Each Shining Hour (28 page)

The Prom

O
n prom night, I arrived at Christine's house a little before seven. I had opted to forgo renting a tux and wore my dark dress suit. I waited in the entry hall, making small talk with her mother. As always, Madeline Chambers was a delight to speak with. But in time she asked to excuse herself and departed to the kitchen. After a few minutes, Christine made her appearance, descending the stairs and smiling luxuriously. To no surprise, she was stunning.

She was wearing a sleeveless black cocktail dress that fit seductively around her, accentuating her brimming curves. Her long legs moved in a fluid, sensuous motion with each downward step and her dark hair fell thickly around the soft lines of her face. There would be no mistaking her for a gushing teenager. She was a woman, fully bloomed: captivating, self-assured, beautiful.

“Wow. Can you just stand there and let me stare at you for an hour or so?”

“Oh, stop it.” She spoke in a low voice of reproach, but her animated smile betrayed her delight.

“I should have asked John if I could borrow the Mercedes. Seems a little shabby for you to show up in the Corolla.”

“It's no big deal, Luke. We're acting as chaperones to a high school prom, not walking the runway for a movie premiere.”

“Okay, I'm not being fair here. I actually have a little surprise for you.”

We stepped onto the porch in full view of the Austin-Healey.

“Oh, my gosh! It's gorgeous!”

“Chick finished it yesterday, just in time to take a pretty girl to the dance.”

“Wow, Luke. It is simply beautiful. A guy could sweep a girl off her feet with a car like this.”

“Well, that's certainly my plan.”

“Oh, hush. Let's go.”

I opened her door for her and she slid nimbly into the passenger seat. Then I quickly pulled the soft-top forward, latched it, and got in.

“You look a little too perfect,” I said. “I'm not sure the windblown look would improve on that.”

Christine smiled, adoring the interior of the old roadster. We headed out Shiloh Road, where the dance was being held in the high school gymnasium. Along the way, I couldn't seem to stop gazing over at her. This didn't go unnoticed.

“What?”

I chuckled. “You, that's what. You look unbelievable. I don't think I've seen you dressed to the nines like this.”

“Well, it's not every day a girl gets to relive a little prom magic.”

Just as Christine finished, my phone dinged a text message. She picked it up from the console between us.

“What's it say?” I asked.

“‘Great to see you again. Enjoy the dance tonight. Sounds like fun. Almost wish I were going. Ha!'”

“Oh, that's what's her name, the sales rep. She came by yesterday.”

“Michelle Herzenberg? How come Miss ‘what's her name' is in your phone?”

“Because I put her there. There are at least half a dozen sales reps in my phone. I put them in there so I know who's calling or texting me.”

“What's this earlier text message from her about dinner last night?”

“Hey, that's a little bit prying, isn't it?”

Christine playfully invoked her schoolteacher voice. “Answer the question, Bradford.”

I gave her a furrowed look. “Well, if you must know, the message is self-explanatory. She came by late yesterday afternoon and wanted to know if I could join her for dinner.”

“Humph. Dinner, my foot. She probably wanted to have you for dessert. Does this girl not have a life?”

I laughed. “You're killing me here, Chambers. Who cares? Right now I'm driving a fabulous car and sitting next to the most beautiful woman in the cosmos. That's all I want to think about.”

Christine looked down and smiled. “Okay, Bradford, pretty good comeback. I might dance with you after all.”

I reached over to hold her hand. She gently and immediately gloved hers around mine. The months had molded us together, blended us into a second nature of understanding where even the slightest nuance or gesture was grasped without words. Still, my cautious heart had kept me from expressing the depth of my feelings. I found myself at a loss to say the things that I suspected Christine would like to hear.

But my devotion had been unmistakable and I had resolved that my affection was simply understood. Furthermore, words were not the only means of expression. As we drove on in silence, the soft, surrendering touch of her hands pulled my imagination deeper into the possibilities of the night.

