Rock of Ages Read online

  He frowns but says sure, tell me about Jenny McLaurin’s ring.

  She puts the little gun, no heavier than a small flashlight, in her purse, and feels changed by its weight.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  November 16

  Kenny’s pickup almost never touches asphalt, seldom leaves the clay road and dirt paths of the farm. Georgia suggested taking it, because it would arouse less suspicion than the Nissan he usually drives.

  “You’ve been watching too many Magnum reruns,” he told her before they left. “I mean, we’re just going to drive up there, right? We’re not trying to sneak up on anybody.”

  But he does indulge her.

  She’s instructed him to pull off the state highway, alongside the Campbell and Cool Spring railroad tracks. They are no more than a couple of hundred feet from the driveway to the late Jenny McLaurin’s home. The yard looks neglected, especially compared with Forsythia Crumpler’s next door. Georgia notices that no one has taken “The McLaurins” off the mailbox yet. There is no sign of Pooh’s big truck in the driveway, but it could be around back.

  “OK, now,” she says, and then stops.

  “OK, now,” Kenny repeats, as if to prime her.

  “He’s probably not even there, but we just park in the driveway and walk up to the front door, and, if he is there, we tell him we want to make peace, that we don’t want any trouble,” she says, looking to see if Kenny approves.

  A shrug.

  “Whatever. Maybe we’ll catch him in a rare moment of sanity. Maybe he’ll just shoot us. Kidding.”

  Georgia does have the little gun, though. She’s carrying it inside one of the pockets of her leather jacket, wrapped in a rag like Kenny told her, so it won’t show. She doesn’t even want to know what he’s carrying.

  She finally called William Blackwell yesterday. The conversation did not go as well as she had hoped.

  “Well, Georgia,” he said, “the boy was a little upset. He thinks you’re trying to get the house back somehow. He thinks you’re trying to get the law on him again.”

  “I don’t want to cause any trouble.” She realized that she sounded like the boys William Blackwell used to torment before he beat them up.

  William broke a long silence by telling her that maybe it would be a good idea if she came out and talked to Pooh herself.

  “I expect he’ll be there tomorrow morning,” he said. “He’s about moved in and all. It’s a real nice place, although Jenny did kind of let it go there towards the end. It was real good of her, though, to will it to us.”

  “She was a saint,” Georgia was proud of herself for stopping at those four syllables when so many others yearned to free themselves.

  She looked up the phone number, but no one answered, just Pooh’s ill-tempered voice on the recording, inquiring of all callers, “What the fuck do you want?” followed by a beep.

  Georgia didn’t leave a message. Instead, she talked Kenny into accompanying her to her cousin’s old house. She wanted to go at 9 in the morning.

  Kenny convinced her that 11 would be a better hour.

  “You’re not likely to wake him that late, and the bars won’t be open yet.”

  Now, as Kenny’s pickup rises over the single set of tracks and then dips into the yard itself, she feels her stomach sink along with the truck.

  She gets out and waits for Kenny, and they walk up to the front door together, neatly dressed like some couple trying to lure a sinner to their church.

  Kenny rings the doorbell three times, then knocks twice.

  He starts walking around the side of the house, headed for the back yard. Georgia scurries after him, staying close.

  No one answers the back door, either, and after a minute or so, Kenny shrugs and turns around.

  “Can we just take a look at the pond?” Georgia asks. “I haven’t even been here since the day she drowned.”

  “Don’t see why not. I didn’t see any no-trespassing signs.”

  “Actually, I think there is one, over there in the weeds, but Harold put it up. Can you be arrested for disobeying dead people’s trespassing signs?”

  Kenny laughs.

  “Come on.”

  A faded green rowboat sits upright and exposed to the elements on the raised bank, one of the few evidences, other than broad-based neglect, that someone of a different nature has taken over Jenny McLaurin’s home. The boat has water standing in it from the weekend’s rain. Kenny turns it over, as if he can’t bear to do otherwise, and lets the dirty water out.

