Storm Track

STORM TRACK

DEBORAH KNOTT BOOK 07

Margaret Maron

All chapter captions are taken from The Complete Story of the Galveston Horror, edited by John Coulter. United Publishers of America, © 1900 by E. E. Sprague.

A DF Books NERDs Release

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

STORM TRACK . Copyright © 2000 by Margaret Maron. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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ISBN 0-7595-8393-5

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2000 by Mysterious Press.

First eBook edition: May 2001

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M ARGARET M ARON grew up on a farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, but for many years lived in Brooklyn, New York. When she returned to her North Carolina roots with her artist-husband, Joe, she began a series based on her own background and went on to write Bootlegger’s Daughter, a Washington Post bestseller and winner of the major mystery awards for 1993. Her next Deborah Knott novel, Southern Discomfort, was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Novel; Shooting at Loons, which followed, received Agatha and Anthony award nominations, and Up Jumps the Devil won the Agatha for Best Novel of 1996.

By Margaret Maron

Deborah Knott novels:

Home Fires

Killer Market

Up Jumps the Devil

Shooting at Loons

Southern Discomfort

Bootlegger’s Daughter

Sigrid Harald novels:

Fugitive Colors

Past Imperfect

Corpus Christmas

Baby Doll Games

The Right Jack

Bloody Kin

Death in Blue Folders

Death of a Butterfly

One Coffee With

Short story collection:

Shoveling Smoke

CONTENTS

Late August

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

DEBORAH KNOTT’S FAMILY TREE

LATE AUGUST

Afternoon shadows shaded the dip in the deserted dirt road where a battered Chevy pickup sat with the motor idling. On the driver’s side, a puff of pale blue smoke drifted through the open window as the old man inside lit a cigarette and waited. The two dogs in back tasted the sultry air and one of them stuck its head through the sliding rear window. The man reached up and rubbed the silky ears.

A few minutes later, a green Ford pickup approached from the opposite direction and pulled even with the Chevy. The old man acknowledged them with a nod, then stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it on the sandy roadbed.

“Evening, Mr. Kezzie,” said the stocky, heavyset driver who appeared to be in his early fifties. His hair was thinning across the crown and his face was lined from squinting through a windshield at too many sunrises.

The other, younger man was probably early thirties. He wore a neat blue shirt that had wet sweat circles under the arms.

Kezzie Knott peered past the driver. “This your cousin’s boy?”

The older man nodded. “Norwood Love, Ben Joe’s youngest.”

“I knowed your daddy when he was a boy,” Kezzie said, tapping another cigarette from the crumpled pack in his shirt pocket. “Good man till they shipped him off to Vietnam.”

“That’s what I hear.” Norwood Love’s jaw tightened. “I only knowed him after he come back.”

And won’t asking for no pity, thought Kezzie as he took a deep drag on his cigarette. Well, that part won’t none of his business. Exhaling smoke, he said, “He the one taught you how to make whiskey?”

“Him and Sherrill here.”

“I done told him, Mr. Kezzie, how you won’t have no truck with a man that makes bad whiskey,” his cousin said earnestly. “Told him ain’t nobody never gone blind drinking stuff you had aught to do with.”

“And that’s the way I aim to keep it,” Kezzie said mildly as he examined the cigarette in his gnarled fingers. There was no threat in his voice, but the young man nodded as if taking an oath.

“All I use is hog feed, grain, sugar and good clean water. No lye or wood alcohol and I ain’t never run none through no radiator neither.”

Kezzie Knott heard the sturdy pride in his voice. “Ever been caught?”

“No, sir.”

“Sherrill says you got a safe place to set up.”

“Yessir. It’s—”

Kezzie held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. Sherrill’s word’s good enough. And your’n.” His clear blue eyes met the younger man’s. “Sherrill says you was thinking eight thousand?”

“I know that’s a lot, but—”

“No, it ain’t. Not if you’re going to do a clean operation, stainless steel vats and cookers.”

He leaned over and took a thick envelope from the glove compartment and passed it across to Norwood Love. “Count it.”

When the younger man had finished counting, he looked up at the other two. “Don’t you want me to sign a paper or something?”

“What for?” asked Kezzie Knott, with the first hint of a smile on his lips. “Sherrill’s told you my terms and you aim to deal square, don’t you?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, then? Ain’t no piece of paper gonna let me take you to court if you don’t.”

“I reckon not.”

“Besides”—a sardonic tone slipped into his voice—“there don’t need to be nothing connecting me to you if your place ain’t as safe as you think it is.”

As Norwood Love started to thank him, Kezzie Knott touched the brim of his straw hat to them, then put the truck in gear and pulled away through August heat and August humidity that had laid a haze across the countryside.

Ought to’ve paid more mind to the noon weather report, the old man told himself as he headed the truck toward home. Thick and heavy as this air was, he reckoned they might get another thunderstorm before bedtime.

Automatically he took a mental inventory of the farm—not just the homeplace but all the land touching his that his sons now owned and farmed.

Cotton was holding up all right, and soybeans and corn could take a little more rain without hurting bad, but all this water was leaching nutrients from the sandy soil. Bolls was starting to crack though so it was too late to spray the cotton with urea to get the nitrogen up enough to finish it off. Tobacco had so much water lately, it was all greened up again. Curing schedule shot to hell. Just as well, he supposed, since the ground was so soggy along the bottoms you couldn’t get tractors in without bogging down.

Playing hell with the garden, too. Maidie was fussing about watery tomatoes and how mold on the field peas was turning ’em to mush. That second sowing of butter beans won’t faring so good neither—them fuzzy yellow beetle larvy making lace outen the leaves. Every time him or Cletus dusted ’em, along come the rain to wash off all the Sevin before it had a chance to kill ’em.

The boys was worried, but that’s what it was to be a farmer. First you lay awake praying for rain, then you lay awake praying for it to quit. You done it ’most your whole life, he thought. All them years Sue tried to make you put farming over whiskey. Got to be a habit after a while. Certainly was for the boys.

And now another round of hurricanes setting up to blow in more rain?

Deb’rah won’t going to be any happier ’bout more rain than the boys. She said she was about to get eat up out there by the pond. Fish couldn’t keep up with the eggs them mosquitoes was laying in this weather.

Through the open back window, Ladybelle’s nose nudged the back of his neck. Kezzie took a final drag on his cigarette and stubbed the butt in his overflowing ashtray.

“Still don’t see why she had to go and build out there when the homeplace is setting almost empty,” he grumbled to the dogs.

CHAPTER | 1

The situation . . . is portrayed day by day exactly as it existed, and is not the product of imaginings of writers who put down what the conditions should have been; the storm has been followed from its inception.

August 31—Hurricane Edouard is now 31° North by 70.5° West. Wind speed approx. 90 knots. (Note: 1 kt. = 1 nautical mile per hour.) (Note: a nautical mile is about 800 ft. longer than a land mile or .15 of a land mi.)

Math was not Stan Freeman’s strongest subject. In the margin of his notebook, the boy laboriously scribbled the computations so he’d have the formula handy:

90 kts. =

90 + (90 x .15) =

He rummaged in his bookbag for his calculator.

The fan in his open window stirred the air but did little to cool the small bedroom. Perspiration gleamed on his dark skin. His red Chicago Bulls tank top clung damply to his chest. It’d been an oversized Christmas present from his little sister Lashanda, yet was already too tight. His distinctly non-stylish sneakers lay under the nightstand so his feet could breathe free. Three sizes in six months. After he outgrew a new pair in one month, Kmart look-alikes were all his mother would buy “till your body settles down.”

At eleven and a half, it was as if his limbs had suddenly erupted. The pudginess that had lingered since babyhood was gone now, completely melted away into bony arms and legs that stretched him almost as tall as his tall father. He was glad to be taller. Short kids got no respect. Now if he could just do something about his head. It felt out of proportion, too big for his gangling body, and he kept his bushy hair clipped as short as his mother would allow so as not to draw attention to the disparity.

At the moment, though, he wasn’t thinking of his appearance. Using his light-powered calculator, he multiplied ninety by point fifteen, then finished writing out his conversion:

90 + (13.5) = 103.5 mph.

For a moment, Stan lay back on his bed and imagined himself standing in a hundred-and-four miles per hour wind.

Freaking cool!

And never going to happen this far inland, he reminded himself. He sat up again and picked up where he’d left off in his main notes: Hurricane warnings posted from Cape Lookout to Delaware, but forecasters predict that Edouard will probably miss the North Carolina coast.

Gloomily, he added, Hurricane Fran downgraded to a tropical storm last night.

With a sigh as heavy as the humid August air the fan was pulling through his open window, Stan took out a fresh sheet of notebook paper and made a new heading.

NOTES—Meterolg

He paused, consulted the dictionary on the shelf beside his bed, tore out the sheet of paper and began again.

NOTES—Meteorologists say we’re getting more tropical storms this year because of a rainy summer in the deserts of W. Africa. (Reminder—look up name of desert) (Reminder—look up name of country) This makes tropical waves that can turn into storms. At least they think that’s what caused Arthur and Bertha so early this year.

He couldn’t help wishing for the umpteenth time that he’d known about this new school’s sixth-grade science project earlier in the summer. If he had, he might have thought about documenting the life and death of a killer hurricane in time for it to do some good. Unfortunately, nobody’d mentioned the project till this past week, a full month after Bertha did her number on Wrightsville Beach. Cesar and Dolly had been right on her heels, but both of them wimped out without making landfall.

Like Hurricane Edouard was about to do.

Just his luck if the rest of hurricane season stayed peaceful. When he came up with the idea of doing a day-by-day diary of a killer storm, Edouard was still kicking butt in the Caribbean and had people down at the coast talking about having to evacuate by Labor Day. Now, though . . .

He wasn’t wishing Wilmington any more bad luck, but a category 3 or 4 hurricane would sure make a bitchin’ project.

Sorry, God, he thought, automatically casting his eyes heavenwards.

“Son, I know you think you have to say things like that to be cool with the other kids,” Dad chided him recently. “But you let it become a habit and one of these days, you’re going to slip and say it to your mother and how cool will you feel then?”

Not for the first time, Stan considered the parental paradox. His father might be the preacher, but it was his mother who had all the Thou Shalt Nots engraved on her heart.

As if she’d heard him think of her, Clara Freeman tapped on the door and opened it without waiting for his response.

“Stanley? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“Sorry, Mama, I was working on my science project.”

Clara Freeman’s face softened a bit at that. Guiltily, Stan knew that schoolwork could always justify a certain amount of leeway.

