Slow Dollar

CHAPTER 16

MONDAY NIGHT (CONTINUED)

It was a little past nine when I left Tally and Arnie. People were gathering around the two trailers, bringing lawn chairs and coolers, ready to spend the rest of the evening talking about Polly and Braz and offering what comfort they could. Even though Tally seemed to accept me now, I knew my presence would make the others uncomfortable, so I drew a map to show Arnie how to get to the farm, then I hugged Tally goodnight and repeated April’s invitation to bring as many of their friends tomorrow as wanted to be there.

Windy Raines, with rough courtesy, offered to walk me to my car, but I told him I’d be fine.

As indeed I was. Officers still milled around the Plate Pitch, but the reporters with their cameras seemed to have moved on and there was no sign of Dwight, either, till I got to my car and found a prowl car parked along side. The window was down, and he seemed to be catching a cat nap behind the steering wheel.

“Hey,” I said softly. “You asleep?”

He opened one eye. “Nope. Just wondering if I ought to come looking for you. See if you’re all right.”

“I was talking to Tally.”

“I figured.”

He yawned, got out, and stretched. “She okay?”

“I think so. It’ll probably be better after tomorrow’s over. Do you want to come to the funeral?”

“Yeah, I probably ought to be there.”

“Arnold Ames thinks you think Polly Viscardi killed Braz.”

“Does he?”

“Dwight!”

“C’mon, Deb’rah. Be fair. You know it’s too soon to say about things like that.”

I subsided, knowing he was right.

He looked at his watch. “Still early. Not even nine thirty yet. You reckon Mr. Kezzie’s still up?”

“Yeah,” I said reluctantly, knowing where he was going with this and knowing I couldn’t put it off any longer. “What about Miss Emily?”

“She’s a night owl,” he said. “Want to follow me out?”

“Slow as you drive? I could tell my whole family and be home in bed before you get to your mother’s.”

He smiled down at me. “Don’t count on it. I got me a blue light here. You break the speed limit and I’m pulling you over.”

Despite his threat, when we drove back through town, he turned off at the courthouse and I knew he was going to pick up his truck rather than drive the prowl car out to Miss Emily’s. All the same, I kept it under the speed limit all the way out to the homeplace as I tried to decide how I was going to tell Daddy.

The moon was high in the sky, shinier than a newly minted quarter. I turned in at the rusty old mailbox that bore only a number on the side, crested the ridge, and eased down the long driveway. There was a light on at the back of the house, but the dogs came off the front porch to greet me. As I looked more closely, I saw Daddy sitting there on the swing in the deep shadows cast by the tall magnolia trees that grew along the path.

“Was wondering if I was gonna see you tonight,” he said, when I got out of the car.

I turned and looked down the slope to the edge of the yard and our family graveyard. With the moon nearly full, I could see Duck Aldcroft’s funeral tent and a dark mound beyond.

Daddy got up and joined me in the yard. I slipped my arm through his and together we walked down to the newly dug grave. That dark mound was the dirt that had been dug up, covered now with carpeting that I knew to be navy blue, though it would have been hard to tell in the moonlight even when it was this bright.

“Never could understand why grave diggers feel they got to hide the dirt,” Daddy said. “You reckon they think people don’t know that’s what’s gonna be covering them?”

“Have you talked to Andrew today?” I asked.

“No, but the last I heared, he’s sober now. Seen a lot of April and the girls, though,” he added dryly. “They and Maidie’s got enough to feed the five thousand. Eating table’s full of cakes and pies.”

The old rosebushes that grew around the graves of both his wives were already starting to drop their leaves, and that reminded me. I looked at Daddy, stricken. “I forgot to order flowers!”

“Don’t you worry, shug,” he said, patting my hand. “You know April won’t gonna forget something like that. And I told Duck to make sure Tallahassee has what she wants for the coffin. They’s gonna be plenty of flowers.”

The grave had been dug next to the little stone carved in the shape of a kneeling lamb that marked the grave of Daddy and Annie Ruth’s first baby boy, a stillbirth. It was as if the gods had required a sacrifice for all the strong, healthy boys to come.

And now another boy was joining him that none of us had ever met, either.

With my arm still linked in Daddy’s, we walked over to Mother’s grave and I put my hand on her stone: SUSAN STEPHENSON KNOTT. It’s not that I think dead spirits inhabit the graves of their bodies, but this was as close as I could physically get to both my parents.

I took a deep breath. “Dwight’s asked me to marry him,” I said, speaking as much to my mother as to my father.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself too choked up to continue.

At last, Daddy asked quietly, “How did you answer him, Daughter?”

“I told him yes.”

He pulled his arm free of mine, stepped back, and tilted my chin up till the moonlight fell full on my face. His own face was stern and, in this light, looked as if it, too, were carved from marble.

“Except for when you decided to run for judge, I ain’t never said a word to you about the way you lived your life, the things you done, the men you been with. Have I?”

“No, sir.”

“I figured you won’t hurting nobody but yourself and what you done was your own business. But if you marry Dwight and mess up—well, now, that’s gonna hurt a lot of people.”

“Daddy—”

He held up his hand. “Hear me out, Deb’rah. I’m right partial to Dwight. He’s a good man and he deserves a good wife. You gonna forsake all others and cleave only to him so long as you both shall live?”

“Yes, sir.” Tears streamed down my face and my hand still lay on Mother’s stone as if it were on a Bible.

“All right, then.” He opened his arms to me and held me against his chest till I quit crying.