Chapter 31
Her mind firmly made up, LuAnne lost no time in gathering her things and getting them into her car during a brief respite in the downpours. Cautioning her to watch for fallen limbs as she drove up the mountain, I endured a hug, then stood on the porch waving good-bye.
“Well, Lillian,” I said as I went back to the kitchen, “I wonder how long that’ll last. I do wish her well, though. It’s no fun thinking that you’ve been betrayed for years all unbeknownst to you. And I know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes’m, I know you do. But you had it easier ’cause Mr. Springer already passed by the time you find out. Miz Conover, now, she got to keep on livin’ with it ’cause Mr. Conover keep on livin’.”
“Law, Lillian, don’t make a point of that. When she gets in one of her rages, she might try to remedy the situation.”
Lillian laughed. “No’m, she won’t do that.” Then she stopped, gave me a sidewise look as if she were testing the waters, and went on. “I tell you what she want me to do, though. Miz Conover, she come an’ tell me I oughta keep my eyes open. She think you got something bad wrong with you.”
Surprised, then stung, I said, “Why in the world would she say such a thing? Just what’s supposed to be wrong with me, I’d like to know.”
“Well, she say you jus’ been talkin’ up a storm ’bout nothing that nobody want to know. She say she can’t get a word in edgewise, no matter how hard she try.”
I stared at her, then laughed. “Exactly! It worked, Lillian; what you said I should do worked!”
Then the lights flickered and the room dimmed. Lillian whirled around and said, “What . . . ?”
“We’ve lost power,” I said, “but hold on. The generator will come on in a few seconds.”
But not before we heard footsteps on the stairs as Lloyd and Latisha came running down. “The power’s off, Miss Julia!” Lloyd called, as if I hadn’t noticed.
Latisha ran to her granny and hid her face in Lillian’s apron. “That big, ole storm’s comin’ here!”
Just then the generator started up, the lights came on, the ceiling fans whirred, and everything looked a great deal brighter.
“Well, Lillian,” I said, relieved that something worked the way it was supposed to, “I was going to tell you to go home early, but the way that wind’s blowing, there’ll be more outages. I think you and Latisha should stay the night here.”
“I think so, too,” Latisha said, back to her confident self again. “That ole house of ours sure do creak an’ carry on when the wind blows.”
“This one does, too, Latisha,” I said, “but I think we’re safe. I do wish, though, that Sam would come on home.”
“Oh, me!” Lillian cried, throwing up her hands. “I forget to tell you. Mr. Sam, he call and say to tell you he goin’ to look at some property with Mr. Burnside. He be home by suppertime.”
Len Burnside was a real estate broker and longtime friend who knew Sam’s propensity for buying far-flung land that nobody else wanted. Every once in a while, Sam got a bee in his bonnet about owning undeveloped tracts of land, usually those that involved long treks through brush and over hill and dale to get to. But if it had water on it, even a little creek, he would snap it up, telling me that land was valuable because they weren’t making any more of it.
“My word, that means he’s out in this storm!” I looked out the window and saw the same thing I’d seen the last time I’d looked. And Sam was out in it.
It was bad enough to worry about him caught somewhere in a thicket, but now I began thinking of Hazel Marie alone with those babies. Turning to Lloyd, I said, “Call your mother, honey, and see if they’ve lost power. I expect a tree is down somewhere, so it could be hours before power comes back on. Use your cell phone—it should be working—and tell her to come over here if she wants to.”
In a few minutes Lloyd came back into the kitchen, saying, “Mama’s still got power. Guess she’s on a different grid from us, but she said that all the stoplights and streetlights on Main Street are off.”
“That means,” I said, “they’ll get the power back on before we know it.” I jumped as something—a limb, a trash can, something—crashed against the house. Latisha screamed, and Lillian called on the Lord. Lloyd’s eyes got big, and my nerves were jumping all over the place.
“Quick,” I said, “Lloyd, let’s you and me and Latisha run through the house and draw the curtains—just in case a window gets broken.”
By the time we’d gathered back in the kitchen, which for some reason seemed the safest place, I’d had enough of the storm we couldn’t get away from. Vaguely worried about LuAnne getting up the mountain safely, and deeply worried about Sam out somewhere braving the elements, I put my mind to keeping the children calm and occupied with something other than the remnants of Marty that were raging outside. It’s a fact that when the weather is really bad, people tend to huddle together, lower their voices, and hope that if they don’t call attention to themselves, they can ride it out.
