The Pirate Queen (16 page)

“Without asking me?”

“She’s been cooking day and night since she got here,” he said.

“I like to know is all.”

“Now you know.”

“Eddie and Tobias want to swim,” she said, not at all interested in taking time out of her evening for a church event.

Bender told her she could take them and still have time to come back and join him. “He’s a minister, Saphora, who came by to see a complete stranger. He got me thinking about some things.”

“What things?”

“Things.”

“Whatever.”

“I figure I can show my gratitude. It’s a small request he’s making.”

She could not figure out Bender’s odd behavior. She sighed and then said, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“There’s the motel where Luke’s cousin works,” said Eddie when she turned back toward the boys.

The motel was only two blocks away.

“I see it. Let’s head on out then,” she said.

Eddie was stuffing his shirt into his backpack. She called Jamie, who was hesitant to let Tobias go. “You can’t keep sheltering him,” said Saphora, keeping her tone respectful. “Besides, I’ll be poolside. Stop worrying.”

Eddie raced Tobias to the front parking lot. It was a small resort pool under the management of a riverside mom-and-pop operation.

Eddie and Tobias had put their swimsuits on under their clothes. Eddie had planned on swimming all along.

Tobias stayed on his bike for so long that while Eddie went in to square things with Luke’s cousin, Saphora returned for Tobias. “Tobias, did you forget something?”

He sat like a small bird, looking up at her. Finally he slipped off the blue bicycle and popped down the kickstand. He followed her through the marina gate.

Eddie had already made an impression on Luke’s cousin, who introduced himself as Wayne. Eddie had never been inclined to negotiating, so Saphora was not only relieved but pleased that she and Tobias were greeted with such enthusiasm.

“Luke called and said you might drop by,” said Wayne. “Mrs. Warren, you can sit under that umbrella over there. We have beers and soda pop in the cooler.”

Wayne was a very short man, graying around the temples. He wore a beach shirt like tourists wear down in the Keys, and his feet had tanned in the shape of his blue flip-flops.

Several mothers sat around the pool while their children jumped in and out with foam noodles and plastic inflated sea horses.

The shade of the umbrella gave Saphora a respite from the hot afternoon sun while she relaxed.

It seemed that one of the mothers was watching her. She smiled at the woman, thinking they might have met in Lake Norman.

The woman turned away but then got out of her chair. She approached Wayne at the beverage hut. Wayne leaned out of the window; his dark sunglasses hid his eyes.

The woman turned and marched back to her lounge chair without a drink.

It had not been a minute when a shadow appeared next to the umbrella shade. Saphora smiled up at Wayne. “The boys are having a nice swim. I’ll have to thank Luke for calling you.”

Wayne hemmed and hawed around so much that Saphora thought something awful must have happened. “What’s wrong?” she asked. She checked her phone to see if Bender had called.

Wayne knelt next to her chair. He whispered, seemingly embarrassed to speak. “Mrs. Warren, the women across the pool have lodged a complaint. I think they’re just nosy. But I have to ask you about the skinny boy you brought to the pool.”

“Tobias? Has he caused a problem?” She couldn’t imagine it. Tobias had been a dream to be around.

“Is Tobias adopted, by any chance?” he asked.

“I don’t see whose business that is,” she said.

“One of the women said there was a big stink up at the RV park last month. A couple brought in an adopted child. He had AIDS. When they asked the boy to leave the pool, there was a big scandal. They published the boy’s picture on the Internet. That woman thinks she’s ID’d Tobias as that boy.”

“ID’d? Like you ID a criminal?”

“I don’t mean it like that, Mrs. Warren,” said Wayne.

“AIDS isn’t passed through swimming, Wayne.”

“People get nervous, Mrs. Warren. It’s dumb, but you know how folks can be.”

“This isn’t the sixties, Wayne.”

“They’re paying guests, Mrs. Warren.”

“I’m glad to pay you whatever you want.”

