Fat Lightning (12 page)

“Third base,” Buddy says, continuing to stroke her as she reciprocates.

Then Nancy becomes aware of Buddy pushing her head downward with his free hand.

“I think we just graduated,” she says before sinking below the dashboard.

Putting her panties and pantyhose back on, Nancy is amazed to realize that they've only been together for 15 minutes.

“We're going backwards,” he says. “Every time I see you, I see you less.”

“Buddy,” she says, trying to soothe him, but she hears an echo from the back seat.

“Buddy.” Wade is wide awake, as if he's never been asleep. He's grinning a two-year-old's grin. “Buddy.”

Buddy doesn't know whether to jolly the child or run. He hurriedly zips up his pants while Nancy adjusts her skirt and worries about the stain on her blouse.

“Go back to sleep, sweetie,” she says. “You're just having a dream.” She doesn't even acknowledge Buddy as he quietly exits from the passenger side.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The state medical examiner confirms that the human skull and upper spine dragged up by Wilbur Mangum's dog are part of the late Terry Jeter, and that he evidently drowned in the irrigation pond near the back of the Chastain property, down by the river. The examiner's office says his skull could have been crushed when it struck one of the stumps beneath the surface. The body apparently was caught in some of the underwater vegetation that almost completely clogs the pond, and when it somehow dislodged and surfaced, it was found, dragged to shore and torn apart by the neighborhood dogs. It is Simon Jeter who tells the sheriff that his grandson couldn't swim.

Two days later, Lot disappears.

Carter comes by to talk with him about the developer's offer on their land and finds only Granger and Billy Basset. The boy has unchained Lot's dog and is sitting with him in the shade of a sycamore tree in the mid-afternoon heat. Billy says that Lot was gone when he came to the house that morning, and that he let himself into the trailer and fed Granger. Lot's been known to drive off and not be seen for several days, so Carter normally wouldn't be worried, but the Jeter boy's death has him spooked. He's also worried that, despite all the “Posted” signs Lot has put around the property, Terry Jeter's family will try to blame the Chastains for the boy's drowning.

“Mr. Chastain,” Billy asks Carter, “what'll I do about all the pilgrims?”

Carter gives him a puzzled look.

“You know. The pilgrims that come to look at Jesus on the barn. What'll I tell them?”

“Don't reckon you'll have to tell 'em anything,” Carter says. “You might stick around, though, to make sure they don't start taking pieces off of it for holy relics.”

Then Carter tells Billy not to worry, that Lot's disappeared before, but that he always turns up.

“You ought to look out around here, though,” he says. “Don't your folks mind you being out here after what happened to that Jeter boy?”

“They don't care,” Billy says.

“Well, you be careful.”

Carter backs away from Billy and Granger; the dog once chased him up the same sycamore tree.

Billy's worries about the pilgrims are solved, for one day at least, when a low-pressure system brings in a thunderstorm by 4 o'clock and more clouds and a steady, drenching rain, first messenger of autumn, behind it. A few out-of-towners drive down the old road in the rain just to see the barn, but there'll be no visions of Jesus today.

The sheriff has already been around to talk to Billy and to Lot. Billy hadn't seen Terry or known anyone who had seen him for a month before his body was dragged up in pieces. He'd just assumed that Terry had decided to run away again; he'd tried to talk Billy into hitch-hiking to California with him back in late May, said he had cousins in some place called Bakersfield.

It does make Billy feel a little uneasy to think about Terry drowning. Both boys had played around the pond, but the vegetation in it had long since choked out the fish, and the river was within eyesight anyhow, for anyone who wanted to fish or swim. Billy knew Terry couldn't swim, without really having to be told. When the water would get low enough to wade to French Crossing, he never could get Terry to come across with him, and he noticed that Terry never got very far from the bank when they'd go skinny-dipping in the river.

He must have got careless, is Billy's final judgment on his late acquaintance.

