The Glory of Green (19 page)

Nervous, I climbed back in the truck and locked my door, which was silly since my window was down. "Chris?" I yelled."Don't you think we'd better get going?"

I turned the spotlight into the woods but didn't see a trace of a human being. Chris was probably right. Silly kids, probably ran off when they heard us.

While I scanned the woods, Chris jerked the truck door open and slammed the vehicle in reverse scarcely before he was in his seat.

"Turn the light off," he said.

"The place look that bad?" I tried to cover my fear with a joke.

"It looks decent enough, considering someone's using it for a meth lab."

"So by the time the sheriff's guys arrived," Linda said the next morning, "everything was cleared out."

"You have excellent sources," I said. "How could you already know that?"

"Police chief's secretary. I take her a cup of gourmet coffee from the doughnut shop on my way to work. Gets my day off to a good start."

"So what else did she tell you?"

"She said the ne'er-do-wells, as she calls them, probably knew Major Wilson was out of commission and made themselves at home. You and Chris must have showed up right as they were getting down to their nightly business."

"The sheriff didn't find anything to indicate who it was?"

"Nothing. It was clean as a whistle, which should make you happy."

"Why would that make me happy?"

"Because they're hauling the camper over to your land this afternoon. It should be ready for you to move in by the time you get off work."

"You're joking, right?"

"You know I never joke. With you living in it, no drug dealers will be able to set up shop there." She looked at her reporter's notebook. "And a quote from Doug's secretary: 'He called that good-looking coach and got the A-OK.' "

The little travel trailer looked right at home nestled in the trees near the back of our yard.

"It's kind of cute, but why'd they put it way back there?" I asked Chris as we pulled into the driveway.

"I asked them to leave room for our building project, whatever that turns out to be. I figure we can do dirt work, trim trees, that sort of thing. We can get the electricity turned on by the end of the week and be set to move in by Saturday."

"I'm glad we don't have to stay here tonight. You've got to admit it's weird to live in a place owned by Major Wilson and previously used as a drug lab."

"After these past few months, nothing seems weird to me anymore," Chris said, pushing open the door.

"Do we need to do an exorcism?" I stepped in.

"Lois, don't be rude. It was big of Major to do this, and I promise you're going to like it once we get settled."

As usual, Chris was right.

By the end of the weekend, we had scrubbed and scoured and gotten rid of years of hunting-camp odors and any germs left by ill-intentioned drug fiends.

Wayne, the sheriff's deputy who had served papers a year ago for the McCuller lawsuit against the newspaper, stopped by with Andy, the drug dog, to reassure me that there wasn't a trace of evidence left. I assumed by the German shepherd's demeanor that Wayne was right.

As the squad car backed out of the driveway, Wayne stuck his head out and hollered, "My wife said to tell you she'd be by before dark with a dewberry cobbler."

One person after another showed up to help us settle in, from Bud and Anna Grace bringing a homemade pound cake to Iris Jo and Stan, who brought new sheets and towels, and Linda, who had a box of everyday dishes and pots and pans."Mom and dad like it at the nursing home, so they don't need these now," she said.

"Don't you need them?" I asked.

"I've got more of their things than I'll ever be able to use."

Rose came by with a green McCoy vase and a primitive painted table with a place for books underneath. "It's small enough to fit and will give the place a homey look."

Estelle and Hugh brought a home-cooked lunch, all four dogs, and materials for a fence. Molly and half of the football team showed up to help build it.

"That was Anthony's idea," she said. "He thinks a lot of Coach."

Mannix, Markey, and Kramer rolled in the grass as though long deprived of such joy, and Holly Beth, carried inside by Molly, immediately climbed up on the bed and laid down on one of the new pillows.

Pastor Jean, Maria, and the boys delivered two hanging baskets filled with impatiens. "You'll have to keep them watered good this time of year," Jean said, "but they'll add a touch of color."

Maria studied the camper closely, walking around back, getting down on her knees to see how the steps were attached and looking at the blocks that had been placed under the wheels.

"They're moving her trailer next week to that land around the corner," Jean said. "She's concerned about how that will work. I don't think she's ever seen a mobile home moved before."

"Obviously she hasn't driven up Interstate 49 very often.Every time I've been to Shreveport I've been practically run off the road by those wide loads."

"Those homes get bigger and bigger, don't they? When you have time, Maria needs you to take care of the paperwork," the pastor said. "Don and I are helping her with the note, and the owners were easy to deal with."

"What sort of paperwork?" Chris asked.

"Note?" I said at the same time.

"Since the property's yours," she said, "you'll have to sign off on the deal with the state. They were very fair with the church, and I think you'll be happy with what you're getting.The highway department pays to move the trailer, too, which helps."

