Who Let That Killer In The House? (2 page)

Brandi Wethers left second base and flew toward home. We leaped to our feet and cheered as she crossed the plate a gnat’s second before the ball reached the catcher. We kept cheering as Hollis rounded first base, and when she slid in safe at second, hair streaming behind her like a banner of pure copper, everybody was jumping up and down. Her uncle Buddy, four rows below us, waved his arms and screamed like a wild man.

Beside me, my cook, Clarinda, grunted in disgust. “Even that didn’t get Garnet’s nose out of her book.” Sure enough, Hollis’s older sister was a solitary island of calm, head bent over her book, thick auburn hair spread across her shoulders like a mantle. Anybody could tell that Garnet Stanton thought fast-pitch softball an enormous waste of time.

I didn’t have time to waste on Garnet. I was watching a family in front of us: two fat little boys, a pudgy father whose belly strained his yellow T-shirt, and a plump blond mother in black spandex pants and a tight pink top with two tiny straps and far more beneath it than it was designed to hold. The way they had screamed and carried on while Brandi was running, I figured they were her family. It wasn’t so easy to figure whether their combined bulk, jumping in unison, would get all our names in next week’s
Hopemore Statesman
under the headline “Bleachers Collapse, Killing Dozens.”

As they finally sat down, Clarinda leaned over and muttered, “I personally wouldn’t wear that pink top without a bra.” I elbowed her. Clarinda has a carrying voice. She also has far too much bosom to wear any top without a bra.

Clarinda had come with Joe Riddley and me to watch the Hopemore Honeybees, our recreation department’s summer season, senior girls’ fast-pitch softball team, play the county championship game. Our store—Yarbrough’s Feed, Seed and Nursery—was team sponsor and both our older son, Ridd, and Clarinda’s grandson, Ronnie, were assistant coaches. The real reason Clarinda and I were there, though, and why Joe Riddley had taken the unprecedented step of shutting down the store for this game, was because Ridd’s daughter, Bethany, was the team’s star pitcher. All three of us were a bit biased where Bethany was concerned.

It was a glorious day for a ball game. At the edge of the field, mimosas waved small pink pom-poms. Up near the school, a huge old magnolia spread blossoms as creamy and wide as dinner plates while fat blue hydrangeas nodded approval. The sky was deep blue, dotted with dollops of whipped-cream clouds, and new-mown hay and honeysuckle scented the breeze. It looked like half of Hopemore—county seat of Hope County, located in that wedge of Georgia between I-16 and I-20—had come out to watch the Honeybees play what we all expected to be their final game.

Summer sports in Hopemore had never produced a winning team. We’d been amazed that the Honeybees had gotten this far—largely due to the coaching of high-school chemistry teacher DeWayne Evans and his sister, Yasheika. Now, at the bottom of the last inning, the team was two runs behind, had two outs, and had reached the bottom of their batting lineup. Beside Joe Riddley on the bench, Bethany’s little brother, Cricket, squirmed. His mother, Martha, gave him an encouraging hug, but she looked anxious. I saw several Honeybees eyeing the other team’s coach. The winning coach would choose three or four players from each county team to play on an all-county team at district play-offs the last week in June. I’m sure every Honeybee wondered if she would get picked.

As the next batter sauntered toward the plate, adjusting her helmet over a long brown ponytail, I heard groans.

“Do it, baby!” Clarinda called.

“Send in a pinch hitter!” Brandi’s mother yelled. Her husband and sons took up the cry. Others followed, stamping their feet so the bleachers throbbed. “Pinch hitter! Pinch hitter!”

If I’d had a sword, that woman’s frizzy yellow head would have rolled, county magistrate though I am. That wasn’t just any old ballplayer she was razzing—it was my oldest grandchild. Sure, she might bat to fielders’ mitts like her balls contained a homing device, but she had a great windmill pitch. She didn’t deserve to be insulted by adults who ought to know better.

Bethany trudged toward the plate like somebody heading for the guillotine.

I saw her daddy give her an encouraging slap on the back and heard him say, “Come on, Yarbrough, hit a homer.” I wished he sounded a little more convinced that she could.

Bethany and Hollis had played ball together since they were little, but it was Yasheika’s after-practice work and DeWayne’s good coaching that had turned them into a catcher and pitcher the
Statesman
had started calling DeWayne’s Deadly Duo. Unfortunately, no amount of coaching had ever made them good hitters. That’s why they batted last.