Billy is proud of not getting careless. He's made enough money selling off the Chastains' smaller valuables, the ones tucked away inside plunder rooms and cubbyholes, to keep himself going. He will spend a few days once in a while across the river with his mother and grandmother and the usual revolving door of relatives and boyfriends, and he's bought and sold some dope, just about breaking even, but he always returns to Lot's, where he can camp by the river until Lot's light goes out and then slip into the house to sleep or plunder, according to his mood. His fence tells him that, soon, he'll send him to Florida in a new car that somebody else will load down there. The police will never find the stuff, and all Billy will have to do to make $300 is drive it back. Billy's never been out of Virginia, and he wonders if Florida is as far away as California. But at least he won't have to hitchhike.

Nancy hasn't been out to the Chastain place since her run-in with Lot the night they met Sebara Tatum. She spends most of her time either writing or taking care of Wade and Sam. Sam hasn't asked her to help out at the drugstore lately, for which she's grateful.

She takes Wade for a walk every day. They go down Maple, stopping to let whatever housewives or retired couples might be outside make a fuss over the boy. Nancy is concerned that Wade might not have too many friends his age if they stay in Monacan, because everyone of child-bearing age seems to have left. The best she can figure, there aren't five children under the age of six among the town's 600 or so residents.

When she asks Sam about this, he tells her that there are lots of young families out of town, out in the county. The children she's seen, though, standing dirty and open-mouthed beside cinder-block houses and mobile homes on the way in and out of town, she can't imagine as companions for her son. She feels like a snob, and she keeps her opinions on the matter to herself.

Nancy and Wade go along the sidewalks that line each of the six side streets feeding into Mosby Street, the east-west spine that leads to the town's head, Courthouse Square. The walk to the courthouse, with stops to visit and for Wade to squat along the concrete walk and inspect a line of ants or an acorn, takes 20 minutes. It might have seemed tedious to Nancy two years before, but now she finds that, on rainy days, she misses the slow daily meander. The town is so small that there is no place in it where a person can stand and, in taking a 360-degree turn, not see its edges. Even at Courthouse Square, the stalks of a corn field are visible just beyond the Chieftan Diner.

Nancy and Wade often go inside the Monacan Drug Store to say hello to Sam, who is sometimes too busy to talk. If Nancy sees that he's waiting on a customer, she'll just wave and tell Wade that Daddy's working, which displeases the boy considerably.

Courthouse Square is across the street from most of Monacan's stores. Its neoclassic center was meant for the larger town that local leaders expected in the future, but Monacan didn't grow, and most of the town's business can still be conducted in the original courthouse building. A small jail, seldom used, is connected by a walkway. There is a historical marker out front, and the large expanse of grass between the courthouse itself and the streets bordering it are the closest thing to a park that Monacan has. Here, Nancy sits on a shady bench while Wade chases squirrels. By the time they've walked back to their rented house on Maple, it's time for Wade's nap and for Nancy to write for an hour before starting dinner.

Lately, Wade has learned a new word. At unexpected moments, whenever he sees a man with sandy-brown hair of a certain size and look go by, he'll cry out “Buddy!” Sometimes the man will turn and smile at Nancy and the child, or merely look puzzled. Wade does this several times when Sam's with them, and Nancy is sure her husband can feel her cringe.

“Am I your buddy?” he asks Wade once, but the boy just points at a departing figure and says, again, “Buddy!” When Sam's not along, Nancy tells Wade “No” every time he says the name, but the boy is well into his Terrible Twos, and this only encourages him.

The second night that Lot is missing, it's still raining. Aileen persuades Grace to come with her to the old family home so they can see if their brother has returned yet. The two women slosh through mud puddles in Aileen's Buick and Grace wonders aloud what will happen if they get stuck.

“Hush, Grace,” Aileen says as the car's right side sinks down almost to the axle in a hole made deeper by all the traffic of late. “If we get stuck, we'll just go back to Simon Jeter's and get some help.”

They come around the last bend, Aileen's headlights striking one of the few remaining chimneys in Old Monacan. The leaning pile of bricks shines brightly in the sudden light, causing Grace to let out a little squeal that scares Aileen as much as the sight of the chimney, which she doesn't remember her headlights ever hitting just that way before. She thinks to herself that Grace's nerves are getting worse.