Yet schoolwork seldom took precedence over church work.

“Leave that for later, son. Right now, what with all the rain we’ve been having, Sister Jordan’s grass needs cutting real bad and I told her you’d be glad to go over this morning and do it for her.”

Without argument, Stan closed the notebook and placed it neatly on his bookshelf, then began cramming his feet into those gawdawful sneakers. His face was expressionless but every cussword he’d ever heard surged through his head. Bad enough that this wet and steamy August kept him cutting their own grass every week without Mama looking over the fences to their neighbors’ yards. Sister Jordan had two teenage grandsons who lived right outside Cotton Grove, less than a mile away, but Mama could be as implacable as the Borg—which he’d only seen on friends’ TV since Mama didn’t believe in it for them. If ever she saw an opportunity to build his character through Christian sacrifice, resistance was futile.

Any argument and she’d be on her knees, begging God’s forgiveness for raising such a lazy, self-centered son, begging in a soft sorrowful voice that always cut him deeper than any switch she might have used.

On the other hand, if he spent the next hour cutting Sister Jordan’s grass, Mama wouldn’t fuss about him going over to Dobbs with Dad this evening.

* * *

This was the second time they’d made love. The first had been in guilty haste, an act as irrational as gulping too much sweet cool water after days of wandering in a dry and barren land.

And just as involuntary.

Today they lay together on the smooth cotton sheets of her bed, away from any eyes that might see or tongues that might tell. Despite the utter privacy, and even though her mouth and body had responded just as passionately, just as hungrily as his, her lovemaking was again curiously silent. No noisy panting, no long ecstatic sobs, no outcries.

Cyl moaned only once as her body arched beneath his, a low sound that was almost a sigh, then she relaxed against the cool white sheets and murmured, “Holy, holy, holy.”

“Don’t,” Ralph Freeman groaned. “Please don’t.”

She turned her face to his, her brown eyes bewildered. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t mock.”

“Mock? Oh, my love, I would never mock you.”

“Not me,” he said miserably. “God.”

She traced the line of his cheek with her fingertips. “I wasn’t mocking,” she whispered. “I was thanking Him.”

* * *

Over in Dobbs, Dr. Jeremy Potts decided he’d put it off as long as he could. Having slept in this morning, he’d had to wait till late afternoon to go running. This hot and humid August had kept his resentments simmering. If not for the three biggest bitches of Colleton County, he told himself, he could be working out in the lavish air-conditioned exercise room at the country club instead of running laps on a school track under a broiling sun. He could follow that workout with a refreshing shower instead of driving back to his condo dripping in sweat. Thanks to his ex-wife who’d been wound up by her lawyer’s wife, not to mention that judge who gave Felicia everything but the gold filling in his back molar, it would be at least another two years before he could afford the country club’s initiation fees and monthly dues.

Thank you very much, Lynn Bullock, he thought angrily as he laced up his running shoes.

* * *

Jason Bullock hefted his athletic bag over his shoulder and paused in the doorway to watch his wife brush her long blonde hair. She had a trick of bending over and brushing it upside down so that it almost touched the floor, then she’d sit up and flip her head back so that her hair fell around her pretty heart-shaped face with a natural fluffiness.

“See you later, then, hon. I’ll grab a hot dog at the field and be home around eight, eight-thirty.”

“For the love of God, Jase! Don’t I mean any thing to you?” Lynn asked impatiently, speaking to his reflection in her mirror. She pushed her hair into the artfully tangled shape she wanted and set it in place with a cloud of perfumed hair spray. “I won’t be here later, remember? Antiquing with my sister? Her and me spending the night in a motel up around Danville? I can’t believe you—”

“Only kidding,” he said. “You don’t think I’d really forget that I’m a bachelor on the prowl tonight, do you?” With his free hand, he stroked a mock mustache and gave her a wicked leer.

“And don’t try to call me because we’re going to ramble till we get tired and then stop at the first motel we come to.”

It pleased her when his leer was replaced by a proper expression of husbandly concern.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you, honey? Don’t let Lurleen talk you into staying somewhere that’s not safe just because it’s cheap, okay?”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be safe. And I’ll call you soon as I’m checked in.”

In the mirror, Lynn watched her husband leave. Not for the first time she wondered why she bothered to try and keep this marriage going. Except that Jason was going to be somebody in this state someday and she was going to be right there by his side. No way was she planning to wind up like her mother (after three husbands and five affairs, she was living on social security in a trailer park in Wake County) or Lurleen (only one husband but God alone knew how many lovers, one of which had left her with herpes and she was just lucky it wasn’t AIDS). Besides, she’d busted her buns working double shifts at the hospital while Jase got his law degree so they wouldn’t have a bunch of debt hanging over them when he started practicing. Now that the long grind was finally over, now that they could start thinking about a fancier house, a winter cruise, maybe even a trip to Hawaii, she wasn’t about to blow it.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve got to keep putting my needs on hold, Lynn thought, absently caressing her smooth cheek. Jase used to be such a tiger in bed. This summer, between long hours at the firm and weekends at the ball field or volunteer fire department—“building contacts” was how he justified so much time away—all he wanted to do in bed most nights was sleep.

Not her.

She took a dainty black lace garter belt from her lingerie drawer and put it in her overnight case. Black hose and a push-up bra followed. She dug out a pair of strappy heels from the back of her closet and put those in, too. Panties? Why bother? You won’t have them on long enough to matter, she told herself with a little shiver of anticipation.

She thought about calling Lurleen, but her sister was going to Norfolk this weekend and wouldn’t be home to answer the phone anyhow if Jase should call. Not that he would. He wasn’t imaginative enough to play the suspicious husband. And no point giving Lurleen another hold over her. She already knew too much.

CHAPTER | 2

The origin of a hurricane is not fully settled. Its accompanying phenomena, however, are significant to even the casual observer.

“C’mon, Deb’rah, we’re one man short and what else you got to do this evening?” Dwight wheedled. “What’s-his-face didn’t change his mind and decide to come, did he?”

Sometimes Dwight can be even more exasperating than one of my eleven brothers. At least they like Kidd and Kidd seems to like all of them. Dwight’s been the same as a brother my whole life—one of my bossier brothers, I might add—and he knows Kidd’s name as well as he knows mine, but he’ll never come right out and use it if he can help it. Don’t ask me why.

Kidd Chapin’s a game warden down east, Dwight Bryant is Sheriff Bo Poole’s right-hand man and heads up Colleton County’s detective squad here in central North Carolina, so they’re both law enforcement agents and they both like to hunt and fish and tromp around in the woods. There’s no reason for them not to be friends. Nevertheless, even though they both deny any animosity, the two of them walk around each other as warily as two strange tomcats.

“No, he hasn’t changed his mind,” I said, with just the right amount of resigned regret.

Dwight would worry me like a dog at a rat hole if I gave him the least little suspicion of how sorry I’d been feeling for myself ever since Kidd called yesterday morning to say he couldn’t come spend this Labor Day weekend with me as we’d planned. Kidd lives in New Bern, a hundred miles away, and we’ve been lovers for over a year now. But let his teenage daughter Amber crook her little finger and he drops everything—including me—to run see what she wants.

I know all about non-custodial angst. Not only do I see a lot of it when I sit domestic court, I’ve watched my own brothers struggle with their guilt. Hell, I even watch Dwight. Let Jonna call and say he can have Cal a day early, and what happens? Ten minutes after she hangs up, he’s rearranged the whole department’s schedule so he can head up I-85 to Virginia.

All the same, knowing about something in theory and liking it in practice are two entirely different things, and I was getting awfully tired of watching Amber jerk the chain of the man who says he loves me, who says he wants to be with me.

I brushed a strand of sandy blonde hair back from my face. It had bleached out this summer and felt like straw here under the torrid afternoon sun. When Dwight drove up in his truck, I’d been standing in the yard of my new house with a twenty-foot length of old zinc pipe in my hands.

“Here,” I said, handing him the pipe. “Hold this and move back a couple of feet, would you?”

“Why?” he asked, as he held it erect and moved to where I’d pointed. “What are you doing?”

“Planning my landscape and I think I want a maple right about—stop!” I cast a critical eye on how the pipe’s shadow fell across my porch. “Right where you’re standing would be good. It’ll shade the whole porch in August.”

Dwight snorted. “It’ll be twenty years before any tree’s tall as this pipe. Unless you buy one with some size on it ’stead of digging a sprout out of the woods?”

Until the spring, my yard had been an open pasture with only a couple of widely scattered oaks and sycamores to shade a few of my daddy’s cows. None of those trees shaded the two-bedroom house I’d had built on a slight rise overlooking the long pond. (A house, I might add, that was supposed to give Kidd and me some privacy. A supposition, I might add, we’ve had too frigging few weekends to test out, thank you very much, Amber.)

“I’ve already root-pruned six or eight waist-high dogwoods, three oaks and two ten-foot maples,” I told him as I marked the spot where he stood with a cement block left over from laying the foundation. “Robert’s going to take his front-end loader this fall and move them here for me. Want to come help me dig some five-dollar holes?”

He smiled at that mention of my daddy’s favorite piece of planting advice: “Better to put a fifty-cent tree in a five-dollar hole than a five-dollar tree in a fifty-cent hole.”

“Tell you what,” Dwight bargained. “You play second base for me this evening and I’ll come help you dig.”

“Deal!” I said, before he could figure out that he’d just swapped half a Saturday of my time for at least two full Saturdays of his. “Give me ten minutes to wash my face and change into clean shorts. Make any difference what color shirt I wear?”

Back when I was playing regularly, the closest we came to uniforms was trying to wear the same color tops.

He turned around so that I could see JAILHOUSE GANG stencilled on the back of the red T-shirt that stretched tightly across his broad shoulders. (And yeah, long as I was checking out his back, I took a good look at the way his white shorts fit his backside.) Dwight’s six three and built tall and solid like most of my brothers. Not bad-looking either. I can’t understand why some pretty woman hasn’t clicked on him and moved him on over to her home page before now. My sisters-in-law and I keep offering suggestions and he keeps sidestepping us.

“I brought you a shirt,” he said, reaching into his truck for one like his.

I had to laugh as I took it from him. “Pretty sure I’d come, weren’t you?”

He shrugged. “Been a couple of years since you played. Thought you might enjoy it for a change.”

“So who’re we playing?” I asked as I headed up the steps, already unbuttoning my sweat-drenched shirt as I went inside.

