Book of Mercy (2 page)

“This isn’t my fault, Antigone.” His voice was growing louder. “You’re the one who takes off for God knows where without a word. You jump in that little Mustang and drive until you’re exhausted.” Antigone moved the phone slightly away from her ear. From the corner of her eye, she saw the figure on the picnic table stir.

“Then you call me. You’re a binge driver, Tigg. You get upset or stressed, and you hit the road. It’s been fifteen hours! Fifteen hours is a heck of a long time when you’re waiting for someone.”

Antigone was swamped with guilt. She’d put him through this—again. What kind of person does that to the people she loves? She closed her eyes and imagined a happy Sam in the garage he loved, munching on Froot Loops, his comfort food, and lying under a car twirling wrenches as if they were batons. This had been a mistake. She should have gone to Sam—instead of the open road—to chase her fears away.

“Tigg, come home,” Sam said. “I want to hold you and my baby. Forget about the forms. Forget everything. We’ll work it all out. Like we always do.”

So, Antigone decided to go home. She told Sam to get some more sleep and hung up.

She did not tell him that, for the first time on her many road trips, she was lost.

Ordinarily, Antigone found her way home without navigational aids, an ability that was incomprehensible to Sam. He lived or died by his GPS. She thought of her phone at home, with the GPS she never used. She trusted her own inner compass more than technology. Even as a child, she’d known when her mother took a wrong turn or her father was driving in circles.

But today when she searched her instincts, all she came up with was confusion. She nervously fingered the green stone in her pocket. Sam and the O. Henry Deer Farm and Café seemed so far away. William’s heavenly chocolate cake sounded so good. She needed to consult a map. And she hated maps as much as Sam did. Antigone rubbed her forehead.

“You all right?” asked the voice from the picnic table.

Antigone jerked. Her head came up. While Antigone made a mess of reading anything from road signs to recipes, she was a genius at listening. It was almost an animal ability. While her deer smelled change in the wind, she heard it in the human voice. She listened to the radio, to voices from Alaska and Texas and New Zealand, and it was as if they were talking to her heart-to-heart.

The voice from the picnic table was young and tough but curious. It was not a trusting voice. Still, and this is what intrigued Antigone, there was a breath of concern.

The body attached to the voice moved. Legs swung around; a long, lanky torso sat up; arms stretched. Antigone froze, watching. A semi thundered down the road, pulling a tail of leaves into the vacuum behind it. There were no other cars at the little roadside park. Without taking her gaze from the stranger, she began edging toward the Mustang.

“Man, I’m hungry,” the voice mumbled.

Antigone stopped. She stared at the figure, which was going through all kinds of early-morning rubbings and twitchings. He drilled into his eyes with both fists. She smiled. He reminded her of a boy in one of the books her mother had read to her when she was a child, some sleepy towhead in baggy jammies shaking off moon dust. It was a ludicrous comparison. Sitting on top of the picnic table, his feet in gigantic unlaced tennis shoes resting on the bench, was a black kid in thin jeans and a navy blue hoodie. He was skinny and strange and scroungy-looking. A leaf stuck to his hair like Velcro. But when he dropped his hands and looked at her, she caught her breath. It was like looking into the eyes of one of her deer. Such amazing liquid brown eyes.

Antigone’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry, too,” she said.

The boy shrugged. “It’s a morning thing.”

Because she was tired and lonely, because the kid probably hadn’t eaten in days, and because
someone
was going to have to read a road map, she asked, “Do you want to get some breakfast? I’ll buy.”

The boy turned to stone. Suddenly, he was alert and suspicious. His stare zeroed in on her like a missile system. He slowly rose and stepped off the picnic table. She realized, with some trepidation, he was as tall as she, probably five-seven or eight. If it came to a tussle, they weighed about the same. But she figured his life experience would tip the scales. After all, he was out in the middle of nowhere, alone, obviously not afraid of her. Probably running from something. A gang? The law? Maybe breakfast wasn’t a good idea.

“Are you nuts?” the boy hissed. There—she heard it again, a softness, a caring. She relaxed. He paced several feet away, turned, and paced back. He stood in front of her, fists clenched on slim hips, legs apart and locked. “Are you crazy? Pickin’ up strangers. A white woman invitin’ a black kid into her car. I could rape ya, kill ya, and steal your car.”

“Do you know how to drive?”

The boy stared at Antigone with disbelief. He muttered to himself, “Save me from white people. They got no sense. They all livin’ in Disneyland.”

“You can earn your keep. Keep me awake. Talk to me.” Antigone scrubbed her face. She was feeling shaky, weary. She didn’t want to be alone. And her instincts told her she could trust this boy.

“I don’t talk.”

Antigone raised one eyebrow. “Ever?”

“Besides how you know I’m goin’ where you’re goin’?”

Antigone turned away and waved her hand. “Forget it. It was just breakfast; that’s all. No big deal.”

She slid into the front seat and slammed the door. She felt flattened. She didn’t even reach for the key in the ignition. She simply draped her arms on the steering wheel and rested her head.

“You gonna sleep or we gonna eat?”

She tilted her head and watched the boy pull the car door open. He gingerly pushed aside the papers on the floor with his toe and lighted on the passenger seat like a bird. She didn’t move. After a few moments, he relaxed into the seat. He flung an elbow out the window with the nonchalance of male youth and gave her a stern look. “No more screamin’.”

