Southern Discomfort (19 page)

Annie Sue's truck was blocking my car, so the girls wished my aunt and uncle bon voyage and drove off into the sunset as I picked up one of the bags and said, "Listen, Uncle Ash—"

"Most of the finish work involves items of essential practical usefulness, such as the door and window frames, the doors and windows themselves, the roof covering, and the stairs."

My car was out of sight, locked inside the garage.

Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell were so caught up in the romance of their Parisian adventure, that they didn't question my lie that I'd suddenly remembered an important meeting I simply had to attend if I expected the fall election to rubber-stamp my appointment. If anything, they seemed sort of pleased to start the first leg of their trip alone.

Now I sat alone in the dark parlor of their quiet house. Twilight shadowed the rooms, but except for dim night lights, all the lamps were off and they'd stay off till someone came.

Dwight? Or—?

I hoped it would be Dwight. I hoped it had been my imagination out on the drive an hour earlier, that involuntary startled widening of the eyes, the sudden withdrawn look of intense concentration as if she were trying to remember.

Me? Did the camera catch me?

Clever to have done it then. If she had. In such a crush of people, who would remember which girl served whom?

Now that they could drive, the three of them were always together this year; in and out of one another's houses, one another's lives, invited to all the ceremonies, caught up in their emotions and hurts—the intense, nonsexual but
passionate
and all-consuming love that exists between adolescent best friends.

Katie Tyson. I remember the night she cried herself sick up in my bedroom, unable to tell me about the disgusting thing that blighted her life; the anger and anguish I'd felt because I knew she would be shamed even further if she told me—even me!—why she cried. I loved her so much. Would I have killed for her if I'd known for sure that a father, brother, uncle, or preacher had violated her trust?

Once, and only once, I asked my father if he'd ever killed anyone.

"No," he'd said. "Wanted to a couple of times, meant to once, but never did."

And there was Mother, who turned her back on all her chances, burned every bridge, and ran off with a fiddle-playing bootlegger.

And I'm enough their daughter that yes, I've had it in me to dance with the devil a time or two over the years.

Not that Katie gave me a chance to find out if I was ready to dance right then. She walked out of our house that dark November night and drove her mother's car straight into the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler and never touched her brakes.

Everybody else thought it was an accident.

So much ugliness, even back then. Stuff I only vaguely suspected in my safe protected world. How had I escaped? What kept things sane and normal in our household? I was the only girl child in a family of randy, roughneck boys, but never did one of them look on me with lust in his heart. Never did my own father touch me lasciviously.

Did hers?

Oh God,
which
her?

For a moment, adolescence blurred with the grown-up here and now and was overlaid with all the pathological nastiness I'd seen and heard in too many courtrooms.

Dusk deepened to darkness, and the streetlight down the block cast black shadows on the sidewalk.

Had she lost her nerve? Or were her nerves strong enough to do nothing, leave it alone, assume there was nothing incriminating on the tape, or that I'd miss it if there were because I'd be busy looking for Carver Bannerman? Surely she was too young for such self-control. Killers more mature than she were unable to leave it alone, to resist that final tidying up of loose ends.

If I ever do kill anyone, I'll just do it and walk away and never look back.

Looking back trips you up.

It was barely dark good. She'd have to get free of the other two first, then drive back alone, park her car on a nearby street, and come the last little bit on foot.

But she had to come soon or risk running into Dwi—

The back veranda door squeaked and I froze.

I'd unplugged the night light here in the front parlor but the one in the hallway was enough to light her way to the central staircase, and she hurried past without a glance in my direction.

The tape atop my VCR was clearly dated and labeled. Not the real one, of course, but I didn't think she'd take the time to watch it here.

Indeed, she was up there only a minute or two before I saw her dark shape on the stairway again. I waited till she was passing the parlor's arched doorway, then switched on the lamp beside me.

"I see you found it."

The cassette fell from her nerveless fingers, but she stooped and snatched it up again and clutched it to her chest.

"I—I thought you—"

"No," I said gently.

She looked down at the tape.

"You poisoned Herman," I said. "Why?"

Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

"He made her cry a lot," she whispered. "Like my father. He didn't trust her. That's what she always said. I thought she meant like Dad didn't trust me—always after me and after me, and talking about sex and what boys wanted and making it all dirty."

"Like Carver Bannerman? You gave him poison, too, didn't you?"

"He was filth!" she said indignantly. "Married. A pregnant wife and not caring who else he made pregnant—! Dad was right. That's all any of them want. To put their hands in our pants, put their things in our—"

A great shudder of repulsion shook her.

Dwight says I never think.

