Millard had once told me about a whole town that’d gotten itself eaten down to the nails by termites. He’d sat beside me on the courthouse steps right in the smack-dab of Red River, the two of us sucking on the little pink candies he liked handing out to the kids in town, and he told me his story.
“See,” he’d said. “It all started with just one little termite. It got itself into the house of the carpenter in a load of wood. It was full up of eggs, that one termite was. Fit to bust.”
Millard’d said that the carpenter carried that termite around all day without knowing it was even there. He’d gone to the baker’s and the butcher’s and the doctor’s. He’d gotten his hair cut at the barber’s and had even sprung for a clean shave while he was there. All the places he went, the termite dropped a handful of eggs.
“Other folks in town,” Millard had told me, “they had some of the same plans that day as that carpenter. And no matter where they went, they all ended up with one of them termite eggs. Good Lord, how those eggs made their way all over town. Got into all the houses even.”
Then one day, all the eggs hatched at once. Baby termites bit through the wood of the walls and the tables and the chairs.
“Before long, wasn’t nothin’ left for nobody to sit on,” he’d said. “Weren’t no place for nobody to live no more. All them termites ate it. And all just from one little critter.”
The gossip about the letter left on Opal’s door spread around Bliss quick as termite eggs in a carpenter’s toolbox. Problem was, nobody seemed able to tell the same account twice. It took on all kinds of different flavors, that story, fitting the taste of whoever happened to be telling it at the time.
All anybody knew for sure was that Lenny Miller had dropped Opal off at her door where she’d found that letter. They couldn’t even agree if Lenny’d walked her up the steps or if she’d read the letter before or after telling him good night.
The folks in town put together stories of their own imagining that best fit what it was they wanted to believe. Some spread the word that Opal and Lenny were having a love affair and that she’d been stepping out on him with somebody else and that was the reason for the letter. Others said she’d tricked Lenny, playing Potiphar’s wife to his Joseph. She’d slipped liquor into his soda pop and tried seducing him with her wiles. When he’d told her no she’d written the note herself, playing the victim to Daddy to get pity out of somebody at least.
Not a one of those stories made a lick of sense to me. But, I guessed it was something they had to do so they didn’t have to admit there was a mean-spirited person living among us.
Daddy hadn’t come home for the noontime meal, so I put together a sandwich of leftover ham from the icebox and a thermos of iced tea to take to him. Opal hadn’t come back to work for us after all. Much as Daddy told her otherwise, she was scared she’d make trouble for us if she was around.
Daddy said he could handle whatever trouble might come, but that he wouldn’t force her. Daddy was a gentleman.
Aunt Carrie kept us fed most of the days and I’d done my best to keep the dirt from taking over the house. Other than the laundry piling up and me breaking a couple glasses in the dishwater, I thought I’d done a pretty good job.
I walked down the main street of town, sandwich and thermos in my hands. Folks didn’t pay me any mind, which was fine by me. I wouldn’t have wanted to have to get at them for saying something sour about Opal. It sure would’ve been a shame if I’d had to drop that heavy thermos on somebody’s foot.
I found Daddy sitting behind his desk at the police station, Mayor Winston sitting across from him. He had his arms crossed, Daddy did, and a look on his face I knew to mean he was past annoyed. He had crossed over to plain old aggravated.
He saw me walk in, but didn’t give me a smile or tell me hello. I figured he meant for me to sit and wait, so I went to the bench, letting my feet hang an inch or so off the floor. I remembered how the long bench in the courthouse in Red River had just been an old church pew somebody’d put against the wall. But there in Bliss it was fancy with slats all along the back and curving, carved sides. It seemed it belonged in the library or the Wheelers’ house rather than in the police station.
“Listen, Jake,” Daddy said. “I do understand. But folks around here can’t think it’s all right to leave a threatening note on a girl’s door like that.”
“But we’ve got no proof, Tom,” Winston said. “We don’t know who did it. There’s more than a few people who think she wrote that note herself. Besides, there’s those earrings of Mrs. Miller’s that Opal had in her apartment.”
