Julia 03 - Miss Julia Throws a Wedding (6 page)

“Who?” I asked.

He glanced up at me, his eyes smiling. “Dixon Hightower. Remember him?”

“Well, I should say I do. I thought that little rascal was locked up for good.”

“We did too. He was put away as a habitual violator, a three-time loser, a few years ago. But some liberal lawyer wrangled him a new trial, which is how he escaped. They transferred him from Raleigh to our jail for the hearing, and, well, he got away from the jailer.” Coleman just shook his head. “Embarrassing as hell, you want to know the truth.”

“That sounds just like him,” I said. “Dixon Hightower’s nothing but a nuisance, but you have to watch him like a hawk.”

“Yes, ma’am, we learned that the hard way. A couple of deputies may lose their jobs over this. Problem is, we haven’t caught him yet.”

“You mean he’s still loose?” Hazel Marie’s eyes widened at the thought. “The jail’s not but four or five blocks from here. Why, he could be right under our feet, and us not know it. I can’t stand the thought of somebody sneaking right up on me.”

“Oh,” Little Lloyd said and put his fork down.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Coleman said, noticing the child’s peaked look. “Dixon’s not going to hurt anybody, just pester us to death, that’s all. We’ll have him back behind bars in no time. But, Miss Julia, you should take some reasonable measures, like keeping your doors locked. You know how he is.”

“Well, my Lord,” I said, thinking to myself that I didn’t need this worry added to the full week’s worth I already had. “He ought to have a good whipping, with all the turmoil he’s put this town through. I remember Pastor Ledbetter going out of his way to help him and bring him into the church. Talked until he was blue in the face about the vice of stealing, for all the good it did. The pastor told Dixon that he should be trusting
the Lord to provide for his needs and not be stealing what belonged to other people. Problem was, though, Dixon didn’t
need
any of the things he stole; he just picked up whatever took his eye.”

I sighed, recalling the many futile efforts so many had made to reform the unreformable. “And Dixon’s poor mother tried her best with him, but some people just can’t be helped. I can’t remember a day of his life when he wasn’t stealing something from somebody. Why, you couldn’t put your laundry out on a line without half of it being gone when you went back.”

“It wasn’t just laundry, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie reminded me. “He was bad for sneaking into people’s houses, when they were home, too, and taking anything he could pick up, although I never heard of him taking anything of much value. He liked odds and ends. But there’re people who’ve sworn their doors were locked, then looked up and saw Dixon inside the house.” She frowned at the thought. “I don’t know how he does it, but he can get in anywhere.”

“And out, too, it seems,” I said. “As the sheriff has so recently found, no offense to you, Coleman.”

Little Lloyd was taking this all in, his eyes wide behind his glasses. Coleman reached over and ruffled his hair. “Don’t you be worrying about Dixon. He’s holed up somewhere, laughing at us. Soon as he sticks his head out, we’ll snatch him up so fast he won’t know what hit him.”

“I sure hope so,” Little Lloyd said. “If anybody can catch him, I know you can.”

“Just let me at him.” Coleman laughed, then laying his napkin beside his plate, he got to his feet. “Got to get back to it. ’Preciate the breakfast, Lillian, it ought to hold me till I get some more of your good cooking tonight. Now, you folks keep your doors latched. I don’t want anybody dropping in on you.”

As he started toward the door, he turned back and said,
“Almost forgot. Binkie asked me to give you this, Miss Julia. It’s our invitation list.”

“Good. We’ll get on the phone right away.”

Lillian stuck a Ziploc bag filled with cookies into Coleman’s hand, as his radio erupted with static. He gave her one of his quick grins, waved to us and jogged to his patrol car, his head turned to speak into the radio on his shoulder.

“Lock that door while you’re there,” I said to Lillian.

“That’s what I’m doin’,” she said, but I hardly heard her for thinking of Dixon Hightower, the town thief, now a man on the run. I remembered him as no more than a child in his mind, although he had to be at least forty years old by now. Dixon had never gotten his full growth, his mother having to buy his clothes from the Belk’s boys’ department. Not that it did any good. Dixon didn’t like to bathe, or change clothes, either. He had a sly way about him, always scuttling along from one end of town to the other, picking up bottles for the deposit. He kept a smile on his face, though, just as friendly as he could be while he was robbing you blind.

“His poor mother,” I said. “It’s a good thing she’s dead and gone, and not having to witness what Dixon’s up to now. But I’ll tell you one thing, he’d better not mess with me while I’m busy with this wedding.”

Thinking about that possibility put me on edge, especially when I saw Little Lloyd press his hand against his stomach, which occasionally got queasy on him. He was a nervous child. I patted his arm, and glanced out the window half-expecting to see that little pest tiptoeing from one boxwood to the other.

“He better not try stealing anything ’round here,” Lillian said, brandishing the heavy iron pan that she cooked corn-bread in. “He gonna meet this arn skillet, if he do.”

Then Little Lloyd said, “Mama, I’m supposed to go to a meeting at the church this afternoon.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t think you ought to go anywhere today. I don’t want to take the chance of you running into Dixon Hightower. Let’s wait till they get him back in jail.”

“He wouldn’t hurt you, Little Lloyd,” I said, entirely agreeing with his mother but not wanting to give him nightmares. “All he’d do is sneak up on you and scare you half to death. Then he’d pick your pocket clean as a whistle.”

After a while Little Lloyd looked from one to the other of us. “Mama? I don’t think I can miss that meeting. Miz Ledbetter’ll be mad as thunder at me.”

“Emma Sue Ledbetter!” I said. “What kind of meeting is she having?”

“She wants to start a young people’s group. She came to our Sunday school class last week and said she wanted everybody between nine and twelve years old to show up today and not be late. She meant it, too.” He rubbed his stomach.

