11

Pace wondered if Dalceda had ever told Marietta or Lula about Louis Delahoussaye’s pedophiliac dalliances with and subsequent posthumous legacy to Perfume James, or if Dalceda had kept it a secret. If anything, she most likely would have shared this information with his grandmother. Marietta and Dalceda remained the closest of friends throughout their lives, just as his mother and Beany had. Dalceda undoubtedly needed to confide in someone, to unburden herself so as not to be eaten up by the worm in her brain that a terrible secret becomes.

The fantasy of his being able to have an intimate relationship with Perfume James persisted in Pace’s mind. It was impossible, of course, and not only because he was close to being a half-century older than the pastor. There was her nightmarish past to consider, and now her religious calling. The idea was absurd, but much to his bewilderment Pace continued to agonize over it. He had become spellbound by this extraordinary woman, and he was in dire need of having the spell broken.

Pace stayed away from Bug Town. His links to both Gagool Angola and Perfume James were at best tenuous and pragmatically unrealistic. It was several days after his last visit to Perfume’s church before Pace was able to resume working on his book. It was while he was writing one afternoon in the cottage when he heard the thunder of Bee Sting’s Mercury Monarch disturb the silence. Leaving the motor running, the big man got out and stood in the driveway, holding an antique double-triggered 20 gauge Hinton shotgun with its twenty-seven inch Damascus barrels pointed directly at Pace’s front door.

Pace looked out the window and froze, unsure of what to do. He waited and Bee Sting waited. After what seemed an eternity to Pace but was probably no more than two minutes, the big man put up the gun, spat on the ground, got back into his car and rumbled away. Pace sat at his desk, stunned. He was truly amazed that without any bad intentions on his part, his life could suddenly spin so dangerously and bizarrely out of control. Whenever he thought he was inching closer to the center of things, there appeared an intruder to deter or prevent him from moving any further. Perhaps the point was not to move but to remove himself.

“I’m surely in the way now, Daddy,” Pace said aloud, “aren’t I?”