Up Jumps the Devil

7

« ^ » Tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers of all sorts, have here an ample range before them: hither then they may repair, and no longer remain in a starving and grovelling condition at home…“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

I was headed home after a mental commitment hearing in Makely late the next morning. Despite fog and rain and dreary gray skies overhead, I was cheered by the seasonal sight of holly berries ripening into bright red amidst shiny wet green leaves. Deciduous trees had finally changed color, too, but even though crepe myrtles and pecans showed skeletal limbs through rapidly thinning orange and yellow leaves, oaks and sweet gums and a lot of the other trees had barely begun to shed good. That, of course, could change overnight if we got a real cold snap.

Growth has been erratic yet steady along New Forty-Eight between Makely and Raleigh. Tucked back behind tall rolling berms that are penetrated here and there by stately brick-and-brass gateposts are the roofs of high-end subdivisions with names like Horse Run Meadows or Dogwood Ridge. More numerous though are the nameless developments, the random results of different people deciding to sell off bits of their land to builders with no overall plan in mind: no berms, no stately entrances, just cheap-to-moderate tract houses, each with its own drive giving directly onto the four-lane highway.

I swear I don’t know where all these new people are coming from. Sometimes I wonder how places like Iowa or Ohio or upstate New York still have enough people to make it worthwhile keeping the lights on up there.

Doomed fields, as yet untouched by berm or bulldozer, bristled with real estate signs and surveyors’ ribbons. Soybeans had been picked, tobacco and corn stalks had been cut, a few fields were even planted already in their winter crop of oats. Intermixed were stands of unharvested cotton. The plants had been sprayed with a defoliant and the coarse dark leafless stems stood in stiff contrast to the soft white fibers bursting from their bolls. A couple of days of sunshine and the cotton would be dry enough to pick.

In the meantime, November was giving us its usual annual quirks, one day cool and damp, the next day warm. The temperature had climbed back into the high seventies this morning and sent a line of thunderstorms rolling through the area, some of them so violent that I had to pull over once because I couldn’t see the front end of my car.

Rain bucketed down on my sunroof and the windshield wipers were about as useful as a broom in a sandstorm. To make it even more harrowing, my lights had continued to dim in the last week and I worried that other cars, groping past me in the blinding downpour, wouldn’t see my taillights till it was too late.

When the rain finally slacked off enough to drive on, I realized that I wasn’t far from the cutoff to Jimmy White’s garage. Maybe he wouldn’t be too busy on a rainy Friday midday to at least tell me whether it was my new battery or something worse.

Two years ago, Jimmy’s single-bay garage expanded to three bays and he could probably add on another two if he could find competent mechanics willing to work as hard as he does. I doubt he’s really looking though. Having enough time for his church and family seems to be more important to him than money.

Even so, whether he wanted that much extra work or not, the yard was filled with cars and I had to thread the needle to pull mine up to the side door. Warm as it was, the middle bay door was open and I could see cars up on all three lifts, but no sign of Jimmy, his son James or Woodrow, their third mechanic. I splashed across the soggy ground, opened the door and stepped into their lunchtime matinee.

Clamped in the vise on Jimmy’s main workbench was a board that extended out like a short shelf. Sitting on the board was a small color television.

James had dragged up a stool, skinny little Woodrow sat cross-legged on the hood of a nearby pickup, Jimmy had swivelled his desk chair around, and two more black men I didn’t recognize were sitting on a low bench they’d jury-rigged from a plank and two concrete blocks. All had takeout plates balanced on their knees, and on the floor beside them were drink cups full of iced tea from my cousin’s barbecue house over on Forty-Eight. Except for their choice of china and crystal and eccentric seating arrangements, it could have been the Possum Creek Dinner Theater.

Everyone glanced over and nodded when I came in, but clearly I’d interrupted a climactic moment.

I stepped around to see what was so interesting. Another celebrity trial? Basketball previews? Highlights from the final car race of the season?

On the television, two impossibly gorgeous (and obviously naked) daytime actors were writhing together beneath tangled pink satin sheets. Talk about climactic moments— they were going at it so hot and heavy with hands and mouths and little animal noises that it’s a wonder the screen didn’t fog up.

So this was why I always got the answering machine if I called these men at lunchtime. Soap opera?

Jimmy tore his eyes from The Young and the Restless and started to put down his plate.

“Sorry,” I said, “but I’m afraid something’s wrong with that battery you put in last month.”

“You finish eating, Jimmy,” said a voice behind me. “I’ll check it out for her.”

I turned and there was Allen Stancil.

“Hey, thanks,” said Jimmy, sinking back into his chair, his attention already focused on the TV again. “Battery tester’s over there on that Mercury.”

