Southern Living (26 page)

It was seven o’clock on a Thursday evening, the newsroom eerily empty. Randy had dispatched every available news reporter to cover what the voice on the scanner said was a fire at Massey Hall.

Once the fifth-oldest Baptist university in the South, the block-long, five-story building had been left to decay since 1971, when the trustees moved the college to Atlanta. Though empty and dark, with windows punched out and graffiti covering the first eight feet of red brick, this was Margaret’s favorite building in town. It reminded her of the original Smithsonian Institute building on the mall in Washington, the one that looked like a castle. Each time she walked by she would notice a new curve or line or angle of the rambling structure, whose turrets sprouted from surprising spots like oaks inadvertently planted by squirrels. It was so different from the rest of the historic structures in towns, most of them shrines to symmetry and order. Though immense, Massey Hall was subtle and challenging. It was not drive-by architecture, and therein lay the roots of its demise.

A new car dealer in north Selby, Ray Dubose of Dubose Jaguar and Mercedes of Atlanta, Inc., decided that Selby needed a minor league baseball team, and he set about finding land for a stadium. Since all the larger parcels out by his dealership were too pricey, he looked closer in, on the edges of the depressed downtown area, and found two possible candidates. One was the decrepit Massey Hall and the other, at the corner of Second and Hanson Streets, was Mount Pleasant All People’s Baptist Church and World Peace Center.

Over the last ten years, Dr. Recil Jackson, chief minister and CEO, had doubled the African American church’s membership to just under two thousand parishioners. The redbrick building grew by a room or two nearly every year, giving the sanctuary the look of a large, rambling commercial bakery or candy factory. To counter this, Jackson built a new facade with soaring, white Corinthian columns and a stairway flanked by gold-painted lions lying atop homemade concrete pedestals decorated in a mosaic of broken glass from dishes brought by each family. Across the top of
the facade, forty-seven plastic letters spelled out the name of the church, alternating in color from red to white to blue. Random-sized, immaculate, white-painted rocks outlined the entire yard of the church, like lights along a runway, as if to entice and guide spirits in for a perfect landing. And none of this hallowed ground, Dr. Jackson informed Ray Dubose, was up for sale.

So Dubose sniffed out and courted the blind-trust owners of Massey Hall, a collection of wealthy, north Selby businessmen who owned more than two hundred inner city homes, most of them rat-infested fire traps with leaky roofs that they rented to African-American families at inflated prices. The
Reflector
broke the story. And that next week, the Middle Georgia Historic Preservation Council, headed by the diminutive, white-haired Pixie Franklin, sued to stop demolition. She was just days from getting Massey Hall officially listed on the National Historic Register. And now this: obvious arson.

Margaret and Harriet stood at the second-floor window of the newsroom watching the blaze eleven blocks away on Massey Hill, the highest point in Selby. The sun had set, and the fire, which had climbed into every turret like ivy, cast an orange, quivering glow on every surface within a hundred yards.

The women noticed a long ladder, presumably one end of it connected to a truck, rising up toward the tallest spire of Massey Hall. On the end was a firefighter in a shiny, silver suit that reminded Harriet of a tented turkey in the oven. The extension ladder rose and rose, growing longer and longer, swiveled a little to the right, then rose again, and rose … and rose … and then, at some point near a hundred feet above the ground, it jerkily stopped, creating enough bounce that both women unconsciously held their breath until the fireman let loose with his hose, a stream of water that looked white and crisp as a laser beam.

Margaret suddenly felt Harriet’s hand on her arm. “That man’s too little to be Dewayne,” she said. “Dewayne’s a big man. I’m sure they’ve got him liftin’ stuff down on the ground someplace.”

Margaret touched her friend’s hand. “I’m sure you’re right, Harriet. He says he usually works the truck … whatever that means.”

“I can’t ever remember a fire this big.”

Margaret could see minuscule, faraway firefighters in reflective yellow suits scurrying about the ground with the energy of mad ants. She thought of Dewayne and his sure but plodding way of navigating the planet. Did he move quicker on the job? Would he be able to dodge a rain of fiery debris? Margaret tried but failed to imagine him in adrenaline mode.

