Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement (6 page)

What a hick! A living teenage country legend.

4-H Club President. Won ribbons at the State Fair every October for pigs, for God’s sake. Dwight wasn’t cool. I pretended to be shocked when Angela told me after I returned from Peace Corps training that she and Dwight were getting married. I wasn’t. Dwight had been in love with her for years, and finally she had the good sense to realize it. The only

thing she asked of him was that they live in town. Never a fool, he bought a house in the city limits and commuted every day twenty minutes to his farm.

“What are you going to do?” I ask, beginning to feel awkward.

“This isn’t your problem,” Angela apologizes, pouring coffee into two chipped mugs.

“It’s just that I’ve been dealing with the bank again this week. They keep telling me to rent out my land.

Dwight’s brother wants to buy me out and carry the mortgage, but I know he can’t pay me.”

I am taken aback by how much she is revealing to me, but I shouldn’t be. For some reason we trusted each other from the moment we met.

That first night on her front steps she had confided how upset she had been when she had learned her father was moving to Arkansas, of all places. Obviously, I had talked about the marvels of Catholicism. I stand up to take the cup she hands me. Her hand is shaking. Family businesses.

They’re messes, whatever the nationality.

“What is Cecil like?” I ask, retrieving somehow the name of Dwight’s brother. Odd what is in the memory bank. Cecil was two years younger, and since those kids worked all the time on the farm, I just barely knew him.

“You’re not obligated to sell to him.”

Angela makes a face before sipping at her own coffee. I should know better, her expression says.

“Of course I am,” she says, her voice slightly bitter as she sits down at the table across from me.

“He’s my husband’s brother. What is Cecil like? He’s like every younger brother. If Dwight had planted beans instead of cotton, if they had bought more land instead of renting … the last two years as things were going from bad to worse it got pretty tense between them.

His wife, Nancy—you may not remember her since she was a lot younger—has been good to me and the boys, but it’s been a strain on everybody.”

I require some milk for my coffee, and, not wanting to make her get up again, I walk over to her ancient GE and open it. Damn. The top shelves are as bare as my own. Three cartons of Dannon fat-free plain yogurt, a quart of Carnation Coffee-mate Lite creamer, a quart of Minute Maid orange juice and four cans of diet Coke. No wonder she’s thin: she hasn’t eaten solid food since high school. I flavor my brew, and wonder why I like instant better than the real thing. A character defect, undoubtedly. I like cheap bourbon better than the expensive stuff. It tastes better with Coke. Angela looks up at me and forces another smile.

“How’s Sarah?”

I nod, glad to talk about a more pleasant subject.

My daughter has been the only thing between me and the nut house most of the time for the last seven years. I sit down again, making the oak chair squeak under my weight. Twenty years ago she must have had nice furniture in this room. Today, it could stand some glue.

“She’s great. First semester she became a raging feminist and quit junior varsity cheer leading because the costumes exploited women. I think she’s calming down a little, but next year it’ll be something else. She’s very passionate, like her mother was.”

Angela pushes back a lock of hair from her forehead.

“Do you still miss Rosa?”

I take off my jacket and hang it on the back of the chair to give myself time to think.

“Not consciously so much anymore,” I say candidly.

“But she was so alive that there’s a big hole I’ve had to realize can’t be filled. You really learn the hard way that people are unique and can’t be replaced.

She wasn’t perfect, but she was good in a way I’m not. She cared about others past the point of just wanting to be liked herself. Do you know what I mean? You would have been friends.”

Angela studies me carefully and strokes the left side of her face.

“Do you have a picture of Sarah?”

From my right hip pocket I tug out my wallet, which as usual is too full of laundry slips, business cards, and ancient notes to myself to make a smooth exit.

“This is Sarah last year,” I say handing her the wallet.

“She looks just like her mother when I met her in Colombia.”

Angela examines the photograph and winks at me.

“God, Gideon, no wonder you married Rosa.

She’s just stunning! I bet she has all the boys going crazy.”

She doesn’t know the half of it.

