Up Jumps the Devil

17

« ^ » All modes of Christian worship, not detrimental to society, are here tolerated...“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

Sunday morning dawned clear and sunny. There was a decided nip in the air as I left the house at 10:54. Dwight and I had wound up talking about my problems with Kidd’s daughter and his problems with his ex-wife before we put the video on, so it was nearly one before I got home and close to two before I fell into bed.

Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash had left in plenty of time for Sunday school at ten, but I’m doing good to make eleven o’clock preaching services. I’ll always consider Sweetwater my home church, but I moved my membership when I joined my cousins’ law practice because I hate to get up early on the weekends. And proximity really was my original motivator for choosing First Baptist Church of Dobbs.

Honest.

“That’s still an admission of sloth,” the preacher had said, disdainful that I couldn’t spring out of bed on Sunday mornings and drive twenty miles to Sweetwater.

“Never hurts a newly qualified attorney to share hymn books and amens with some of the most prominent citizens of the county,” the pragmatist had reminded him.

“Opportunism in church is worse than sloth and furthermore—”

It was such an old argument that I pushed them both to the back of my head and hurried into the sanctuary just as the first hymn was announced. Portland and Avery Brewer moved down to make room for me at the end of a pew near the door and my voice joined with theirs as we sang hymn number one-ninety, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

Because it was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the young and earnest minister exhorted us to count our many blessings and give thanks to the Lord. Obediently, I fixed my eyes upon my favorite stained-glass window, a pastoral scene where sheep grazed calmly while an improbable lion lay down amongst them with sleepily benevolent eyes. Instead of the upcoming national holiday, I thought back to the earliest November I could remember.

Now that I considered it, that was probably about the time our simple little country church was changing over from its old-fashioned Harvest Day.

Harvest Day at Sweetwater Baptist was usually a Saturday in late October or early November. There would be a morning praise service in gratitude for bountiful crops, then lunch on the grounds with hot dogs stuck on straightened-out coat hangers and roasted over an open fire, followed by marshmallows toasted on the same wire hangers. When I pulled mine out of the fire, they were always black on the outside and melted ambrosia inside.

After the weenie roast, there would be an auction to raise money for the church. Men donated cords of wood, bales of cotton, carved cedar walking sticks, fresh apple cider, and ten-pound bags of pecans, walnuts or peanuts. Women gave crocheted tablecloths, embroidered aprons, colorful patchwork quilts, fancy cakes, or quart jars of canned fruits, the peaches and cherries glowing like jewels in that crisp autumn sunlight.

Will got his start as an auctioneer at one of the Sweetwater Harvest sales.

Daddy wasn’t a churchgoer, but he always came to the sale and donated a hundred-weight of cured tobacco and bid on a quilt or some cakes. Growing boys always needed covering or feeding.

Relatively speaking, Southerners—especially those out in the country—have only recently taken to Thanksgiving. Certainly it was never a major holiday when I was very young. Oh, we colored pumpkins and turkeys in kindergarten and put on assembly plays in Pilgrim costumes of buckled shoes and hats and gray clothes with wide white collars. And we’d get Thursday and Friday off and the mail wouldn’t run on that Thursday, but otherwise, it was just an ordinary day of the week. Like as not, Daddy and the boys would harvest beans or cut stalks that day while Mother and Maidie and I went about our usual chores.

It wasn’t till I was in middle school and after some of the boys had married town-bred girls who celebrated Thanksgiving like the rest of the country that Mother started cooking a turkey and making a special holiday meal.

Daddy still thought it was a made-up holiday imposed on us by the North. As a boy, he could remember when Thanksgiving depended on annual presidential proclamations and was vaguely mistrusted as a remnant of Yankee puritanism. “They tried to outlaw our Christmas, so we never much bothered with their Thanksgiving,” he says, harkening back to lore handed down from before the Civil War.

Mother was a girl but old enough to remember when President Roosevelt stabilized Thanksgiving in 1939 and made it the fourth Thursday in November instead of the last Thursday, a distinction with a difference. “And not for the glory of God,” she would say dryly, “but for Mammon. November had five Thursdays that year and Mr. Roosevelt thought it would help stores get out of the Depression quicker if the country had an extra week of Christmas shopping days.”

Which is why Haywood and Isabel would feel no qualms about flying off to Atlantic City next Thursday instead of staying home to eat a big meal. As long as we get together sometime toward the end of the week, our family still has no fixation on any particular day.