“Your old team.” Dwight followed me as far as the kitchen, where he helped himself to a glass of iced tea from my refrigerator.

“The Civil Suits?” I asked through my open bedroom door as I stepped out of my dirty shorts and pulled a pair of clean white ones from my dresser drawer. There were enough law firms clustered around the courthouse in Dobbs to field a fairly decent team and I’d been right out there with them till I was appointed to the district court bench and decided I probably ought to step back from too much fraternization with attorneys I’d have to be ruling on. “They as good as they used to be?”

“Tied with us for third place,” he drawled. “Today’s the playoff. You still got your glove or do we need to borrow one?”

“I not only have it, I can even tell you where it is,” I bragged. My sports gear was in one of the last boxes I’d hauled over to my new garage from Aunt Zell’s house, where I’d lived from the time I graduated law school till this summer.

I found myself a red ribbon, and while I tied my hair in a ponytail to get it up off my neck, Dwight spent a few minutes rubbing neat’s-foot oil into my glove. The leather wasn’t very stiff. Half the time when they come over to swim in the pond, my teenage nieces and nephews wind up dragging out balls and bats. Just like their daddies—any excuse to play whatever ball’s in season—so my glove stays soft and supple.

* * *

I poured myself a plastic cup of iced tea and sipped on it as we drove over to Dobbs in Dwight’s pickup. He was going to spend the night at his mother’s house out from Cotton Grove and since neither of us had plans for later that night, there was no point taking two vehicles.

Our county softball league’s a pretty loosey-goosey operation: slow pitch, a tenth player at short field, flexible substitutions. It’s played more for laughs and bragging rights than diehard competition because the season sort of peters out at the end of summer when so many people take off for one last weekend at the mountains or the coast. Instead of a regulation field, we play on the new middle school’s little league field where baselines are shorter.

For once, Colleton County’s planners had tipped a hat to environmental concerns and hadn’t bulldozed off all the trees and bushes when they built the new school. They’d left a thick buffer between the school grounds and a commercial zone on the bypass that lies north of the running track. Mature oaks flourished amid the parking spaces and a bushy stand of cedars separated the parking lot from the playing field.

Dwight’s team, the Jailhouse Gang, are members of the Sheriff’s Department, a couple of town police officers, a magistrate and some of the clerks from the Register of Deeds’s office.

The Civil Suits are all attorneys with a couple of athletic paralegals thrown in, and sure enough, Portland Brewer called to me as I was getting out of Dwight’s truck.

“Hey, Deborah! Whatcha doing in that ugly red shirt?”

Portland’s my height, a little thinner, and her wiry black hair is so curly she has to wear it in a poodle cut that makes her look remarkably like Julia Lee’s CoCo. We’ve been good friends ever since we got kicked out of the Sweetwater Junior Girls Sunday School Class one Sunday a million years ago when we were eight. Her Uncle Ash is married to my Aunt Zell, which also makes us first cousins by marriage.

Back when I was on the verge of messing up my life for good, I noticed that Portland was the only one of the old gang who seemed to be loving her work. It wasn’t that I had this huge burning desire to practice law. No, it was more like deciding that if she could ace law school, so could I. She snorts at the idea of being my role model, but I laugh and tell her I’m just grateful she wasn’t happily dealing dope back then or no telling where we’d’ve both wound up.

“Cool shirts,” I said when Dwight and I caught up with her and her husband Avery, who’s also her partner in their own law firm.

Their T-shirts didn’t have the team’s name on the back, but they were printed to look like black-tie dinner jackets, if you can picture dinner jackets with short sleeves. Black shorts completed an appearance of wacky formality that was a little disconcerting when they joined us down the sidelines for throwing and catching practice while a team from the fire department and faculty members from the county schools battled it out on the field.

I was rusty with my first few throws, but it’s like riding a bicycle. Before long, I was zinging them into Dwight’s glove just like old times when I was a tagalong tomboy and he’d drop by to play ball with my brothers.

I was soon just as hot and sweaty as back then, too, and more than ready to take a break when someone showed up with the team’s drink cooler.

Quite a few people had come to play and were either waiting to start or still hanging around after their own games. There were also forty or fifty legitimate spectators in the stands, and among the kids who stood with their noses to the wire behind home plate, I recognized Ralph Freeman’s son Stan.

Ralph was called to preach at one of the black churches this past spring, but Balm of Gilead is in the midst of a major building program and membership drive and they can’t afford to pay him a full-time minister’s salary yet. In addition to his pastoral duties, he was going to be teaching here at the Dobbs middle school, and I wasn’t surprised to see him out on the field with other Colleton County teachers.

“Who’s ahead?” I asked Stan. “And what inning is it anyhow?”

“Dad’s team’s up by six,” he said with a smile as wide as Ralph’s. “Bottom of the fifth.”

So it’d be another two innings before our game started, and the way both pitchers were getting hammered, it could be six or six-thirty.

By now, the westering sun sat on a line of thin gray heat clouds like a fat red tomato on a shelf, a swollen overripe tomato going soft around the edges. All this heat and humidity made it look three times larger than usual against a gunmetal gray sky. The air was saturated with a warm dampness. Any more and it’d be raining. A typical summer evening in North Carolina.

Portland’s team and ours clustered loosely on the bleachers near third base and we sounded like a PBS fund-raiser the way all the pagers and cell phones kept going off. I hadn’t brought either with me since I had no underlings and was no longer subject to the calls of clients, but Dwight had to borrow Portland’s phone twice to respond to his beeper. Both were minor procedural matters.

Jason Bullock was on the row behind me and his phone went off almost in my ear. Nice-looking guy in an average sort of way. Mid-twenties. Brown hair with an unruly cowlick on the crown. He’s so new to the bar that the ink on his license is barely dry. He’s only argued in front of me four or five times. Seems pretty sharp. Certainly sharp enough that Portland and Avery had taken him on as a junior associate. I didn’t know his marital status, but I figured he was talking to either his wife or live-in.

I heard him say, “Hey, honey. Yanceyville? Already? You must’ve made good time. Didn’t pick up another speeding ticket, did you? . . . No, looks like our game’s going to run late. We haven’t even started yet, so I’ll be here at least another two hours. . . . Okay, honey. Any idea what time you’ll be home tomorrow? . . . Yeah, okay. Love you, too. . . . Lynn? Lynn?”

Beside me, Portland turned around to ask, “Something wrong?”

“Not really. She hung up before I thought to ask her what motel she’s at. She and her sister have gone antiquing up near the Virginia border.”

“I didn’t realize Lynn was interested in antiques,” said Portland, who’d rather poke through junk stores and flea markets than eat.

“Yeah, she’d go every weekend if she could. She loves pretty things and God knows she’s earned the right to have them. Not that she buys much yet. But she says she’s educating her eye for when we can afford the real things.”

“Take more than a few antique stores to educate that eye,” Portland murmured in my ear when Bullock got up to stretch his legs.

I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, but for once Portland looked immediately sorry she’d been catty.

“Jason’s smart and works hard,” she said. “Lynn, too, for that matter. He’ll probably be a full partner someday.”

In other words, it’s not nice to be snide about a potential partner’s wife.

“Why are all the cute ones already married?” sighed one of the Deeds clerks on the row in front of us as she watched Bullock walk toward the concession stand.

“Because they get snagged early by the trashy girls who put out,” said her friend.

“Trashy?” I silently mouthed to Portland, but she just shook her head and said, “So where’s Kidd? I thought he was coming this weekend.”

“Me, too.”

She immediately picked up on my tone. “Y’all didn’t have a fight, did you?”

I shook my head.

“Come on, sugar. Tell momma.”

So we moved up and back a few bleacher rows away from the others where we wouldn’t be overheard and I spent the next half-hour unloading about Amber and how she seemed to be trying to sabotage my relationship with Kidd.

“Well, of course she is,” Portland said. “You’re a threat to the status quo. She’s what—sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Sixteen in October.”

“Give her till Christmas. Once she gets her driver’s license and a taste of freedom, she’ll be more interested in boys than her father.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said bitterly. “It just hurts that Kidd can’t see how she’s manipulating him.”

“You haven’t said that to him, have you?”

I shook my head. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Good. He may be subconsciously putting the father role above the lover, but you don’t want him making it a conscious choice.”

“I said I wasn’t that stupid,” I huffed. “I do know that if it’s a choice between Amber and me, I’ll lose. I just wish he could understand that he doesn’t have to choose. I’m willing to take my turn, but she wants her turn and mine, too, and he has to start thinking more about my needs once in a while.”

“Oh, sugar,” Portland said, squeezing my hand. “Just keep thinking license, license, license.”

I gave her a rueful smile and promised I would. Portland likes Kidd fine, but what she really likes is the idea that he might be for me what Avery is for her, somebody to love and laugh with and keep warm with on cold winter nights.

Despite the still evening air, the smell of popcorn and chopped onions floated up to us as the sun went down. People were coming and going with hot dogs so we succumbed to the temptation of one “all the way.” Here in Colleton County, that’s still a dog on a bun with chili, mustard, coleslaw and onions. Enough Yankees have moved in that some of us’ve heard about sauerkraut on hot dogs, but Tater Ennis, who runs the concession stand, doesn’t really believe it’s true and he certainly doesn’t sell it.

As we waited in line, I was surprised to suddenly spot Cyl DeGraffenried, an assistant DA in Doug Woodall’s office, among the spectators. Cyl is most things black and beautiful, but I’ve never heard of any interest in sports. In fact, in the three years she’d been on Doug’s staff, this was the first time I’d seen her at a purely social community gathering with no political overtones. She’s the cat who walks alone and her name is linked to no one’s.

While I watched, Stan Freeman stopped in front of her, and from their body language I could tell that they were having the same conversation he and I’d had earlier. He pointed to his father out on the field and I saw her nod. After the boy moved on, I tried to see who she was there for—volunteer fireman or school member—but she didn’t cheer or clap so it was impossible to know even which team, much less which man.

“Is Cyl seeing someone?” I asked Portland.

She shrugged, as ignorant as me.

(“As I,” came the subliminal voice of my most pedantic high school English teacher. “As is not a preposition here, Deborah, and it never takes an objective pronoun.”)

More friends and relatives, teenage couples looking for a cheap way to spend the evening, town kids and idlers began to trickle into the bleachers through an opening in the shrubbery that surrounded the parking lot. School had opened last Monday and this was day one of the Labor Day weekend, the last weekend of long lazy summer nights. Our weather would probably stay hot on into early October, but psychologically, summer always feels over once school starts and Labor Day is past.