She nodded.

“And I ain’t drivin’ no car. Some cop catch me in a ride like this with a white chick—.” He shook his head. “That’s the last anybody gonna see of old Ryder.”

“Okay, Ryder.” Antigone started the engine, plucked her sunglasses from the dash, and slid them on her nose. “I’m Antigone, by the way.”

His forehead wrinkled. “What kinda name is that?”

“Antigone was a girl in Greek mythology.”

“Did she have a unicorn? I heard all those Greek chicks had unicorns.”

“No unicorn. But I
do
have deer.”

Ryder shifted in the seat and turned toward her. It was like watching one of the deer coming to attention, swirling its ears in the direction of interest. “Deer,” he said slowly. “Like Bambi?”

“Better than Bambi.” Antigone laughed and reached for the glove compartment.

The boy jumped to avoid contact.

In the even voice she used with the deer, Antigone said, “Just getting the map.”

She unfolded the map, propped it against the steering wheel, and stared at it in confusion.

After a few moments, Ryder said, “Uh, you know you’ve got it upside down, right?”

Antigone rotated the map. “Sure, just getting a different perspective.” The boy gave her a skeptical look. More moments passed with her studying the map and him studying her.

Ryder cleared his throat. “You expect those eggs to come to us?”

Antigone turned, edged the sunglasses down, and peered over the top at her new navigator. “Okay, Mr. Bigshot Map Expert.” She shoved the map at him. “You find the nearest restaurant.”

Ryder checked the road sign Antigone had been unable to read, traced one road then another on the map with his finger, and announced, “Left.”

Antigone patted the stone in her pocket to make sure she turned in the correct direction and pulled out of the parking lot.

T
HE
A
PRIL MEETING OF
the Mercy Study Club convened in Irene Crump’s solarium, a room ablaze with rich sunlight, understated elegance, and female resolve. Here seventeen women—dressed in silk designer suits and heels—changed lives. This room, with its ceiling fans stirring air while manicured hands stirred gold spoons in demitasse cups, was command central.

The Study Club was a book club, a support group, and a force to be reckoned with. While their husbands struck deals over lunch in clubs still dominated by white males, their wives held on fiercely to their own pockets of power. When the need arose, these hothouse blooms could shake loose an amazing amount of cash and clout. They got what they wanted without breaking a sweat, raising a voice, chipping a fingernail, or bothering with official channels. Mercy was a one-industry North Carolina town of less than five thousand in danger of shrinking into oblivion. The textile mill was taking a beating from imports.

The Study Club’s projects were invaluable to the community—the removal of asbestos in the high school; the fire department’s new hoses and uniforms; monthly contributions of canned goods to the local food bank. Any member could bring a need to the group. A majority vote determined action.

On this unusually warm day, with the sun cooking the Jaguars, Mercedes, and SUVs parked outside her house, Irene was coolly determined. She was club president, program chair, and commander in chief. With a jerk on her silk jacket hem and an unconscious straightening of her spine (an action hot-wired into her body by a mother obsessed with posture), Irene brought the group to order. “I’ve been volunteering two mornings each week at the high school library. And it has been quite an eye opener. Librarian Nancy Sandhart has her hands full. The attitudes of today’s youth are appalling, and as we all know, Nancy is not exactly a dominant personality. In short, I found the library itself lacking in control and its contents nothing short of questionable.”

Irene upended a Nieman Marcus shopping bag and poured books onto the ornate tile floor her contractor husband Arthur had special ordered from Italy. The befuddled members of the Study Club stared at the mound of literature. They were familiar with many of the books; some like Faulkner and Twain had been around when they were in high school. Other books such as the
Harry Potter
series looked new and were favorites of their children and grandchildren.

Irene nudged the pile with the toe of her black Prada. “Our children have complete and unrestricted access to this filth. Nancy makes no attempt to guide the young and impressionable toward more appropriate reading. She says she’s too busy.”

“Nancy buys these
things
?” asked seventy-six-year-old Arabella Richey, wrinkling her nose with distaste at a book about the adventures of a character called Captain Underpants. Arabella, wife of the bank president, was a mystery junkie and not ashamed to admit it.

“Apparently, they come out of the library’s budget. Many were requested.”

“People
asked
for this?” Arabella poked the underpants book with her cane.

“The children did.” Irene swept her hand across the pile. “In effect, ladies,
we
paid for them.
This
is our tax dollars at work.”

Several members looked at the heap in consternation.

“How can you be sure they’re all filth?” asked a soft voice. Irene turned to Julie Masterson Clark, a thirty-five-year-old who sneaked romances into her shopping cart at the grocery store. Their daughters were on the same soccer team. Julie’s grandmother founded the Mercy Study Club in 1919 as a place “where women of intelligence and culture could shine, keep abreast of the events of the day, and exercise their minds.” Julie’s mother had been a past president and a respected member until her death five years ago.

“Have you read any of them?” Julie asked.

“I’ve
perused
all of them,” Irene snapped. “I also consulted some librarians I know in other towns. And I found tons of information on the Internet. I even read some of those blogs. Most of those people are idiots, but a few were insightful.”