Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle (34 page)

“Yes, ma’am, maybe so, but it
was
something I said, and I was wondering if you’d go with me to call on him.”

“Well . . .”

“Please, Miss Julia. He won’t talk to me on the phone—he just hung up on me—so he’d probably close the door in my face if I go by myself. I thought, because you know him so well, that he’d at least let us in and I’d have a chance to explain.”

I was silent for a few minutes, thinking over the ramifications. How and from whom had she gotten the impression that I knew Thurlow so well?
Nobody
knew him, and that was a fact. He had such an erratic personality that no one could predict what he would do or say next.

Still, this would give me a perfect excuse to visit Thurlow and maybe get a reverse view of Miss Petty’s toolshed, and maybe that would reveal why Richard Stroud had been interested enough to spend a cold January night spying on Thurlow’s house.

“All right, Poppy,” I said, “I’ll go with you, but you have to understand that I make no promises. Thurlow’s just as likely to close the door in my face as he is to anybody. We may not get in at all, but I do commend you for wanting to try. When do you want to go?”

“This afternoon? I can pick you up about two. And thank you so much. If this doesn’t work, at least I’ll have tried everything I know to do.”

I was just as glad to be leaving when Pastor Poppy rang my doorbell at one-forty-five that afternoon, although I had a few qualms about doing so. Lillian and Latisha had left, and Etta Mae had taken the afternoon off to check on her single-wide and to get, I supposed, an uninterrupted nap. That left Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens alone to care for both babies, something they were going to have to get used to, although Hazel Marie looked a little wild-eyed at having to do it so soon.

Mr. Pickens was being his usual cocky self, saying, “Don’t worry, honey. What can be so hard? We’re bigger than they are.”

Etta Mae had just laughed and told Hazel Marie that she’d be back by suppertime. “I’ll bring us some barbecue from The Smokehouse in Delmont. Lillian’s not here, so that’ll make a good supper.”

Indeed it would, because not one of us was much of a cook. I slipped Etta Mae some money for the takeout, then met Pastor Poppy at the door for our joint church visitation. She was a fashion picture in a long, black double-breasted coat and black patent-leather boots with stilletto heels, making me feel quite dowdy beside her.

We left together in her vehicle, which was neither car nor truck. Or maybe it was both, but whatever it was, I almost needed a step stool to get up into it. As Poppy stepped on the gas, my head was jerked backward as the tires, gathering speed, chirped on the pavement.

“Sorry,” Poppy said, laughing. “This thing gets away from me every now and then.”

I gripped the armrest with one hand and my pocketbook with the other, thankful for the safety harness and praying for air bags. We flew down Polk Street, turned left onto Thurlow’s street, and pulled up in front of his house with the tires scraping the curb.

“Well,” I said, letting out the breath I’d been holding, “that was . . . exhilarating. Now, Poppy, let me warn you before we go in. Mr. Jones can be rude, crude, insensitive, insulting, and on occasion, indecent. You mustn’t take it personally, because that’s the way he is with everyone. I’ve certainly had my share of verbal abuse from him. So if you have a thin skin, I’d recommend we crank up and forget about seeing him.”

“No,” she said, taking her lip in her teeth and gazing out the window at Thurlow’s two-story brick, vaguely Georgian house, its high gabled roof overlooking the brick wall around the property. “No, I have to try to make amends. I can’t let something I said be the reason he rejects our church. And I do appreciate your coming with me, Miss Julia. Maybe,” she said with a charming smile, “if the Methodists can’t get him, the Presbyterians can.”

No, thank you,
I thought, then felt a stab of guilt. If I could think of Thurlow as a little lost lamb, as Poppy apparently did, I might’ve felt differently. But to my mind and on the basis of past experience with him, he was more like a ravening wolf.

We got out of the car and walked through the gate in the brick wall onto the brick walkway that led to the front door. I stopped just past the gate and took it all in. The winter storms had left hardly a mark on the lawn—no litter, no debris from the bushes and trees that enclosed the spacious yard. Even with the patches of unmelted snow in the shaded areas, the landscape looked tended and pruned. Looking up at the house, I saw all the shutters in neat array, none hanging askew as they’d once done. And looking down at the walkway, I saw not one blade of grass or weed between the bricks, whereas the last time I’d walked it, the weeds had been up to my knees.

“My land,” I said in awe, “there have certainly been some changes here. You wouldn’t believe how he usually keeps it. Maybe Thurlow really has had a change of heart.” Then I told Poppy how Thurlow had always had the most disreputable property within the town limits, making himself an affront to all his neighbors. “Look,” I said, as we approached the front door, “even the brass is bright and shiny. Well, let’s see if his manners have been polished as well.”

I rang the doorbell as Poppy and I stood shivering in our coats. I rang it again and waited, but nobody came. Just as I started to turn away, Poppy reached around me for the brass lion’s head knocker and thunked it roundly several times.

“My word,” I said under my breath, then quickly drew back as the door was flung open.

My first thought on seeing Thurlow was that whoever had spruced up his house and yard had bypassed him. He stood there glowering at us, his hair in an absolute mess, his plaid shirt stained, and his loose trousers gathered by a belt with a flapping tongue. His eyes glittered behind smudged glasses and his unshaven face had a scowl on it that would have discouraged a less determined woman than Pastor Poppy Patterson. Me, for example.

