Miss Julia to the Rescue (37 page)

Or who knew? Maybe it was both of them—each coming from a different direction to snare him into whatever strange rituals and ceremonies that were going on out at that Fairfields estate. And I couldn’t leave out the influence of that little pierced architect who’d taken it on himself to lecture me about Adam’s spiritual welfare.

And I’ll tell you the truth, I’d had enough lectures from Wesley Lloyd Springer, the deceased husband I’d lived with for forty-some-odd years, to last me a lifetime. Every time I thought of Tucker Caldwell’s nerve in berating me for standing in the way of Adam’s so-called spiritual growth, my blood pressure shot up a mile.

But Sheriff McAfee continued to hold forth, telling in detail about the confiscation of pounds and pounds of moldering tobacco.

And I’d thought he was the tall, silent type—he certainly hadn’t had much to say in Mill Run, West Virginia. But maybe it was Etta Mae’s admiring face turned up toward him that kept him going on. Or the eager questions from Lloyd and Josh. Or Mr. Pickens’s leading comments that kept our guest talking.

Not wanting to draw the sheriff’s attention to a certain escape from hospital custody, I’d mostly kept quiet, hoping that Etta Mae had put that little escapade in perspective for him. Still, there was a matter for which I felt he needed to be held accountable.

So in a lull of the conversation, I ventured to ask, “You like fried chicken, Sheriff?”

“Do I ever!” he said. “And this is about the best I ever had. You folks know how to make real southern fried chicken.”

“Etta Mae and I had some in Mill Run that was quite good, at least while we were eating it. It didn’t sit so well later on.”

“Bet you had it at Bud’s. Sometimes he uses his grease too long.”

I put down my fork at the thought. “No, actually we had it at your church. Dinner on the grounds, you know.”

“Well, I don’t …”

Etta Mae jumped in. “Oh, I think we got the directions wrong, Miss Julia. We were at the wrong place, I’m pretty sure of it.”

Uh-huh,
I thought, pretty sure but not completely so. But I didn’t pursue the matter because talk of religion, along with politics, were not suitable topics for a dinner table discussion. Such controversial subjects can upset one’s digestion, you know, and mine was already upset enough by seeing what was going on across the table.

Little Miss McAfee quickly lifted her hand as Lillian, with Lloyd helping her, circled the table, removing our plates and beginning to serve dessert. Adam kept his eyes down, refusing to even glance to the side. Josh, however, was as avid a listener to the sheriff as Lloyd and as hearty an eater as Mr. Pickens.

“Well, I tell you,” Ardis said, pushing his dessert plate away when he’d finished the pound cake and ice cream, “that was as good a meal as I ever had.” He went on to thank Hazel Marie, who glowed under his compliments, and to praise Lillian to the skies. Then he tilted his chair back and proceeded to entertain us—feeling, perhaps, that as a guest, he was beholden for the meal he’d been served.

Lloyd got him started again by asking, “Have you always been a sheriff, Sheriff?”

“No, son, I was with the Charleston Po-lice for a few years, then decided I’d had enough of city life. So I moved to Mill Run, where the fishin’s good, and got on with the Sheriff’s Department as an investigator. Then when the old sheriff retired, I ran for the office, got voted in and been there ever since. But I tell you, boy, it was a wonder anybody ever voted for me, ’cause I got known as a joker. Couldn’t help myself, ’cause if you can’t laugh, you don’t last long in law enforcement.