“Don’t make me have to ask you to take the boy out, Mrs. Warren.”

By now the two women had come to their feet. A small crowd gathered around them. They each took turns calling their children out of the pool. It was like a scene out of a civil rights movie. Saphora got out of her chair. She stared down the woman who had first reported Tobias.

Eddie was so busy diving for nickels he did not notice that Tobias moved slowly toward the shallow end of the pool, away from the
guests staring at him. He stopped Saphora, who was halfway down the pool’s patio. “Don’t say anything, Mrs. Warren,” he asked. “It just gets worse when you do.”

“We can’t just let this go, Tobias,” she said.

“I don’t want to get you into trouble, Mrs. Warren.” He picked up his towel and left the pool area.

Eddie came up holding two nickels. “I found them!” he yelled. He searched around the pool’s ledge. “Where’s Tobias?” That’s when he saw the group of adults standing and staring at his grandmother. “What happened? Nana, where’s Tobias?”

“You should have seen them, Bender! It was like Rosa Parks being asked to give up her seat on the bus,” said Saphora.

“Did Tobias refuse to get out of the water?” asked Bender.

“Not at all. He’s such a sweet kid. They were all staring at him like he had leprosy. I told him he didn’t have to get out of the water. But he did. He came and put his arms around me, as if he had to comfort me.” Saphora was still fuming. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble.’ Like he wasn’t going to let me take his punishment. They were treating him like a criminal.”

“Where is he?”

“After that, he was humiliated. He asked me to drop him by his house. But I couldn’t just drop him off. I took him inside and told Jamie what happened. She took it in stride. I was mad as bats and there she sat, serenely taking it all in. She made pizza for Tobias, and they planned to watch a movie. Is this the way it is now? We all just lie down and let people roll over us? What happened to the sixties? What’s happened to us, Bender?”

“Are you saying they’re teaching Tobias to be passive?”

“I just can’t stand this. Don’t you think the boy should stand up for himself?”

“He’s sick, Saphora. That’s a lot of balls in the air already. Now you want him to add activism to his happy little act.”

“Who then? Someone’s got to do something,” she said.

“We’re about to be late.”

“Oh, hang the church bake sale! Like any of them care what’s happening right out their front door.”

“It’ll do you good to get your mind off Tobias. I’ll drive,” said Bender.

Sherry sat Eddie down for warmed-up spaghetti. “Bring us back chocolate pie, all right, Dr. Warren?”

“I thought you were off for the night,” said Saphora, picking up her purse.

“I’m still in charge of the kitchen, right, Dr. Warren?”

“And I’m not. I got it,” he answered.

“Bring us a pie, though,” she said.

“Will do,” said Bender.

Saphora lacked the resolve to sweep the incident out of her thoughts. She fumed all the way to the church.

Standing at the church door with an irritating grin on his face, Pastor John handed a silent auction bid ticket to Bender. Saphora hardly looked at him. She could not get the picture out of her head of Tobias climbing out of the pool as if he had broken the law. He had not shed a single tear.

Several tables displayed baked goods along the outside walk, luring the hungry and the curious, filling the church gym with people who wandered in from downtown. Bender immediately slapped down a ten to hold a chocolate meringue pie.

He moved table to table, picking up objects like handmade
pottery and home-canned salsa. It amused Saphora to see him taking an interest in a conventional community project. He took out his pen, the one he used to write out prescriptions and keep his golf score. He bid on a dinner and two symphony tickets and then the vacation package to the mountains.

Saphora said, “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s all in fun, Saphora.” He picked up a quilt and examined the fabric and stitching.

“But this is something only enslaved husbands do. This isn’t a Bender Warren activity. You’re the man who makes fun of men who are dragged into church by their wives.”

“This isn’t church, actually.”

“But it’s prosaic. You run from prosaic.”

“The incident with Tobias has soured you, Saphora. Take a breath. Look around you.”

“What is this, some new enlightenment that comes with brain cancer?”

“Maybe. A man can change.”