A few families had spread blankets on the grass out beyond the centerfield fence where they could picnic and let their children run around while watching the game, and several hardy souls were even jogging along the oval track that circles next to the trees bounding the school’s perimeter. As I munched on my hot dog, it made me hot just to watch them.

Coming down the homestretch was a man dressed in one of those Civil Suit T-shirts, but at that distance, I couldn’t make out his face under his black ball cap.

“Millard King,” said Portland when I asked.

“That’s Millard King? Last time I saw him, he was carrying at least fifty more pounds.”

This man was trim and fit.

Portland nodded. “Love’ll do that.”

“Who’s the lucky woman?”

She shrugged. “Some Hillsborough debutante’s what I heard. Old money. Very proper. I think her father’s on the court of appeals. Or was it the state Supreme Court?”

The parking lot was gravel over clay but with all the rain we’d had in the last couple of weeks, we didn’t have to put up with the clouds of dust that usually drifted up over the tall shrubbery as cars pulled in and out with some people leaving and more arriving.

The game in progress wound down to the last two outs, and Avery and Dwight, the two team captains, started counting heads and writing down the batting order.

“Where the hell’s Reid?” Avery asked Portland. “He swore he’d be here by five-thirty.”

“Reid?” I asked. “Reid Stephenson’s playing softball?”

Reid is a cousin and my former law partner when the firm was Lee, Stephenson and Knott, before I took the bench. He’s the third generation of Stephensons in the firm and I was fourth generation because his grandfather was also my great-grandfather. (The Lee is John Claude Lee, also my cousin, but no kin to Reid.) Generationally, Reid’s on the same level as my mother and Aunt Zell. In reality, he’s a couple of years younger than I am, although John Claude, who’s been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, has made it clear more times than one that he considers us both on the same emotional level.

That’s not particularly accurate.

Or fair.

I think of myself as serially monogamous and I don’t mess around with married men, but ever since Reid’s marriage broke up, he seems to be on a sybaritic mission to bed half the women in Colleton County, married or single.

“Reid’s always been a sexual athlete,” I said. “That’s why Dotty left him. But when did he take up outdoor sports?”

Portland laughed. “Back in July. Right after he pigged out at your pig-picking. One of the young statisticians in Ellis Glover’s office said something about his cute little tummy and Reid signed up for our team the next day.”

“Unfortunately, he still has his own idea of warmup practice,” Avery said dryly. “And he never gets here on time.”

* * *

Ralph Freeman’s team held on to their comfortable lead in the bottom of the seventh and our game could finally get underway.

First though, each team had to line up at home plate and let the Ledger photographer take a group picture. The picture itself only took a minute, but we had to stand in place another five minutes while the photographer laboriously wrote down every name, double-checking the spelling as he went. He must’ve been reamed good by Linsey Thomas, the editor and publisher, who believes that the Ledger thrives because Colleton County readers like to see their names in print. And spelled correctly.

Dwight won the coin toss, elected to be the home team, and we took the field a little before six-thirty.

Colleton County is mostly sandy soil, but the ball diamond has a thick layer of red clay that was dumped here when the Department of Transportation widened the four-lane bypass less than a quarter-mile away as the crow flies.

With so much humidity, my feet soon felt as if I had about five pounds of clay clogged to the bottom of each sneaker, but that didn’t stop me from making a neat double play when Jason Bullock hit a grounder through the box in the first inning.

Reid had arrived, cool and debonair, just in time to have his picture taken, but I didn’t get to speak to him till the bottom of the second when I hit a double, then moved to third—Reid’s position—on a pitching error.

He just smiled when I needled him about getting there late.

“Is she in the stands?” I asked. “Or doesn’t she care for ball games?”

“Not softball games,” he said with a perfectly straight face as one of the dispatchers popped up, leaving me stranded.

Top of the seventh, tied three all, and Millard King doubled to score Portland before we could get them out. Heat lightning flashed across the sky and there were distant rumbles of thunder. As shadows lengthened across the field, the floodlights came on. We were down to our last out when Avery walked me. Then Dwight stepped up to the plate and smacked the first pitch clear over the right field fence for the only home run of the game. I was waiting for him at home plate and gave him an exuberant hug.

A gang of us went out afterwards for beer and pizza—Portland and Avery’s treat. Jason Bullock and one of their paralegals joined the two Deeds clerks who’d scored in the fifth inning, the dispatcher, Dwight and me. Everybody else, including my randy cousin Reid, pled previous commitments. Our waiter pushed two tables together and we sat down just as the rain started.

“They say Edouard’ll probably miss the coast,” Avery said as fat drops splattered against the window behind him. “Fran’s still out there though.”

Lavon, the small trim dispatcher, said, “And Gustave’s tooling along right in behind her.”

“I’m real mad at Edouard,” said the paralegal (Jean? Debbie?), giving him a pretty little frown. “I bought me a brand new bikini to wear to the beach this weekend but I was afraid to go with a hurricane maybe coming in. And then it blew right on past us so I stayed home for nothing.”

I instantly hated her. It’s taken constant vigilance to keep my weight the same as it’s been since I was twenty, but even on my skinniest days, there’s no way I’d ever have the nerve to wear a bikini in public.

Beneath her mop of tight black curls, Portland was looking indecisive, but not about bikinis. She and Avery have a condo at Wrightsville Beach and a small boat with an outboard motor for waterskiing and puttering around the shoals. “Bertha didn’t hurt us, but if we’re going to keep getting bad storms—?”

Avery nodded. “Maybe we’d better run down tomorrow, close the shutters and bring the boat back up here.”

Our pizzas arrived amid trash talk and laughter as we rehashed the game. Jason jazzed me that he’d given me such an easy double play that I owed him a good decision on his next DWI defense. We didn’t get into courthouse gossip till there was nothing left of our pizzas except a logpile of crusts. As I suspected, the paralegal had her eye on Lavon and cut him out of the pack as soon as we’d finished eating.

That broke up the party.

Rain was falling heavier as Dwight and I drove back toward Cotton Grove, with the taillights of Jason Bullock’s car ahead of us all the way till we turned off onto Old 48 and he kept going on into town.

By the time we drove into my yard, the rain was coming down so hard that we sat in the truck a few minutes to see if it’d slack off.

“You were right,” I told Dwight as rain thundered on the truck roof. “Tonight was fun. I’m glad you asked me to fill in, but I have a feeling I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”

“You probably ought to soak in a hot bath and take a couple of aspirin before you go to bed.”

“Come in for a nightcap?”

“Naw, I’d better get on. Mother’ll be expecting me.”

He reached out and gave my ponytail a teasing tug. “Out there on the field tonight, with your hair tied up in that red ribbon, you looked about fourteen again.”

I grabbed my glove, leaned over to give him a goodnight kiss on the cheek, and opened the door.

“Deb’rah—?”

I looked at him inquiringly.

He hesitated, then turned the key in the ignition. “Let me see if I’n get a little closer to the door so you don’t get wet.”

“Don’t bother.” I opened the truck door wide and stepped out into the downpour. “Feels good.”

I held my face up to the sky and let the warm rain pelt my face. I was instantly soaked to the skin with my clothes plastered to my body, but since I was going straight in the bathtub anyhow, what difference did it make?

“You’re crazy, you know that?” said Dwight. “And you’re getting my seat wet.”

I laughed and slammed the door. He waited with the lights on till I dug the keys out of my pocket and let myself in the house, then gave a goodnight toot of his horn and drove off through the rain.

I’d forgotten to leave my answering machine on, so there was no way to know if Kidd had tried to call.

CHAPTER | 3

Husbands lost their wives and wives their husbands, and the elements were only merciful when they destroyed an entire family at once.

September 1—Edouard missed us completely. Down from a category 4 hurricane to a category 3, and heading out to sea. (Note: Make a chart that shows all 5 categories on the Saffir-Simpson scale.) Winds still up to 100 knots but dropping.

Tropical Storm Fran reclassified yesterday as a hurricane. 22°N by 63°W, winds at 70 knots and gathering strength. Tracking west-northwest at about 7 mph. Tropical depression #7 has moved off the African coast out into the Atlantic and is now called Tropical Storm Gustav.

Stan paused and compared his maps to those in the newspaper. His were slightly more up-to-date because the newspaper went to press with Fran’s position as of eleven p.m. last night, while he had the radio’s report from only a few minutes ago.

The radio was old and the original aerial had long since been replaced by a straightened wire hanger, but it had shortwave capabilities and when atmospheric conditions were right, it really did pick up stations far beyond the range of his regular AM/FM radio and tape player. In bed at night, he kept it tuned too low for his mother to hear and he often fell asleep with voices whispering foreign languages past the static, into his ear. Spanish and French, and occasional bursts of Slavic or German, twined through his sleeping brain and dreamed him into worlds beyond Cotton Grove.

The radio had come into its own with this science project. Its weather band made keeping up with all these hurricane movements almost as easy as watching the weather channel on his friend Willie’s television.

Too bad Mama was so against television, Stan thought wistfully. (And good thing she didn’t know that this radio could pick up the audio of some local TV stations.) Still, it was sort of fun to pinpoint the storm’s positions just by listening and to try and guess where they’d be at the next reading. Right now, if Fran kept going straight, it’d hit between Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville, yet forecasters were beginning to predict that it’d turn north before that and could make landfall between Charleston and Wilmington by the end of the week if it didn’t get pushed out to sea sooner.

He read over the sheets he had photocopied from a reference book at the county library over in Dobbs before the ball game yesterday, then began to write again, conscientiously casting the information he had gleaned into his own words. Intellectual honesty was one of the few things Dad preached about at home and Stan frowned in concentration as he wrote, skirting that fine line between plagiarism and honest summation.

NOTES: Here’s how tropical storms strengthen into hurricanes: Warm air rises, cold air sinks. Warm humid air rises from the tropical waters of the Caribbean. As it rises, the water vapor condenses and forms clouds. That releases heat, which warms the upper air around it and that makes the upper air rise even higher. More air [cooler] flows down to the water surface to replace the rising air [warmer] and that starts a spiral of wind around a center of rotation. These storm winds speed up as they near the eye and form spiraling bands. Each band is like a separate thunderstorm and the heaviest are the ones that surround the eye.

He had already begun to consider the problem of constructing a 3-D model of a hurricane. Bands of cotton arranged in spirals on top of a map of the ocean? Build up the Caribbean Islands with a salt and flour dough that he could paint green?

He scissored the weather map from the paper and dated it for his growing file of clippings, then neatly refolded that section and carried it back to the living room.