“I’ll give you a for instance. Not long after I was hired on as a deputy, I got a call to an area on the outskirts of town about a big ole horse that was galloping loose up and down the road. This was in the middle of the night. Well, by the time I got there, a man in a pickup had stopped and caught it—and it was a big ’un, lemme tell you, some seventeen or so hands high, like one of them Budweiser horses you see at Christmas. And lying underneath it was this woman—looked like a witch with her hair stringing out everywhere—and she was too inebriated to crawl out from under. Come to find out, it was her horse. She’d been trying to get it home, but it had stepped on her foot, so she was laying there cryin’ and carryin’ on, with that horse still high steppin’ around her. Well, I got the EMS guys out there and they dragged her out and got her to the hospital. Then a neighbor offered to keep the horse in his lot till somebody could come for it. And that was the end of it, until I got back in the squad car to let the sergeant know I was leaving the scene. When he asked how I’d handled it, I couldn’t help myself. I told him, I said, ‘Well, I got the woman taken care of, but I had to do something with the horse ’cause, you know, Sergeant, I couldn’t just leave it runnin’ loose. I had to do something. And with all that activity, it had gotten kinda skittish and was about to step on the reins that were trailin’ on the ground. It took me the longest to grab the bridle, but I finally got it and led the horse over to my squad car, meanin’ to bring it in to you. So I tied it to the rear bumper, and everything went real fine till I got up to about sixty…’ ”

We all burst out laughing, and even Adam, as miserable as he was looking, managed to laugh.

“That reminds me,” Mr. Pickens said, “of the time I was on the Charlotte-Meckleinburg force, working the third watch. It’d been a fairly quiet night, but cold, man, it was cold. So there I was coming out of a residential area, about to go up a ramp to I-77, when I saw a scraggly little kitten right on the curb. I stopped and picked it up, thinking I’d give it to one of the family guys when the watch was over. I swung back around and stopped at a McDonald’s and got it some milk and a hamburger.”

“I didn’t know kittens ate hamburgers!” Lloyd said, laughing.

“This one did—it was about half starved. I told ’em to hold the ketchup and pickle, and I didn’t give it much, afraid it’d get sick in the car. Anyway, after it ate, I let it wander around in the car and pretty soon it found a warm place under the passenger seat and, I guess, just went to sleep. Then I got busy and, to tell the truth, I pretty much forgot about it until I picked up a drunk who was walking along the interstate, weaving on and off the traffic lane. He was smelly and filthy, and, man, he was out of it. He kept mumbling about “ale-yuns,” which I finally figured out meant
aliens,
who were pinching and scratching him and hovering around with blue lights flashing all over the place.” Mr. Pickens stopped and laughed. “That was the light rack on my car, I guess. Anyway, I put him in the cage and headed for the city jail with him talkin’ and mumblin’, not knowing who or where he was. I wasn’t paying much attention to him—he’d given me no trouble—and I was just cruisin’ along,
when all of a sudden he let out this blood-curdling yell that nearly gave me a heart attack. ‘Git ’em off me!’ he yelled. ‘Help, po-lice, the ale-yuns is on me!’ Well, I swung off the road, hopped out of the car and flung open the back door, thinking he was going crazy on me. And all it was was that little kitten had come flyin’ up out of nowhere and landed in his lap. It had clawed its way up his chest and was licking his face and beard, looking for more food.”

While we laughed, Mr. Pickens began his awkward rise from the table, carefully standing upright as he suggested we move to the living room. Hazel Marie and Etta Mae took the sleeping babies to their cribs, and Lloyd and I cleared the table, taking dishes into the kitchen. Lillian then shooed us out, saying that she could clean up better by herself.

When I got to the living room, I saw Josh talking with Ardis and Mr. Pickens, asking them about going to the police academy. Adam was fidgeting in a chair by the door, more than ready, it seemed to me, to leave. Little Miss McAfee had moved a chair next to his and was whispering to him. She was sitting demurely with her ankles crossed, and my eyes almost crossed when I saw that she had more tattoos on her feet and ankles. If the ones on her arms were called full sleeves, then I supposed she also had full socks.

I’d about had enough of tattoos and piercings and enticements designed to lure an unsuspecting young man into who knew what kind of freakish behavior—all in the name of a spiritual quest of some sort. Don’t you just hate it when you’ve already said no, and people won’t leave you alone?

Adam suddenly jumped to his feet. “We got to go, Josh. It’s late, and we thank you for supper, but we got to go.”

Mr. Pickens managed to rise again, shook Adam’s hand and thanked him for his help. “If you and Josh can repair the roof, I’d sure like to see you out here bright and early tomorrow.”