“Come on, baby. You can do it!” Clarinda yelled again.

Martha, an emergency-room supervisor who daily faced gory scenes without flinching, covered her eyes. “I can’t watch. Tell me when it’s over.”

Joe Riddley cupped his mouth and begged at the top of his lungs, “Hit one for Pop!”

I was considering disowning the lot of them, when I realized I was clenching my fists and whispering, “Please, God, please, God, please, God,” as if the Almighty had nothing better to do that afternoon than make sure my granddaughter hit a ball.

Bethany flickered a quick, nervous smile in our direction, then gave Coach Evans a pleading look like she wanted to lay down her bat.

Cricket bounced on the front of his bleacher seat, ready to fly down and help his big sister. “Hit it, Beth’ny,” he roared into a sudden silence. “Hit it, for a change!”

Bethany visibly cringed.

“Time out!” Coach Evans left his position behind third base and went to home plate. He was dark as semisweet chocolate, his face a shadow in the afternoon sun. I couldn’t see his expression as he spoke into Bethany’s ear, but she listened gravely, then nodded and lifted her chin. As he stepped away, Yasheika left her first-base coaching spot and trotted to the plate.

Yasheika was much closer to the ages of the players, a tall, slender young woman with coffee-and-milk skin. She’d graduated from Howard University in early May, then came to Hopemore to help her brother coach because, as Bethany and Hollis told us at least weekly, she used to pitch for a fast-pitch team that had won the national championship.

Whatever Yasheika said made Bethany laugh. As the coach trotted back to first, Bethany took a few practice swings with what looked like a whole lot more determination.

Poised on the balls of her feet, she waited for the pitch. She didn’t swing when the first ball crossed the plate, but the umpire called, “Strike one!”

I glared in his direction. “Anybody could see that ball was low.”

Joe Riddley reached across Clarinda and laid a big hand on my arm. “Take it easy, Little Bit. It’s not over yet.” His eyes didn’t leave the game.

“You tell her, Judge,” joked a man behind us. Joe Riddley was no longer a county magistrate, but he had served thirty years before he retired the previous fall, so folks were still apt to give him the title. I’d been a magistrate myself for nearly nine months, but a lot of folks were still apt to call me Mac or Miss MacLaren.

Another ball flew from the pitcher’s mound. “Swing, dammit!” yelled Brandi’s dad.

Bethany swung.

She hit it so hard, I thought her bat had cracked. The ball rose in a perfect arc above the diamond, eluded the left fielder’s mitt, and dropped with deceptive humility behind the back fence. Nobody made a sound. Even Bethany stood, mouth open, gaping at that fence.

We all soared at that moment, but like the ball, we would soon fall back to earth.

2

Cricket broke the spell. “Run, dummy! Run!”

Bethany took off with a spurt of dirt.

She and Hollis pounded around the bases, across home plate, and into a jumping, squealing, hugging mass of teammates. I was jumping up and down so hard, I felt like I might fly. Even Garnet noticed something was going on. She stood and dutifully clapped, but when she saw Hollis break away from the mass and fling her arms around DeWayne Evans’s neck, and saw DeWayne squeeze Hollis back, Garnet sat down abruptly and opened her book. Buddy bent to speak in her ear, but she shook her head and kept reading.

The rest of us yelled ourselves hoarse. Brandi’s mama jumped up and down so hard her whole front jiggled. Cricket was fascinated. Martha quickly gave him a box of juice to distract him. I wished I had a juice box for Joe Riddley.

The crowd sat down again just in time to see the next batter—usually our best—hit a fly ball straight to the pitcher’s mitt. The Honeybees merged into an ecstatic swarm and somebody started a chant: “We’re county champs! We’re county champs!” The other team’s parents trickled down their half of the bleachers in a disappointed stream.

Cricket swallowed the last of his juice and heaved an enormous sigh. “Poor Uncle Walker is sure gonna be sorry he missed this game.”

Poor Uncle Walker—our younger son—had sold so much insurance last year, he’d won a month’s, all-expenses-paid vacation for his whole family at a Hawaiian resort. “Yeah,” Clarinda agreed, “he’s prob’ly cryin’ his eyes out right this minute.”

Joe Riddley peered at me around Clarinda. “You sure look smug, Little Bit.”