  They walk along the edge of the pond and are halfway down the side nearest the house when Georgia sees something.

  She walks out through the weeds where Harold and Jenny used to raise tomatoes and beans. Just as Kenny is about to ask her what she’s doing, she reaches down into the vegetation and comes up holding a shoe.

  It is a sensible shoe, of the kind that would have been worn by an older country lady with bad feet and not enough money, flat-heeled and apparently of a dark blue color originally, although the elements have taken their toll.

  “A dog probably drug it up,” Kenny says. “It looks like it’s been there awhile.”

  Georgia doesn’t say anything at first. She doesn’t even know what drew her to the pond, other than a chance to see it one last time, unlikely as she is to be invited to brunch or cocktails by the present owner.

  She carries the shoe with her as they do a full lap around Harold McLaurin’s prized pond. In the distance, across the road and in the direction of Maxwell’s Millpond, she can hear a loon’s sleepy call, as languid as if it were a July day instead of the week before Thanksgiving. Georgia looks down into the brown water, seemingly too stained and debris-filled even for the catfish it allegedly still sustains. All she sees are two reflections—hers staring into the pond, Kenny looking into the distance as he jingles the change in his pocket. And the carpet knife, she’s thinking.

  It doesn’t hit her until they are almost back to the house.

  “Kenny,” she says, stopping and grabbing his arm, forcing him to make a whiplash stop, “when I went over to the funeral home, after Jenny drowned, I took over the burial clothes, and they gave me a bag with what she had on when they brought her to the undertaker’s. I thought it was such a crazy thing for them to do.”

  Kenny nods his head, waiting.

  “I never opened it, but I know this much: There was a shoe in there. One shoe. I guess she’d had it on when she went in the water, and I figured she just lost the other one when she was thrashing about, as much as I thought of it at all.”

  “There are a lot of shoes, Georgia.”

  “Well, maybe I have been watching too much television, but I swear that shoe looks just like this one.”

  “Well, even if it is, which it probably isn’t, she could have just, you know, kicked it off when she started to fall.”

  Georgia shakes her head.

  “It was at least 20 feet from the bank,” she says. “And how come if one shoe just flies off like it had wings, the other one stays on all the way to the bottom, like it was glued on?”

  “Well, it might not be a match at all. I’ll bet you could go to just about any old place like this and find all kinds of things in the weeds out back that didn’t look like they belonged there. It’s like those kids’ shoes you see thrown over the power lines for some damn reason. Or you’ll be driving down the road and there’ll be one just lying there in the middle of the highway.”

  “Well, I’m going to see.” And she puts the shoe into her jacket pocket, opposite the Ladysmith. The shoe doesn’t quite fit; its toe sticks out, pointing upward.

  “OK. You know best,” Kenny says, in a voice that suggests the opposite. “Come on, let’s go before the fat boy gets back. We’re just not destined to be graced with his company today. Maybe he’s actually gotten a job.”

  They are walking back to the truck when Georgia hears Forsythia Crumpler calling.

  She waits at her hedge, unwilling to trespa
ss.

  “I saw you all walking by the pond,” she says, nodding to Kenny. “Can’t help but keep an eye on that place, I suppose. Habit.”

  “We came to see Pooh,” Georgia says, “but he wasn’t at home.”

  “Come to make peace?” Forsythia offers a slight smile, then turns to Kenny.

  “Mr. Locklear,” she says, “I hope you’re taking care of this girl. That Pooh Blackwell scares me. I tell you, Georgia, I used to not lock my doors at night. I do now.”

  “Mrs. Crumpler,” Georgia says, “does this look like one of Jenny’s shoes?”

  The older woman takes the shoe, examines it from all angles.

  She shakes her head.

  “I don’t know. Lord, it looks like some she had, but I can’t say for sure.”

  Georgia thanks her, then thinks to ask if she’s all right.