“Yessir, be glad to. Let’s go, Josh.”

As Josh disengaged himself from his intense conversation with Ardis, Lillian walked into the room. “Somebody’s telephone ringin’ its head off in a raincoat back there.”

Nellie McAfee hopped up. “Must be mine. Don’t leave yet, Adam, I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Pickens walked Adam and Josh out into the hall, discussing what would be needed to repair the roof. Adam seemed intent on getting out the door before Nellie returned, but he didn’t quite make it. She came running back, calling to him.

“That was Agnes,” she said, almost gasping. Addressing Adam and ignoring everybody else, she went on, “There’s a power line down at her place and she’s been calling everywhere, looking for you. She wants you tonight, right away, because she’s been without power for hours and the generator won’t start. You have to go, Adam, she really needs you.” Then turning to the sheriff as she slipped into her raincoat, she said, “No need for you to drive all the way out there, Uncle Ardis. I’ll ride with Adam.”

There was nothing Adam could do but agree to go to the Whitman place and take Nellie with him. It wasn’t in him to refuse help to someone in need, although I wondered how dire the need actually was and also wondered why Agnes didn’t have enough help already. There had been at least two decorated, yet able-bodied, young men at the garden party. Was this sudden after-hours need of help designed to entangle Adam even further?

While good-byes were being said, Adam walked out onto the porch and I followed. It was hardly late, for a dusky light lingered across the wet grass of the lawn and steam from the street blended with the evening mist.

“Adam,” I said, lowering my voice, “you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Just because somebody calls doesn’t mean you have to answer.”

He gave me a bleak look, then shook his head. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”

“I’m not so sure about that, but what you have to do is put on the whole armor of God and call me if you need me.”

I didn’t know what I could do if he did call, but I could certainly try something. He was wrestling, it seemed to me, with spiritual wickedness in high places and he was no match for it.
Why he couldn’t just turn her down, I didn’t know or understand, unless he had such a strong work ethic that he couldn’t refuse to get an ox out of a ditch, regardless of who the ox belonged to. I just didn’t think Agnes Whitman needed help, or if she did, why she couldn’t find it closer to hand.

I stood on the porch and watched the three of them walk out to the driveway. Adam spoke to Josh, while Nellie waited impatiently beside Adam’s pickup. Then Josh got in his truck and left, apparently having been sent on home. Adam and Nellie got in his truck and turned in the opposite direction toward Fairfields.

I hoped she’d keep her hands to herself while he was driving.

“What was that?” Mr. Pickens was standing next to me, watching his guests leave.

I realized that I had murmured my concern aloud. “Oh, nothing. Just wondering if Miss McAfee is quite the demure little thing that she appears to be.”

“Nope,” he said with a wry grin. “Tattoos make a statement, and anybody with that many is making a loud one.”

“I don’t understand why anyone would want them,” I said, noticing that we were the only ones still on the porch.

He shrugged as if he didn’t know, either. “Lot of people have them—one or two, maybe. I’ve got one on my arm.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, got it when I was runnin’ wild and didn’t know any better. But these days, even a lot of women wear ink, kinda as beauty marks, I guess, like flowers or hearts or something. Nothing like Miss McAfee’s, though.”

“Well, in my opinion, hers aren’t beauty marks,” I said. “I understand that she’s involved with some kind of religious group that encourages subduing the flesh in order to strengthen the spirit.”

“Huh,” he said. Then turning to go back inside, he said, “From the way that girl looks, her spirit must be pretty strong by now.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” I followed him toward the door, then touched his arm. “Mr. Pickens, if Adam doesn’t show up in the morning to fix your roof, give me a call.”

He gave me a quick grin as he opened the screen door, motioning me inside. “Think she’ll keep him overnight?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I said as I walked in past him. “Or Agnes Whitman, either.”

Soon afterward, I made my excuses and left early so I could get home before full dark. Mr. Pickens and the sheriff had settled in to swapping cop stories, as they called them, so Lloyd decided to stay on to hear them, which meant he’d stay the night.