“What the Sam Hill is goin’ on?” he demanded. “Can’t a man get any rest without a bevy of women banging on his door? And if you’re selling or begging, you can just take it on down the road. I ain’t in the market.”

He stepped back to close the door just as Poppy, with a bright smile on her face, stepped forward to enter. He could do nothing but move aside and I could do nothing but follow.

As she started unbuttoning her coat, Poppy looked around the entrance hall. “My, what a lovely home you have, Mr. Jones,” she said, favoring him with a guileless smile. “This paneling is beautiful, so rich and warm. It’s similar to what I’ve seen in the governor’s mansion in Raleigh. How old is your house?”

“Built in 1892,” Thurlow said, taken aback by her ease after his less-than-welcoming greeting. “One of the oldest in town. Still standing, that is.”

“I love old houses,” Poppy said. “I expect it’s been in your family for a long time. Would you mind showing us around? I’d love to see it.”

Thurlow immediately led her, as I tagged along, to the room on the left. He threw back the door to a small formal room I’d never seen before and began pointing out the old portraits on the wall.

I stayed in the background for fear of disrupting the rapport that Poppy had established with her interest in old things. Maybe he felt that included him as well. But whatever it was, Pastor Poppy had gained us admittance and, so far, Thurlow seemed thoroughly taken in by her admiration of his home.

Who would’ve thought that was all it would take?

After showing us the dining room, Thurlow led us back to the big front room on the right of the hall. This was the room Lillian and I had once visited and the room that appeared to be the most used. All through the guided tour, I had been struck by the neatness and cleanliness of the floors and furniture—there’d been no dust or stacks of books and newspapers left where they’d fallen. This was all in stark contrast to what I’d seen in my previous visit.

The library, as he now called it, and where he offered us chairs, was equally clean, but bore evidence of Thurlow’s daily use. There was the same old recliner by the fireplace, the same pile of old papers beside it, and the same old Ronnie splayed out in front of the fireplace so that you could hardly pick your way past him.

I took a seat on the end of the sofa farthest from Ronnie, while Poppy sat in a chair next to Thurlow’s recliner. She shrugged out of her coat, then crossed her legs, leaving a black-stockinged gap between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots.

“So,” Thurlow said, plopping himself down in the form-fitting recliner, “I’ve already told you I’m not buying anything or donating anything; let’s get that straight right now. So why am I being blessed or harassed with a visit from two such elegant ladies?”

I wanted to tell him that sarcasm was unbecoming, but he wouldn’t care. Poppy laughed her bubbly laugh, but I felt a shiver across my shoulders, fearing that Thurlow was just revving up for some of his usual hurtful bluster. I didn’t want Poppy to have her feelings hurt or be humiliated when he began to rant and rave.

“Oh,” she said in a merry fashion, “we don’t want a thing from you. I asked Miss Julia to come with me because you’re a hard man to catch, and I am fishing for men.”

“Ha!” Thurlow said and pulled the lever that reclined him a few degrees. Ronnie lifted his head, then plopped it down again. “I bet you think I don’t know the double meaning of that. Well, I do, and I didn’t have to go to a seminary to know it.”

“Then you know why I’m here,” Poppy said, a little teasing in her voice. “I am sorry if I offended you last Sunday—”

“
If! If
you offended me!” Thurlow shouted, and straight up came the recliner. “You offended every right-thinking man there. Listen to me, young lady, God is not a mother and I can prove it. Let me get my Bible.”

He sprang out of the chair, looked around the room, then sat back down. “Well, I can’t put my hands on it right now, but,” and he lifted a finger to her, “it says
he, he, he
all the way through. And it’s a crying shame that we have to put up with women up there trying to preach without them poking some heathen message down our throats. You’re a fine-lookin’ woman—you ought to be fishin’ for a husband. You ought to be married. You ought to be raisin’ children, not up there usurpin’ a man’s place.”

I stiffened as he built up a head of steam as fierce and as outrageous as I’d feared. Poor little Poppy, she’d be outtalked and outwitted, and most likely reduced to tears before he was done.

Instead, though, she leaned over and gave him a light tap on the arm with the back of her hand. With a delighted smile on her face, she said, “Why, you old misogynist!”

Up came the recliner again, almost catapulting Thurlow out of it. “Miss-
what
?”

“You heard me, and you don’t fool me. You’re trying to make me feel bad because I made you rethink some of your ingrained beliefs. I gave you something new to think about. Now you can reject the new . . .”

“I did! Or didn’t you see me walk out?”

“
Or,
” Poppy went on, her eyes twinkling as she challenged him, “you can broaden your understanding of God and deepen your faith.”

“I’m gonna prove you wrong!” And he was on his feet again. “Let me get my Bible. And by the way, I’ve never yet seen a preacher come visitin’ without his own Bible.”

“Well,” Poppy said, with another bubbly laugh, “you’ve just seen one. Besides, I’m pretty much up on Scripture and don’t need to point out chapter and verse every time I turn around.”

Thurlow plopped back in the chair, seemingly outdone by her claim. “Arrogance!” he yelled, disturbing Ronnie so that he stood up and shook himself. “Scriptural arrogance, that’s what it is. That’s what happens when women get above themselves. Madam Murdoch, why’re you just sitting there without saying a word? What do you think of women getting too big for their britches and climbing up in a pulpit? Let’s hear from you for a change.”