Chapter 30

Monday came, and by midmorning Lloyd had called to say that he was back from school with his almost perfect report card. So Sam stowed his one small suitcase in the trunk of his car, kissed me good-bye, and drove off to pick up Lloyd and Mr. Pickens. They had a long road ahead of them to the bottom of Mississippi, which would’ve been worse if they’d gone in Mr. Pickens’s cramped sports car as he’d first suggested. Both Lloyd and Sam vetoed that in favor of Sam’s roomier Lincoln.

They’d also discussed flying to Biloxi, but that would’ve involved changing planes in Atlanta, and there wasn’t an easy connection. “Besides,” Mr. Pickens had said, “I like road trips, and with two good drivers, we’ll be fine.”

I stood on the front porch after Sam had driven off to pick up the other two, and waited. Sure enough, in a little while his car nosed onto Polk Street, slowed as it neared the house, while all three of them, grinning, waved until they were out of sight.

It’s close to heart wrenching when people you love go off from home. You’re happy for them, but you also fear for them. I wished the week were over already and that they were driving in rather than out.

Sighing, I went inside, determined to stay so busy during the days with Mattie’s affairs and so entertained in the evenings with Etta Mae’s company that the week would fly by. She had accepted with enthusiasm my invitation to spend a week in Lloyd’s room along with all meals included.

“It’ll be like a vacation,” she’d said. “I haven’t had a real vacation since I don’t know when, and this will be like room and board in a fancy hotel. I’d love to, Miss Julia.”

Recalling that conversation, I got as far as the living room and sat down to process all that had happened between packing for Sam on Saturday and seeing him off on Monday. Sunday had been close to a lost day, as Sam had wavered about leaving at all. Concerned that the entire church, it seemed, was now expecting me to come to the rescue, he felt he should stay home to fend them off. I had insisted that he go—the fishing trip had been planned for months—telling him that I would unplug the phones, refuse to answer the door, and stay out of sight for the duration.

“Let them clamor, Sam,” I’d told him. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

It had happened like this: we’d gone to church as we usually did on Sunday morning and had just settled in our pew, preparing to focus on Pastor Ledbetter’s sermon. The congregation waited in respectful silence for him to begin. But just as he clasped the pulpit and opened his mouth, a far-off clanking sound issued from the bowels of the church, followed by a low groan that filled the sanctuary.

We all sat up, looked around, then to the pastor for guidance. What in the world was it? Then a woman—it might’ve been LuAnne—on the far side of the church stood up and screamed, “Smoke! The church is on fire!”

And sure enough, a wisp of smoke emanated from the vent high up on the wall beside the apse. There was a great stirring of the congregation as people got up to leave, while the pastor called for calm and orderliness. We Presbyterians do like things done decently and in order, you know.

“Slow down, people, it’s all right!” Pastor Ledbetter shouted. “Don’t panic. No fire, no fire! It’s just the air-conditioning.” The explanation didn’t help, for his lapel microphone amplified his voice to an unbearable decibel level, making the scramble to get outside even more frantic.

Sam kept his hands on my shoulders as we joined the surge for the doors, but by that time the smoke had dissipated and the groaning and clanking had died away.

Well, of course that hadn’t been the end of it, although it had ended the service. We’d barely gotten home when two trucks from Nichol’s Heating and Air-Conditioning pulled into the parking lot of the church. Thank goodness for workmen who answer emergency calls on the weekends.

Sam and I had sat on the front porch after a light lunch and watched the goings and comings across the street. Pastor Ledbetter, sweating in the sun, followed the men from truck to church and back again over and over. One truck left, apparently to retrieve some parts for the unit, and a group of deacons gathered under the porte cochere, probably to discuss what was to be done and how to pay for it.

“Think I should take some sandwiches over?” I asked, but made no move to do so.

Sam smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t bother. They ought to go on home and let the repairmen do their job.”

“My thought exactly,” I said, and continued to sit, lazily waving a fan in the heat. “Sam, let’s go in the house. There’s no need to swelter out here just because they are. Our air-conditioning is working.”

“Good idea,” he said, rising from his rocking chair.

We spent the afternoon reading the Sunday papers and occasionally checking on the activity at the church through the front windows. Finally, around five o’clock the repairmen left, and so did the pastor and the deacons. I hoped that was a sign that all was well.

It wasn’t. About five-thirty, the phone started ringing and it didn’t stop until we turned it off and went to bed. The pastor was first in line, with every one of the twelve deacons taking his turn to appeal to my loyalty to the church.

“We need air-conditioning, Miss Julia,” the pastor had said. “The old unit can’t be repaired. We can’t even limp by on it, and there’re too many windows to be opening and closing them every day and every night, and, besides, most of them are painted shut. I just don’t know what we’ll do if you’re unwilling to distribute Miss Mattie’s assets in a timely manner.”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling,” I said, trying to patiently explain my position. “It’s that I’m unable to distribute what doesn’t exist.” And I went on to recount the many snags that were holding up Mattie’s assets—mainly that she had so few.

