Southern Discomfort (7 page)

Lu stood at the head of the table. Beside her were BeeBee Powell and her two children, who'd been working hard all morning, too. On the other side was a sweaty white girl in green cotton running shorts, a pink T-shirt, and an even pinker nose. She didn't look a day older than Annie Sue and her friends.

"For those who haven't met her yet," said Lu, "I'd like to introduce the Reverend Veronica Norton. Ronnie?"

The young woman wiped her hands on the seat of her shorts, then opened a Bible, and with an impish grin, read the last three verses of the book of Proverbs. It's from the passage that begins "Who can find a virtuous woman?"—the one most preachers will read at an elderly matron's funeral when he doesn't really know the least little thing about her except that she'd been somebody's wife and mother. This was the first time I'd heard it read with a spin.

"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."
In the Reverend Norton's voice, the final words sounded down-right subversive:
"Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates."

I wasn't the only woman who turned and looked proudfully at the house rising behind us, strong and clean, soon to shelter the young mother who stood among us with her two children.

Lu next called on an elderly black deaconess who gave thanks for the food, both spiritually and temporally, and we fell to. My paper plate was soon loaded with chicken, butterbeans, two thick meaty slices of vine-ripened tomatoes, and a dollop of zucchini casserole, and I carried it over to a stack of plywood shaded from the midday sun by a huge elm tree that was actually growing in the next yard over. Somebody's black-and-white hound was lying in the cool dirt beside the lumber. He looked up at me with a hopeful air and I gave him a bit of crisp chicken skin. Annie Sue, Cindy and a third girl soon joined us, sitting cross-legged on the broad sheets of plywood like day campers on a boat pier.

"Y'all know my Aunt Deb'rah, don't you?" Annie Sue asked.

Cindy McGee I had already recognized. The other, a strawberry blonde who'd been with her Thursday night, looked familiar but I couldn't put a name to her and said so.

"That's because you couldn't come to our spring concert," said Annie Sue. "She and Cindy and me made up a trio, but you had a fund-raiser or something that night."

"I'm Paige Byrd," the girl said shyly. "I think we probably met at my father's funeral."

"Oh. Right," I said, feeling like a clod. "Sorry."

I vaguely knew that Annie Sue and Cindy had begun running around with Judge Byrd's daughter when they made the senior high school chorus last fall. And I must have seen her at his wake—even though I disliked Perry Byrd personally, I'd still gone to pay my respects to the family—but she had never fully registered.

"That's because she was a total
mess
," Annie Sue told me later. "Fat and frumpy. She's lost at least ten pounds since the funeral and Cindy and me, we made her cut her hair and get a rinse and start wearing bright colors. Can you believe it? Everything in her closet practically was beige. She just flat-out disappeared into the woodwork before."

Now that I knew who she was, I could see the likeness to her father. Perry Byrd had been a redhead with broad flat cheekbones and wide brow, and his daughter had inherited both his bone structure and his coloring. She seemed to have escaped his prejudices though, if helping to build a house for a needy single black woman meant anything.

She wiped her fingers on her napkins and held out her hand like a well-mannered old lady. "I'm pleased to meet you again, Judge Knott," she said awkwardly. "I've been wanting to ever since Annie Sue told me you were going to be appointed."

"Why, thank you, Paige. I guess it must be hard for you and your family to see someone else in his place, but—"

"No," she said firmly, as if this were something she and Annie Sue had already discussed. "I was really glad when I heard it was you going to get his seat. I think there ought to be more women on the bench."

"Hear, Hear!" said Cindy, tapping her hammer on plywood to underline her enthusiasm.

Paige turned beet red and there was a moment of self-conscious silence before Cindy, who was the prettiest of the three and who seemed to be the leader, leaned over and bossily took a buttered biscuit out of Paige's hand.

"You want to put back every pound?" she said sternly, handing the biscuit to the hound, who didn't really need it either, but was willing to oblige. "If you're going to get in that new bathing suit—"

"Doesn't matter whether I can or can't," said Paige. "My mother doesn't want me to go with y'all."

"What?"

Annie Sue stirred uneasily. "My dad won't let me either."