I heaved a sigh that would’ve blown out a candle. “Wouldn’t you know, she’s at it again. I declare, I don’t know why the pastor didn’t take her with him.” I stopped, because I knew why he’d left his wife at home while he led a church group on a tour of the Holy Land. The both of them poor-mouthed around for months, making sure every member knew that his salary couldn’t cover two airline tickets. They wanted the deacons to give him a bonus or raise his salary or, barring that, they would’ve accepted a love-offering for her expenses. But the pastor already had every member, except me, pledged up to the hilt to pay for that Family Life Center he was so determined to build. The man could get blood out of a turnip, so there were a number of fairly anemic-looking people in the congregation who weren’t at all interested in providing an expense-paid vacation for his wife. Even if it was an educational trip and they planned to get rebaptized in the river Jordan.

“Not that I’m against a young people’s group, you
understand,” I said to Little Lloyd. “I think it’s a good idea. But Emma Sue Ledbetter is known to have spells of do-good activities which she can’t seem to help. I remember the time her heart was burdened about the babies in the nursery on Sunday mornings because they needed grandmotherly attention. She went around badgering every white-headed woman in the congregation to sign up for nursery duty. As if, by the time you’re sixty, you’d be thrilled at the opportunity to change diapers again.”

I propped my chin on my hand, remembering the havoc she’d created with that proposal. “The pastor was gone then, too, at General Assembly, I think. You wouldn’t believe the hornets’ nest he came back to, because Presbyterian women, and men, too, for that matter, don’t like both the pastor and his wife getting calls from the Lord. It’s confusing, to say the least.”

I stopped then, because I’m not one to criticize either the pastor or his wife in the presence of young children. Even when one or both needed it.

“Don’t worry about the meeting, Lloyd,” Hazel Marie told him, patting his hand. “We’re just being careful so, if you have to miss it, I’m sure Mrs. Ledbetter’ll understand.”

“I hope so,” he said, not at all convinced. “She said she expected me to be there, come what may. Come what may, that’s what she said right in front of the whole class.”

“It’ll be all right,” I said, smoothing down the cowlick that was standing straight up at the back of his head. He needed to be sleeping in a stocking to tame the thing. “I’ll call and tell her that today’s not a good day. Besides, I think your stomach’s feeling a little uneasy.”

I didn’t mention the fact that when Emma Sue Ledbetter got on her high horse, she put my stomach in the same state of contention. Emma Sue and I had never seen eye to eye on a number of matters. For instance, if she was in charge of a
Women of the Church meeting, as she usually was, she never failed to call on me to offer the prayer. I just hated to pray in public and she knew it, since I’d told her time out of mind not to call on me.

“Julia,” she’d once told me, a note of exasperation in her voice at having to instruct me again. “As Christians, we should always be ready to pray, preach or die.”

“You may be ready, Emma Sue,” I’d said, “but I’d just as soon wait on all three. Call on somebody else from now on.”

But from then on, she’d been concerned about my prayer life, giving me books and tracts to read, offering to have one-on-one prayer with me, wanting to be my prayer partner and warning me that prayer was the way to sanctification which, if I didn’t watch out, I’d never reach.

Don’t you just hate to be given spiritual advice from somebody who needs a bigger dose of it than you?

Chapter 6

“My word,” I said as I looked over the invitation list Coleman had given me. “They haven’t given any thought to this at all. I’ll just have to add some names to it; I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head who should be here.

“Now, Hazel Marie, and you, too, Lillian, help me with what else we have to do today. Florist, for one thing. I’ll call The Watering Can, and get them lined up. Who else?”

“Photographer?” Hazel Marie said.

“Oh, goodness, yes. I’ll give that job to you, Hazel Marie. Call around until you find one, although with all the weddings scheduled for next weekend, it may take you a while. But stay on it until you do; we have to have pictures. What else?”

“You call that catering lady?” Lillian asked.

“She’s on my list to call this morning. And I’d better put down Emma Sue Ledbetter and tell her to cancel that meeting. Saturday afternoon,” I grumbled, jotting down her name. “Who ever heard of having a church meeting on Saturday? The church takes up enough time as it is.”

“What you want me to cook for tonight? An’ how many people you havin’?”

“Well, let’s see. Coleman and Binkie, of course. Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens. That’s four, and I make five. Five, Lillian.”

“You not gonna ast Mr. Sam? That way the table be even out. Man, woman, man, woman, man, woman.”

That stopped me because I had to think about it. Coleman and Binkie both thought the world of Sam, and ordinarily I wouldn’t think twice about inviting him. But it’d been ten days since I’d heard from him, and two could play that game. So I said, “I hadn’t planned on it. Besides, Little Lloyd can even out the table if that’s all you’re worried about.”

“Don’t make no difference to me. But you gonna get yo’ nose stuck so high up in the air, you won’t see what right in front of yo’ face, you don’t watch out.”

Continuing to grumble under her breath, she banged a pan on the stove, and Hazel Marie and I left to start making our phone calls. For the first time I saw the sense in Hazel Marie having her own line, when all the time before I’d thought it was an unnecessary expense just to be able to talk to Mr. Pickens in private.

“Well, Lillian,” I said, pushing through the swinging door into the kitchen a little while later. “I hope you’re happy. I’ve invited Sam, and a good thing, too, because Coleman has asked him to be the best man. So now we’ll have an uneven number at the table because I want Little Lloyd, too. Let’s put the boy opposite me at the foot of the table. Binkie on my right and Coleman on my left, since they’re the guests of honor. Then Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens opposite each other in the middle. Sam can sit on Little Lloyd’s right, opposite nobody.”