He's wrong. I
do
think. It's just that I always think people will act logically.

Instead of bursting into tears and confessing that she'd administered several doses of arsenic to her father and Herman, and had slipped Carver Bannerman a first dose, too, her face filled with a dread and horror I'll see in my nightmares the rest of my life as it finally dawned on her what she was facing. In that instant, she turned and fled for the back door.

By the time I got to the veranda, she was nowhere in sight. Her car could be parked anywhere. I flicked on the yard lights and forced myself to stop and listen.

Over there! Crashing through Aunt Zell's flowers.

I raced down the grassy path and saw her balanced on the rail of the arched bridge that spanned the pool. She hesitated for only a second, then pushed off from the rail with all the force she could muster to dive straight down.

Headfirst.

Into a pool she knew was only four feet deep.

I splashed into the water after her, but when I got there and turned her face up, blood was staining the water from the top of her head, and she wasn't breathing.

"Be careful!" screamed the preacher. "Her neck could be broken."

"Her neck may be broken, but if you don't get her out of the water and begin CPR, she's going to die here and now," the pragmatist said.

It was the worst dilemma I've ever faced.

As gently as I could, I laid her over the coping of the pool with her legs still in the water and performed the Heimlich maneuver till I thought her lungs were emptied of water, then I pulled her all the way up and started CPR till finally, finally she began to breathe again.

Blood was a dark halo on the white tile around her head.

A phone, I thought. The rescue squad.

And then blessedly I heard Dwight's car door slam.

Another Intensive Care waiting room.

"Why? O God, why?" cried Eleanor Byrd as we waited to hear if Paige's head injuries included a broken neck.

"She thought Herman was doing to Annie Sue what Perry did to her," I said.

"No!" she said wildly. "Perry never touched Paige. Never!" But her eyes couldn't meet mine.

I might never know exactly what Perry Byrd did to push their daughter over the edge, but I'd bet every dime I'll ever make that she did.

Dwight came back then and took me out of there. I was still in the damp, chlorine-smelling clothes I'd worn over in the ambulance.

"I didn't get a chance to tell you before," he said as we drove the short distance home through the hot, still night. "The lab report came right after you left my office this evening. No arsenic in Ralph McGee's body."

"They dug up the wrong man. It's Perry Byrd that should be exhumed."

"You think?"

"Yes. Remember when he had that first stroke and everybody thought he was going to die? She must have realized that if he did die, she'd be free of him. Because he was getting better, remember? Then suddenly, he just keeled over again."

For the last hour, I'd been facing the fact that I got Perry Byrd's seat mainly because his daughter had poisoned him.

"I can sort of understand why she'd slip arsenic in Bannerman's drink after he laid Cindy, but why poor old Herman? Was she starting an orphans' club or something?"

"She almost told me the night she confessed to killing Bannerman—and isn't that bizarre? Start to kill a man with slow poison and then wind up doing him in with a hammer."

"Herman," Dwight reminded me, turning down my street.

"Herman," I said, feeling tears begin to slide down my cheek. "She did it for Annie Sue and I wish to God Annie Sue never had to know. Because if she hadn't dramatized it, if she hadn't—if—"

"Hey," said Dwight. He parked the car in the side driveway, cut the motor, handed me his handkerchief, and opened his arms.

I was grateful for both.

"Paige misunderstood the way Herman yells and how Annie Sue always overreacts. If you ever heard her, you'd think he was David Copperfield's wicked stepfather and kept her chained in the basement. Because Annie Sue was the first best friend she'd ever had—you know about teenage girls and their best friends?"

"Tell me," he said, gently smoothing my hair.

"It's hard to find the words because it isn't sexual, even though it's almost as romantic as first love. Oh hell, who am I fooling? It is first love! With all that pre-Freudian intensity. Flirting with each other. Telling innermost secrets. The hurts and jealousies if you think she likes a another girl better than you. You spend hours analyzing hairstyles and clothes, and then you spend even more time analyzing each other. You know her thoughts and moods as well as you know your own—
better
than your own maybe, because at that age you usually don't like your body very much and you certainly don't like the dark disturbing thoughts that are rolling around in your head. And you're protective as the devil if anything or anyone threatens her. I guess she thought Herman was abusing Annie Sue and, since she'd already stopped the abuse in her own life, why not make Herman sick and stop it in Annie Sue's?"

"Not kill him?"

I shrugged. "She could have just given him one big dose instead of several small ones. Maybe she thought if he felt a little sick, he'd leave Annie Sue alone. At the hospital Saturday night, though. That's when she finally realized there was nothing perverted between Annie Sue and Herman, and that's the real reason she couldn't stay in that hospital room."

