Fat Lightning (11 page)

Because Lot's mother didn't leave a will, no one knows what to do about the family estate. Lot, Carter and their sisters divvied up the 100-acre plot their father owned and farmed across the river, and all of them except Lot sold their 20-acre parcels. They all believe Lot when he tells them that his mother, right before she died, said the house and the land around it were his as long as he lived. However, none of them are willing to turn down that much money for land that isn't even being farmed.

“Honey,” Aileen says to Nancy as she explains the situation, “I wouldn't mind it if I didn't have to sit on a footstool for the rest of my life, trying to sell shoes to white trash that don't change their socks every day. I wouldn't mind retiring.”

“I just don't know what gets into him,” Grace says. “He used to could be so nice sometimes.”

“When?” Aileen snaps.

“Well,” Grace says, “he used to buy us candy at the store sometimes, when we were young'uns.”

“Yeah,” Aileen says, “and then he'd make us sing a song before he'd give it to us, and sometimes he'd make us sing, and then he wouldn't give it to us anyhow.”

“Now, I don't remember that,” Grace says. “And besides, he's our brother.”

“And he does need a keeper,” Aileen says.

“Well, I just hope he doesn't have one of his spells. Let's try to not get him excited.”

They come on a Wednesday. It takes them 45 minutes to get from the state highway to the house, and they see that there are perhaps 200 people there. They have to go around a bus that has “Ebenezer Free Will Gospel Holiness Church” across the side of it. The bus is painted purple, and there's a picture of a black Jesus on the back of it.

“Even the niggers are coming now,” Aileen says.

Most nights, the crowd is either all white or close to it. There isn't one white church in Moseby County that has a black member, and there isn't a black church that has one white member. Even in the area of miracles, crowds run along racial lines.

But tonight, it appears that the entire Wednesday night congregation of the Ebenezer Free Will Gospel Holiness Church has decided to take a field trip. About 60 black people stand, all together and to one side, and wait for Jesus-on-the-barn to appear. One woman, with curly reddish hair that shines in the late-afternoon light, seems to be their leader. She is wearing a scarlet robe, and everyone gives her room.

Lot stands back from the crowd, as is his custom, and Aileen, Grace and Nancy go and stand beside him. Lot nods. Billy Basset, who's become a fixture around the barn and helps Lot with chores, stands a little to one side.

The magic moment comes. Most of those present haven't seen it before, and a murmur slowly rises. Sometimes, Lot feels obligated to go forward and point out an arm here, a foot there, a crown of thorns up there, but this crowd picks up the general outline more quickly than most.

The Chastains become aware of a rising, rhythmic chant over to one side, and they see that the focus is shifting between the barn itself and the black woman in the scarlet robe.

Finally, they can hear her repeating, and her followers repeating with her: “GLOOORRY to God on high, GLOOORRY to his only son,” over and over. It isn't quite singing, but it reminds Nancy of the old blues records that Buddy used to like to listen to. Soon, even some of the white people are at least mouthing the words. The chant goes on until the last vestiges of the image have faded from the side of the barn.

While the crowd is breaking up, the woman in scarlet goes straight to Lot, who is acknowledging thanks from pilgrims as they go past and occasionally offering them a terse bit of Revelation.

“Praise Jesus,” she says, by way of greeting. “Brother Lot, I am Sister Sebara Tatum of the Ebenezer Free Will Gospel Holiness Church. We are awed by your vision.”

Lot just nods. She reaches inside her robe and produces a business card that has her name, her church's name and address, a cross and the words: “God is All.” And then she is gone.

“Well, I reckon they'll all be coming out here now,” Aileen says with a sigh.

“Who do you mean, ‘they'?” Lot asks, turning to her.

She sees the warning signs and tries to avert trouble.

“Oh, you know what I mean, Lot. Everybody.”

“Naw,” he says. “You don't mean everybody. You mean black folks. Reckon you think Jesus is too good for them. Reckon Jesus ought to be segregated, like that fine brick church you all go to. I suppose you'd call in the National Guard if them folks tried to go to your church one fine Sunday morning.”

