No Defense (16 page)

The gravel driveway wound past the rose
gardens and bird feeders and ended in a circular drive in front of
the house.

Edwina hobbled to the front door to greet
us. She was a large old woman. With each step she leaned to one
side, took a shallow breath, then lifted the other foot, and with
great effort moved forward. Her breasts formed the beginning of a
large mound that continued uninterrupted down to her waist. Her
hairline and hands were splattered with liver spots. She wore
tennis shoes, carefully pressed blue jeans, and a sweat shirt. Her
long gray hair was braided, and the braid was twisted neatly around
the top of her head like a halo.

I presented the box lunch, hugged her, and
introduced Ben.

“You look adorable,” I said.

“Shoot,” Edwina said, waving her hand as
though swatting at a fly. “I look silly! My great-grandchildren
want me to be ‘in,’ they said. ‘In’ what? I asked, but these
clothes are comfortable. There’s no denying that. I told them, ‘At
least you didn’t give me hot pants!’ “ She laughed and turned
toward Ben. “You didn’t tell me he was such a handsome young man,
LuAnn.”

“Why Miss Edwina!”

“I may be old,” Edwina responded, “but I’m
not dead!”

All three of us laughed.

“Go get the iced tea, dear,” she said to me.
“Everything’s all set out in the kitchen.”

A few moments later, Ben and I were seated
on the couch, Edwina on the matching love seat, each of us with an
iced tea.

Ben explained to Edwina about the book he
was writing and asked her to talk about what life was like here,
anything she remembered, anything that stood out.

The tape recorder whirred and Ben jotted
down some notes in his steno pad as Edwina spoke about the year
electric lights came to town, the toilet her family had on the back
porch, the Sears & Roebuck catalog pages that papered the
inside walls of the house, and the red brick streets in town, torn
up and paved in the late thirties. She related her baptism in a
creek that was long gone and how their church met in a barn. She
said she had every one of her babies without a doctor (an old black
midwife named Early had helped), the first baby born when she was
barely fifteen.

Ben was content for the most part to let her
speak, asking a question occasionally when Edwina temporarily lost
the flow of her story.

“How do you like these dog days?” Edwina
asked Ben out of the blue.

“The heat, you mean?” he asked.

“Not just the heat. During the dog days
mockingbirds don’t sing, rattlesnakes strike anything that moves
within their reach, cuts don’t heal, and dogs go mad.”

“Sounds serious,” Ben said.

“We used to warn our children to stay away
from strange dogs, in case they might be mad, and we locked up pets
and hunting dogs so they wouldn’t get in fights with rabid dogs. If
you heard that there was a mad dog in town during the dog days, why
that’d scare the living daylights out of everybody.”

After a few hours Edwina began to wind down
and Ben moved her gently into the present, asking whom she planned
to vote for in the gubernatorial election. Edwina confided that
she’d vote for my father. I could see that the interview was coming
to an end. Edwina’s eyelids were fluttering slightly and Ben was
leafing through his notes. On a hunch, I asked her if she knew
anything about the murders. I knew Ben wouldn’t even mention it,
and when I did he looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“Why would I know anything about that?”
Edwina asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said quickly. “Of
course you wouldn’t.”

“Well, son, I do know one thing about it, as
a matter of fact,” she said. She smiled at the surprised looks on
our faces. “I don’t guess it’ll do any harm to tell you now, since
he’s dead. I think ... he’s dead, anyway.”

Was she talking about Dean Reese? I
wondered.

She stopped for a moment to think. “I’m sure
he is. Well, I’ll tell you what it was. I heard that the FBI paid a
visit on Floyd Waddy in Cullman and asked him some questions about
it.”

Floyd Waddy! “He’s definitely dead,” I said.
He had been a good friend of my father’s.

“I wasn’t real sure because I didn’t even
know Floyd, but his wife’s mother was best friends with my sister
Haddie, bless her heart. That’s how I came to hear of the FBI,”
Edwina explained. “Get me some more iced tea, LuAnn, hon.”

As I stood up, I tried to suppress a grin.
This was a real lead Ben couldn’t possibly ignore. “I’ll set out
your lunch for you too,” I said.

“I don’t believe those nigger boys deserved
what they got,” Edwina was saying when I returned, “but they should
have known something like that probably would happen.”