  “I’m fine,” the old woman says, then hesitates before she speaks again. “I’m just sorry to have that boy living next door to me. He comes tearing in and out of here all hours of the night, and he’s got all kinds of no-account friends that like to visit him.”

  “You want me to talk to him?” Kenny says.

  She looks alarmed.

  “No. No, don’t do that. That’ll just make it worse. Let’s just wait and see how it works out.”

  They leave it at that. Georgia promises to check up on her, and promises herself that she will call her every day.

  Kenny drops Georgia in her driveway. Before he leaves, she walks around to his side of the truck and thanks him for his time and support.

  “Nothing to it,” he says. “You know, though, Mrs. Crumpler is right about watching out for yourself. I’m pretty sure I can take care of that fat tub of crap, if it comes to it, and I’d rather make peace than war, but you ought to be careful.”

  “Hey,” Georgia says, forcing a smile, “I’ve got my trusty friend here.” And she pats her pocket.

  “If you take it out,” he tells her, as he’s already told her twice, “use it, early and often. That’s important.”

  She holds up her right hand.

  “I promise. Scout’s honor.”

  He shakes his head and drives off.

  Justin and Leeza are there when she walks inside, along with another man she doesn’t immediately recognize. The darkness of his skin is accentuated by the white of the apron he’s wearing. He’s standing next to Leeza, who also is wearing one. Hers is yellow with blue flowers, once worn by Georgia’s mother and now appropriated by the girl who soon will give her a grandchild. Four generations involved, more or less, she thinks. Justin stands to one side. They all seem to have been laughing, and her expression sets them off again.

  “What?”

  Justin finally controls himself enough to tell her that Blue has come by to visit, and Leeza was trying to make biscuits the way Annabelle taught her, without much luck. And so now Blue is helping.

  Georgia shakes Blue Geddie’s hand. It has flour on it, as does his face and everything else the apron does not cover. Georgia thinks, despite herself, of Al Jolson in reverse.

  She hasn’t spoken to Blue in years.

  After her father’s death, when everyone knew about the will (she had rebuffed a local lawyer who tried to convince her Littlejohn McCain didn’t truly mean to give nearly half his farm to “those people”), she visited Blue and his mother a couple of times, but it was awkward.

  They seemed afraid that their good luck was only an illusion. They couldn’t make themselves believe that she meant them well, that she was not seeking, after all the nice words and genteel manners, to take back from them their godsend. She couldn’t have convinced them that she thought land she never wanted was just compensation for her son’s careless act and Blue’s shattered leg. They kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it didn’t, they always bid her goodbye with obvious relief.

  After that, Georgia thought it would be better to just let it lie and stop scaring Blue and Annabelle to death.

  She would see one or the other of them from time to time over the years, but it has been the better part of a decade since she has had a face-to-face conversation with Blue Geddie.

  He has grown into a handsome man, with a strong, full nose separating eyes and a mouth that obviously are accustomed to laughter. His flawless, unwrinkled skin is a rich mahogany seldom seen even one state north, in the Piedmont of Virginia. His head, shaved and darkly shining, shows off its perfect proportions. He and the red-haired sunburn-magnet Leeza, who can barely reach the counter, and actually has to turn a little to give her swollen belly room, are so different in color that Georgia wonders if they don’t represent the extremes that human pigment can attain.

  “Well, Blue,” Georgia says, raising her arms, “I’m sure you’re a better biscuit maker than I am. Your kids are probably better. The dog is probably better.”

  “Well, Miss Georgia,” he says, “my momma used to say I was so ugly, she figured I’d better learn how to cook, since no woman was likely to ever do it for me.”

  Georgia tells him he must have been the ugly duckling, then, turned into a swan, and when he gives her a polite but blank look, she says, “What I mean is, you’ve grown into a handsome man. And stop calling me ‘Miss Georgia.’ Just Georgia will do fine.”

  It’s impossible to tell, but she thinks he is blushing.

