Julia 03 - Miss Julia Throws a Wedding (29 page)

“I have no idea,” I said, as perplexed as he was. “Oh, my Lord,” I gasped as Hazel Marie strode past us, dragging the hose that we watered the lawn with behind her. “Hazel Marie?”

“Stand back, Miss Julia,” she said, her back straight and her eyes glaring at the obstacle in front of her.

“Mama?” Little Lloyd said as he started toward her.

“Hazel Marie?” I said again, and started with him, but she was not to be deterred.

Those television people, now that we’d been put in our place, were intent on the business at hand and didn’t see Hazel Marie take aim and twist the nozzle. A stream of water spurted out full force. We’d always had good water pressure, and it didn’t fail her now.

Her first poorly aimed shot went into and through the open windows of the van and out the other side. She got their attention, though, for the beam of the spotlight went wild, veering this way and that up and down the street. One man jumped from the back of the van, cursing something awful, and the crowd turned as one to see what the trouble was. The man doing the directing ran toward Hazel Marie, his mouth open in a yell and his arms outstretched to grab her. She turned the hose into his face, backing him off as he sputtered and gasped at the sudden influx. And all the while, Tiffany, the television personality, continued to broadcast, her eyes wide with the thrill of breaking news. The light of the camera swiveled back and forth between her and the wild woman with the hose.

Hazel Marie stepped to the side and, taking deliberate aim, yelled, “Tiffany’s finished!” Then she soaked the reporter to a fare-thee-well, not stopping until the woman’s hair was plastered to her head and her clothes were sopping wet.

And still the shoulder-held camera kept filming, turning first to Hazel Marie and then back to the saturated Tiffany.

Tiffany, with water dripping off her, screamed, “Turn that damn camera
off
!” And finally all the lights went off, and we were left with only a streetlight and the glow of candles still held by the mesmerized crowd.

Hazel Marie flung the hose down and stomped back to us. With a satisfied grin, she said, “You’ll be able to get out now, Miss Julia.”

Then three squad cars, their roof lights flashing blue and red, turned the corner. One blast of a siren cleared the way, and they pulled up and stopped beside the television van. Coleman and two other deputies stepped out, as the television crew, minus Tiffany who had ducked inside the van, ran to them, waving their arms, pointing at us and lodging their complaints.

“I don’t know, Hazel Marie,” I said, noting that now there were four vehicles impeding my passage. “I may be stuck for good. But as long as Coleman’s here, he can’t be at Binkie’s, can he?” Then, trying not to laugh, I said, “I declare, Hazel Marie, you certainly know how to wrap up a broadcast.”

Chapter 29

Coleman and the two deputies who’d come with him calmly listened to the indignant, arm-waving director, while the cameraman stood aside with a bemused expression on his face. Gradually the tension lessened, especially when Tiffany asserted from inside the van that there was “no way in hell” she would go in front of a camera in the shape she was in. The men began gathering up their cables and wires, and placing them in the van.

When they slammed the back door of the van and climbed into the front seat, Little Lloyd said, “Bet those seats’re squishy.”

Hazel Marie and I smiled at each other as we watched one of the deputies direct the van through the crowd and send it on its way.

“I guess I could go on to Binkie’s now,” I said. “But since Coleman’s here, I’ll wait and try to talk him out of giving up on her. And I want to find out why this strange gathering was worth putting on television.”

By that time, Coleman and the deputies were moving among the crowd, shaking hands and talking with several people they seemed to know.

As we stood to the side of the milling crowd and watched, Hazel Marie said, “Something’s drawing these people here. I mean, there’s got to be some reason why it’s right by our
house. And it’s not like any kind of religious vigil I’ve ever heard of.”

I nodded as I squinched my eyes at the crowd. “I’ve never seen some of these people before. Wonder where they came from?”

Little Lloyd said, “I saw some out-of-state license plates on the cars parked down the street. Some from Virginia and Tennessee, even.”

“My word,” I said, marveling at anybody who’d drive so far to stand around on a sidewalk. “Look over there on the other side, Hazel Marie. Isn’t that the Riley family? And there’s Bud Wilkins, too. And have you ever seen so many candles? It’s like a Christmas Eve service. You know, if it’s religious and it has candles, it’s got to be something with Catholic overtones. Maybe that’s why we don’t know anything about it.”

“But why would anybody want to celebrate anything on Polk Street?” Hazel Marie said, frowning and casting worried glances toward the candlelit gathering. “Oh, look. I think that’s Norma Cantrell across the street. Well, there’re too many heads in the way. I’m not sure.”

“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “She has to check out everything in town. You think we can get through to her? She’d know, if anybody would.”

Hazel Marie said, “I don’t think we ought to try it. Too many people between us.”

Little Lloyd, who seemed entranced by the street meeting, said, “Let’s just ask somebody here.”

“Lord, child,” I said. “I don’t know anybody nearby to ask.”

“I don’t mind asking a stranger,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows at Hazel Marie, wondering if she thought we’d be disrupting a religious service, even though I hadn’t seen a preacher anywhere.

She shrugged and said, “We could try. Maybe we’d learn
what’s brought them here. And if they’re going to leave before the wedding guests start coming.”

“Don’t mention the wedding to me, Hazel Marie,” I said. “I’m so wrought up about it now I can hardly stand it. All right, let’s see if we can find out what’s going on. But keep an eye on Coleman; I don’t want him getting to Binkie before I do.”