Harriet opened her purse, reached inside and pulled out a thick crescent moon of a mostly consumed York Peppermint Patty. She unfolded the foil, revealing the dried-out white edge cut by teeth a day earlier, and offered Margaret a piece. After they both finished their bite of candy, Harriet took Margaret’s right hand in hers, bowed her head and closed her eyes.

“Dear Lord,” she said, “please watch over these brave men tonight …”

The prayer caught Margaret by surprise, and for a moment she stared at Harriet as she spoke to her creator. Then, like a Sunday school teacher, Harriet peeked at Margaret to see if she had joined in, and Margaret quickly shut her eyes and bowed her head in compliance.

“… and give them the strength to put out that fire and come on home safe and sound to their families … and close ones.… Amen.”

“Amen,” Margaret whispered.

“And what’s all this about?”

They whipped around in surprise and saw Randy leaning against a desk with his arms folded across his chest.

“Just givin’ some support to those men out there,” Harriet said.

“They’re gonna need a helluva lot more than that,” he replied. “They just called in some backups from Peachtree City.”

“You don’t need to sound so excited about it, Randy,” Margaret said. “It’s a horrible fire. That was a lovely, historic building.”

“There’s nothin’ wrong with a little prayer, Mr. Randy,” Harriet said. “It all helps.”

“Harriet, do you really think God has anything to do with that fire?” he said.

“Sir?”

“I don’t understand you people. Is this fallout from the Civil War or something? Is there some inferiority complex in the culture here? Do you guys attribute everything bad and good to God because you feel you have no control over your own destinies? Is that it, Harriet?”

“I guess I don’t know what you’re sayin’,” Harriet answered.

“No,” he replied. “I’m sure you don’t … because it would involve deep, secular introspection.”

“That’s enough, Randy!” Margaret yelled. “Or shall we deconstruct your tortured soul to discover the true roots of your blatant assholeishness?”

“God, what bug bit your butt?”

“Reserve some dignity for people, Randy, would you?”

“Boy, you’ve been pissed at me lately. Are you still weirded out over that kiss?”

“No. I’ve got other things to think about.”

“I know you think I was rushing things.”

“Please. Your brilliance is blinding me now.”

“Let’s go grab a bite to eat and talk about it.”

“No. I’m tired. I’m fixin’ to go home and go to bed.”

“Fixin’ to!… Margaret! God!”

Margaret pulled the sticks from the bun on the back of her head and let her hair cascade over her shoulders.

“You need to relax a little bit more, Randy,” she said.

Just before three
A.M
., Margaret was awakened by a light knocking on the back door. She knew the knock; Dewayne had refused to accept his own key to the house, thinking it improper.

Wearing a faded, black SUNY-Buffalo T-shirt over Power Puff
Girl panties she’d found on clearance at Belk Lindsay, Margaret ran on her toes into the kitchen and flipped on the light. As she opened the door, she saw a paramedic’s truck pull away from the curb.

“Oh, my God … Oh, Dewayne.”

A bandage covered the left side of his forehead, from his hairline to below the eyebrow. His right cheek and chin had large scrapes that looked wet and raw, as if he’d been dragged across a roof of gritty asphalt shingles. His broad shoulders were in a perpetual shrug from the tops of crutches crammed into his armpits.

The cast ran from mid-thigh to the beginning of his toes. Unable to fit it into his jeans, Dewayne wore a pair of navy blue gym shorts with
SFD
embroidered on them, perhaps a gift from his mother. This was the first time Margaret had ever seen his bare thighs. They were full and muscular though pale from living beneath the boot-cut Wranglers he always wore.

“Oh, Dewayne … Oh, God … You must be exhausted.”

Wanting to hug him but afraid she might hurt or throw him off balance, Margaret reached out, placing her hands on his forearms, and looked into his eyes, which had begun to fill with tears. She gently touched his uninjured cheek with the back of her hand and he leaned into it and closed his eyes, his chin falling, hydraulic-like, until it came to rest on his chest.