The house was wreathed in Sunday silence as he stepped into the hall. Dad would be thinking out tonight’s sermon, Mama would be talking in low tones with her prayer partner at the dinner table or on the back porch, her Bible open between them. No sound from Lashanda’s room. She’d probably fallen asleep on the floor in the middle of her dolls.

The carpet let Stan move so noiselessly that his father did not stir when he entered the room and laid the paper on the coffee table with the rest of the Sunday pile.

The big man’s breaths continued deep and regular, never quite breaking into a snore, but heavier than if he were awake. The soft leather Bible lay open on the arm of his lounge chair. Several index cards had fluttered to the floor. Ralph Freeman seldom wrote out his sermons, but he did make notes of the points he wished to cover. Stan tiptoed closer to the lounge chair, torn between wanting to look on his father’s face without being seen, yet feeling vaguely guilty at doing so.

Was this what the Bible meant when it condemned Noah’s son for looking upon Noah’s nakedness? Because even though Dad was certainly dressed in suit pants, white shirt and tie, there was something naked about his face with the lines smoothed out, his eyes closed, his mouth relaxed.

For one confused moment, Stan wished he were a little kid again so he could crawl onto that lap, lay his head against that crisp white shirt and hear his father’s heart beating strong and sure.

Seeing him like this with all the tension gone out of his body made Stan realize how much things had changed since they moved to Colleton County this spring.

Especially in the last month.

And it wasn’t just because Balm of Gilead had been burned to the ground six weeks after they arrived. The person who set the fire had nothing against them personally or the church either and was now locked up in a Georgia penitentiary. Dad knew before they came that he was called to help Balm of Gilead’s congregation raise a bigger, finer church and he’d been excited about it. Made them excited, too.

Not Mama though.

She hated to leave Warrenton but she hadn’t tried to talk Dad out of it when he brought it to family council. “I’m called to be your wife,” she’d said. “If you’re called to go down there, then it’s my duty to go with you.”

“I would hope it’s more than duty,” Dad had teased, but Mama hadn’t smiled back.

“If we’re moving, then I’d better get some boxes tomorrow,” she’d said. “Start packing.”

“If you don’t want to do this, Clara, tell me.”

“No, it’s fine,” she’d said.

Looking at his father’s sleeping face, the worry lines smoothed out for the moment, Stan realized that it wasn’t fine, hadn’t been fine even before they left Warrenton. More and more, it was as if he and Dad and Lashanda were in a circle together and Mama was on the outside with her back to them.

A scrap of a verse he’d learned in Sunday school when he was younger than Lashanda came to him. Something about a person standing apart.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

That image suddenly troubled him so much that he slipped out of the room as silently as he’d come. What did circles of love have to do with this anyhow? They loved Mama and Mama surely loved them.

Look at the way she took care of them, the way she cooked good food and kept the house so neat and clean. Not like Willie’s mom, who half the time sent him out for pizza or KFC and didn’t seem to care if dishes piled up in the kitchen or if people dropped clothes and toys and schoolbooks wherever they finished with them so that she couldn’t have vacuumed or dusted even if she’d wanted to.

Unbidden though came memories of the way Mrs. Parrish could throw back her head and roar with laughter over something Willie said, how Sister Jordan would reach out and suddenly crush her grandsons with big warm hugs for no reason at all, how old Brother Frank and Sister Hathy Smith still held hands when they walked across the churchyard despite their canes.

When did Mama quit laughing and hugging them? he wondered. Or holding Dad’s hand? Because she did use to.

Didn’t she?

He shook his head angrily, hating himself for these disloyal thoughts. Mama loves us, he told himself firmly, and we love her. She’s just busy doing good things for people. She sees that Sister Jordan’s grass is cut, sees that nobody at Balm of Gilead goes hungry, and even though she doesn’t like dealing with white people, she doesn’t let that stop her from driving over to Dobbs whenever some of the congregation need help signing up for benefits.

She makes sure all the shut-ins get their Meals on Wheels and that they have a ride to the clinic for their checkups.

And look how she loaned her car to Miss Rosa yesterday so Miss Rosa wouldn’t lose her job when her car broke down Friday.

Mama’s prayer partner was a cheerful person. Rough as she had it, she could always find things to laugh about when she came to visit, outrageous things white people did where she worked, things that made Mama shake her head and cluck her tongue.

Dad thought Miss Rosa was using her, but Mama just shrugged at that. “We’re here to be used, Ralph,” she reproached him. “How can I see your church members struggling and not try to help?”

As Stan entered the kitchen, he could see his mother and Rosa Edwards through the open door that led out to a screened porch. The two women sat facing each other across a small wicker table. The Bible was open between them, but their hands were clasped, their heads were close together and Miss Rosa was speaking with low urgency.

Both of Clara Freeman’s children knew better than to interrupt a parent’s conversation, so Stan went to the doorway and waited quietly until one of the women should notice him.

Miss Rosa saw him first and sat back abruptly, as if startled.

“What is it, Stanley?” his mother asked sharply.

“May I have a glass of lemonade, Mama?”

“Yes, but be sure and wipe up the counter if you spill any. I don’t want ants in my kitchen again. Lemonade for you, Rosa?”

“I shouldn’t. In fact, I probably ought to go.” The other woman shifted in her chair, but didn’t get up. “I’ve hindered you too long already.”

“You never hinder me,” said his mother with a smile for her friend. She closed her Bible and put it aside. “Stanley?”

Without spilling a drop, he brought a brimming glass out to the porch and set it down in front of Miss Rosa.

“Thank you, honey,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

As he returned to the kitchen, he heard Miss Rosa say, “You’re raising you a fine young man, Sister Clara.”

“We’re real proud of him,” his mother said.

As she always said.

* * *

Sunday dinner long over, the kitchen restored to order, the chattering nieces and nephews and their noisy children now departed, Cyl DeGraffenried’s grandmother rested drowsily in her old oak rocking chair. The chair had a split willow seat that her own mother had woven half a century earlier and Mrs. Mitchiner kept it protected with a dark blue cushion. No one else ever sat there and the child who dared put his skinny little bottom on that cushion without being invited risked getting that bottom smacked.

Mrs. Mitchiner gave a dainty yawn and settled herself more comfortably in the chair.

Cyl nudged a small footstool closer and said, “Wouldn’t you rest better if you went and lay down for a while?”

“I’m not ready to take to my bed in the daytime yet,” Mrs. Mitchiner said tartly.

As Cyl had known she would. Unless she were sick, her grandmother never lay down until bedtime. If the sun was up, so was she. Her only concession to sloth was to lean back and let her spine actually rest against the cushion.

“See you next Sunday, then,” said Cyl as she bent to kiss that cool pale cheek. “Call me if you need anything.”

The older woman caught her hand. “Everything all right with you, child?”

“Sure,” Cyl said cautiously. “Why?”

“I don’t know. This last month, there’s something different. I look at you in church. One minute you be sad, next minute you be lit up all happy.”

Green eyes looked deep into Cyl’s brown.

“Oh, baby, you finally loving somebody?”

“You, Grandma,” she parried lightly. “Just you.”

“I may be old, but I’m not feeble-minded,” said Mrs. Mitchiner. “Just tell me this. Is he a good Christian man?”

“He tries to be,” Cyl whispered.

Satisfied, Mrs. Mitchiner leaned back in her chair. “That’s all God asks, baby. That’s all He asks.”

* * *

At the Orchid Motel, Marie O’Day was showing her newest employee the ropes. Mrs. O’Day didn’t speak much Spanish and if Consuela Flores understood much English, it wasn’t obvious. Nevertheless, they managed to communicate well enough that when they came to the last room at the back of the motel and found a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, Consuela pointed to the work sheet and made an inquisitive sound.

“Good!” said Mrs. O’Day with an encouraging nod and exaggerated pantomime. “Este guest no check out at noon, and it’s past three o’clock.” She tapped her watch and held up three fingers. “Qué más? What you do now?”

Confidently, the apprentice maid stepped up to the door and rapped smartly. “Housekeeping!” she called in a lilting accent.

Sunlight played on the low bushes that separated walkway from parking lot and a welcome breeze ruffled the younger woman’s long black hair as she listened for an answer. When no one responded, she used the master key to open the door, again announcing herself.

Inside, the drapes were tightly drawn, but enough sunlight spilled through the doorway to show that the king-sized bed had not been slept in. The near side pillow had been pulled up against the headboard and the coverlet was rumpled where someone had sat. Otherwise the bed was still made. An overnight case sat open on the luggage bench under the window and a cosmetic bag lay on the dresser next to a bottle of wine and two plastic goblets, familiar signs that this guest was still in residence even though the room had been booked for only one night.

Consuela Flores looked to the motel owner for instructions.

“Start with the bathroom,” Marie O’Day said briskly, pulling the curtains to let more light into the room, “then we’ll—”

“¡Cojones de Jesús!” Consuela shrieked. Crossing herself furiously, she recoiled from her path to the bathroom and slammed into Mrs. O’Day.

A torrent of Spanish poured from the terrified maid and she clung to her employer, who looked over her shoulder to the figure that sprawled on the floor between the bed and the far wall.

It was a slender blonde white woman.

She was naked except for black bra, a black lace garter belt and stockings. One sheer black stocking was on her leg. The other was knotted tightly around her neck.

CHAPTER | 4

A faint rise in the barometer may be noticed before the sharp fall follows. Wisps of thin, cirrus cloud float for 200 miles around the storm center.

Election day was still two months away and I had no Republican opposition. Nevertheless, I continued to hit as many churches as I could every Sunday I was free. Today was homecoming at Bethel Baptist, the church that my mother and Aunt Zell had grown up in, not to mention my sister-in-law Minnie and Dwight Bryant as well. I hadn’t planned to go, but then I hadn’t planned to be free either.

Instead, I dragged my aching bones out of bed early and with my own two hands and a recipe off the Internet, I made a perfect pan of lemon bars for the picnic dinner that followed the preaching services. I also contributed a deep-dish chicken pie prepared from ingredients I’d bought Friday evening when I still thought Kidd was coming.

“Didn’t know you could cook anything besides popcorn,” said Dwight, helping himself to a spoonful.

“And you still won’t know till you actually taste it,” teased Seth, who was right in behind him.

Seth’s five brothers up from me and likes to pretend I can’t tie my own shoelaces yet.

“Y’all leave Deborah alone,” said Dwight’s mother. “I know for a fact that Sue started teaching her how to cook before she was five.”