“Look,” Little Lloyd said, pointing toward a man in a short-sleeved shirt. “There’s Señor Acosta again. Let’s ask him.” And he headed into the crowd.

Looking back at us, he went on. “Remember? I know his son from school. Angel.”

“What?” I asked, as Hazel Marie and I frowned at each other.

“Angel. That’s his son’s name,” Little Lloyd said.

“My word,” I said under my breath. “They must be a religious family.”

Hazel Marie and I cautiously followed Little Lloyd, not wanting to get too close but not wanting to lose sight of him, either.

As we approached the gathering, Hazel Marie giggled nervously and took my arm. “I hope they won’t get mad at us for asking what they’re doing.”

“They won’t get mad, Mama,” Little Lloyd said, walking fearlessly into the crowd. “We just have to be respectful, like we’d be in church.”

“Huh,” I said. “I could be a lot more respectful if this kind of carrying-on wasn’t practically in my front yard.”

“Sh-h-h,” Hazel Marie said, poking me with her elbow.

As we followed Little Lloyd into the crowd, I heard the low cadence of their voices in what might have been prayer. Each face was lit with a circle of light from the candles they held. Little Lloyd walked right up to a square-shouldered man who had his eyes closed. Not a fearful bone in the child’s body, I thought with pride, except when it came to Dixon Hightower.

“Buenas noches, Señor Acosta. ¿Cómo está usted?”
Little Lloyd said, surprising me at how fluent he was in another tongue.

The man turned to him, smiled broadly in the glow of his candle, and said something like, “
Buenas noches, señor pequeño
. Would you like a candle?” He offered his candle to Little Lloyd.

I hurried up beside him and whispered, “Give it back, Little Lloyd. No telling what kind of worship service this is.”

The boy shook his head, and said to the man,
“¿Qué pasa?”

The man took a deep breath and pointed toward our half-built Family Life Center and said in an awestruck voice,
“Está un milagro.”

“What’d he say?” I whispered. “What’s growing around here?”

Paying me no mind, Little Lloyd said,
“¿Que?”

His face glowing in the light of the candle, the man leaned down to the child and said,
“¡La santa!”

“What?” I whispered. “What’d he say?”

Little Lloyd said, “He said
la santa,
but I don’t know what it means. I mean, I know what it means, but . . .”

Señor Acosta pointed at the building again, jabbing the air with his finger.
“¡En el muro!”

“¿Qué?”
Little Lloyd hunched his shoulders and squinched up his eyes, peering through the dark at the brick wall. “I don’t see anything.”

“
¡Mira!
It’s a miracle from God.” And he fell down on his knees before our very eyes and began crossing his chest. Others followed his example until more than half the crowd knelt on the cement sidewalk. I’d known all along it was some kind of Catholic ceremony. Or maybe Episcopal.

“Come on, Lloyd,” Hazel Marie said, as if she too had recognized the strangeness of it. “We better not bother him anymore.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I’ve seen enough, and I still don’t understand it.”

“
Un minuto,
Mama,” Little Lloyd said. “I mean, in a minute. I want to find out what’s on the wall. I can’t see what he’s talking about.”

He leaned down to the man, handed back his candle and said, “I can’t see anything, Señor Acosta. What is it?”

The man looked up at him with a beautiful smile.
“Nuestra Señora del Muro. Está un milagro de la virgen.”

“Gracias, señor,”
Little Lloyd said, somewhat subdued by the answer. Then he turned and walked back to the driveway, glancing over his shoulder at that offensive building.

Hazel Marie took my arm, and we hurried after him.

“What’d he say, Lloyd?” she asked as we stopped a little distance from the crowd.

“Well,” he said, frowning so that his glasses slipped down his nose. “I’m not sure that I got it all. But he said something about a miracle, and I think he said it was on the wall. Of the new building, I guess, ’cause he kept pointing at it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “I told Pastor Ledbetter it’d take a miracle to get that thing built without my help.”

“No’m, I don’t think he meant that. If I understood it right, he said there’s a lady on the wall.”

Hazel Marie and I looked at each other with our mouths open. “A lady on the wall?” she said. “You mean somebody’s walking around on top of that brick wall?” Then she squinched up her eyes, trying to see in the dark.

Little Lloyd shook his head. “No’m, not that. From the way he said it, I think it meant
our lady.
He said it was a miracle of the virgin.”

“What!” I was shocked at the word. “How dare that man say such a thing to a child! Hazel Marie, I’m going to tell Coleman about this. It’s bad enough to see half-naked women on the TV, but to hear such talk on the street is another matter.”

“Wait, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said. “I don’t think he was saying anything ugly. I think he was talking about Mary, the Virgin Mother. I wish we could get through this crowd and talk to the Rileys, so we’d know for sure.”

“Well,” I said, somewhat mollified. “Even if it wasn’t ugly, it’s pretty Catholic, if you ask me. And in a Presbyterian neighborhood, too.”

The three of us stood there for a while, mulling over that theological riddle. Then I turned and stared at the Family Life Center, wondering how anybody could see a woman, even if she was a lady, on a wall of bricks in the dead of night. My attention was taken then by Coleman, who was walking with Señor Acosta toward his squad car. I gasped, thinking Coleman was making an arrest, but instead, he leaned in the car window and turned on his spotlight. With Señor Acosta directing him, Coleman wiggled the light until it was centered on the wall between the windows of the second and third floors, right where the television people had aimed their spotlight.

I leaned forward, straining to see what was on the wall. All I could see were some streaks of poorly applied mortar.