"But we gave the land to Maria, along with the mobile home," I said. "That money belongs to her."

Jean clapped her hands together. "In all of the confusion at the courthouse after the storm," she said, "that must not have been properly filed. Are you sure you want to do that, given all that's happened? Don't you need the money for your new place?"

"Yes." Chris looked at me. "We could use the money for our new place. But we're sure we want Maria to have it."

"Absolutely," I said.

Wild hogs are damaging fields and wooded areas, according to state official Tim Robinson, and should be approached with caution. "They are being seen in high numbers and can be quite aggressive. A Bouef Parish hunter sent me a game-camera shot of a dozen feeding near his deer stand, and a driver reported three crossing the road near the Route Two crossroads. Hunting of the hogs is regulated, so we've got us," and I quote, "a Catch-29 situation."

—The Green News-Item

T
ammy sashayed into the paper glowing after her honeymoon.She gushed about the white sand on the beach and "watermelons carved into baskets and huge ice sculptures shaped like dolphins."

"Did you know on a cruise they fold your towels in the shapes of animals? And you can get pizza until two in the morning? We had dinner with people we didn't know, and I fit in good except when I snorted a bean sprout up my nose."

Her souvenir gift to us was a wooden plaque to hang outside our travel trailer, "like all the campers in Florida have.""The Craig's" was burned into it, along with a figure of a dog.

"I know that apostrophe doesn't belong there," she said, "but I didn't have the heart to get them to change it."

I couldn't get over how happy I was to see her.

"We stopped in Georgia and saw Katy," she said. "Her dorm room is so cute. She's got it all done in Georgia colors—red, black, and gray—almost like our wedding! Alex texted her three times while we were having lunch. I think they're getting serious."

"They're way too young to be serious," I said.

"Spoken like a woman who got married when she was thirty-eight."

"I'm afraid to ask, but is her dorm room bigger than our camper?"

"I haven't seen the notorious meth lab yet, but I'd say they're roughly the same size. It's a twenty-four-footer, right?"

"Something like that. Why don't you come for a visit, and I'll give you a tour. It'll take about two minutes, tops."

"Walt has a golf tournament this weekend for his law firm.Maybe I'll come Saturday."

"Perfect," I said, relieved. With Katy at college, Iris and Stan working on their building project, Chris consumed with football, and Kevin overwhelmed by patients, I felt a tad lonely.When I went into the paper on Saturdays, I kept expecting to see Tom sitting at his desk, listening to the police radio and working a crossword puzzle.

On Friday night after the Rabbits narrowly lost to a team from West Monroe, Chris flopped onto the bed, bumping his head on the fake wood headboard. Aggravated, he grabbed a throw pillow and, well, threw it, causing Holly Beth to jump down and run over to where I sat on a bench that doubled as a dining room chair.

"I must be a bad influence on you," I said, picking up the dog and moving into what might loosely be called a bedroom."The old Chris Craig would have never thrown something.What's wrong?"

With both hands behind his head, he stretched out on the bed, his feet almost hanging off.

"Number one, the Rabbits lost tonight because Anthony Cox acted like he had never seen a football before. Number two, Asa has toys bigger than this camper. Number three, I don't know how in the heck I'm going to keep the food delivery program going for the rest of the school year."

I snuggled up next to him. Holly made a few circles and settled down right between us. I could have sworn she gave a sigh of pleasure as she drifted off to sleep.

"That's quite a list. What can I do?"

"You already do too much. You're running the paper with a skeleton crew and eking out a profit. You've jumped back in to Kids' Camp on Wednesdays, and you're on the building committee at church."

"That's only because I'm bossy. When they said metal building, I stuck my nose in. The brick front's going to help, though, and the steeple."

"I need to start a building committee for me and you," he said. "This camper is better than a motel room, but it's getting old in a hurry."

"What if I take over your food deliveries for a while? And why don't we postpone house talk until after football season? I'm happy to be back out on Route Two, to have the dogs back."I stroked Holly. "Every morning I sit out in the swing and am thankful we're alive, and that I have you. It could be much worse."

Chris was silent, and I turned my head to look at him. He was sound asleep.

Saturday, after breakfast with his parents, I hatched a plan and presented it to him as though it were a fait accompli.

"I'll do the food delivery program today while you meet with the other coaches," I said. "Go out for a hamburger with your buddies afterwards. Relax a little."

"It's not safe for you to be alone out there. A few of the places are isolated, and Doug says those meth dealers aren't to be taken lightly."

"Tammy's coming over later. I'll get her to go with me."

"That's a comforting thought."

