Man in the Blue Moon (26 page)

Before the rooster crowed, Clive Gillespie was up with a pistol strapped in a holster inside his suit jacket. He walked down the sidewalk toward the bank as if it were an ordinary day. Clive passed the tavern with an illustration of a beer mug on the window and tapped on the glass. The owner, a hawkish-nosed man whose property Clive had just threatened to foreclose on, looked up in time to see Clive offer a tip of his hat and a raised eyebrow. People on the street watched Clive glide downtown with a peacock strut that caused them to wonder how a man who had been humiliated by a simpleton like Ruby Tucker could still be so arrogant. They could never possibly realize that this morning it was anger, not self-importance, that put him in motion.

At the corner near the courthouse, Clive made a sharp left in the opposite direction of the bank. When he reached the entrance of the Franklin Inn, he brushed against the shoulders of the Troxler brothers and their hired man who had just paid their overnight bill and were setting about their business. “Mind your step,” J.D. Troxler said with a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth. Never pausing to render an apology, Clive marched forward past the reception desk and into the restaurant that was off to the side. Two potted ferns on marbled columns marked its entrance.

In the restaurant the morning sun streamed in through lace curtains and fanned out across the bamboo floor. Clanking silverware rang out along with a chorus of conversation among the regulars. Mayor Cox and the new owner of the oyster cannery hunched over cups of steaming coffee. The cannery operator, a young man with a wayward shirt collar that poked straight out from his neck, occasionally turned to look back at the café entrance. At the table next to him, a steamboat captain sipped coffee with a slurping sound and read yesterday’s newspaper.

Across the room in the corner nearest the swinging kitchen door, Sheriff Bissell sat with his back to the room. A napkin stained with coffee was tucked inside his shirt collar. He was mixing scrambled eggs in the ketchup he had just poured onto his plate.

Just as the sheriff was sticking the fork into his mouth, Clive came up from behind and slapped him on the back with a thrust that was less than friendly. “Morning, Sheriff,” Clive said.

Sheriff Bissell groaned, flinched, and turned to look at Clive with an angry scowl. He took the edge of his napkin and dabbed his mouth. Drops of blood were next to the coffee stain on the napkin. “You just caused me to jab my mouth with that fork.”

Clive tossed his hat onto an empty seat before taking his place directly next to the sheriff. “You’re just lucky I didn’t come over to your house last night and jab you with a pitchfork.”

“Got up on the wrong side of the bed, did we?”

Clive planted his hands on the table, knocking over a red and green porcelain cup that was filled with sugar. “Last night I had a little visitor, or should I say a gigantic visitor. Brother Mabry showed up at my front door, ranting and carrying on.”

“Was he drunk?”

“Drunk with rage. And I must say that it’s catching.”

Sheriff Bissell dabbed at his mouth, looked at the bloody spot on the napkin, and then raised an eyebrow. “Now, look, Clive. I can’t see how any of this involves—”

“Charlie Bissell, I want you to hear what I’m saying and hear me good.” Leaning closer to the plate, where a slice of bacon puddled in grease, Clive spat as he spoke. “I’ve been patient with you. I’ve trusted you. I’ve included you. And what do I have to show for it? Uh? That man is still on Ella’s place, and now he’s putting all sorts of foolish ideas in her head.”

Sheriff Bissell raised his hand, trying to get the waiter’s attention. “You need a cup of coffee.”

Clive gripped the sheriff’s hand and placed it down on the table. “Coffee makes me nervous.”

“Go on and give me your gripe. What you got for me today?”

“It seems that Ella has got it in her head that she can lease the land to Brother Mabry . . . lease it without selling it. She’ll even let him put his little retreat on the land right next to the spring.”

“Oh,” Sheriff Bissell said.

“
Oh
is right.
Oh,
and I’ll be out of the deal altogether.
Oh,
and you’ll be back to working security on the steamboat, looking for children who are hiding underneath roulette tables and cleaning up after drunks who can’t handle their liquor.” Clive licked the corner of his mouth and waved across the room to the steamboat captain. A waiter refreshed a pot of coffee at a busing station where decanters of honey sat.

“Now, I’ve had it with you, Charlie Bissell. I told that nutty preacher I’d see to it that he owned that land outright—told him he didn’t want to fool around with the whims of a woman who changes her mind from one day to the next. But he’s about to go along with what she’s offering.”