“Why do you say that?” Ben asked.

“Well, they were trying to mix,” Edwina
explained. “It probably was one of those Yankee lawyers who got the
niggers to sue, who got them thinking crazy. You know, they didn’t
need our university. They had their own schools. In my day they
weren’t allowed to drive or to try on clothes at our stores. We
were all happier then. Them and us. Nobody says that anymore, but
it’s true. The Lord made us different, and we should keep ourselves
separate. I’ve heard some even date whites now. The Devil’s hand is
in that sure as can be.” Nothing in Edwina’s countenance had
changed. Her tone was as sweet as ever. She could have been
discussing her great-grandchildren.

“Why don’t you come get your lunch?” I
suggested. “We’ll talk more another day if you feel like it.”

“Y’all stop and visit my parakeets on the
way out, and the dogs too,” Edwina said. She eased herself down
into her kitchen chair for lunch.

I hugged her, but it didn’t feel right after
what I’d heard her say. When I turned to wave good-bye from the
front door, her eyes were closed and her head was dropped in
prayer.

I took off my sandals and carried them in my
hand. Ben and I walked across the patio, toward the barns. Browning
magnolia blossoms littered the yard.

I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“How could that sweet old lady say those
horrible things?” I asked.

“Don’t you ever hear people talk like that?”
he asked. “Because that’s sure not the first person I’ve heard say
those things. You’re in Alabama, LuAnn.”

“I know where I am, thank you very much. I
never heard her talk like that, that’s all, and we’ve spent so much
time together. My horses have been in her barn since I was little.
Maybe her mind is going after all these years.” I pulled open the
door of the older of the two barns. Its wood was weathered a
gray-blue shade. “You’re not going to believe this, Ben.” I laughed
and held out my right arm as if making a presentation.

Inside the barn were hundreds of
parakeets-at least three hundred yellow, blue, green, white, and
lavender birds, imprisoned by the wire mesh that hung across each
opening, a second skin inside the walls of wood, its openings too
small for even a parakeet to slip through. The birds flew back and
forth from one wire-mesh perch to another, congregating mainly at
the windows and doors where light poured through. Fruit and seeds
were scattered across the dirt floor, as were a few old hollow tree
trunks.

“She sells them, most of them at Easter,” I
said.

“Only in the South,” Ben said. He shook his
head slowly back and forth. Then he pulled the lens cap off his
camera and tried to capture the bizarre scene while I sat,
thinking, on the seat of an orange tractor nearby.

“Why don’t we try to talk to Floyd Waddy’s
widow, Berta, today?” I suggested as we drove out of Edwina’s
driveway.

“Where does she live?”

“Cullman, less than an hour away. Let’s stop
and I’ll call her. We’re not too far from my parents’. We could
call from there.”

“Do your parents know you’re so into
this?”

“Not yet. My mother would say it was silly.
She’s not particularly interested in controversy. And Daddy is so
busy with the governor’s race that I thought I should wait to tell
him if and when I got more facts. I told you he was devastated when
it happened. I know he’d be thrilled to have this solved while he’s
mayor. Of course, Buck would be happy with the good publicity.”

“Is it okay if we call from my place?” Ben
asked. “I need to pick up more tapes if we see Berta Waddy, and I
could fix us a couple of sandwiches.”

“I told you I’d get you to work on this,” I
said, grinning.

“I’ll talk to her. That’s all, though,” he
said.

At Ben’s, he made the sandwiches while I
called Berta Waddy from the kitchen phone. Making an effort to
restrain myself, I avoided mentioning the real reason for my call.
I explained that I was helping Ben locate people to interview for
his book. He would like to see Berta, I said, because of her
knowledge of fish farms, a booming business in the New South. Berta
said she’d love to talk to Ben, but that it would have to wait
until next week, when she returned from a church retreat for which
she was about to leave.

I hung up and stood in front of the sink,
looking out one of the windows at Mother’s chapel. Ben walked up
behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. I turned around and
saw in his eyes that he didn’t want to talk about Berta Waddy.

For a while we just stood there, kissing and
looking at each other. “Did you know you have golden flecks in your
eyes?” I asked him.

He just smiled, took my hand, and led me
slowly down the hall into the bedroom.