The gym had been fabulously decorated with banners, paper ribbons, and low lights. The basketball court had been transformed into a glittering dance floor packed with energy and magic. Walking in with Christine on my arm felt like being a rock star. I was spontaneously greeted by the engaging shouts of the riotous teenagers, who seemed well charged for any excuse for revelry. The air was filled with electricity, laughter, celebration.

We found Connie and Estelle behind the refreshment counter. Despite their service roles for the evening, they both were attired in dazzling cocktail dresses, clearly communicating that they were open to some festive spontaneity. A DJ was spinning records before the band came on and both sisters were lightly bouncing to the pounding beat.

“My, my, my,” I yelled above the noise. “Check out these two fine-looking ladies.”

Estelle playfully responded, “You're looking pretty fine yourself, Dr. B. Nice suit.” Showing much less restraint than her sister, she continued to rhythmically dip and shake her shoulders to the music, lifting her hands for added expression.

“I like that dress, Estelle.”

Estelle continued to step lightly and sway, speaking with an aloof, confident certainty. “You like what's in it, too.”

Christine put a hand over her mouth and we both choked back our laughter at Estelle's unabashed declaration. Connie rolled her eyes.

“Estelle, what can I say? You read my mind.”

She continued her preoccupation with the music, turning her head from side to side, and answered casually, “It's okay, sweetie. You go ahead and have a good time with Miss Christine there. But you come back and see me for a dance if you want to get a little sweet chocolate in your diet.”

Christine and I could barely control ourselves from bursting. The fun was just beginning.

The band was a group of locals called the Joint Chiefs, who apparently had known some modest success years ago. I recognized most of them, including the lead singer, Barry Satterfield. They started out by trying to play some recent hits but struggled with them. The kids seemed uninspired, which left the dance floor barely occupied. Many began to drift out the large double doors to the parking lot. Then the band huddled for a moment. Barry made a short announcement.

“Okay, everybody. We're going to try something a little different.”

With that, he cranked out the opening licks to “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. His pick hand hit the strings in a succession of crashing, blaring notes. It was an explosion of sound. Instantly the teenagers were leaving the bleachers and crowding the dance floor. They began pouring in from outside, almost running to catch an open space.

The next hours were filled with a long list of classic rock songs. The Joint Chiefs weren't just good; they were incredibly good. And the kids danced. They danced joyously, wondrously celebrating the moment, unhindered by any cares of the challenging and uncertain world beyond high school.

The grand moment of the evening occurred when all the teenagers lined up for the runway dance. While the music blared, each couple split into one of two rows that faced each other. This formed
a long, ten-foot-wide central runway that extended the length of the gym. The head couple would dance their way down while everyone slowly sidestepped toward the head of the line.

Couple by couple the teenagers took their turn. Some displayed incredible rhythm and skill; others, not so much. All were having the absolute time of their lives. Christine and I were one of the later couples to dance our way down the middle. We were met with a grand round of whoops and applause. Eventually even the principal, Carl Suggs, and his wife, Shirley, joined in and stiffly stepped their way down the line.

But the biggest explosion of cheers came last. It began as a wave of deafening sound that started at the far end and rippled in our direction. Under the shadows and flash of the strobing lights, at first I couldn't make out who was causing such an earthquake of shouts and whistles. Somewhere about half-court, the two shapes came clearly into view. It was Connie and Estelle.

The two plus-size sisters were moving in a fluid choreography that left me staring in slack-jawed wonder. With their faces locked in a fixed intensity, they were oblivious to the roar of the crowd. Each movement, each hand motion, each twist and dip, were in perfect sync. They were stepping and sliding in unison to the thunderous beat of the music. John Harris hadn't been kidding. Connie Thompson could dance. When the music stopped, she and Estelle went back to serving refreshments. I would never be able to look at them the same way again.

Long into the night Christine and I danced, but we were often pulled away from each other: she by single boys who had mustered up their courage or who were responding to a dare; me by odd pairs of girls who wanted me to join in some coordinated dance step.