  Leeza does seem to be getting the hang of biscuits. After they’ve talked for a while, she produces a baking sheet full of them. They look and smell almost like some of the better ones Georgia remembers from her childhood. There is ham left from breakfast, along with molasses and syrup and butter, and the four of them make a lunch that, while lacking in variety, is as good as any Georgia can remember in some time.

  Blue’s visit, it develops over the course of their impromptu meal, is more than just a social one.

  “One of the guys I worked with in the Peace Corps, his family runs a big distributorship up in Manhattan,” Justin tells her. “They buy fresh fruit and vegetables all over the Southeast and haul it up there, the same day. He used to tell me about it all the time when we were in Guatemala. They were always looking for the best way to get some of the great stuff they grow down here up there.

  “They just have to have reliable sources for everything, stuff ready to go when the truck gets here. I’ve been talking to him, and he’s going to come down and check it out. Selling produce to rich New Yorkers will beat the hell out of selling berries to people a bucket at a time.”

  “Although,” Blue says, “we’ll still do that, too.”

  Justin nods.

  Georgia wants to ask her son, just shy of a master’s degree, what in the world he thinks he’s doing, how he could consider such a boneheaded move, how he could think about embracing the very thing she went to college to escape, how he could so blithely embrace downward mobility, and what exactly in the hell does he knows about farming.

  She is becoming adept at holding her tongue.

  “Part of it,” Justin says, “is we’ve got to get Kenny on board.”

  Kenny’s land turns out the sweetest cantaloupes and watermelons, a big mover, Justin tells her, for the city people up North. Georgia remembers that people did brag on her father’s melons when she was a girl. She never developed a taste for them herself.

  And the McCain farm has always produced more than its share of greens—collards, mustard, kale, and turnips—well into the winter.

  “If we can get all of this tied together,” he adds, “we can have something to send up there just about all year.”

  “What does Kenny say about this?” Georgia asks them.

  “He’s studying it,” Blue says, in a tone that might have some disapproval in it.

  “Why hasn’t anybody mentioned this to me before?”

  “Well,” Justin says, when the other two look to him, “I guess we figured you’d just clear a space on the floor and have a shit fit. We wanted to have a good plan before we told you about it. We’ve still got to figu
re out who gets what, assuming we make anything.”

  “But I’m not having a shit fit,” Georgia says, forcing a smile. “I’m calm. I’m not judgmental. I’m not asking you if you’ve lost your mind. Excuse me.”

  She gets up and walks out, leaving silence and then low talking behind her.

  The shoe is still sticking out of her jacket. She walks to the back room where she put the plastic bag containing Jenny’s possessions.

  She takes the other one out. She puts them both together, under the brightest lamp in the room.

  They are both beyond repair, but as Georgia looks at them as closely as she can, she comes to the conclusion that fills her with dread and, she must admit, excitement.

  She calls the sheriff’s office. This time, Wade Hairr is in, although she waits five minutes for him to come to the phone.

  “Sure, Georgia,” he tells her. “Come on by. What is it you want to show me?”

  “I’d rather just show it to you, Wade.”

  “This doesn’t happen to have anything to do with Jenny McLaurin’s death, does it?”

  “Well … Yes, it does. But this is important. I know you think I’m fixated or something, but I think you’re going to want to see this.”

  He sounds like a man seeking to let someone know he’s trying to be tolerant and not quite succeeding.

  “OK, then. When?”

  “How about now?”

  A short silence.

  “I reckon that’d be OK.”

  She thanks him and hangs up, then puts both shoes in the same bag, emptying Jenny’s other possessions on the bed.

  The heft of her jacket as she removes it reminds her of the gun.

  She takes it out and puts it in the top drawer of Jenny’s dresser, holding it with the same care and trepidation she might have afforded a nonpoisonous snake.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  November 19

  This has ceased being funny.

  I am tired of seeing things other people aren’t seeing, and pretending I don’t see them.

  My old classmate the sheriff was concerned enough, I suppose, considering he thought he was dealing with a lunatic.