“Miss Moon worked for me nearly a year,” Daddy said. “I trust her with my kids. She’s never lied to me. Never stole from me. She said Lenny gave her those earrings and I’m inclined to believe her. If anybody stole them, it was that Miller boy.”
“I believe you. And I’ll back whatever you decide.” Winston shook his head. “I just don’t know how you’ll figure out who wrote that note.”
Daddy leaned forward and rested his elbow on the top of his desk, pinching at the bridge of his nose with thumb and finger.
“What happens if somebody makes good on the threat?” he asked. “Like they did with the Carsons?”
“We just have to pray that don’t happen.” Winston let out a deep sigh. “I don’t like it either, Tom, but it’s been simmering. Ever since the dances started. It surprises me it took this long to start boiling. We can’t be too careful.”
Daddy let his shoulders slump. He shook his head and let out breath it seemed he’d been holding for days.
“Well, if I see so much as one person look at Opal sideways, I’m going to have him in here for questioning,” Daddy said. “She’s a good girl, Jake. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“And I’ll be right here to be sure nobody tries to interfere.” Winston got up from his chair. “I’m just hoping hard that this fades away. Some things like this have a way of doing that.”
“Maybe for us,” Daddy said. “But I don’t know that Opal can walk down the street now without wondering if she’s safe. We might have a way of forgetting the kind of ugly that was in that letter, but folks like Opal have got to live with it every day.”
“Don’t seem fair, does it?”
“No, it does not.”
The mayor got to his feet and walked toward the door. When he saw me, he stopped and took my hand.
“Pearl, you are the ray of sunshine I needed today,” he said.
I couldn’t help but smile and maybe even blush just a little bit.
“Lord God Almighty, give me strength,” Daddy said just as soon as Winston left.
“You sound like Meemaw,” I told him, getting up from the bench and carrying the plate and thermos to him.
“Sure could use her right about now.” He looked at me and shook his head. “What would she say about all this mess, I wonder.”
I put his lunch in front of him on the desk and sat down where Mayor Winston had been. The seat was still warm from his behind and I thought that was a funny thing to notice.
“Thanks for bringing me lunch, darlin’,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I answered.
He took a bite of his sandwich and made a humming sound like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.
“Daddy?” I said.
“Hmm?”
“I’d say most do. It’s just some don’t know what to make of her, I guess.”
“But why?” I asked.
“It doesn’t make much sense to me either, darlin’.”
“I saw the earrings,” I told him. “The ones Lenny gave her.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think he was trying to get her in trouble?”
“Nah.” Daddy shook his head. “I don’t suspect he was thinking much of anything.”
“Can’t he tell somebody that Opal didn’t steal them?” I asked.
“He’s probably scared of getting in trouble,” Daddy answered.
“I wish they’d just believe Opal.”
He took another bite of sandwich and chewed it real good and took a sip of iced tea.
“Me too, darlin’,” Daddy said. “It’s just they’re more inclined to believe a white boy over a Negro girl.”
“But Opal’s only half,” I said.
“Not the way some of these folks see it.”
“Not the way Mama sees it, either,” I said.
Daddy nodded. “I know, Pearl.”
Sitting there across from Daddy I realized what it was Meemaw would’ve said. She’d have hummed her hm-hm-hm until she had my full attention. Then she’d have looked me right in the eyes, maybe even taking my hand to be sure I really listened to her.
“Man only looks at the outside,” she’d have started. “At the mussed-up hair and the wrinkly old face. All’s a man sees is a stained shirt or scuffed up shoes. But that ain’t what God sees. No, miss. God sees right into the heart. He’s got eyes that’ll see either kindness or hate. He don’t miss bitterness if it’s there, or love neither. He sees it all. The heavenly Lord sees all that’s in the heart, darlin’.”
If it was true, I knew God saw nothing but sweetness and beauty in Opal.
He saw her just the way He made her to be.