For some time we caught only fleeting glimpses of each other
against the throb and roar of the music and the spinning lights. And yet, in the lost, dizzying moments, amidst the insanity of the shouts and laughter, something in the night's enchantment was drawing us to each other. The air swelled with a sense of liberation and the music pounded a reverberating message to stop and revel in the moment, that life was here and now, and that tomorrow was not guaranteed. Almost unknowingly we were being pulled into the contagious euphoria, the intoxicating spell of release and celebration. My desire for her burned within me.

The music continued, the magic grew, and we danced. And somewhere in the depth of the night, from across the room our eyes met for a willful, telling moment. All the sound and motion fell away. Christine was staring at me with a face full of sensuous promise. There, against the crush and noise, we shared an unmistakable knowing look, a spontaneous agreement, a mutual willingness to abandon ourselves to our deep attraction to each other.

It seemed the open doors were calling us to leave the roar and confusion of the dance behind and come out into the starlight. I went to her, took her by the hand, and led her out, away from the blare of the music and into the far shadows of the parking lot. We were alone, breathless, delirious.

I leaned against the car and pulled Christine close. She draped her arms around my neck and pressed the full length of her pliant and sensuous body in to me. No words passed between us. There were only our pounding and longing hearts. In that moment, the universe was ours.

Her skin was warm and fragrant and she breathed softly through moist and lightly parted lips. There was no clumsy awkwardness here, no confusion, no second-guessing our singular intent. There was only the two of us, pulled together under this starlit night, sharing an unvoiced, deep and tender desire. I pressed
my hand against the small of her back, molding us together. We kissed again and again. I could sense the subtle rise and fall of her chest as her breath shortened. She put her hand to my face, searched my eyes, and spoke in a low, sweet whisper filled with certainty and promise.

“Let's get away from here.”

Then the blare of my phone pierced the night. “Oh, hell!”

I wanted to ignore it, to throw the blasted thing into some black corner of the parking lot. But the doctor in me won out. I had to respond. I stepped away to answer it. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and from whom I was hearing it. It was a trauma, a medical emergency. I hung up and returned to Christine, speaking in a disgusted voice. “It's an emergency. I have to go. Not sure when I'll be back. Think you can possibly get a ride home?”

Christine spoke in a low, dejected voice. “Sure. I imagine Connie can take me.”

“I'll call you later.”

I hopped in the Austin-Healey and headed toward town to Estelle's bakery, where the caller, Randall Simmons, was expecting me.

Sins of the Fathers

R
andall's voice had sounded raspy and desperate. Clearly in agony, he had pleaded with me to come immediately, gasping between words to catch his breath. Then he begged me to please not tell a soul where he was and come by myself. I sped toward town, angry and bewildered. He was at the bakery, where he had no right to be. Something was grandly wrong.

Downtown Watervalley was asleep under the gray and silent shadows left by random streetlights. It seemed a ghostly, sterile world compared to the roar and passion of the one I had just left. I parked in front of the bakery, grabbed my emergency medical bag, and found the front door unlocked.

I called out firmly, “Hello.”

“Back here.” Randall's voice cracked with anguish.

Unable to find a light switch, I used my phone as a flashlight. I found him sitting on the tile floor of the kitchen. There was a significant pool of blood around his leg and his face was as white as a sheet. There was also blood on his hands and he was panting with rapid rises of his chest, struggling to catch his breath. He was
in near shock. As I approached him, he was tightly holding a large flashlight.

“Thank you. Thank you for coming, Dr. Bradford. I'm hurt and I think I've lost a lot of blood.”

A dozen questions ran through my head. Why was he here? What had he been doing? How had he hurt himself? In my anger I wanted immediate answers. But that would have to wait. “Randall, take some deep, slow breaths. Let me have your flashlight.”

A quick examination of his leg told the ugly story. A ragged shaft of wood approximately the size of a pencil had pierced the calf of his right leg. The amount of blood soaking his pants and the surrounding floor suggested it may have nicked or severed the posterior tibial artery. I could call the EMTs and have them drive Randall to the hospital in neighboring Gunther County, but that would involve an hour's delay. The wound wasn't necessarily life threatening, but it needed immediate attention.