She felt as if someone had slipped into the house, pulled out the old Bender, and slid a new man into the old Bender suit.

Two tables away she was almost certain she saw one of the women who had shunned Tobias at the pool. But then she wasn’t sure. The woman looked too agreeable. Saphora said, “If you’re going to win the mountain trip, you’ll have to ante up another twenty. Make it more than an incremental difference. Run off the wannabes.” She took his pen and increased his bid by twenty dollars.

“That’s the spirit! Now let’s go and wait to see if anyone is watching. You know the competition’s just waiting for us to walk away,” he said.

“That’s why you up it so much. Two dollars will only tempt them to keep trying.” She had organized enough silent auctions to know the ropes of winning a bid.

Bender returned to the symphony tickets. “See, ten people have filled in bids behind mine. We’ve got to think of a new strategy.” He found Pastor John in a corner eating a cookie. “John, what time does this thing end?”

“In an hour,” said Pastor John. “Oh, I see what you’re up to. You want to slide in at the last minute and win your prize. What is it you’re trying to win?”

“The mountain trip and the symphony tickets,” said Bender.

“You’re up against the Flanigans. They’re financially solvent. Michael Flanigan owns half the shrimp boats out in the harbor. They’ll be hard to beat,” said Pastor John.

“I hate to lose,” said Bender. “Any suggestions?”

“Act as if you don’t care what you win. Hover around other bids. Place a few more bids at the other tables so as to throw the Flanigans off.” John pointed them out casually so as not to draw attention.

“We can beat them, Bender,” said Saphora. “They’re amateurs.”

“I smell blood,” said Pastor John.

“Is this addictive?” asked Bender.

“Not sinful, like bingo,” said the minister.

“Saphora, you go to that table, the one with the quilts. I’ll go to the opposite side of the room and act interested in the pottery,” said Bender.

“I’m interested in the pottery,” she said, thinking it might be Luke’s work. But Saphora strolled over to the quilts, making a great show of selecting one. It was blue and white and expertly stitched. It would add some color to the plain master suite. Just as she had
penciled in the bid, the Flanigan woman stood right beside her looking over the bid list.

Pastor John nodded in such a knowing way that Saphora was beginning to feel overcome with confidence. She also felt ashamed of herself for having judged Pastor John. She had not seen Bender enjoying himself this much in so long that the auction was worth the time spent in foolishness. She placed another bid and then casually joined Pastor John at the cookie table. “You’ve done a good thing, Pastor,” she said. “I’ve never known a single minister who could make an impression on Bender. It’s like watching a miracle.”

“You never know what God is up to. I thought that the afternoon you fingered me for stealing oysters.”

“I’m an idiot sometimes.”

“Don’t ever say that, Mrs. Warren.”

He was exactly the opposite of the man she had judged in the grocery store. “Look, there goes that Flanigan fellow upping Bender’s bid,” she said.

“Honestly, Mrs. Warren, I hated to tell your husband, but I’ve never seen Flanigan lose.”

There was so much she could have said about Bender. But the minister’s curious opinion of him was too much of a novelty. At the close of the auction, Bender would have everything he had set out to get.

As Saphora went out to the bake sale table to pay the balance for Sherry’s pie, a bell sounded from inside. Pastor John’s secretary was calling the auction to a close.

Saphora worked fast. She picked up some canned beans and bought a potholder. After all, it was for a good cause. When she went inside she could not find Bender.

Pastor John spoke into a microphone attached to a squeaking public address system. He called out the auction items one after another, a woman handing him slips of paper as fast as he could read them off. Finally, he came to auction item number twenty-two. Saphora looked up, spotting Bender. He was talking with, of all people, Michael Flanigan. Knowing him, though, it was only another strategy.

Pastor John announced, “The winner of an evening of dinner and a symphony goes to … Michael Flanigan!” The couples packed into the church hall erupted, applauding. Everyone in town knew him. Saphora knew Bender had given that to him to appease him.