“Now, Lot,” Grace starts, “Aileen didn't mean nothing.”

Billy Basset has slipped away to his tent down toward the river, where he'll stay until he's sure Lot is in for the night. People in the crowd sense trouble and either stop to stare or move a little more hurriedly to their cars and vans. Nancy sees that Lot's face is almost as red as the black woman's dress, and that his eyes seem to be all black. A little boy wanders away from his parents and bumps into Lot. He looks up into Lot's face and runs screaming toward his father.

“Come on, Lot,” Aileen says. “Let's go over to your place and talk.”

They finally get him away from the departing crowd and into the trailer, where the living room is too hot and too small for four people, but they can't get him to change the subject. Aileen broaches the subject of the offer on the land, but Lot doesn't even want to listen. He goes into a 15-minute diatribe against churches in general and Monacan Baptist in particular. Finally, Aileen has had enough.

“I don't have to put up with this shit,” she says as Grace tries to shush her and Nancy makes her first move toward the only door. “I came out here because somebody wants to make all of us rich. Somebody wants to let you keep Momma and Daddy's house and the yard and the road and still give us near-bout half a million dollars. I …”

She stops talking. She's almost as red as Lot is now, and she starts crying. “Oh, Lot, why can't you act right?”

“You all are just trying to sell the place out from under me,” he says. “You must think I'm an idiot. This here land won't never be sold, not as long as I live.”

He turns then to Nancy, who hasn't said anything except “hello” so far.

“And I reckon you've been sending this girl out here to soften me up,” he says, as Nancy wrestles with the doorknob. “Get me so you can make me do whatever you want. Well, it ain't a-gonna work.”

Nancy finally gets the door open, just before Lot gets there. She stands outside, not knowing which way to run, for five minutes. Finally, Aileen and Grace come out, in no particular hurry. There's no sign of Lot.

In the car, Nancy starts to ask what happened after she left.

“Lot just gets overexcited,” Grace says.

“He's just full of meanness,” Aileen adds. Then she sighs. “I reckon I might as well plan on selling a few thousand more pairs of shoes.”

Sam continues to do his plyometric exercises, running and jumping one day, lifting the next. He's gaining about an inch a month, but something happens in late July that sets him back.

He's in the gym between 7 and 7:30 one morning, lifting weights in the locker room, when he hears the door open, and two black kids, members of the high school basketball team, come walking in. The coach has also given them a key so they can work out with weights before school, but they're obviously more intent on playing basketball. They become quiet when they see Sam, dress quickly and take a couple of basketballs out on the court with them.

Sam finishes his squats. He's lost about five pounds and can now lift his weight, straining to keep his knees from buckling as he dips and then rises with his arms gripping the bar as it digs into his shoulders and the back of his neck. He does five repetitions, does some more leg lifts, then gets ready to go home and shower.

He's feeling pretty good about himself when he decides to peek in on the two basketball players. He opens the door to the gym halfway, his weight belt in his hand. The two teenagers aren't really playing; they're setting each other up.

One throws the ball up on the backboard from about five feet away. The other, who has already started running from the top of the key, jumps as he nears at the basket, just as the ball is coming off the glass. The point is to catch the ball in midair, preferably with one hand, and dunk it as spectacularly as possible. About half the time, the coordination is just off. The other half, Sam is struck by how the players seem to have another gear, seem to actually rise to another level after they've apparently reached the peak. Their hands seem to be a good foot and a half over the rim at the top of their leaps. Sam realizes that probably neither of them has ever lifted a weight in his life unless a coach was standing right behind him. He resists an urge to throw the $30 weight belt in the trash can by the door.

Sam and Nancy are having Sunday dinner with his parents when they hear about the body. Holly and her husband. Cole, are also there, sitting around the big drop-leaf maple table in the Chastains' dining room. Marie answers the phone, and she has the quiet, flushed look of a bearer of news when she comes back.

“They think they've found that boy's body,” she says as she sits down.