“Let’s see your boys,” I say, taking my wallet back. To be so serious, Angela could be a real flirt. Though it was the first time for both of us, sex was, I seem to recall, her idea. I thought I was going to hell.

Still, I can’t say I needed much encouragement.

“Sure,” she says, getting up.

“I’ve got my favorite picture of them in the bedroom.”

I watch her glide from the kitchen and wonder if she has begun to miss

sex. Maybe she isn’t missing it. Somehow, though? I don’t think Angela is much of a date these days. She seems too emotional. Still, I can’t deny that I’m interested in her.

When she returns, she hands me a framed picture.

“They look just like my dad. This is Brad on the left and Curt on the right.”

I study the photo and am reminded of her father’s square jaw. He was a bear of a man, and I was scared to death of him. If he had known what his daughter was doing in my mother’s ‘58 Fairlane all those summers, he would have killed me.

A widower himself, he died from a massive heart attack, my mother wrote me in Colombia, while Angela and Dwight were on their honeymoon.

“This is terrible to say, but when I heard he had died, I was a little relieved. I was scared shitless of him,” I admit.

“Even in South America I was afraid he would find out what we did those summers and come get me.”

“I remember how you used to worry,” Angela laughs, as she sits down across from me.

“Either God or Dad was going to get you. It was just a matter of time.”

There is a twinkle in her eye. I feel good, thinking this conversation must be providing some relief for her. Women allow themselves to grieve,

and it is obvious to me that Dwight’s death has affected her greatly. Still, she will have to make a living. She wrote in December that she had kept the books for the farm, but she had never worked in town. Who would hire a woman almost fifty with no skills? There were no jobs anyway.

“It’s not too late for God,” I say, pretending to look out the window.

“Are you still religious?” she asks, getting up again to warm up the soup which is in a pot on the kitchen counter.

“I’m more spiritual than formally religious, but Dwight went to the First Baptist Church every Sunday and Wednesday night until the month before he died. It didn’t seem to accomplish much.”

I watch as she takes two bowls from the cupboard above it and ladles soup into them. Angela seems to be swinging back and forth between bitterness and nostalgia. I know the feeling. Death is the ultimate thief.

“Rosa’s death cured me once and for all. I probably was looking for an excuse to give it up, and breast cancer was a real good one.”

As Angela places one of the bowls into the microwave above her, she says brightly, “You must not have heard our big news. Paul Taylor was charged yesterday with murdering Tommy Ting’s father. It’s the most incredible story you can imagine. Paul was supposed to have hired a worker in his meat-packing plant to cut his throat. It’s ridiculous!”

Angela’s face has become red with indignation.

I say, “I’m representing the plant worker.”

“You are?” she says, surprise giving way to enthusiasm.

“That’s wonderful. You can help Dick get this case dismissed against Paul.”

How strange! I realize now that I had unconsciously thought that I would get pressure from whites not to take Bledsoe’s case.

“How do you know Paul’s not guilty?” I ask.

“That summer we began going out, you regularly called the Taylors exhibit A of a bankrupt way of life.”

A faraway look steals over Angela’s face as she rearranges her mostly unused silverware on the mat.

“I doubt if they were any worse than anybody else.”

“They were, too!” I yelp, and tell her the story of Paul’s buying at a tax sale my mother’s eighty acres left to her by her father. I had lost contact with her during those years, and she probably never heard what had happened.

Angela had always liked my mother, and she murmurs sympathetically, “That was terrible, Gideon. Paul can be ruthless. I know that.”

“Ruthless, hell!” I exclaim, thoroughly worked up now.

“He threatened to kill that old man a month before he died,” I say and relate to her what I have learned at the prosecutor’s office.

Angela will keep anything secret I ask her.

Angela holds her face in her hands while I talk and responds when I am finished, “Surely he wouldn’t have someone murdered. Why would he do such a thing?”

“Greed!” I practically shout at her.

“They’ve always been like that. You know they have.

They’re so damn rich they just have to have more and more.”

Angela shakes her head.

“Not as rich now. Like a lot of people, Oscar and Paul overextended in the eighties and lost quite a bit of their land. It’s been really tough over here.”