Cindy sat back, looking scornful. "And y'all are just gonna let them tell you what you can do every minute?"

"Easy for you," said Annie Sue. "Now that your dad's gone, you can talk your mother into anything."

That seemed like a callous remark to me, what with Ralph McGee not in his grave a month and Perry Byrd barely a week earlier, but only Paige seemed to notice.

"I could probably talk her into it later," she said quietly.

"Just not now. She thinks it wouldn't look right this soon after."

"Where are y'all wanting to go?" I asked.

"My cousin and her new husband have a condo down at Emerald Isle," said Cindy, "and he's got to go to Chicago on business so she's invited us to come stay with her next week. Just four females. It's not like Jet's going to have men over or anything and her new-married."

"Jet Johnson's your cousin?" I asked.

"Jet Ingram now," Cindy said. "Actually, second cousin. Our grandmothers are sisters. Anyhow, she's settled down a lot these last two years and I don't know why Mr. Herman won't trust her to chaperon."

Annie Sue just shrugged, but I could have told Cindy why my straitlaced brother objected. And for once I agreed with him. Jet Johnson's more my age than Cindy's. She grew up in our part of the woods over in Cotton Grove and she didn't get her nickname at the tender age of thirteen just because she had dark eyes and coal black hair. She broke the Colleton County sound barrier, and drugs and sex were only the tip of her wildness. There'd been rumors of dealing and known acts of violence.

True, I'd heard nothing in the last year or so. And maybe I was turning into an old fogy right before my own eyes. All the same, I didn't like hearing that one of Annie Sue's best friends was that closely related, and I was glad old stick-in-the-mud Herman had put his foot down on any beach trip Jet Johnson might be a part of.

"I think he's just being mean," Cindy persisted. "Why don't—"

Paige abruptly nudged her foot and smiled over my shoulder. "Hey, Miss Nadine."

I turned and there was my sister-in-law bearing a box of homemade cookies.

"Ah, here you all are!" said Nadine. "Who wants a fudge delight?"

"Rough carpentry includes the layout, cutting, and erection of formwork members and of such wooden structural members as plates, joists, studs, girders, bridging, bracing, and rafters... sheathing and subflooring members are also included under rough carpentry."

The trusses to support the peaked roof were built of two-by-fours and looked like big wooden triangles with W-shaped stiff knees between rafter and joist. They spanned the full width of the house from one exterior wall to the other and they looked heavier than they were. Or maybe that was because many hands really do make light work. I was afraid we'd need sky hooks to hoist those cumber-some things up to the women perched like acrobats on those flimsy-looking skeletal walls. Up they went, though, and once they were nailed in place, the whole structure suddenly became rigid and sturdy. A steady stream of half-inch plywood sheets followed; and as soon as the bottom courses were secured, several of us swarmed onto the roof to tack down black tar paper.

"Now let it rain!" we told one another.

As we knocked off in the late afternoon, BeeBee Powell stood under the waterproof roof with a blissed-out smile on her face.

"Starting to look like a real house, isn't it?" I said.

"Starting to look like home," she answered softly.

Her children were darting in and out between the open studs. "Which is my room, Mama?" they called. "Which is mine?"

Annie Sue approached with the wiring diagram in one hand and a carpenter's pencil in the other. "We don't have to put everything exactly where it is on this, BeeBee. Did you think about where you'd like counter sockets in the kitchen? And what'd you decide about that ceiling light in Kaneesha's room?"

As they went off together to mark off on wall studs and ceiling joists where each socket and light fixture should go, I grabbed a basket and started picking up scraps to carry out to the dumpster.

Most of the women had gone, scattered for the week with promises to come back or send friends in their places next weekend. Still there were Annie Sue's friends who were straightening lumber in the back and Lu Bingham and Betty Ann Edgerton, who sat on the edge of the small front porch and conferred about delivery schedules for next Saturday's supplies. They were hoping to set the doors and windows and get the exterior sheathing on so that the whole house would be dried in, ready for insulation and Sheetrock.

I had emptied two basketfuls of trash when Betty Ann called, "Come and sit a minute."