Both of them silent, Margaret led him into the bedroom. As he stood at the side of the futon, she took the crutches from him and leaned them against the wall.

“Can you put your arms up?” she asked.

Balancing on his good leg, Dewayne slowly raised them, and Margaret began pulling off his sweatshirt, stepping onto the futon to finish the task because she was so much shorter than he.

Dewayne sat down, and Margaret removed the one shoe, and then he leaned back, toward the pillows. After lifting and swinging his legs onto the futon, Margaret leaned over him and kissed his cheek, then his nose, then his lips, which were dry and salty. She
then lay her head on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart on her ear, looking at the underside of his chin and noting, for the first time ever, blond beard stubble. “Are you okay?” she whispered. He nodded.

She felt a sudden, compelling need to touch him all over. Outside, the moon was full, and the lunar light coated much of the bedroom in a skim-milk white. Margaret could see herself as she traced her fingers over Dewayne’s smooth shoulder blades, then across the twin mounds of his chest, dropping kisses, tiny like stitches, in the wake of her fingers.

She dragged her lips down to the rise of his stomach, then let them hop across the warm dense arc, and when she finally reached the end of this smooth beach of skin and the beginning of the undulating waves of his blue, nylon shorts, she lay down her head, floating on top, feeling him swell and stir beneath her cheek.

He moaned softly, and she leaned forward for a moment to connect with his face. Margaret smiled at what she saw: a look of naive, bewildered ecstasy, much like the expression she remembered from the time he first tasted her flan.

T
he UPS man delivered the day’s packages just after three o’clock, and with an eight-inch butcher knife and highball of bourbon and soda Suzanne carried them out to the patio to open them.

From Ballard Designs, she had a French, fake-weathered, metal bread tin, which Suzanne would place on her kitchen étagère and fill with the faux baguettes she’d found at the Silk Flower Warehouse; from Williams-Sonoma, an eight-inch copper saucepan to add to the collection of matching, unused copper cookware hanging on the pot rack over the island in the kitchen; and from the Solutions catalog, the patented, goldtone-plastic Bracelet Buddy.
(An extra hand so you won’t need someone to help fasten a bracelet around your wrist!)

Anxious to try the latter, Suzanne disappeared into the bedroom
and returned with her braided, gold-and-silver David Yurman bracelet and the Paloma Picasso from Tiffany, a circle of expressionistic, alternating, sterling-silver
X
’s and
O
’s.

Suzanne spread the David Yurman on the glass patio table then lay her forearm over it, upside down, as if she were preparing to be punctured for a blood sample. She was trying to attach the end of the bracelet onto the hook of her new tool when the doorbell rang.

Suzanne looked up, through the open French doors. From this vantage point she could see the foyer, and that someone was waiting on the other side of the narrow, stained-glass windows that flanked the front door. The glass was cloudy, for privacy’s sake, and the person on the other end always looked like a witness on a true-crime show whose appearance is blurred to protect his identity, but Suzanne could tell this was a man by the heft of his belly. He was dressed all in dark green. And on the head, a hat with a wide brim. A service man? Had she made an appointment that she’d forgotten?

Immersed in her test of the new Bracelet Buddy, Suzanne ignored the door. He rang twice more before she saw him descend the steps of the porch and leave.

“Ma’am?”

Suzanne gasped and shot up, dropping the Bracelet Buddy, which fell to the flagstone and rolled toward the feet of a black man dressed in an Italian-cut suit, red medallion tie, and militarily polished, black, Cole Haan loafers.

“Who are you … and what are you doin’ on my property?” Suzanne asked.

He pulled from his back pocket a brown wallet, well rounded from spending hours every day smooshed against a car seat. Men’s wallets always reminded Suzanne of messy sandwiches, and this was no exception … all those layers of credit-card color and leafy, green notes and unruly, large receipts sneaking out of the side like errant slices of Swiss cheese—all pressed between matching slices of leather that snapped shut like a mousetrap.

He flipped it open, revealing a gold badge with the seal of Perry
County in the middle, a shield of armor divided into quarters that featured a cotton bowl, a magnolia blossom, an Indian headdress, and a pair of peaches.