“Well, that explains his motive then,” I say, understanding now why he was desperate enough to hire someone to kill to get his hands on the plant. God, I wish I had been around to see their faces when they realized what was happening to them. I still my right foot, which has been tapping the linoleum, and cross my legs.

Where is this acid surge of venom pumping from? It is as if a volcano has been waiting to erupt, and now that it has started, it won’t stop.

I’m not sure I want it to. After all these years, it feels good.

Angela looks worried instead of indignant as I thought she would be.

Maturity has made her cautious.

“Gideon, you need to be careful about what you’re getting into. Paul is still very powerful here. Taylor Realty probably still holds half the mortgages on the square even though they’re not worth much because the economy’s so depressed.”

I am pleased by the concern in her voice. I think I like this older version better. She was so sure of herself as a teenager it used to bug me.

“Tell me what he’s been up to,” I say, dredging up a spoonful of corn, green beans, onion, and beef from the bottom of the bowl. It has been almost thirty years since we have had an extended conversation, yet I sense I would have been comfortable if I had married this woman. Living with Rosa on a daily basis was sometimes like having a Roman candle go off daily in the house. Rain or shine, I could count on several bursts of heat and light. If I was within earshot, she could turn the job of scrubbing the sink into the Passion Play.

For the most part, I loved it. Older now, I could enjoy somebody less wired.

“Until yesterday, Paul Taylor,” Angela declares, pushing away her untouched bowl and dabbing needlessly at her mouth with a paper napkin,

“could have been elected governor. He’s got that much energy. He’s smart, well-read, and interested in everything.”

She smiles at some private memory, and, irrationally, I wonder just how well she knows him.

Still, this is a small town. Bear Creek numbers barely six thousand people and more than half of them are black. Subtract them, the kids, old folks, and women, and there can’t be too many men in her age group.

They couldn’t help being at least acquaintances even if they hated each other.

“How’s he holding up?” I ask.

“His father put on some weight as he got older.”

Angela glances up at a calendar on the GE.

“He runs in the Dallas Marathon every year. He looks good. He stays in shape.”

I finger the roll around my gut and decide against another bowl, though I could eat the whole crock pot.

“It sounds like you keep up with him pretty good,” I say, chagrined by the irritation I’m beginning to feel. God, I’m glad I don’t live here anymore. I haven’t been in Bear Creek two hours, and already my nose is out of joint.

“You know what it’s like here,” Angela says, cheerfully, not issuing a denial.

“You can’t hide anything in Bear Creek. He’s been having an affair with Mae Terry off and on for years, and everybody in town knows it, including Jill.”

“Mae Terry?” I exclaim, my memory kicking into overdrive.

“She’s been in a wheelchair since we were in high school!”

Angela takes my cup for a refill.

“Paul is absolutely crazy about her. It obviously can’t be the sex.”

I study her face, thinking I detected a hint of protectiveness in her voice. For all I know, Angela had just climbed out of bed with him before I drove up.

“Angela, he’s an asshole!” I say, not even bothering to try to hide my hostility. Actually, I’ve kept up with Bear Creek more than I thought I had. Bits and pieces of gossip have made their way to me for years from eastern Arkansas, and I only pretended I wasn’t paying attention.

Though I haven’t heard about Paul’s sex life, I’ve known Jill and Mae forever. Both passed as small town beauty queens in high school until Mae was in an automobile accident her senior year that left her a paraplegic. She was, and is, I guess, the smartest person ever to come out of Bear Creek. Blessed or cursed with a photographic memory and supposedly an un testable IQ, until a decade ago she taught English at

Duke, and then abruptly quit and came home to Bear Creek. I heard stories years ago she had been suspected of major plagiarism and cut a deal to retire with full benefits.

“Jill is cold as Christmas, Gideon. You remember how she was. She could divorce Paul in a second and clean his clock in the process,” Angela says breezily.

“But Sean is only twelve, and she’s afraid he’d choose to go with his father and a judge would let him. Paul takes him practically everywhere with him. Actually, he’s a wonderful father.”