“Randall, you're going to be all right, but I need to deal with this injury right now. Sit tight, I am going to turn on some lights.”

Using the flashlight, I moved toward the back door and almost stepped into a two-foot square hole in the floor. Beside it lay a piece of heavy plywood that no doubt had been used to cover it. The plywood had been pushed aside. The back light switches didn't work. I found the fuse box and was eventually able to turn on the kitchen lights.

Randall lay on the floor in a pitiful heap, far from the arrogant banker I had previously known. I had him turn on his side and away from the pool of blood. Using scissors from my medical kit, I cut away his pant leg. The wound was still oozing blood but not profusely. This was a good sign. As I grabbed what I needed from my medical bag, curiosity overtook me. Moving rapidly, I remained intently focused on the task at hand. I spoke sternly.

“How did this happen?”

“I accidentally stepped through the hole in the floor and my leg caught that piece of wood.”

I pursed my lips hard and nodded while drawing lidocaine into a hypodermic to numb the wound. My words were fueled by my aggravation. I instructed him in a low, cool voice. “Randall, here's what's going to happen. You're going to lie still until I say move. I'm going to stop the bleeding, remove the wood, and sew you up. Then you're going to tell me exactly what you were doing here in the middle of the night.”

He responded with frightened, quick bobs of his head. “Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bradford.”

I cleaned the wound with sterile laps and saline and injected the lidocaine. He winced at the sting of the syringe. The wood shaft was embedded only about a half inch below the back of his leg and ran parallel about three inches through the calf muscle before reemerging. It was too jagged to pull out. I would have to lacerate the leg to remove it. Fortunately, the bakery's hot water heater was functional. I scrubbed up as best I could, set up a sterile field, and went to work. Within half an hour, I had him sewn up. He would have an ugly scar, but he was lucky. I could detect no significant arterial, tendon, or nerve damage. At worst he would have some minor pain and a limp for a few days.

I wrapped his leg with gauze and told Randall he could turn over but to keep his leg extended. He did so and pushed himself across the floor, resting his back against a nearby wall. I stowed my things in my bag and found some rags. After scouring them in hot water, I wiped the blood from the floor. I did it for Estelle and Connie. A pool of blood was not something I wanted them to walk in and see.

Randall's head sagged to one side. He seemed a defeated man.
I grabbed a small chair and set it in front of him. Taking a seat, I spoke in a less-than-accommodating voice.

“All right, Randall. Talk.”

He glanced up at me, nodding in resignation. “What would you like to know?”

“Everything. I think the questions are pretty obvious.”

He exhaled, and spoke in a low, penitent voice. “I'm a ruined man. John Harris is going to have me fired next week. And I just thought if I could find them, find where they were stashed, I would be okay.”

“Find what?”

“The diamonds.”

“What makes you think there are diamonds here?”

“Because of what my dad told me.”

A tingling sensation fluttered up the back of my neck. “And what did he tell you?”

Randall held up his hand, a gesture to give him a moment. He closed his eyes for a second, seemingly to gather his strength. Then the words began to pour out of him, as if he was speaking a confession from which he had long desired to unburden himself.

“My father was not a good man. His people were poor and pretty backward, so he scraped by and got an education in finance because he loved money and he wanted to show all his dirt-poor relatives that he wasn't like them. When Oscar Fox came to town and started to spend a lot, my dad took notice. He said Oscar never seemed to have much on deposit but always had a lot of cash. He noticed that Oscar had a safety-deposit box at the bank that he visited often. The box was in Oscar's name, not his wife's. Dad was a vice president at that time, and one day, he did something he shouldn't have. After hours late one night, he got a key and looked
in Oscar's box. He found diamonds there, hundreds of them. Oscar made frequent trips to Nashville. Apparently, someone there bought them from him for cash.”

“So, your dad broke the law.”

“Yeah, he broke the law. Like I said, he was not a good man.”

“Go on.”