Lot's trailer is dark, and Aileen stops beside it, the Buick's engine idling while she debates whether to go in. It's after 9; if Lot were back, he'd still be up, with the lights on. Besides, his car's missing.

“Look, Aileen,” Grace says, leaning low to see something higher than the car's windshield. Aileen looks, and finally sees what Grace is pointing toward. In the back of their parents' old house, there's a light, just barely visible through the mist. They watch it for a few seconds, then it suddenly disappears.

“I wonder if we oughtn't to call the police,” Grace says, and Aileen doesn't say anything.

“No,” she says finally. “It might have been just the way the headlights were hitting the house. Or something.” She's not sure herself, and she turns the car around in the little grass patch in front of Lot's trailer instead of driving up to the open area in front of the old house, trying not to spook Grace any more while she's doing it.

“I wish Lot'd let us sell this place,” Grace says when they're back on the paved road headed out.

“Hush, Grace,” Aileen says, but she's thinking the same thing.

Upstairs, Billy sits in the dark, the darkened flashlight in his hand, and looks out the window at the headlights down below. He's taking advantage of Lot's absence to give the old house a more thorough going-over than he's done before, but all he's been able to find are some silver dollars in the back of an old chest-of-drawers.

He breathes a sigh of relief when the car turns around, but he knows he'd better spend the rest of this night in his tent by the river, no matter how much it rains. It crosses his mind that he might have to accept the fact that he's gotten about all he's going to out of the old house. He would leave—the old man certainly isn't much fun to be around; you never can tell when he's going to launch into a tirade about something Billy's never even noticed. But the image on the barn, and all the people who come every day the weather's willing, treating Lot and even Billy like they're special, somehow makes him think it will be worth his while to stay, at least until it turns cold.

In late August, during the week that Lot disappears, Sam and Nancy go to visit Sam's second cousin, Pete Bondurant, who wants to give them some of his surplus of garden vegetables. Pete lives off Route 17, between the water tower and the river, right behind the Riverview Drive-In, the only drive-in theater in the county. Even though they know they'll be keeping him up past his bedtime, they take Wade along, too, because Pete and his wife, May, haven't seen him since Christmas.

The Riverview Drive-In has shown general-interest films for most of its life, but nobody wants to sit outside and watch movies without air conditioning or heat any more, buying a Pic and lighting the spiral contraption to fend off mosquitoes. So, a year ago, the owners went to the only thing that still attracted customers to drive-in movies in the '70s—X-rated. Since she first got a look at what X-rated meant, May Bondurant, with Pete offering moral support, has tried to get the county to at least make the Riverview build a higher fence.

When Sam and Nancy turn off Route 17 onto the rut road leading to Pete's house, a quarter-mile away, it's still twilight, and the rain has finally stopped. They can see the blank screen to their left, another quarter-mile from the Bondurants' back porch, and hear the bass notes from whatever music is piped in before the show starts.

“Daddy said that Pete cut down a perfectly good china-berry tree the month after they started showing skin flicks,” Sam says. “Gave him a perfect view of the screen.”

Pete Bondurant, a heavy-set, bald man with deep smile wrinkles, looks vaguely like the Chastains. He has brought two watermelons out of the patch, and May has two Winn-Dixie bags full of field peas and another one of tomatoes. Sam and Nancy sit with them on the porch for a while, talking and drinking iced tea. Nancy is seated facing Pete, holding Wade in her lap, with nothing but fields between her and the Riverview's screen.

When the coming attractions start, swatches of indecipherable music and an occasional low moan can be heard over the porch fan. Despite their repeated complaints, Pete and May have become so inured to the Riverview's fare that they don't even mention it. Nancy is glad that it's dark, so that no one can see her blush. She gets distracted and has to ask May to repeat something twice, and she's glad when they can finally leave.

Wade's asleep by the time they've rounded the circular drive and are headed back to the highway. Halfway to the road, Sam slows down and looks to his right, across the bean-fields to where a young blonde woman is having sex with two black men at the same time.