“This whole mess has got way out of hand,” the sheriff said, balling the napkin up and tossing it in the pool of grease on the plate.

“It only got out of hand when that hobo showed up at Ella’s. I told you,” Clive hissed. “I told you he’d be trouble, but you continued to look the other way.”

“Now, may I say this,” the sheriff said while leaning back in his chair. “I might owe you a great deal, but . . .”

Pulling at his brass-plated suspenders, Mayor Cox made his way around the room, greeting the diners. He glanced at Clive, who was still hunched over Sheriff Bissell’s plate, and simply nodded.

“Now look, Clive . . .” Sheriff Bissell used his finger to drag the napkin around and around the plate. The napkin grew heavier and darker with the grease that it collected.

“No, you look. You look me directly in the eye and tell me that you don’t owe me your job. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t forget it.”

The sheriff raised his right hand as if being sworn into office. “Fair enough. But I owe the law something too.”

Clive smiled, chuckled, and then laughed so loud that the waiter across the room stopped wrapping napkins around silverware and stared.

“I don’t see nothing funny about that,” Sheriff Bissell said.

After finally regaining control, Clive wiped away tears of laughter.

“I just can’t go around putting people in jail, you know.”

Clive flicked his front two teeth with his tongue. “Tell me something. How long has this man been at Ella’s?”

Sheriff Bissell rubbed his neck, tilting his head from side to side. Pepper on his plate scattered when he sighed.

“Now, need I remind you that we have an agreement.” Clive picked a piece of lint from the shoulder of his jacket and then tossed it in the air. “You help us secure that land, and you’ll get your cut when the deal comes through. But right now, the deal is out of our control. And I don’t do well with losing control.”

“Clive,” Sheriff Bissell said, staring at the lint that shifted and floated in the air. “Don’t you think there comes a time to move on?”

“Give up, you mean? That’s what you’re really saying.”

The sheriff raised his shoulders and twisted the side of his mouth. “I’m just saying . . .”

“And I’m just saying that you don’t want to buck me. Not now. If I go down with this thing, bless pete, you go down with me. Why, I declare. I bet you couldn’t even get a job working back on that steamboat with a charge of bribery slapped on you.”

The sheriff shrugged once more and tapped his boot at the spot where the lint landed next to his chair.

“Let me tell you one thing, Charlie Bissell. You might not care about this town, but I do. This place used to be something, and now look. . . .” Clive motioned with his hand toward the window. The curtain moved against a breeze. A lot where a warehouse had sat twenty years ago was a weedy cavity in the mouth of the city. “Tell me. Do you think I enjoy these foreclosures? Do you?”

Sheriff Bissell was gripping the ends of the table, staring at the plate. “I don’t think much about it, to tell the truth.”

“With this preacher, we have the chance to put Apalachicola back on the map. And what about our plan to bottle that springwater, hmm? Ship it around the world. From here to kingdom come. It’s your chance to make some real money for a change.” Clive leaned down closer. The end of his tie lay across the table. “So if you have to take that hobo and jail him for suspicion of jaywalking, you do it. And you do it today.”

The waiter appeared and tentatively motioned toward Sheriff Bissell’s plate. “Go ahead, he’s done,” Clive said. “We were just leaving.”

Upstairs, above the restaurant, Mrs. Mercile, dressed all in white, brought the morning tea and coffee on the same tray she had used every day since Brother Mabry and his wife, Priscilla, had occupied the room on the top floor. The white uniform was only a recent request from Priscilla. It reminded her of back home, where servants knew their place.

Once the tray was set on the table Mrs. Mercile eased into the bathroom, carrying the teacup. She walked on the black-and-white tiled floor on her tiptoes, so as not to disrupt the guest. A roll of fat gathered above the belt of her freshly pressed uniform.

Priscilla’s bony frame was silhouetted behind shower curtains that turned the porcelain tub into an island all to itself. Without saying a word, she reached her bony hand through the gap in the curtains. Mrs. Mercile turned and looked away as always instructed. Priscilla sipped the tea and sloshed in the water that was meant to give her healing. “This tea is lackluster warm,” she protested.

