Miss Julia Hits the Road (4 page)

I just couldn’t add another burden to the one she was already carrying. So who did that leave?

Lillian, that’s who. I’d just have to make her understand that Sam needed our help, and that she should be cautious about taking his advice. That way, I could kill two birds with one stone and, between us, we could look after him and talk him into some sedate activity more suited to his age.

A sudden image of the local shuffleboard court filled with senior citizens flashed in my mind. I shuddered at the thought, but if that’s what it took to get Sam off that death trap, I’d learn to wield one of those sticks with the best of them. At least there’d be less danger from a wayward puck than from a motorcycle flipping in the air.

What I had to do was ease into a general conversation with Lillian, then gradually persuade her to tell me what was bothering her. I felt justified in using such a tactic because she didn’t need to be taking half-baked legal advice from Sam when I was perfectly willing to help with whatever she needed.

Maybe I should let her read some of that pitiful poetry he’d sent, and if that wouldn’t make her think twice about consulting him, I didn’t know what would.

I didn’t want to be too obvious about delving into Lillian’s business. She had every right to keep her own counsel if she wanted to. But of course, that didn’t mean I had to like it if she did.

The thing to do was to come at it sideways, so she wouldn’t think I was being meddlesome. Still, I couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t confided in me before now.

And that disturbed me all over again. Why was she keeping something from me? Didn’t she trust me? And if she didn’t, what did that say about all we’d been through together for, lo, these many years?

So I walked into the kitchen and, before I could help myself, just came right out and said, “Lillian, I want to know what kind of trouble you’re having. I want you to sit right down here and tell me. I declare, to have to learn that you have a problem from somebody else is more than I can stand.”

“Miss Julia,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel as she stared out the window. “They ain’t nothin’ you can do. Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do, look like. So no need to worry you with it.”

“Listen to me, Lillian,” I said, pulling out a chair for her at the table. “Anything that worries you, worries me. Whether I know what it is or not. So I might as well know about it. Now, you’ve been moping around here for I don’t know how long, and I thought it was because you were missing Little Lloyd.”

“Well, I was, an’ I still do. But you been doin’ some mopin’ yo’self ’bout the same thing.”

“I know it, but that’s not all that’s been bothering me, as you well know because I told you how concerned I am about Sam. Now I find out that missing Little Lloyd is not all that’s bothering you, either. Tell me, Lillian, and even if I can’t do anything to help, at least you’ll have somebody who can still think straight to talk to.”

“Might as well, I guess,” she said as she sank into a chair with a heaving sigh. Then she started up again. “Lemme get us some coffee.”

“Just as long as you’re not trying to put me off. I tell you, Lillian, I’m not going to give up until I get to the bottom of this.”

She didn’t reply because she knew I meant it and she might as well resign herself to it. She brought the coffeepot that we kept replenished throughout the day while I got down two cups and saucers.

When we were both settled at the table again, I said, “All right, let’s hear it.”

“Well, it’s like this, Miss Julia.” She stopped, added more sugar to her cup, and stirred her coffee a considerably longer time than it needed.

“I’m waiting.”

“Well, it’s that Mr. Clarence Gibbs,” she said, as if it hurt her to say his name. Then, in a rush, she got it all out. “An’ I know he a friend of yours, which is why I didn’t want to tell you, an’ I don’ want to say nothin’ ’gainst him, but he bringin’ down a peck of trouble on us.”

“Clarence Gibbs!” I cried. “He’s no friend of mine. Where in the world did you get that idea?”

“Well, I know he a member of the Presbyterium Church over there, an’ I know he had some proppity dealin’s with Mr. Springer ’fore he passed, so I figgered you still doin’ bus’ness with him.”

“You figured wrong, then,” I said. But I had to stop and study the matter. I declare, when you have a husband suddenly expire on you and leave you with a theretofore unknown number of acquisitions, both real and personal, it’s a wonder if you know who you’re doing business with. I’d have to talk with Little Lloyd about it, too. The child had taken a precocious interest in real estate recently, which I’d encouraged. The reason being that he would come into a goodly number of properties when he grew up, and even more when I passed on. Which I didn’t intend to do anytime soon.

“I’ll have to check some of Mr. Springer’s holdings,” I went on, “but I know I’ve had no personal contact with Clarence Gibbs. Oh, I see him at church occasionally, but just to nod to. He is a deacon, you know.”

“Yessum, I know. An’ he known ’round town, too. But, Miss Julia, that deacon fixin’ to put us out.” She leaned her head on her hand and covered her eyes.

I leaned closer, not fully understanding what she was telling me. “Put who out? And from where?”

“Our whole street, that’s who. He own all the houses on it, an’ now he say he need that proppity, an’ he not renewin’ any rents, an’ we all got to move.”

“You mean,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “he just all of a sudden told everybody they have to move without giving any reason whatsoever?”

“Well, he say the town council done voted us out ’cause them houses too far gone for anybody to be livin’ in ’em, which can’t be no news to any of us. An’ the sheriff, he say the same thing ’cause the Reverend Mr. Abernathy, he went down an’ talk to him for us. An’ the sheriff say he sorry but he got a ’viction order he got to carry out.”

“Well, I say,” I said, stunned that Clarence Gibbs had been able to get the town council to condemn those houses, and not a word in the newspaper about it that I’d seen. He was fairly tight with a couple of the councilmen, so he could pretty much push through anything he wanted. “How long have you lived there?”