“Who? The Jeter boy?” Carter asks her.

She gives him a look that silently asks how many boys have turned up missing in Monacan lately, then says, “Yes. Down by the river. A dog dragged up a human skull and part of a spine, Sue Wampler said. Dragged it right up in Wilbur Mangum's yard, that used to work at the court house. Berlean was the one that found it, and they had to take her to the hospital with chest pains. Sue said Johnny was there, with the rescue squad, and they're looking for more now.”

“They think there's more than one?” Cole asks.

“More, uh, body parts,” Marie says.

Everyone looks down at their roast beef.

“Johnny says they might even be searching down on the back side of Momma and Daddy Chastain's land,” Marie goes on.

“The Mangums live right back of where Daddy dug the irrigation pond,” Carter says. “I think he sold them that land.”

Holly, without looking up from dinner, says, “The Dead Sea.”

“The what?” her husband asks as Carter clears his throat.

“Oh,” she turns her head, obviously embarrassed, “that's just what Lot used to call that pond. The Dead Sea.”

She looks up and around the table. “But don't tell him I told you that.”

Nancy wants to ask her why not, but Sam gently presses his right arm against her left, and she remains quiet.

Nancy hasn't seen Buddy since the night she called him from the mall. She's writing again, and she's hoping that the lack of opportunity will conspire to keep them out of the same bed. She finds it odd that, after living in the same city as her ex-husband for six years, she had to move 30 miles away to rediscover him.

But, the Thursday night after Terry Jeter's body was found, she's in Richmond again, having dinner with her parents. Sam, as usual, is too tired to make the trip with her, so she and Wade go alone.

She finds that she misses Suzanne and Pat, the former for her vivaciousness, the latter for the quiet sense of steadiness he always seemed to lend to their home. She visits them as much now as when she lived in Richmond, and with less of a feeling of obligation. Sam's silence often strikes her as moodiness, and on those occasions she wonders if she's offended him without realizing it. Now, with Buddy back in the world, she is aware that every unexplained gap in the conversation has her steeling herself for accusations.

Thinking of her father and of Carter, she wonders if it just takes men longer to grow up.

“Honey,” Suzanne tells her when she verbalizes this theory, “I don't think they ever do.”

Candy's still living at home, saving money to buy a condominium, and she's watching TV and helping Nancy catch up on Richmond gossip. Robbie comes in while they're there; he's still living at home, too, with another year of college left. Marilou calls to talk to her mother.

Nancy remembers her house as always being like this. Her father complained that he was going to move to the bus station so he'd have more privacy, but he knew the name of every neighborhood kid, and they all seemed to be drawn to him. His quietness made them all the more appreciative when he would show them a trick or play catch with them. And Suzanne, who looks the same to Nancy now as she did 20 years ago, always had something going. She'd have neighborhood pet shows, managing to give every toad and hamster some kind of prize. Nancy wonders if she and Sam will ever have the kind of house where something's always happening.

On the way home, with Wade already asleep in the car seat in the back, Nancy stops and calls Buddy. This time, she tells him, she really can't come over, because of the child. OK, he says, where are you? Finally, she tells him, and he's there, in a mini-mall parking lot, in 15 minutes.

Buddy slides into the passenger seat, and Nancy looks nervously into the back, where Wade's head is slumped to the right at a 45-degree angle and his mouth is hanging open in blissful unconsciousness.

“Don't worry,” he says. “They can sleep through anything.”

“How would you know?” she asks him.

He responds by putting his left arm around her neck and drawing her to him. They kiss.

“I can't do this,” Nancy says. “Not with Wade in the back seat.”

They talk softly for a few minutes, then Buddy starts sliding his hand up her thigh so casually that she doesn't resist at first.

“Just like high school,” he says, reaching around her shoulder to fondle her left breast, finding her nipple beneath her blouse and bra and giving it a squeeze with his thumb and forefinger.

“Yeah. Tenth grade,” Nancy whispers, unzipping Buddy's pants while he helps her slide down her pantyhose.