Reluctantly, I followed Allen back outside. The sky had lightened momentarily, but more thunderheads were roiling up in the west.

I popped the hood and started the engine and Allen did his thing with the battery tester. After a few minutes, he hollered for me to shut it off and he began pulling on various belts.

‘Try it again.”

Again, I started the engine, gave it more gas when he told me to mash down, turned my lights off and on, then switched off as he eventually closed the hood and came around to my side of the car.

“Nothing wrong with your battery or your belts, far as I can tell,” he said, “but it’s not charging right. Looks to me like your alternator’s going to the bad. You don’t get a new one pretty soon, it’s gonna leave you on the side of the road somewhere.”

Back inside, the soap opera had ended and the guys were clearing away. James stowed the television and its board under the desk while Woodrow and the others pushed the cinder blocks and stool out of the middle of the floor.

Allen told Jimmy his diagnosis and Jimmy shook his head and gestured to all the cars ahead of me.

“I’m sorry, Deb’rah. You know I’d do it in a minute if I could, but I’d have to send James to town for the part and the way we’re so backed up—there’s no way in the world we’n get to it before Monday or Tuesday. And even then…”

His voice trailed off into uncertainty.

“I don’t mean to be butting in,” said Allen, butting in. “But she sure needs to get it changed and I’m not doing much right now.”

“Would you?” Relief brightened Jimmy’s face. He really does hate to make me wait. “That’d be great. Y’all do know each other, don’t you, Deb’rah? Dallas’s cousin? Staying over yonder with Mr. Jap? He knows as much about cars as me.”

Allen smiled broadly beneath his mustache. “More.”

“Naw, now, I didn’ say that!” Jimmy laughed. “But he’ll do you right.”

Which was how I found myself riding over to Cotton Grove with Allen to buy a new alternator.

We left my car parked in front of the garage at Mr. Jap’s place and drove to the auto parts store in Allen’s old Chevy pickup. I had to slide in under the steering wheel since the door on the passenger side was held shut with a C-clamp.

“Keep forgetting to get that damn latch fixed,” Allen said with a trace of embarrassment.

Didn’t bother me. With him driving, I could look him over good rather than the other way around.

He’d held up rather well, all things considered. His brown hair was still thick and bushy, his belly was flat, and he didn’t seem to have any teeth missing.

“When’d you grow the mustache?” I asked, as we crossed Possum Creek and headed north toward town.

“You don’t like it, darlin’, I’ll shave it off tomorrow morning.” His voice was warm and insinuating, but there was no way I was going to step in that creek twice.

“I don’t give a damn whether it stays or goes, Allen. I was just making polite conversation.”

“Well, I’n talk polite, too. How come you never got married again?”

“Once was enough, thank you.”

“What about that game warden? Y’all serious?”

“Oh, I always take game wardens serious,” I said. “What about you? How many times you been married since me?”

“Might’ve put my mark on one or two.” With one of those Ain’t-I-a-pistol? smiles, he flashed me the black star tattooed in the palm of his left hand. “You were the last one with a preacher, though.”

“Except it was a magistrate,” I reminded him sharply. “Any kids?”

“They proved one on me, but that’s all.”

I knew that Allen had been married before I met him and I seemed to recall mention of a son. “You mean Kevin—was that his name?”

“Keith. Naw, he’s grown now. Lives up in Richmond. I’m still paying for a girl that—”

He broke off so abruptly that my curiosity was piqued.

“A daughter? How old is she?”

He hesitated. “Seventeen. I got just one more year to pay on her. Wendy Nicole.”

“Seventeen?”

I’m not all that good at mental math, but it doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that his daughter couldn’t have been in this world very long at the time we’d run off to Martinsville together. I said as much and added, “Back then, didn’t you say you’d been divorced four or five years?”

“That was from Keith’s mama. Sally come after her.”

Rain had begun falling again and the wind was whipping wet leaves across the pavement. The pickup might be old, one door might be a different color and the other hanging on by a C-clamp, but the wipers swept the windshield cleanly and the engine purred like a happy kitten. Those two boded well for my new alternator.

“So how long had you been divorced from this Sally?”

Another hesitation. “Well, now, darlin’, I don’t want you to get all fussed over something that’s long done and finished with.”

“I’m not your ‘darlin’,‘ Allen. How long done and finished was it?”

“Actually, we only got it finalized about four years ago when Katie came up pregnant.”

I sat bolt upright. “Wait just a damn minute here! You saying you were still married to this Sally when you married me?” My hand slammed down hard on the dashboard. “You committed bigamy?”

“See? I knew you were going to get upset.”