“All us been livin’ there a long time,” she said, wiping her face with her hand. “Some of our people livin’ there ’fore even the courthouse got built, but they all dead now. An’ used to be all them houses was owned by whoever lived in ’em. But Mr. Gibbs, he always knowed when folks havin’ troubles, an’ he come ’round offerin’ to take them houses offa folkses’ hands. He handin’ out money to buy ’em, then he rent ’em back to whoever owned ’em.” She reached for a napkin to do a better job of drying her face. “So now he own ’em all, ’cept maybe one or two, an’ he want them, too. He say they all have to sell or they be settin’ in the middle of something they don’t like.”

“Like what?” I asked. “What’s he planning to do with that land?”

“We don’t know. Don’t nobody tell us nothin’ but get up and move.” Tears welled up in her eyes again and she covered them with the napkin. “Miss Julia, we got a graveyard back up there by that ridge. Nobody use it now, but they’s folks buried there a hundred years ago.”

“Well, he certainly can’t put anything on that spot,” I said. “There are laws protecting cemeteries.” At least I thought there were.

I couldn’t stand the thought of Lillian being taken advantage of, and the idea of the likes of stoop-shouldered, hooded-eyed Clarence Gibbs being the one to do it just tore me up.

“Seems to me,” I said, throwing out a few terms that I didn’t know the meaning of, “that you and your neighbors would have eminent domain or squatters’ rights or something. How can he just move everybody out, lock, stock and barrel?”

“I don’ know, but look like he can. That ’viction notice come a few weeks ago, an’ we s’posed to be out this week.”

“This week! Lillian! Why didn’t you tell me? I might’ve done
something,
at least I’d have tried to.”

She bowed her head, mumbling, “We was hopin’ Mr. Gibbs have a change of heart, but don’t look like it gonna happen.”

I frowned, trying to think what Clarence Gibbs might have in mind. With his reputation for slick business practices, there’d be money to be made somewhere.

“What about your leases?” I asked. “Surely, as permanent as that street is, you all have long-term leases.”

“No’m, it always been week to week. He send somebody ever’ Friday to pick up the rent money.”

I thought for a minute, picturing in my mind the street where Lillian lived. It was an unpaved offshoot of a road right outside the town limits, no more than a lane where a few grandchildren played hopscotch and jumped rope in the thick dust of summer. As I recalled, there was an empty field, what might have been a pasture at one time, where the lane ended in a dirt turn-around. The field ran some distance beyond the houses, ending in a wooded ridge that didn’t seem suitable for any kind of development to me. But then, developers see possibilities where most folks see cliffs and gullies and sheer mountainsides.

Willow Lane, I thought, and not a willow in sight. Large oak trees lined the street, their branches forming a shady canopy overhead. The small houses, no more than four or five on each side, were all alike: shotgun style with small banistered porches. They were made of weathered clap-boards, many of them listing to one side or the other on foundations of stacked rocks. I’d often driven Lillian home, so I knew the place well. Her house, at least from the outside, was well cared for. Flowers blooming in pots and cans on her front porch testified to that, as did the dirt yard that was kept raked in neat lines, reminding me of a Japanese garden I’d once seen. And, knowing her, it would be just as well-kept on the inside.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got. From the looks of those houses, Clarence Gibbs had not put a nickel into their upkeep, letting them deteriorate year after year. No wonder he was able to get the town council to condemn them.

“I just wish I knew why he suddenly needs that property,” I said, trying to figure out what scheme Clarence Gibbs had in mind.

“They no tellin’, Miss Julia, but we seen him walkin’ ’round up on that ridge back of us, goin’ in an’ out the trees. He bring some men one time with him, look like they measurin’ something.”

“Surveying, sounds like,” I said.

I thought about that for a minute, bringing my newly realized—as of Wesley Lloyd’s passing—business sense to bear. “It’s got to be something commercial,” I said. “Nothing else would be worth more than residential rentals.”

“I don’ know, Miss Julia,” she said, looking as unsettled as I’d ever seen her. “All I know’s we got to move, an’ the time comin’ up on us fast. But they’s nowhere to go, ’cept places that cost more’n anybody got the money to pay.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback at the reminder that not everybody could just write a check for whatever they wanted. Of course, I knew what Lillian had to live on because I knew what I paid her. I’d been proud of myself for raising her salary after Wesley Lloyd’s demise, and I’d given her bonuses and raises every year since. Yet when I mentally compared her income to my own, it didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Because of my late husband’s estate, I could do whatever I wanted, and I was often brought up short when I realized that that wasn’t the case for everybody.

Still, not everybody’d had to put up with Wesley Lloyd Springer and the shame he’d left me with, so I considered his estate a just compensation.

“Well, you certainly have a place to go. I want you to move in here, right up there in Coleman’s rooms which he no longer needs, and you can stay as long as you want.”

“That’s real nice of you, Miss Julia, an’ I thank you for it. But I don’t know what ever’body else’s gonna do, an’ you know I want my own place.”

“I understand that, but at least you have somewhere to come to until you find something. Oh, Lord, Lillian,” I said, overwhelmed with what she’d been holding inside. “I am just so sorry this is happening. But, now listen, all is not lost. There may still be some legal avenues to look into. Still, though, if you only have a day or two, we need to get you packed up and moved. Then we’ll see what can be done.”

She just shook her head. “I think it too late, Miss Julia. Coleman, he been comin’ by, an’ he all tore up ’cause the sheriff sent him to serve that notice.”

“My Lord,” I said, realizing that I’d been doing an awful lot of calling on the Deity lately. But I certainly needed to call on somebody, since no one had had the decency to let me know what was going on. “Well, what’s done is done. Now we have to think about your furniture and all your things.”

“Coleman been helpin’ me,” she said, wiping her face again with the napkin. “I been packin’ an’ tho’win’ out an’ givin’ away all kinds a stuff. Hardly nothin’ left but my bed an’ all them boxes.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “I tell you the truth, Miss Julia, it make me happy to move outta that ramshackle house if there be a decent place to go to.”