I love Miss Emily. Whenever she’s putting Dwight in his place, she always looks like a militant Chihuahua up against a Saint Bernard. I’m told that Dwight and his sister Nancy Faye take after their dad, a big slow-moving deliberate man who was killed in a farming accident when his four children were quite young. The other two look like Miss Emily, who is small and wiry and has bright orange hair.

She’s the enormously popular principal of Zachary Taylor High School and drives an elderly TR that she turns over to the vocational kids for a new paint job every spring. They think she’s pretty cool because no matter how outrageous the color or detailing, as long as it isn’t pornographic, she drives the results for a year. Currently, the car’s a midnight blue with a ferocious cougar splayed across the hood. Last year it was turquoise with flamingoes and palm trees and the year before that, a neon purple with red and yellow racing stripes.

I took a serving of her pear salad. With so many newcomers from all over the whole country, Colleton County church picnics are no longer just home-fried chicken and ham biscuits. These days the chicken’s likely to come out of a fast-food bucket that’ll be plonked down alongside a bowl of guacamole or eggplant parmigiana. But Miss Emily’s pear salad is unpretentious comfort food from my childhood: canned pear halves on buttercrunch lettuce with a blob of mayonnaise in the center and a healthy sprinkle of shredded American cheese. Even though I wind up scraping off most of the cheese and mayonnaise, I still put it on my plate every time it’s offered.

Miss Emily was pleased and took me around and introduced me to all the new people who’ve moved in since I last visited. In between, we paused to hug and reminisce with old-timers who remembered my mother and still knew Aunt Zell. If everybody was speaking gospel truth that Sunday, I could count on a hundred votes right here.

I was surprised Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash hadn’t come, but Minnie said they were spending the weekend with cousins down on Harkers Island. “I think she was hoping they might could have a hurricane party.”

People were talking about beach erosion from the storm surges Edouard had kicked up as it passed by our coast, but a hundred and fifty miles inland, the weather here was downright pleasant—low 80s, low humidity, nice breeze. In fact, the day was much too beautiful to stay inside and after all the preaching and handshaking (and a helping of fresh banana pudding from the dessert table), I wanted some physical activity. My whole body was still a little sore and achy from last night and I knew just what it needed.

“Anybody for a swim off my new pier?” I asked when I’d worked my way back around to Seth and Minnie.

“You know, that sounds like fun,” said Minnie with a pleased smile. “I haven’t been in the water this whole summer.”

Miss Emily begged off, but Dwight thought he’d swing by for a while if he could find an old bathing suit at her house.

“Come on anyhow,” said Seth. “I got an extra, don’t I, hon?”

“If you don’t, Robert or Andrew will,” said Minnie.

I packed up the remains of my chicken pie and lemon bars and stopped at a store on the way home for a bag of ice, some soft drinks, salsa and several bags of tortilla chips in case this turned into another picnic.

* * *

The long pond that my house overlooks is actually more like a small lake that covers about five acres. Years ago, Daddy scooped out a marshy bottom when the little twins thought they wanted to raise catfish as a 4-H project. When they got over that enthusiasm, the original pond was drained, bulldozers and backhoes enlarged it to its present size and it was restocked with bass, bream and crappies.

The land Daddy deeded me takes in only the eastern third of the pond. The rest is part Haywood’s and part Seth’s, but of course, the whole family use it as freely as if all the land still had Daddy’s name on the deed.

When I drove into the yard, I saw two fishermen in our old rowboat at the far end of the water. One was definitely Daddy—I could see his truck parked under a willow tree down there. I assumed the other was one of my brothers or nephews. At a distance, they tend to look a lot alike. I waved before taking my bags into the kitchen and putting the ice in a cooler.

By the time I got the food stowed and then called around to the rest of my brothers who still live out this way, cars and trucks were pulling into my yard—Minnie and Seth, Andrew and April, Andrew’s A.K. and Herman’s Reese. Haywood and Isabel were in Atlantic City this weekend, Robert and Doris weren’t home, and Zach’s wife and daughter Emma were visiting Barbara’s sick grandmother in Wilson, but Zach said he’d come as soon as he could find out what she’d done with his swimsuit. (Half of my brothers still act like they’re guests in their own homes and don’t have a clue as to where anything’s kept even though their wives have been putting stuff back in the exact same places since the day they were carried across the thresholds.)

Long as I had the phone in my hand, I called Will and Amy over in Dobbs and they said they’d try to make it before dark.

That’s when I finally noticed the message light blinking on my answering machine. Two messages actually. The first was from Kidd and came about five minutes after I left for church this morning: “I know I said I couldn’t come, but this is dumb when we both have Labor Day off tomorrow. Call me back and say if it’s okay if I scoot on up there this afternoon. I really miss you, Ms. Judge.”

All right! His words zinged a warm flush through my body. “Take that, Amber, baby!” I thought gleefully.

A moment later, my emotions took a plunge into ice water as I listened to Kidd’s second message.

“I guess you must be at church or something. Oh, God, Deb’rah, I sure do hate to have to say this. Some asshole hunter took a potshot at Griggs this morning. Got him in the shoulder. He’s going to be okay and the shooter’s in jail, but they just called me out to cover for him. Damn, damn, damn!”

My sentiments exactly as I angrily reset the message tape.

“Hey, it’s not Kidd’s fault that his colleague got shot,” reasoned the preacher who lives in the back of my head.

The pragmatist who shares head space agreed. “The situation’s exactly what it was before you heard his message. Nothing’s changed.”

“Except that he lifted me up and then let me drop again,” I sulked out loud.

“So? Since when do you take all your emotional cues from somebody else?” they both asked.

Point taken, I decided, and I made myself breathe deeply till I calmed back down. Just in time, too, since my yard seemed to be filling up with large animals. Through the window, I saw Zach’s teenage son Lee, Andrew’s Ruth and Seth’s Jessica arrive on horseback, escorted by Blue and Ladybelle, the farm’s boss dogs, and a couple of Robert’s redbones.

How Herman’s Annie Sue over in Dobbs had heard so quickly, I didn’t know, unless she was already on the farm, but here she was, getting out of her car with her friend Cindy McGee, and both wore bathing suits under their T-shirts.

Since it was just family and nobody I needed to impress, I changed into a faded old black bathing suit and topped it with a “big-and-tall” white cotton dress shirt that Haywood outgrew this spring. It’s loose and airy on me, perfect for keeping the sun off my bare arms.

Until I had this house of my own, I hadn’t quite realized how much I loved giving parties and having people come.

Seth, who was helping me carry lawn chairs from the garage, smiled when I said that. “Must be the Mama Sue in you.”

“That woman sure did know how to throw a party,” agreed Dwight, putting a couple of chairs under each arm. He’d arrived in a bathing suit and T-shirt as faded as mine, his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes on a hanger in his truck.

Mother’s parties and her hospitality were legendary. I had neither the space nor the help that she’d had, but I liked the thought that I might be carrying on her tradition.

* * *

The kids were jumping in and out and Minnie was bobbing around on a big fat inner tube when I got down to the pier. We’d had so much rain this month that the pond’s surface was almost even with the pier and I jumped right in. The water’s deep enough there to take a running dive off the end, but I’ve resisted all entreaties for a real diving board.

“Only if you all agree to wear helmets,” I tell my nieces and nephews, having seen too many head injuries for one lifetime.

(They tell me I’m starting to sound like their parents.)

“Here comes Granddaddy!” called A.K. “Race y’all to him.”

The water boiled with furiously stroking arms and kicking legs as they churned off toward the approaching rowboat. I let them go. After yesterday’s ball game, the muscles in my arms were too sore for competition.

Daddy and whoever was with him had either fished all they wanted or else the bass weren’t biting because my swimming area was too far away to seriously disturb the fish at that end.

Dwight pulled himself onto the pier and he slicked his wet hair back with both hands, then shaded his eyes against the sun. A pleased smile lit his face as the boat came closer. “Well, looky who’s here.”

It was Terry Wilson, a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation and one of my favorite ex-boyfriends. Terry came between a law professor at Carolina and the current assistant secretary of a state department in Raleigh that shall remain nameless. I came between wives number two and three. Daddy’s crazy about Terry and had sort of hoped I might be number three, the good woman that would settle Terry down and give him a stable home life.

As if.

Kidd included, Terry’s more fun than any man I’ve ever known, but I wasn’t reared to take a backseat to any body or any thing and he’d made it clear up front that his boy Stanton came first and the job came second. Since he was working undercover narcotics back then, I soon saw the futility of trying to take our relationship beyond the fun and games. Wife number three didn’t last long enough to wreck our friendship and Terry still makes me laugh with the best war stories of any of my law enforcement friends.

I had a matching grin on my face as he rowed the old boat toward my pier.

Terry and Dwight and some of my brothers played baseball in the same high school division. They still go hunting together and he has standing fishing privileges in all the ponds on the farm.

Just as Terry threw the rope to Annie Sue to tie up, Dwight’s pager went off.

He muttered a mild oath and looked around as if to see a phone magically appear.

Actually, one did. Annie Sue’s friend Cindy had her cell phone tucked into the pocket of her T-shirt that was hanging on one of the pier posts. “Help yourself,” she told him.

I pulled myself out of the water and listened unabashedly.

Dwight still had his watch on and I saw him check the time. “Around three-thirty, you say? And you got there ten minutes ago? Good. Secure the scene and call for the van and backups. I’ll be there”—again he checked his watch—“in, say, twenty-five minutes, thirty at the most.”

He replaced Cindy’s phone and said, “Okay if I change clothes up at the house, Deb’rah?”

“Of course,” I said.

Terry shipped the oars and stepped up onto the pier. “You got to leave the minute I get here?”

“Yeah,” said Dwight. “Somebody went and got herself killed at the Orchid Motel over in Dobbs.”

CHAPTER | 5

What caused the mighty elemental disturbance, the possibilities of its recurrence and the danger which constantly hangs over other cities are given in detail.

A murder out on the bypass? Naturally enough, we assumed that whoever got killed at the Orchid Motel was a tourist who probably brought her own problems as well as her killer from somewhere outside the county. Nothing to concern us beyond the usual curiosity. Our momentary gloom was perfunctory and more because it was dragging Dwight away than because of an anonymous death.

“Too bad,” we said. We clicked our tongues and shook our heads, then went back to the pleasures of a lazy warm Sunday. As the sun began to set in a blaze of gold and purple, the menfolks dressed the bucket of fish Daddy and Terry had caught while Minnie and I made cornbread and salad.