“The day the German arrived in town, Oscar came to the bank in a big hurry, carrying a metal container. He went to the vault, opened his safety-deposit box, and left soon afterward. Dad was convinced he took the diamonds and hid them here. He was also convinced that Elise Fox knew nothing about them. Years later, when he became bank president, he put a lot of pressure on Elise to sell the bakery. As soon as she did, he searched it thoroughly. He was the one who cut the holes in the walls and floors, thinking the diamonds were hidden there. But he never found them. Eventually, he gave up. But he was still convinced that there were diamonds somewhere.”

“Why wouldn't Oscar have hidden them at his house?”

“Because they checked there.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

“My dad had a couple of drinking buddies he was pretty tight with in those days. The sheriff, Crawford Lewis, and the town doctor, Haslem Hinson. Lewis called my dad the night of the murder. The three of them decided to make it look like Oscar Fox had killed the German in cold blood. They figured whoever the guy was, he had come to town for the diamonds. It was sort of a half-baked plan, but they thought if Oscar could be rumored to be tied up with some German spy, it would be a good cover to search for the diamonds. That night Hinson gave Elise Fox a sedative and kept her down at the clinic while the sheriff and my dad searched
the house. They found nothing. The diamonds had vanished. They thought for the longest time that the guy who lived by the lake had them.”

“Otto Miller, Sunflower's father?”

“Yeah. They gave him a pretty hard time of it. But ultimately, they were convinced he knew nothing. Hinson and Lewis eventually died. Neither of them had any children, so the story died with them.”

Randall paused for a moment, catching his breath. “You need to know something, Dr. Bradford. I didn't know any of this when I was growing up. My dad told me all of it a week before he died. He told me never to let the bank sell the bakery. I asked him why and that's when the whole story came out. That was fifteen years ago and I hated my dad when he told me. I wanted nothing to do with the bakery. But time does funny things to you. You forget the bad stuff about your parents; you gloss over them and construct a memory that's more workable, more acceptable. That's why I . . .” He paused for a moment. “That's why I didn't want to sell the bakery at the board meeting a few months ago, even though I hated my father for what he'd done. I couldn't shake his voice in my head telling me not to sell. Stupid, I guess. Now I've let his twisted business become my undoing as well.”

I absorbed all that Randall had told me. It seemed that the knowledge that John Harris had both the means and the determination to have him sacked had eaten at Randall like a cancer during the past months. This was a humbled and desperate man. So desperate that he had succumbed to the reckless idea of sneaking into the bakery and resuming the search his father had abandoned. Though he remained a pathetic figure, I still found it difficult to pity him.

Then another question occurred to me. “Tell me something else, Randall. What happened when Connie Thompson's mother
was fired from working here? Your dad have anything to do with that?”

A pained grin inched across his face and he spoke with mild sarcasm. “Among his other virtues, my dad was a racist. He was very low-key about it, but I knew it. My dad was one-eighth black and was always embarrassed about it.”

He paused, speaking reflectively. “You know, when you're young, you take everything your parents think and double it. I picked on Connie when I was a kid. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. I'm not going to sit here and lie and tell you I've ever really liked her. But I have a lot of respect for her. What John Harris said in the board meeting was true. Connie saved the bank, and the community along with it.”

There was a long silence between us. Randall looked up at me, speaking in a voice of defeat and resolve.

“So, Doctor, what happens now? I guess you're going to have to tell the sheriff and the Pillow sisters about all this.”

I thought for a minute. “I'm not telling anyone anything—at least, not yet. But you may have some things that need to be said.”

I explained to Randall what was on my mind. He agreed. I helped him to my car and drove him home.

Sometime after two o'clock in the morning I turned the key in my front door. Rhett greeted me with sleepy enthusiasm. I let him out into the backyard and stood under the stars while he took care of his business. Regrettably, it was far too late to call Christine. I wasn't sure what to tell her in any case. Randall's confession was not something I could speak about for the time being.

My head and my heart were spinning. Equal measures of wonder, bewilderment, and aching passion were vying for my attention, flooding my thoughts despite my exhaustion. I collapsed into bed, comforted only by the opiate of
sleep.