“But surely,” he pled, “she has a little something somewhere. You could perhaps manage a partial payment of the bequest she made to the church. Just so we can get a new unit and keep the church cool. You know, Miss Julia, that some of our elderly members and small children will truly suffer in the heat.”

“Pastor, all I can tell you is that I will check with Mattie’s attorney to see if I can legally do that. But I’ll tell you right now that I don’t think I can. In fact, Mr. Sitton has said that most wills take six months or more to be probated.”

“Six months! Why, that’ll be the dead of winter, and we won’t need air-conditioning.”

By that time, I had had enough. It wasn’t my fault, or Mattie’s, that the deacons hadn’t planned for expected expenditures or for obsolescent air-conditioning units. Taking care of the church property was their job, after all. Besides, not every church had to be air-conditioned—Lillian’s, for instance, wasn’t. They had overhead fans and handheld ones, too. Spoiled, that’s what we were.

Fed up, I said, “My advice, Pastor, is for the church to go into debt and keep the congregation cool. I know you don’t want to do it, and I appreciate that, but my hands are tied. Besides,” I went on, “you can have a campaign to raise funds to pay for it, and I’ll be the first to contribute.”

He was not happy with me. One of the things that I could admire about him was that he was disinclined to incur debt—unlike another minister I knew who had once gone into a frenzy of bank-financed church construction, then answered a call to another church before the roof was on.

I had barely gotten off the phone with the pastor when one of the deacons called. And after that, one after the other was either pleading with or nagging at me, as if a hot church were entirely my fault.

To whom, I wondered, would they have turned if Mattie hadn’t died?

_______

“Come sit with me,” I said as I walked into the kitchen after Lillian had called me to lunch. I had been mentally picturing Sam’s Lincoln going farther and farther down the mountain, and I needed a distraction. “I have got to think of something besides those three on the road dodging crazy drivers, while I’m here trying to dodge overheated deacons. Tell me about the Reverend Abernathy. He was having some kind of problem, wasn’t he?”

“Yes’m, he sure was and still is.” Lillian hung a washcloth over the faucet and came over to the table with my plate. “See, Mr. Robert Mobley, he died, like I tole you. An’ ever’body was happy for Miss Bessie, ’cause he treat her so bad. We all figgered she was set for life in that little house he have an’ doin’ jus’ for herself without wonderin’ what he gonna do next. Well . . .”

“Knock, knock, yoo-hoo, Julia!” Mildred rapped on the back door.

“Why, Miz Allen!” Lillian greeted her as she opened the door. “Come in, come in. You lookin’ mighty fine for a lady right outta the hospital.”

“I’m feeling fine, too. So fine that I’m thinking of taking a walk. Julia,” she said, turning to me, “if you’ve finished lunch, let’s walk a while.”

“Wonderful!” I jumped up, anxious to strike while the iron was hot or before she changed her mind. “But come in for a minute. I want to show you something.”

I hurried to retrieve Mattie’s scribble from my pocketbook, as Mildred sank into a chair at the kitchen table, saying, “Whew, I’m out of breath from walking across the yard.”

“Look at this,” I said, handing the scrap of paper to her. “I found it in Mattie’s safe-deposit box, but I can’t make head nor tails out of it. And neither can Sam or Lillian.”

Mildred frowned as she studied the numbers and figures. “Well, I’ve seen some of Mattie’s writing, and it looks kind of wobbly like this does, Julia,” she said, as she carefully placed the scrap on the table and pushed it away. “You ought to get rid of it. It may be a spell of some kind, like if you wanted to put a hex on somebody.”

A pan clattered in the sink, as Lillian spun around. “What you say?”

“Oh, no,” I said, laughing. “Our Miss Mattie? Surely not. Mrs. Allen’s just teasing, Lillian.”

“Mattie had her ways,” Mildred said, but she was laughing. “And she was strange, you have to admit.”

“You won’t believe how strange. I’ll tell you as we walk.” I opened the door and urged her up and out. “And, Lillian,” I said, turning back, “Christians don’t have to worry about hexes. We’ll talk when I get back. This won’t take long.”

And it didn’t. Mildred’s idea of a walk was a leisurely stroll to the far end of the block and back again.

“That should do it for the first time,” she said as we returned to her driveway. “I forgot the pedometer, but how many steps do you think that was? I lost count when you were telling me about finding a flask in Mattie’s pocketbook.”

I was tempted to say about fifty, but was afraid of discouraging her. “I wasn’t counting, but I think we should aim to go all the way around the block the next time.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Mildred said, blotting her face with a Kleenex. “It’s awfully hot to be outside that long.”

“We don’t need to push it, but maybe walking later in the day would be better. We got a good start today, though, and I’m proud of you, Mildred. Every step you take and every calorie you turn down pushes that operation further away.”

“That’s why I’m doing it, but, boy, am I tired!”