"I'm afraid my muscles will seize up if I stop moving," I said, but I didn't need to be asked twice.

Out in the side yard, Cindy McGee and Paige Byrd had stepped into a water fight with the Powell kids. Squeals of laughter erupted every time the hose changed hands.

"Where do they get the energy?" Betty Ann groaned as she pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her nail apron and lit up.

"Probably comes with being sixteen," I said.

"Were we ever sixteen?" Lu took out her own cigarettes and offered me one.

I shook my head.

"We
were
sixteen," Lu said. "Because that's when you and I both started smoking. I remember sneaking out of study hall with you to the girls' bathroom. When did you quit?"

"When I was eighteen," I reminded her. "When my mother was dying with cancer."

It was part of yet another secret bargain I had tried to strike with God that summer:
Just let her live and I swear I'll never put another cigarette to my lips.

God wasn't bargaining that day either.

"Oh, Lordy, that's right," said Betty Ann as Lu's hand hesitated on her lighter. "Will it bother you if we smoke?"

"No," I said honestly.

In truth, I had always loved the smell of mellow tobacco and still missed cigarettes after all these years. Yet even if it did bother me, it would be hypocritical to say so, since part of my income is from the tobacco allotment I inherited from Mother. Besides, some of my sweetest memories had the smell of her cigarettes and Daddy's twining through them.

The sun headed down the western sky behind the tall pines but there was plenty of daylight left. I rested my tired back against a wall stud and waited for Annie Sue to finish up and carry me home. She and her two friends had talked about meeting some guys at a dance over at the Armory, but Aunt Zell and Uncle Ashe's Jacuzzi was the only entertainment I wanted tonight.

Marking on the studs as she talked, Annie Sue and BeeBee came down the newly defined hall into what would be the living room. "—and then over by the front door, we'll have a switch plate for the porch light and that lamp outlet, okay?"

BeeBee nodded. "Sounds fine to me." She grinned at the three of us flaked out on her new porch. "Y'all look plumb worn out."

Before we could retort, her son came around the corner of the house lugging the hose with such mischievous intent that she drew herself up sternly. "Boy, you better think again 'fore you point that thing at me."

Gurgling with laughter, he didn't hesitate and before we could dive for cover, all five of us were swept with a spray of cold water.

"Anthony Carl Powell, I'm gonna wear your bottom out!" his mother threatened as she leaped from the porch.

The child dropped the hose and fled, confident that she wasn't really angry, that the chase would end in a tumbled heap on the long grass under the trees.

Lu and Betty Ann looked at their soggy cigarettes ruefully.

"Time I was getting home anyhow," said Betty Ann and went off to her truck.

"Me, too," said Lu as she headed toward her own car. "You'll be back next Saturday, Deborah?"

"Sure," said Annie Sue. "She's going to help me pull wire, right?"

I sighed. "Right."

"Maybe we could even get started one evening next week?"

"Maybe," I said noncommittally.

Lu laughed and called goodbye to BeeBee, who was toweling her children off with her son's wet T-shirt so they wouldn't get mud on the seat of her car.

"Y'all aren't leaving now?" BeeBee asked.

"My dad's coming by to check that I've got everything marked out right," Annie Sue told her. "I thought he'd be here by now."

"Probably making sure everybody's gone first," I said.

"See you next week then," said BeeBee as she finished buckling little Kaneesha into the backseat. Anthony Carl was buckled up, ready to roll, and both children waved to Paige and Cindy till the car pulled out of sight.

The two girls were drenched to the skin. Their hair hung in wet strands and their thin cotton shirts were plastered to their young bodies, outlining breasts and nipples.

At that moment, a bright red Jeep without its rag top screeched to a halt and a virile young white man pulled himself up by the roll bar. Sunlight glinted off his mirror shades.

"Well, well, well!" A salacious leer spread itself across his handsome face. "Did someone forget to tell me about the wet T-shirt contest?"

He stepped down from the Jeep, hitched up his low-slung jeans and strolled across the grass. "Hell-
lo
, little ladies! I'm your friendly neighborhood building inspector and I'd be happy to inspect your framing any old time you say."