“You look pretty smug yourself.” We beamed at each other, happy as worms after rain.

“Ronnie’s plumb slaphappy.” Clarinda peered down at her grandson, a brand-new accounting graduate from the University of Georgia and the third assistant coach. He was slapping every shoulder in sight.

Ronnie had grown into a tall young man, good-looking in a skeletal kind of way, but to me he’d always be the thin five-year-old with huge, bewildered eyes who stood in my kitchen a week after his daddy shot his mama—Clarinda’s daughter, Janey. I had told Clarinda to bring Ronnie on down to work with her. Our house felt empty without children.

Ridd, home from grad school that summer, had been enchanted by the child. Every morning he took Ronnie out on his tractor to the fields. By August, Ronnie was bragging, “Ridd’s taught me to drive as good as him!”

When Bethany was born a year later, Clarinda kept her after Martha went back to work. To hear Ronnie tell it back then, he raised that baby. I’ll never forget the day he came in the store—skinny, eight years old, and the color of fudge icing—carrying a squirming, pink, two-year-old Bethany, and startled a tourist by assuring her, “This here’s my baby.”

He had missed very few of her ball games through the years, and he was delighted when DeWayne asked him to help coach that season. As we watched, Bethany left the others and flung her arms around him.

Hollis, meanwhile, was squinting toward the stands. When she found Buddy—who was still whooping and hollering—she raised one fist and pumped air. He raised both fists over his head and yelled down, “What-a-go, girl! What-a-go!”

Nobody would have guessed to look at them that Hollis and Buddy were related. Her eyes were bright blue, his hazel. Her lively copper hair was flecked with gold, green, and purple, his was walnut brown. Hollis’s body was sturdy, square, and strong; Buddy had the lean physique of an avid tennis player. As he nimbly started down the stands toward the field, I saw a lot of single women and a few married ones giving him the eye. At thirty, Buddy was one of Hopemore’s most eligible bachelors—if he’d had time to date. Martha must have been thinking the same thing, because she said indulgently, “Lots of women are gonna be glad when Hollis and Garnet are grown and Buddy gets free time again.”

For six years—ever since Fred Stanton had died and left Buddy’s sister a young widow—Buddy had helped her raise the two girls. She had used Fred’s life-insurance money to open a small store, and because she couldn’t get away in the afternoons and Buddy was a self-employed CPA, he was the one who left his office to drive the girls to after-school activities. I couldn’t remember him ever missing one of Garnet’s piano recitals or Hollis’s games.

He was certainly a lot more interested in this particular game than her sister was. The whole time he’d been jumping up and down and hollering, Garnet had kept on reading.

Down on the field, DeWayne, Ridd, and Ronnie were pounding each other’s backs like kids. Although Ridd was forty, DeWayne twenty-eight, and Ronnie scarcely twenty-two, the three of them were great friends. They often played a round of golf or drove down to Dublin for a NASCAR race. Ridd, who taught math at the high school, had led the campaign for DeWayne to coach the team after our former (and spectacularly unvictorious) coach retired. Ronnie, who used to pitch for Hopemore High, seconded his choice. In DeWayne’s favor, at a previous school he had coached a high-school fast-pitch team to state finals. But Coach Evans was black and single while the Honeybees were young, female, and predominantly white. We’re making progress in Middle Georgia, but we still have a ways to go.

“Let’s go join the party,” Joe Riddley told Cricket. He swung him onto his shoulders and headed for the field. I watched anxiously to be sure they got there safely. Joe Riddley had been shot in the head ten months before
¹
and hadn’t been walking without a cane very long. He was getting more confident in his abilities every day, but it was taking me a little longer to accept that he was almost back to normal.

Cricket wasn’t worried. He snatched his granddaddy’s cap from his head and waved it, with no fear of falling whatsoever.

Brandi’s daddy and brothers also headed to the field, leaving her mother surrounded by a mess of candy wrappers and soft-drink cans. She said to Martha, “That child sure looks like you.” He did. Both were plump, with round faces, soft brown hair, and light brown eyes.

Martha grinned. “It’s only fair, considering how much Bethany looks like her daddy. Mac and Clarinda, do you all know Shana Wethers, Brandi’s mother?”

We all extended sticky palms. I said, “Weren’t those girls terrific?”

“They sure were. I nearly had a heart attack while Brandi was running her bases.” I couldn’t place her accent, but it wasn’t Southern.