“Upset?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do? You were the one so hot to get married that—”

This time it was my fist hit the dash and he gave me an apprehensive look.

“You ain’t got a knife in that handbag, have you?”

“If I did, I’d cut your lying tongue right out of your head,” I snarled. “My daddy paid you five thousand dollars not to contest the annulment and to keep your mouth shut about it and it wasn’t even a legal marriage?”

“You ain’t gonna tell him, are you?” Allen asked as he pulled in at the auto parts place. “I’d sure hate for you to get him mad at me all over again.”

I was so outraged that I jerked at the door handle a couple of times before I remembered that it was broken. Meekly, Allen got out on his side and held the door for me, but he made sure he stayed well out of my swinging range as I stomped into the store ahead of him.

“How ’bout I don’t charge you nothing for fixing your car?” he called after me.

The trouble with small-pond life is that it’s awfully hard to go anywhere without bumping into a relative. When I stalked into the store, my nephew Reese was there at the counter talking to the clerk about the merits of different floor mats.

“With winter coming on, I got to do something to keep the mud off my carpet,” he said with an inquiring look at Allen.

I swallowed my anger and introduced the two of them after Allen had told the clerk what we wanted. While the clerk went off to find an alternator that would fit my engine, they talked carpet cleaners and the care and feeding of vinyl interiors.

By the time the clerk came back and I’d handed over my credit card, Allen had convinced Reese he was the one to help him install his new stereo speakers in the door panels.

“You might want to see how he fixes his own doors before you turn him loose on yours,” I said nastily.

Allen just smiled. “Everybody knows the shoemaker’s children always go barefoot.”

When we were in the truck again and heading back to Mr. Jap’s, Allen looked over at me warily and said, “You ain’t gonna stay mad at me, are you, darlin’?”

I knew my outraged feelings didn’t really concern him. He was only worried what Daddy or some of the boys might do if I told them. Well, he could just keep on worrying.

“So who’s Katie?” I asked.

“Nobody special. Just a gal I stayed with for a coupla weeks one time when Sally threw me out.”

“And she had your child?”

“Won’t mine. I tell you what’s the truth—between paying for Keith and paying for Wendy Nicole, I quit taking my pecker out of my britches without putting on his raincoat. No way that baby was mine. She took me to court, but I got a blood test and it proved that little girl was somebody else’s.”

“Lucky you,” I said, remembering the relief of Portland Brewer’s client when the blood test let him off the hook.

“Won’t luck, darlin’. It was science. You know how much I’d’ve had to pay if they’d proved it on me?”

“Depends on what you’re making. In your case, probably a hundred dollars a week?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a judge. You know all about laying child support on a man, don’t you? Busting his balls?”

Takes two to make a baby.”

“So how come it’s always one that has to pay?”

“Sometimes it’s the mother,” I said.

He snorted disdainfully. “Not very often, I bet”

“No,” I agreed. “Most times it’s the father that takes off.”

“Hey, I paid for Keith. And I’m paying for Wendy Nicole, too. But damn if I was gonna let ’em lay a court order on me for another eighteen years just because Katie can’t keep up with who she’s sleeping with.”

Which sounded an awful lot as if he was under a court order for ol’ Wendy Nicole.

“Not behind on your payments, are you?” I needled, wondering if that had anything to do with why he was hanging around over here instead of heading back to Charlotte.

“Sally knows I’m doing the best I can. I send her money ever chance I get. Hell, I even send Katie something when I have a little extra. Poor girl never did figure out who’s Tiffany’s daddy.”

Allen might not’ve fathered her child, but I was willing to bet even money that he’d left that Katie with a tiny black star on her left shoulder. And Sally, too. I knew Keith’s mother had one and God knows how many women before or since. I was just young enough and dumb enough to be flattered when Allen hauled me into a tattoo shop and had the guy do me.

When we walked down the street together, my right thumb was always hooked in the back pocket of his jeans just as his left hand always rested on my left shoulder. At eighteen, that tattoo had seemed so romantic, as if the heat from his hand had magically burned through to my flesh and marked me as his woman forever.

Hard to believe I’d been so stupid. What on earth made me pick such a bad-news womanizer to go to hell with?

I was still getting used to the idea that my one fling at marriage hadn’t been a marriage at all and wasn’t quite sure whether this was something that would help me or hurt me if the whole shabby mess ever came out in public. One thing was certain though: the sooner Allen Stancil got out of n’ County, the sooner I’d breathe easy again.

I decided maybe I’d give Charlotte a buzz and see if his ex-wife Sally really was as understanding about those erratic support payments as he made out. If I was lucky, maybe there’d be a nice little warrant out for his sorry hide.