My back porch is fully screened and plenty big for a large round table and lots of chairs. The table was one I’d found in Robert’s barn and works just fine when I hide the water stains and scratches with a red-checkered tablecloth. The chairs at the moment are cheap white plastic deck chairs and I only have four. Even with the four from my dining area inside, we were going to have to fill in with those folding aluminum lawn chairs that are always just a little too low for any eating table.

Some of the kids don’t like fish, so I fetched a couple of twenties and was going to send Reese and A.K. out for pizzas, but they’d already conferred with the rest of their cousins and decided that the seven of them would stop somewhere on their way into Garner for a movie they all wanted to see at the new multiplex.

“But we sure do ’preciate your generosity,” said Reese, plucking the bills from my hand with a big grin.

Zach had to leave, too. “Barbara’ll be home soon and we’re supposed to go over and take supper with her sister.” He cast a regretful eye at Minnie’s cornbread.

With the dogs milling around his feet, Daddy sat on the porch steps downwind from Terry and lit a cigarette while they watched Andrew and Seth fuss with getting the charcoal hot enough. The grill was one that Haywood and Isabel gave me when they bought a new gas model last month and this was the first time I’d had it out.

April murmured sounds of dismay as she rummaged in my sparsely filled kitchen drawers and cabinets for plates, glasses and flatware. All she could find were three or four mismatched plates and mugs, four glasses and some odds and ends of tableware—discards Aunt Zell had given me till I could get around to buying new.

“Over there,” I said, gesturing toward the cupboards Will had built into the wall behind my dining table.

Mother was townbred and of the generation of young women that picked out table patterns by the time they were sixteen and registered them at Belk’s or Ivey’s. Her family was solidly middle-class, with a wide circle of equally well-to-do friends who gave her at least a dozen bridal showers, which means that she brought a ton of china, silver, and crystal to the farm when she married Daddy, a dirt farmer who’d never before even held a silver spoon, much less eaten from one.

She had willed it all to me, her only daughter, and when I moved into my new house, Daddy boxed it up and brought it over on the back of his old Chevy pickup. Full-service china for sixteen with meat platters, lidded bowls, and tureens. Silver for twenty. Enough crystal wine goblets to drink France under the table. It took up every inch of Will’s cabinets.

“You can’t serve cornbread and pond fish on Royal Doulton,” April protested. “Do you know how much it would cost to replace one of those plates?”

“Why?” I asked with a perfectly straight face. “Did you plan on breaking some?”

“Deborah!” It was the same voice she would have used on one of her sixth-grade students.

“Look,” I said. “This stuff hasn’t been used since Mother died and Christmas was about the only time she ever used it herself. It’s either that or paper plates and plastic forks and I hate plastic forks.”

We compromised. Paper plates, plastic cups, sterling silver.

“We should have given you a proper housewarming,” Minnie said and April nodded.

I laughed. “Come on, you two! Cotton Grove may think it’s ready for the twenty-first century, but house-warmings for single people?”

“We could have started a trend,” Minnie said regretfully.

“Never mind,” April told her. “It’ll make Christmas easy on all of us for the next few years. You’ve always been hard to shop for, Deborah. Now we can give you house stuff. Stainless flatware and water glasses.” An impish grin spread over her freckled face. “And cute little napkin rings and salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like kittycats.”

“Don’t forget Tupperware,” said Minnie.

“Teflon!”

“Aprons!”

“Oven mitts that look like vegetables!”

Laughing, they stepped onto the porch to set the table and Seth called through the screen. “I guess we’re skipping church tonight?”

Minnie gave him an inquiring look. “Unless you want to go?”

“Well, I believe I’d rather sit right here and give thanks for this fish and this company,” Seth said happily.

* * *

In the end, nine of us sat down to supper because Amy and Will arrived just as the first, smaller fish were coming off the grill.

“Sorry we couldn’t get here in time to help,” Amy said.

“That’s okay,” Terry said magnanimously, as if catching half the fish cleared him of further obligations. “You and Will can wash dishes.”

Will took one look at the disposable plates and cups and said, “Done!”

Amy took one look at the silver and said, “You don’t put this in your dishwasher, do you?”

“Why not?” I asked.

April had just taken a bite of crusty cornbread, but she rolled her eyes at Minnie, who laughed and passed me the salad.

Pond fish, bass excluded, are too small to split or scale if you’re going to grill them, and they’re full of bones. They’re also wonderfully succulent and these were cooked to perfection.

“Fresher’n this and they’d still be swimming,” said Daddy, as he expertly laid open a little sunperch and deboned it.

The first few minutes were devoted to food talk, then Seth mentioned Dwight and how he had to leave for a homicide at the Orchid Motel.

Amy looked up in interest. “Any of y’all know Lynn Bullock? We heard that’s who it was. One of the EMS drivers told somebody in ER that she was choked to death. They say Tom and Marie O’Day found her stark naked with just a black stocking tied around her neck. Stiff as a board, too.”

Amy works on the administrative side at the hospital and hears every rumor that floats through the medical complex.

“Lynn Bullock?” I asked, removing a small bone from my mouth. “Not married to Jason Bullock?”

Amy nodded. “She’s one of our LPNs.”

I put down my fork. “That can’t be right. I was sitting next to him at the ball game last night when she called him from a motel in Yanceyville.”

“How’d he know?” asked Will.

“I assume he knows his own wife’s voice.”

“No, I mean how did he know she was calling from Yanceyville?”

“Because she and her sister had gone antiquing up there.”

There was a slightly cynical smile on Will’s lips, a smile just like the one on Terry’s. Though butter wouldn’t melt in either mouth these days, both men know a thing or two about creative cheating. There’s a reason they’ve both been married three times.

Seth and Andrew merely looked interested. Seth because he’s never looked at another woman since Minnie, Andrew because, even though he messed up two marriages before April came into his life, infidelity was never the problem.

“Bullock,” said Daddy. “Didn’t one of Vara Seymour’s girls marry a Bullock?”

“I believe her mother’s name is Vara,” said Amy. “But I was thinking Lynn’s maiden name was Benton.”

“Likely was,” Daddy said, helping himself to another fish. “Vara, she sort of got around a bit.”

“Who’s Vara Seymour?” Minnie asked.

“Charlie Seymour’s girl. Little Creek Township. He used to do some work for me. She were a pretty little thing, Vara were, but her mammy died when she was just starting to ramble and Charlie didn’t know nothing about raising a girl.”

From his tone of voice, I could guess what work Lynn Bullock’s grandfather had done for him. He’s out of the business now, of course, but Daddy was once one of the biggest bootleggers on the East Coast and he’d financed a string of illegal moonshine stills all over this part of the country before Mother reformed him.

“I don’t know what kind of a woman her mother was,” said Amy, “but Lynn herself was bright as sunshine.”

“Won’t never nothing wrong with Charlie Seymour’s brains,” Daddy said mildly.

“Excellent LPN,” Amy said. “She was really good with scared pre-op patients. One of those people who never saw a stranger. She’d start in talking to them like she’d known them all her life. Didn’t mind getting her hands dirty either. A lot of doctors are going to miss her.”

“But not all?” I asked, picking up on something in her tone.

“Well-l-l.”

“What?”

Amy shrugged. “I don’t think we have to worry about Dr. Potts crying at her funeral. Lynn got her husband to represent Felicia Potts for their divorce.”

“What’s so bad about that?” asked Terry as he took another piece of cornbread.

“Ask Deborah.”

The Potts divorce took place in May so it was still quite clear in my mind. It was the first case Jason Bullock had argued before me. Might have been his first case in association with Avery and Avery, for all I knew. Equitable division of marital property in a bitterly contentious divorce.

Felicia and Jeremy Potts had met and married at Carolina. Felicia soon dropped out and went to work full-time in order to help Jeremy get his undergraduate degree, then to send him to med school. Nine years later, having completed medical school and his residency at Dobbs Memorial, and having passed all his boards, he was poised to join a lucrative private practice there in Dobbs. At that point, Dr. Jeremy Potts suddenly decided Felicia hadn’t “grown” as a doctor’s wife and he had filed for divorce.

They had been formally separated for over a year when the case came to me for final disposition. There wasn’t much marital property beyond the furniture in their rental apartment and two five-year-old cars, and Dr. Potts generously offered her all the furniture and a ten-thousand-dollar settlement. He also offered to pay college tuition if Felicia now wished to go back for a degree.

Jason Bullock, who had only recently taken on Mrs. Potts’s case, asked me to consider Dr. Potts’s own degrees as marital property.

“You think you can split up a medical license like a set of dining room chairs?” sneered the good doctor.

His attorney asked to speak to his client in private. When they came back to the bargaining table, the attorney announced that Dr. Potts was also willing to pay reasonable room and board while Felicia was in college, a term not to exceed three years.

Jason Bullock smiled, then produced pay stubs and cancelled checks to prove that Felicia had indeed financed most of Jeremy Potts’s medical education.

Although our State Supreme Court has ruled that professional licenses aren’t marital property, it has ruled that “any direct or indirect contribution made by one spouse to help educate or develop the career potential of the other spouse” could be taken into consideration when granting alimony. Bullock’s argument and those cancelled checks convinced me that Potts would still be slogging through medical school without his wife’s help and I granted Mrs. Potts so much alimony that my clerk’s jaw dropped. I even provided for an annual accounting of his income with an accountant of her choice if she decided later to come back for a bigger bite sometime in the future.

Potts’s attorney gave immediate notice of appeal.

“You’re free to take it to Raleigh,” I had told him, feeling pretty sure that my ruling was solidly grounded in the law. “In the meantime, her alimony payments start now.”

Most of this occurred in open court and the results were public record so it wasn’t a betrayal of anyone’s confidence to tell about the case over fish and cornbread.

“But why would Potts be angry at Lynn Bullock,” I asked, “when it was Jason Bullock that handled the wife’s divorce?”

Again, Amy knew the details. “Felicia Potts studied accounting before she quit school and when they came to Dobbs, she got a job in Ralph McGee’s office till he died.”

(The late Ralph McGee, father of Annie Sue’s friend Cindy, had been a CPA over in Dobbs.)

“That’s how she met Lynn. Ralph did the Bullocks’ taxes.”

“And that affected the Potts divorce?” asked Minnie.

“Absolutely! Felicia was going to accept the good doctor’s first offer,” said Amy, “and Lynn heard him bragging about it at the hospital. I told y’all Lynn Bullock was one smart cookie? When Jason was in law school, she used to read some of his casebooks and one of those cases covered a similar situation. Felicia didn’t have any money to hire a good lawyer and it’d never dawned on her that a degree could be like marital property, but once Lynn talked Jason into taking the case on a contingency basis, Felicia went back and pulled every tax record and every receipt from their whole marriage.”