Only then did I admit to myself that this
was exactly what I’d wanted for some time.

Hours later, we were still in bed. I’d
called the restaurant to make sure everything was okay. I propped
myself up on my right elbow and looked down at Ben. His eyes were
just about half open. The thought of returning to work or going
home was suddenly unbearable. I didn’t want the afternoon to end. I
didn’t want the magic spell we were under to be broken.

“I know!” I said. ’Til take you to the Cow
Palace. No book on the South would be complete without a paragraph
on that famous landmark.”

Ben pulled my hair back into a ponytail in
his hand, drew me down toward him, and kissed me.

A little while later, in the shower, I
thought briefly and guiltily about Eddie. It wasn’t his fault that
we rarely saw each other, that we were both too busy with work and
the children to ever spend time alone. As I faced the falling
water, Ben slipped into the shower and began to soap my back,
massaging my shoulders, and then working his way down to the small
of my back, where he lingered, his hands on my waist and his thumbs
rubbing lightly. I arched my back with pleasure. My thoughts of
Eddie vanished.

The sun had begun its descent in the
afternoon sky when Ben and I left his house. He drove northwest
from Clark Lake away from Tallagumsa. Within a few miles of the
restaurant, we passed several Cow Palace billboards featuring huge
cartoonish black and white cows.

“All these cows,” I said, laughing. “And the
best is yet to come. Slow down. There she is. Pull in here.” I
pointed to the giant plaster cow statue that dwarfed both the
rectangular brick building-the Palace--and the nearby trailer,
where the owners lived.

We went inside and ate barbecue sandwiches
and coleslaw. Both of us were starving.

It was after seven by the time Ben dropped me
off at the Steak House to get my car. I drove straight home.

The house was unusually quiet: no music, TV,
or children talking and laughing. Eddie was sitting in a
living-room chair. He wore a tan summer suit, a white shirt, and a
burgundy and blue striped tie. I hadn’t even known he’d bought a
suit.

He had one beer in his hand. The six empties
on the floor next to him were stacked in a pyramid. The room was
thick with smoke. He was plainly furious and very drunk.

I walked past him into the kitchen. “Where’s
Jolene?” I asked when I didn’t find her there.

“She’s gone,” he said very quietly. “When I
got home from my show I let her go home.”

The show. Oh, shit! I forgot his show. I
chewed on my lip.

“Everyone was there. Your entire family,
half the college, people from all over. But you weren’t there. I
was there. The best work I’ve ever done was there. Goddamnit,
LuAnn,” he said. “What is going on?” He knocked over the beer cans
with a sweep of his arm.

“I forgot. I’m sorry.” I was sorry-sorry
that I was caught and that I didn’t feel as horrible as I should
have.

He jumped up, rushed toward me, and started
yelling. “You forgot! You are too fucking much! Forgot!”

“Where’s Jessie?” I asked, backing away from
him.

“Next door at the Cooks,” he said. “The boys
are asleep.”

“I tried to find you,” he continued. “I
called all over. You weren’t at work. Your car was, but you
weren’t. You weren’t here. You weren’t anywhere. But that’s
impossible--isn’t it? to be nowhere. I do know who you were with.
There was one other person who was supposed to be at the show who
wasn’t. Your buddy, Ben. Where were you two?”

“Talking to Miss Edwina, Eddie,” I said
quietly. I stared down at the carpet, unable to meet his fierce
look.

“Since this morning? It’s after seven
o’clock. Miss Edwina isn’t that interesting.”

“We were talking to her and then we were
planning some of Ben’s interviews for next week. Time got away from
me. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I am too,” he said. He turned away and
walked toward the stairway, then stopped and looked at me. “I’m
sorry about everything. I’m sorry you’ve changed so much. I’m sorry
you won’t let me touch you. Do you know how many times we’ve made
love since we got here? Once. First I thought it was because you’d
just delivered twins. Then I thought you were tired from moving,
then from your new job. Now I don’t know. You think you can do
whatever you want here, that I and everyone else will just adore
you no matter what. The Queen of the Steak House. Well, count me
out. I’m leaving. I already told Jessie I had to go away for a few
days. The twins won’t even notice. They think Jolene is their only
parent anyway.”