"She can be downright scary, and you know it." I struck a Tammy pose, both hands on my hips, pretending to chew gum, which she did ninety percent of the time. "I'd as soon kick a meth dealer in the teeth as look at him," I said, doing my best imitation.

"Is that supposed to be me?" Tammy asked, peering in the top of the aluminum door.

"Busted," I said as she walked in. "How'd I do?"

"You've got to work on what Walt calls the Tammy Twang.He says it's the cutest thing he's ever heard."

"How was the honeymoon?" Chris asked.

"Like living in a movie. You should try one of your own sometime."

A worm of regret crawled through me. For a second, I could see Chris and me sitting on our private deck in Montana, but I pushed the picture down.

"Thanks for the sign," Chris said.

"I noticed you fixed it," Tammy said, twirling her ponytail, her dark hair streaked with blonde highlights. "Pretty clever to turn the apostrophe into a daisy."

"Daddy did that," Chris said. "He was happy to have an excuse to use his Dremel tool."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I couldn't in good conscience have a display of bad grammar at the entrance to my home."

"Nice home," she said. "You've done wonders with the place.When are you moving?"

Chris and I exchanged the look that I now thought of as our married look.

"We're thinking of clearing this lot and building a house or getting one of those package deals. What do you think?" I said.

"I told Iris Jo you'd never leave Route Two," Tammy said."This piece of land was made for you. I'm sorry you don't have your old house back. I suppose certain wounds from the tornado will never heal."

One of the things that intrigued me about Tammy was that she could seem as breezy as a coed at a sorority party one minute and as deep as Pastor Jean at others.

"Speaking of tornado wounds," I said, "how about giving me a hand with food delivery today? Chris has too much on his plate, no pun intended, and I told him we could run his route."

"That sounds fun."

"I wouldn't exactly call it fun," Chris said, "but it's interesting.Just be careful. Don't take any silly chances."

Tammy volunteered to drive the big SUV that Walt had bought her after they got engaged "to keep me safe on the highway," and we headed to downtown to load up on boxes of staples.

"Today we have frozen turkeys, too," Pastor Mali said, as he checked our list of recipients and loaded the food into the back of the vehicle.

Driving into the country, we visited with sweet little old ladies who practically wept over the food, and grouchy old men who tried to act as if they were taking it as a favor. I read Chris's map and mostly got us to the right roads, occasionally leading us into a dead end.

We approached Maria's trailer, now parked on an acre of land across the road from one of Chris's catfish farms. Big trees shaded it, and it had been spared the plopped-down look that many mobile homes in rural Bouef Parish had.

"What the tornado couldn't accomplish, the government did," I said. "Moved, lock, stock, and barrel in less than a week. It's surprising how fast officials can work when they want something."

"Where'd that porch come from?" Tammy asked.

No wonder the trailer looked so settled.

"I don't know. It wasn't there a few days ago. Neither were those flower beds."

"I think she has company." Tammy pulled into the long rutted drive, "Unless she got a fancy black pickup while I was on that cruise."

"Maybe we should come back later," I said.

"Chicken. You're just saying that because you know that's Dub McCuller's truck. You can't keep running from him forever."

"Who says I'm running from him?"

"I saw you at the town meeting, Lois. I even saw you cross the street downtown the other day to avoid him as he came out of Eva's store."

"I can't make a move in this town . . ." I muttered. "OK, let's get the box unloaded and get out of here."

Maria answered the door with a big smile and invited us in.Dub and Mr. Sepulvado stood as we entered, and Joe insisted on taking the box.

"I've got it," I said. "I'm sure you shouldn't be lifting yet."

"I'm all healed," he said, looking younger than I remembered."I'm ready to plant my fall garden. Maria's going to let me use part of her land."

The question must have shown on my face.

"We met at the Spanish service at Grace Chapel," the young mother said. "Joe and Mr. Dub have been a godsend in helping me and the boys settle here. Doesn't their porch look fantastic?" Her Spanish intonation gave the word "fantastic" a poetic sound.

"You built that?" I turned to Dub, astonished.

"Joe was the brains behind the operation," Dub said. "I was the hired hand." He looked every bit the carpenter in a pair of worn jeans and a chambray shirt that looked like it had been through the washer a hundred times.

Mr. Sepulvado looked as though he didn't understand, and Dub spoke to him in Spanish. Both men chuckled.

"
Loco,"
Joe said, pointing to Dub.

We all laughed, although I wasn't quite sure why.

"We'd better get going." I all but shoved Tammy out the door.

"First see what the boys have," Maria said, proudly pointing out the back window to a nice-sized above-ground pool.

"That was Eva's idea," Dub said. "She said a sprinkler's fun, but those boys need a pool."