Daddy nodded. “Sounds like something a granddaughter of Charlie Seymour’s would think of.”

“Lynn Bullock?” Will cocked his head at his wife. “Long blonde hair? Built like a brick outhouse? Wasn’t she the gal we saw Reid with at the North Raleigh Hilton last Christmas?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to speak ill of the dead,” Amy said, “but yes, she did play around on the side a little.”

Again Daddy nodded. “Just like her mama.”

CHAPTER | 6

Such a night of horror as the unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to pass has fallen to the lot of few since the records of history were first opened.

September 1—cont’d.

—Edouard 37.5°N by 70°W. Winds 85 knots & dropping fast as it heads to N. Atlantic. No longer a threat to anybody.

—Hurr. Dolly pounded Mexico. At least 2 people dead.

—Fran 23.9°N by ?? W. Winds steady at 75 kts.

—Gustave—

Stan threw down his pencil, unable to concentrate.

Upon returning from evening worship, he had come straight to his room and turned on his radio to the weather station, but he’d been too distracted to copy off all the numbers accurately, much less put them in coherent order. There were floods in Sudan, monsoons in Pakistan, earthquakes in Ecuador and maybe he’d use them in his report and maybe he wouldn’t, but right now, all he could think about was the storm raging behind the closed door of his parents’ bedroom.

A quiet storm. No flying shoes or hair irons crashing into lamps. No shrieked accusations or thundering counterblasts. Even with his own door cracked, he could barely hear his mother’s low voice, quick and tight and cold with a towering anger usually reserved for racist whites who threatened the dignity of her world.

Normally when she raged, his father’s voice would be heard rumbling beneath hers, soothing, reassuring, reasoning. Tonight, he seemed to speak only when she paused after a torrent of questions, and even then, his words were short and fell away to a silence quickly filled with more of her anger.

Bewildered, Stan remembered how the evening had started normally enough. After a heavy Sunday dinner, supper was always sandwiches and milk. Then Mama and Lashanda would neaten up the kitchen while he and Dad went on ahead in the van to get things set up.

Ever since Balm of Gilead burned to the ground back in July, services had been held in an old-fashioned canvas gospel tent with folding chairs. In just the few short months Dad’d been here, the congregation had grown to over a hundred and it looked as if they could begin breaking ground for a new sanctuary next month. Meantime, everybody was sort of enjoying the outdoor preaching. There were inconveniences, of course. No Sunday school rooms, no choir stalls, no screens, no air-conditioning, not even overhead fans, only the handheld, cardboard-and-stick fans with a picture of Jesus knocking at the door on one side and an ad for a funeral home on the other.

But tent revivals were a tradition that had almost fallen out of use and the older folks beamed when they sang,

Gimme that ol’ time religion, that ol’ time religion,

Gimme that ol’ time religion—It’s good enough for me.

That evening, he’d helped Dad set up the simple sound system, then he’d taken rubber gloves and a bucket of soapy water out to the two portable toilets that stood modestly on opposite sides of a large holly tree at the back of the lot and wiped down the seats and floors so everything would be neat and fresh.

When he came back to the tent, Sister Helen Garrett and her daughter Crystal were there, arranging a large bouquet of deep blue hydrangeas in front of the pulpit, the only piece of church furniture to survive the fire. At least Crystal was at work on the flowers, trying to keep the heavy flower heads from tipping over. Her mother was at the pulpit in deep talk with his father.

“Hey, Stan,” Crystal said shyly. They were in the same class, but different homerooms at school, and he’d only started to know her a little when Sister Garrett joined their church last month. “Could I borrow your bucket to get some water for these?”

“I’ll get that for you,” he said, glad for a chance to be alone with her a few minutes before his friends arrived and started clowning around, teasing them. He’d always had friends who were girls, but never a real girlfriend. Not that Crystal was, he thought confusedly as he fetched the water and poured it into the vase. But if he did have a girlfriend, Crystal Garrett sure would be fine. That smile. Those eyes. Smart, too. Her science project was on the life cycle of the black-and-yellow argiope.

Only thing wrong was her mother, who embarrassed both of them the way she put herself forward at calls for rededication, clinging to Dad as she sobbed out her sins in his ear. Now that his own body was so aware of girls—and not just Crystal—it had only recently dawned on him precisely why Sister Garrett and one or two other of the church women took any opportunity to convert Dad’s “right hand of fellowship” into a warm hug. He hated the way those women pulled at him and touched him and brushed up against him like they wanted more from him than what a pastor was supposed to give.

Crystal wasn’t responsible for her mother any more than he was for Dad, who couldn’t help reaching out and touching whoever he was speaking to at the moment. Like now, when one of the deacons approached and he drew Brother Lorton into the conversation with a handclasp and an arm around the older man’s shoulder.

Predictably, once the conversation quit being one-on-one, Sister Garrett turned her attention back to the flowers and, to his dismay, to him. “You’re looking more like your daddy every day, Stanley. No wonder my little Crystal’s so sweet on you.”

Crystal looked as if she wanted to go crawl under the pulpit and Stan escaped by suddenly remembering that he was supposed to distribute hymn books and fans along the chairs. More church folks arrived and he answered politely as they greeted him. He hadn’t noticed Mama and Lashanda’s arrival until his little sister edged up to him while he was plugging in the lights and whispered, “Mama’s real mad.”

Guilt had instantly seized him. A dozen possible transgressions immediately tumbled through his mind.

“What’s she mad about?” he asked cautiously.

The seven-year-old shook her head, her brown eyes wide with unhappiness. “I don’t know. I think she found something in Daddy’s desk.”

Four things were off-limits without permission: the refrigerator except for milk or carrots, the cookie jar, their parents’ bedroom unless Mama or Dad was there, and Dad’s desk in the living room.

Doors and drawers were left unlocked. It was enough for Mama to say “Thou shalt not” to ensure that neither he nor Lashanda would open any of them unbidden. They knew that Dad kept his pastoral records in the desk and often sat there to counsel troubled church members.

Maybe that’s what Mama’s found, he thought. Maybe there were some notes about a member of the congregation who’d done something so steeped in sin that the church needed to cast them out.

There was that time in Warrenton when she’d urged Dad to take such a step, but Dad had brought the sinner back to Christ. “And if Jesus can forgive him, Clara, who are we to cast stones and cast him out?”

But he couldn’t say all this to his sister. She was still too little to understand.

“Don’t worry. Dad’ll take care of it,” he reassured her, and she’d skipped away to join her friends.

Crystal had saved a place for him among their friends near the back but he kept a wary eye on his mother’s profile. She sat in her accustomed seat, the very last chair on the front row.

As the pastor’s wife, Mama knew all eyes were always upon her and her children and she preached to them constantly.

“It’s up to us to set good examples,” she said. “Think before you act. Weigh your words before you speak. The Bible tells us that the ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. The Devil is a mighty wind, children, and he’ll blow your bad words and bad deeds to where they’ll do the most hurt to your father if you’re not mindful of who you are.”

So Mama had sat in her usual seat and kept her face turned to Dad’s with her usual expression of solemn attention. But when preaching was over and everything was stowed in the back of the van, Mama gave her keys to Miss Rosa, who was still without her own transportation to work, and she and Lashanda rode home with them. That’s when he realized that Dad was the focus of her anger.

As his parents approached the van, he heard Dad say, “What were you doing in my desk, Clara?”

“I was looking for a rubber band for my prayer cards.” Her words lashed out like a switch off a peach tree. “Instead, I found—”

She hushed when she realized that the van windows were open and that Stan and Lashanda were sitting wide-eyed.

There was utter silence as they drove home and he and Lashanda had immediately gone to their rooms without being told. It was like seeing bolts of lightning flash across a dark sky and scurrying for cover before the storm broke.

He couldn’t imagine what Mama had found to set her off like that.

* * *

“Rubbers!” Clara Freeman’s face contorted with distaste as she voiced a word that raised images of filth and abomination in her mind. “An open pack. I had my tubes tied after Lashanda, so why do you have rubbers in your desk, Ralph? What whore you lying down on? I’m your true wife, the mother of your children. I yoked my life to yours, walked beside you in righteousness, sacrificed myself to your calling.”

“Clara, don’t,” Ralph said. It was worse than he’d imagined when he let himself imagine.

“Haven’t I done what I promised the day you asked me to marry you?” she raged in quiet fury. “Haven’t I been an upright and faithful helpmeet? Taught our children to walk in the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ and respect your position?”

Battered by her anger, knowing he was responsible for her scalding humiliation, he mumured, “You have.”

“What more could a man of God require of a wife?”

He shook his head, suddenly deeply tired. “Sometimes, even a man of God just wants to be treated like a man, Clara.”

She drew herself up icily at this allusion to sex. “I’ve done my duty to you in this bed.”

“Your duty,” he repeated, feeling numb.

“So now it’s my fault? Because I won’t be your whore in bed, you’ve gone to a whore’s bed?”

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said quietly.

“Hurt me? It’s not just me that’s hurt, it’s you, it’s the children, but most of all, it’s God. When people see a preacher turn to adultery and fornication, they laugh with the Devil and it’s God who’s hurt.”

“Clara—”

“Did you think you could keep her a secret? When all the eyes of the church are on its shepherd? I’m your true wife, Ralph, and I call you back to the paths of righteousness. Like Sarah to Abraham. In the name of God, I tell you to cast out your concubine like Abraham cast out Hagar.”

“Oh, Clara—”

The sound of her name upon his lips fed her scornful rage like kerosene on an open flame. Suddenly, she whipped her dress over her head and flung it to the floor. Her slip followed, then her bra and panties. For the first time in years, she stood naked before him.

Naked with all the lamps on.

“Is this what you want from me, Ralph?” She cocked her hip at him and did an awkward parody of a bump and grind. “Is this what it takes to redeem your soul?”

A sheen of perspiration covered her face and light gleamed on her full breasts and smooth belly. She was thirty-six years old and had borne two children, yet her body seemed as slim and firm as on their wedding night, the night he realized he had made a huge error that could never be rectified, when he understood that he’d mistaken her passion for God as a passion for him.

She had given him her virginity as a burnt sacrifice to God, not as a celebration of God’s greatest gift between man and woman.

Now she slowly turned around, displaying herself openly, front and back. “Am I not comely in your sight?”