My Thanksgiving reverie was suddenly interrupted by a sharp nudge in the ribs by Portland Brewer. Everyone else had their heads bowed for the prayer that closed the minister’s sermon. Once again, I’d missed it entirely.

Oh, well.

We stood for the singing of a final hymn—“Bringing in the Sheaves”—a last benediction, then we left the shadowy sanctuary and passed into the bright sunshine where red, gold and brown leaves lay thickly on the sidewalk and swirled along the gutters. Last night’s chilly wind had finished stripping the crepe myrtles and maples. The oaks alone still held their brown leaves.

As Cherry Lou Stancil’s court-appointed attorney, Avety Brewer wanted to hear my account of Mr. Jap’s death.

“Too bad she didn’t get to sign the farm back over to him,” I said. “That leaves her going to trial with her primary motive still intact.”

“You never know,” Avery said gamely. “Juries have acquitted with a lot more evidence than a Kmart sales slip for the weapon.”

“Right. And I suppose Millard King’s going to argue accidental discharge of said weapon and have Tig Wentworth plead to involuntary manslaughter?”

Portland grinned at her husband. “Now there’s a thought, honey. She said the shotgun was a present. Maybe her little ol’ son-in-law tripped on a mole run as he was going out to give it to him.”

Avery was not amused and went on ahead to warm up their car.

As the rest of the congregation streamed through the broad oak doors, then clumped for snatches of Sunday morning conversation along the steps and sidewalk, Portland touched my sleeve and drew me aside.

“Can I speak to you a minute, Deborah? Off the record?”

“Sure, Por. What’s up?”

Portland was a Smith before she married Avery Brewer and is Uncle Ash’s brother’s daughter, which makes us courtesy cousins. Not that the courtesy is needed. We’ve been good friends since we got thrown out of the Junior Girls’ class in Sunday school for teasing prissy Caroline Atherton. Indeed, Portland’s one of the reasons I stuck with law. After nearly messing up my life, I looked around to see what my friends were doing with theirs and Portland seemed to be having the most fun.

She and I were still the same height and approximate build, only on her, it looked better. She had short wiry black hair that curled all over her head as if a mad beautician had styled a Persian lamb, and her brown eyes were worried as she drew me even further away from the crowd.

“You remember that contested paternity suit I argued before you a couple of weeks ago?”

“Vaguely. Refresh my memory.”

“Beecham versus Collins? Single mom and cute little girl? I represented the alleged father.”

“Oh, yeah. The one where blood tests proved he couldn’t have fathered the child?”

“That’s the one.”

“So?”

“So day before yesterday—Friday? I got a call from one of Collins’ friends. He’s facing a paternity suit, too, and Collins recommended me.”

“What’s wrong with that? You won the case, why wouldn’t he recommend you?”

“Because I wasn’t Collins’ only recommendation,” Portland said grimly. “This friend tried to be subtle about it, but he asked me to make certain that we used Jamerson Labs and that it’d sure be nice if Mrs. Diana Henderson could be the technician who actually draws the blood and runs the test since she did such a good job for ol’ Tim there, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.”

“What?”

She nodded unhappily.

“He bribed her?”

“Maybe.”

As the implications sank in, I said, “You’re talking perjury here. And subornation of perjury, too. Or conspiracy. And that’s just for starters. Who approached whom?”

If possible, Portland looked even more unhappy. The ethical ground she was walking over at the moment was shakier than Jell-O.

“I don’t know, Deborah. Swear to God. And maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.”

“Do you honestly think so?” I asked her squarely.

Her eyes met mine. “No.”

“Who was the opposing attorney? Ambrose Daughtridge? I want your client and Mrs. Henderson in my courtroom first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Ex-client,” Portland said hastily.

“Whichever.”

“We’ll be there.” She gave my arm a squeeze, then with her wiry dark curls bouncing in the sunlight, she hurried over to the curb where Avery waited in their car.

As I started to cross the street to my own car, a white pickup stopped in the crosswalk in front of me and my nephew Reese leaned over and pushed open the passenger door.

“Want to buy me a cup of coffee?” he asked.

With those oversized tires, I had to hike my Sunday skirt to make that long step up to the cab, but one glance at the diamond-patterned treads made me think that it might well be worth the price of a cup of coffee to hear what Reese had to say about yesterday morning.