“I guess,” I said, “if we had the cards, we could play Old Maid. But we don’t, so somebody think of something else.”
“I know something we can do!” Latisha sprang up, her face bright with a sudden idea. “Let’s go get Lloyd’s mama an’ her glue gun. Then we can bring my shells downstairs and dump ’em out so we can find the best ones, ’cause Miss Hazel Marie said she’d show me how to decorate picture frames an’ mirrors an’ things. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Not really, I thought, picturing my kitchen table strewn with sandy, salt-water-leaking shells, but I said, “Let’s save that for another day, Latisha. It’s too risky to be driving in this weather.”
Lillian, looking skeptically at Latisha, said, “I don’t know as I want you usin’ no glue gun. No tellin’ what you get stuck to.”
“Well,” Latisha said, her hands on her hips, “I aim to make me some pretty things so I can sell ’em an’ make me some money.” Then almost under her breath, she said, “I might want me a scooter or something.”
“How about a puzzle?” Lloyd said, and dashed upstairs for one that he’d had since the fifth grade. He spread the pieces out on the kitchen table, and we all sat around putting together a picture of a sailing ship.
The back door suddenly swung open, scaring me half to death, as Sam, thoroughly drenched, came running in.
“Oh, thank goodness!” I said, going to him. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick. Oh, Sam, you are soaked!”
“I’m fine, honey. I’m fine,” he said, shrugging off the raincoat that had not repelled water. “Just picked a poor day to look at property. I tell you,” he went on, smiling, as I handed him a towel, “this was no time for man or beast to be out. But, beautiful land, Julia, as much of it as I could see. Lots of mist and fog, then we got caught in a downpour, but it has acres of hardwood, lots of rhododendron patches, and a fast-running stream. Well,” he ended with a laugh, “I guess any stream would be fast-running today.”
“Go put on some dry clothes, Sam,” I said, “before you catch your death. Take a warm shower, too. Did you have lunch?”
“No, but we had a big breakfast. We sat around the back table at the Bluebird until close to eleven, just talking. Then Len told me about this tract he wanted me to see, and off we went.” Then, ruefully, he added, “I’ll check the weather the next time we head for the hills.”
Preparing for bed later that evening, I went over in my mind the welfare of those I cared about. Although Marty had calmed down considerably in our area, there were still the occasional gusts of wind that rattled windows and made us all look up at each other. But Hazel Marie and her babies were safe and dry in her house, and every bed in my house was filled with Lloyd, Latisha, and Lillian. Well, and Sam and me, too, and all I could do was hope that the storm was doing no damage.
Deciding that no news was good news except in the case of Etta Mae, I tried not to picture her inside that single-wide trailer bouncing around in high winds like a tin can. In which case, she wouldn’t be in any condition to let us know, anyway.
So, hopefully, we all were reasonably safe and snug in dry beds and under strong roofs. I crawled into bed beside Sam and prepared to sleep the sleep of the just.
Just as I was on the verge of slipping over the edge, Sam turned onto his back and said, “Julia?”
“Hmm?”
“You asleep?”
My eyes opened. “Not now.”
He laughed. “I heard at breakfast this morning who Leonard’s involved with.”
That woke me up. “Who?”
“Somebody who works in the County Inspections office in the basement of the courthouse, who’s worked there for years, apparently, and Leonard’s job—whatever it was—would’ve taken him there every day or so. At least, that’s what they say.”
I sat straight up in bed. “Who is she?”
“Well, nobody was sure of her last name. She’s just known as Totsie.”
“Totsie!” I shrieked. “What kind of name is that?”
“Lie down, honey,” Sam said. “It’s a nickname, I guess, but Hank Childers said that’s what’s on her nameplate. He knows her fairly well—he’s a contractor, you know.”
“Oh, my word,” I said, collapsing back onto my pillow. “Leonard Conover and a woman named Totsie? What else did they say?” I said, sitting up again. “What does she look like? Some little flirty thing in short skirts and tight sweaters? Somebody who’d wear black underwear? That’s what a Totsie sounds like to me.”
“Just the opposite, they said.”
I absorbed that for a few seconds, then asked, “Are you going to buy that property you looked at today?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Good. You’ll have reason to go see about zoning and permits, and I want a full description when you do.”
He laughed and drew me back down. After a few minutes of silence, I said, “That breakfast group of yours really knows what’s going on in town. Which means that I don’t ever want to hear another word about how women gossip.”
We had a quiet laugh together, then I tried to sleep while visions of a woman named Totsie danced in my head.