The girls laughed at his burlesque of crude seducer. I just sat where I was and watched. Motionless on the floor behind the others, my baseball cap perched on one drawn-up knee, I could have been another teenager for all he noticed. He still hadn't pulled his eyes off those wet shirts; but I knew his face and now I remembered his name: C-for-Carver Bannerman, my cousin Reid's lead-foot, the man I'd fined a hundred dollars for grossly speeding in a residential zone and for failure to yield to an ambulance.

"Don't tell me you gals know how to hammer a stud into place?"

He marched right on up to them in that space-invading tactic men like him use, knowing most women will step back. Annie Sue and Paige did. Cindy stood her ground, dimples flashing, her green eyes daring him to further flights of outrageousness. Her back was against a porch support and he reached past her to brace himself, his chest less than six inches from hers. With his free hand, he pulled off his sunglasses and stared straight down into her pretty face.

It seemed a good time to pull the plug on this nonsense. I stuck my cap back on my head and leaned forward. "Good evening, Mr. Bannerman."

"Just wait your turn, dollface," he drawled. "I'll get to—" He hesitated, seeing me now, almost remembering my voice, but unable to think how he knew me.

Paige and Annie Sue were smiling as broadly as Cindy, who slipped out from under his arm and said, "This is Ms. Deborah Knott.
Judge
Deborah Knott."

"Oh, shit!" He downshifted from the cliché of walking penis to the cliché of boyish penitence, which he'd tried to use on me in court Tuesday. "Stepped into it again, didn't I?"

"You do seem prone to it," I agreed.

The smile stayed on his lips, but the eyes went hard before he slipped those concealing glasses on again. A young man who liked to jab, not be jabbed. He kept his cool though. Continued to tease the girls, albeit with considerably less lechery than he'd used initially. They seemed not to notice and laughed when he asked what part I'd worked on "so I can judge the Judge."

They followed him through the house, chattering and giggling. I stayed where I was. Lu had led me to expect a lot of sarcasm and nitpicking, and I didn't want to hear it; but when they returned, Bannerman's only criticism was that two-by-two ledger strips ought to be nailed on the ceiling joists, a valid oversight and something easily corrected.

He dated and signed his okay on the building permit's framing line and hopped back in his red Jeep.

"How old would you say he is?" I heard Cindy ask as Carver Bannerman roared away.

At least twenty-one," said Paige.

"Twenty-two easy," Annie Sue guessed.

"Well I don't care," said Cindy. "If he's there tonight, I'm dancing with him."

They stirred restlessly.

"I guess Cindy and I'll go on," said Paige. "Want us to come by for you, Annie Sue?"

"Okay." She looked at her watch for the third time in ten minutes. After six and still no Herman. "Give me a call when you're ready to come, in case something comes up.

No sooner had they, too, driven away than a teenage black girl walked into the yard. She was the young clerk who'd come up earlier from the convenience store. From the way the two girls greeted each other, I realized they must be classmates at Dobbs Senior High. "Your mother just called, Annie Sue. Said for me to tell you your daddy's not feeling good and he's not coming."

"Thanks, Patsy," Annie Sue said. "Give you a lift back to the store?"

"No, thanks. I'm through for the day. And it's Saturday night, girl!"

As I feared, I was stiffer than a two-by-two as I rousted myself up off the porch and climbed into the truck.

Annie Sue was almost as lively as she'd been at seven that morning. "He was kind of cute, wasn't he, Deb'rah?"

I shrugged.

"You didn't take all that stuff he said serious, did you? He was just playing."

"Half-joke, no fooling," the preacher said starchily.

"Forgotten what it's like to be sixteen?" asked the pragmatist.

Trouble was, I remembered only too well. Still... "Yeah, he was cute," I said. "Too bad he's too old for you guys."

"He asked for our phone numbers."

"Oh?"

She looked so poised and mature, her hands relaxed and in control of the truck's steering wheel. "Cindy gave them to him."

"You wouldn't go out with him, would you?"

"He probably won't ask me." She sighed wistfully and suddenly looked fourteen. "Anyhow, Dad would kill me!"