They found Paige's car parked in front of Miss Sallie Anderson's the next day. An empty bottle of Terro Ant Killer was in a little box under the front seat.

Her neck wasn't broken, but it was four days before she came out of the coma. There's residual paralysis on her left side and the fingers of her left hand tend to curl, but they're hoping therapy will help. She says she doesn't remember a thing about that night and that these past few months have a dreamlike quality, as if they happened to someone else. Paige doesn't deny what she's done, she just doesn't quite understand why.

Considering the severity of her head injury, her doctors say she's probably telling the truth. Zack Young's counting on their testimony when she goes to trial this fall. He thinks it'll be a mitigating factor in her sentencing.

Annie Sue and Cindy have rallied around. They say Paige isn't quite the same. Quieter. Maybe not quite as sharp as before she hurt her head. "But still real sweet."

They don't hear the pity in their own young voices.

"The part of the finish which is purely ornamental is called trim."

BeeBee Powell's house was dedicated at a ceremony the weekend before Labor Day.

Living room, large kitchen, three small bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths. The siding was painted pale creamy yellow with black shutters and porch railings, and a burnt orange door. Inside, everything was fresh and clean and sparkled almost as brightly as Kaneesha's snaggle-toothed grin.

She and Anthony Carl had colored two bright THANK YOU!! posters and hung them by the front door.

Retha Dupree and Ava donated the Coffee Pot's services and catered a picnic in the yard. (After pulling a two-week drunk in South Carolina, Bass Langley had sweet-talked his way back into Ava's good graces and was back lifting and toting and washing dishes again.)

Mr. Ou hadn't put in the grass yet, but neat borders of liriope lined the new front walk, and azaleas were mixed with Korean boxwoods around the foundation. People were trying not to step on anything.

Everyone who worked on the house was there, including a few who merely donated money or materials. Not Paige, though. She was at a rehab place over in Durham, not far from the detox center where Graham Ogburn had stashed his son to wait for his jury trial.

I could thank Zack Young for that nugget of information because there was certainly no on-the-record mention of young Layton at the dedication. This was blue sky PR all the way. Lu introduced the owner of Tri-County Building Supply, and the
Ledger's
photographer bounced strobe flashes all over the house as Graham Ogburn announced his intention to furnish all the materials for a second house—"At cost, ladies and gentlemen! In honor of what family values can accomplish when a whole community pulls together!"

(Applause. )

Clapping loudest were Kimmer Norris and her three kids, who'd been promised that house.

The women of the community college's cabinetry class had donated their labor on the cabinet work and, in the end, they took pity on some of their male classmates who felt discriminated against, so it wasn't totally an all-woman project after all. By then, no one really cared. The point had been made.

Annie Sue and Cindy hung in till the end. They could have ducked out without blame, but Annie Sue was determined to finish what she'd begun and Cindy wouldn't admit she couldn't handle it, too.

As each person's contribution was called out and Knott Electrical was recognized, Herman didn't try to stand, just reached back for Nadine's hand on the wheelchair handle and made a joint wave. They smiled proudly when Annie Sue was named, but there was still a worried look in their eyes.

And with reason.

Annie Sue's done a lot of growing up this last month, but she knows how much blame she deserves for what happened to Herman and she's quit dramatizing anything. No more stomping off in anger, but no more flamboyance either.

Not so oddly, I think Herman sort of misses it. More than what he's lost, he's troubled by what Annie Sue has lost.

The following Saturday, I was still at the breakfast table when Dwight came by to pick me up. K.C. Massengill was having an end-of-the-summer weekend party at her lake cottage, and he'd been invited, too.

The puppy met him at the back door, yipping importantly like a real watchdog, but then spoiling it by wagging his little tail like a crazed metronome.

Dwight accepted Aunt Zell's invitation and sat down across from me with a hot corn muffin and a cold glass of milk.

"What'd you end up naming him?" he asked her.

"I just can't decide," Aunt Zell sighed. "I thought sure I'd find a name in Paris, but he's too American to be a Jacques or a Pierre, isn't he? I think I've narrowed it down, though. Copperfield, because he was orphaned, too. Or Mowgli. Which do you think, Dwight?"

"What about Q?"

"Short for Barbecue," he said innocently.

I about strangled on my coffee.

Aunt Zell looked at me anxiously. "You all right, Deborah?"

"Or Pork Chop's a nice na— Ow!"

Dwight suddenly reached down and rubbed his shin.

My sandals weren't designed for effective kicking, but it's like building a house: one does what one can with the tools at hand.