outside, Pap’s rocker creaks in mournful thought.

Inside his brightly colored coverlet, Daniel sees the humped-up grave on the broom sedge knoll up home. He worries over the effect of the October rains and wonders if the dark earth’s sunk in on itself yet. He expects that, if it has, the sunken spot is filled up with red, orange, and yellow leaves from the autumn hardwoods. With all his heart, he hopes that poor Mam rests peaceful and easy, under “the purties’ coverlet ye ever saw.”