“Is it?” Mrs. Mercile rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to run down and get you another?”

“By now I’d think you’d know my stomach becomes ornery if I don’t have my morning tea.”

When Mrs. Mercile walked back through the room, she almost curtseyed in front of Brother Mabry, whose hair was still wet and perfectly parted on the side. The look made him resemble a fresh-faced schoolboy on picture day.

“Shall I send this week’s bill to Mr. Gillespie again?”

Brother Mabry rubbed his eyes. “I never heard of a place charging by the week like you do.” He looked out through the white curtains and onto the street below.

“I just can’t afford to keep groceries in the house with the amount you . . . Will you be staying on with us much longer?”

Below, Clive Gillespie and Sheriff Bissell got in the sheriff’s automobile with the official seal of the county painted on the door. Sticking his head out of the window, Brother Mabry yelled, “Gillespie. Gillespie . . . I’ve made up my mind. I want a word with you.”

“Must you be so vivacious this early in the day?” Priscilla called out from the bathroom.

Brushing against Mrs. Mercile and causing the tray to wobble, Brother Mabry stomped down the burgundy-carpeted stairs two at a time. In the lobby a woman wearing a sleeveless dress meant for someone far younger than her years trailed behind him. “Brother Mabry, Brother Mabry. I couldn’t make it to the last service, but I heard . . .”

Out on the porch, Brother Mabry shoved through a group of men wearing matching pin-striped hats. “And he calls himself a man of the Word,” one of the men said when an apology was not rendered.

Earl came from around the corner where he’d been waiting for Gillespie. When the sheriff started the car, Earl purposely walked toward the old automobile that belonged to one of the men Brother Mabry had offended. After the men shook their heads and mumbled, they went on about their business in the inn’s café. None of them paid any mind to the preacher or the deadbeat drunk who slipped inside the automobile and cranked the engine.

In the street, Brother Mabry spread his legs wide and once again shouted, “Gillespie, I want a word with you.”

Earl wove the automobile around Brother Mabry. Once he’d cleared the obstacle that stood in the middle of the road, he followed the path of the lawman’s car.

Everyone on the sidewalk paused to look at Brother Mabry, who stomped and shouted, but no one responded. The sheriff’s automobile had already turned the corner at Main Street.

Down the street, past the park, and next to the shipping dock, Deputy Ronnie carried a thermos of coffee and whistled as he approached the station. The smell of sea salt and rotting fish laced the air.

Ronnie jingled his keys and dropped them when he saw the sheriff from Bainbridge standing outside the door. The man was standing next to a street post where a faint smoke from the steamboats hovered. “Morning,” the sheriff said with a serious nod.

“Morning. Can I help you with something?”

The sheriff looked around and paused to notice a group of colored boys who laughed and frolicked on their way to the unloading dock. He reached out to shake Ronnie’s hand and ended up gripping the thermos. “Sheriff Loring from Bainbridge, Georgia. Is your sheriff on the premises?”

“No, sir. He’s at breakfast, I imagine.”

“Well, I need to talk with somebody with some authority,” Sheriff Loring said and scratched his ear.

“All right,” Ronnie said while shifting his weight.

“I’m afraid there’s fixing to be some trouble. And somebody’s liable to wind up dead before it’s through with.”

In Ella’s kitchen, the morning heat began to stir through the open windows, and the smell of fried ham still clung to the clothes of all who sat at her table.

“I’m going to work on the garden some today,” Narsissa said.

Lanier looked at Samuel, who sat at the table across from him, and then reached for one of the last biscuits on a plate painted with seashells.

“The store needs restocking,” Ella said and sipped coffee. “Samuel, can you help with that?”

If he heard his mother, Samuel never indicated. He put the last bit of ham into his mouth and then scooped out another serving of grits from the bowl.

“We need to order school supplies too,” Keaton said.

“When’s school?” Macon wondered.

“Next week.” Ella pointed with her fork to Macon’s plate. “Now eat all your ham. You’ll be hungry before noon.”

“I don’t want to go back to school,” Macon said and picked at the ham.

“You sure wanted to go when you were laid up in bed sick,” Samuel said and then glanced up at Lanier.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’m going to have to get another slice of that bacon,” Lanier said. “I mean, unless anyone has any objections to that.”