The Pirate Queen (17 page)

Finally John called out the number that most people had been waiting to hear. “Number fifty-eight. A mountain vacation at the Chetola Resort.”

The room fell quiet. It irritated Saphora that Bender was still in the back of the room quietly conversing with Flanigan.

Pastor John’s microphone screeched. Then he exclaimed, “Michael Flanigan again! Michael, you won the mountain vacation!” Pastor John held out the prize to Flanigan.

Bender shook Flanigan’s hand and gave him a pat on the back. He walked him up to the front of the room to claim the prize.

John announced, “Saphora Warren has won item seventy-three, the blue wedding ring quilt!”

Saphora waved her ticket in the air while everyone applauded. She returned to the registration table to pay for her bid and pick up the quilt. She checked the ledger. There was the final bid in Bender’s handwriting.

The remaining items were announced, and the attendees started moving toward the front door while the women’s committee members began breaking down the booths.

Bender thanked Pastor John for the invitation. Saphora headed out the door, put out with Bender for losing all of his bids.

On the way home, Saphora pulled out the quilt she had won. “I wasn’t about to let that Flanigan woman win. Obviously you weren’t either.”

Bender stared placidly ahead.

“Are you upset at all?” she asked.

“The church needed the money. I didn’t really want to win. I was just upping the money to keep Flanigan bidding. He can afford it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know.”

She looked at a small package between them. She picked up the familiar-looking box and then opened it. “These are the symphony tickets and dinner out.”

“I bought them off Flanigan. He didn’t need them, and I told him you’d like to go when we got back home.”

“You bought them for me?”

“Unless you’d rather not go.”

“No, I’ll go. It’s just a surprise, that’s all.”

Bender kept smiling.
It could be a ploy
, she thought. He had never done anything without an ulterior motive. “Thank you,” she said.

It was quiet between them on the drive back. But not unpleasantly quiet.

10

Bender took his meds and went to bed.

Saphora pulled the old comforter off her bed and replaced it with the wedding ring quilt. The majority of the fabric was some shade of blue, except for the oyster white rings. She replaced the pillowcases with blue cotton covers and tossed the old throw pillows on a closet shelf. There were some blue pillows left up on the shelf. She arranged them on the bed. The room looked like a different place.

The empty area over the headboard needed some framed art. She would look around the downtown shops for something nautical, like what hung over the Sailing School’s fireplace.

She slipped into a pair of yoga pants for sleeping and a T-shirt. She pulled back the linens and was getting ready to turn on the TV to find a late-night movie. But the moon outside seemed to be telling her that TV was such a spoiler when the river was running past. She opened the balcony door. The wind sent the tree leaves into faint, shuddering spasms. She opened the door wider and sat on the edge of the bed to hear the night sounds. And yet the frogs were quiet. The silence created a tension in the air that made Saphora pause.

Sherry had left chai tea on her nightstand. She poured a cup and then took it out onto the balcony to drink. Some women sipped, but Saphora always drank deeply, so much so that her cup was quickly empty.

She walked to the balcony’s edge. Finally, the sound of the river was in its place and there was a small frog chorus down along the banks.

Luke puttered around his backyard. She could see his flashlight beam gyrating above the fence. No surprise that it sounded like he was digging again. She put down the cup, listening until she decided that curiosity was enough reason to put on her leather flats. Before she could question how shallow she was to spy on Luke, she was tiptoeing downstairs and then outside, standing at the gate. Through a crack in the gate, she could see a shop light illuminating the spot where he worked.

That was when Bender’s light came on in the library. If he looked out and saw her, he might ask for an explanation. There was no single explanation for what she was doing snooping around the neighbor’s fence. She pushed up on the lock. The gate opened and she walked through. She found a place to squat and hide behind a bush.

Luke stood over a hole, wearing a knit cap, perhaps to keep the hair out of his eyes. However, the warm night air did not warrant a winter cap. He looked very nearly grim in the light of the lantern. He had clamped a metal light onto his back fence, and an oil lantern hung on a kind of hook like the ones used for hanging hummingbird feeders.

He took off his eyeglasses and cleaned them with his shirttail. Plaid suited him.

Saphora moved slowly toward him without coming out of the
shadow of the trees. She stayed hidden behind a large photinia. There was a faint smell of magnolias. Tourists tended to bring them to plant and make their seaside home like their mountain home.

Luke might have cooked out on a grill for his dinner as there was also a faint cloud of burnt charcoal and lighter fluid.

He shoved the tip of the shovel into the hole. It went down at least a foot. He was digging a serious hole, possibly for a tree, Saphora decided. She looked back at her house. Bender’s light had gone out. Eddie was still up. The light through his window on the side of the house shed a dim yellow cast across his blinds, probably the lamp left on while he conquered a video monster.

She moved in for a closer look. That’s when she startled Luke’s cat. The animal bolted out of the shrub, hissing like cats do when their privacy has been invaded.

Luke came up from looking into the hole. When his cat tore past him, he scolded her and then returned to digging. Then he stopped and jerked the flashlight up and aimed it within a foot of where Saphora crouched.

Saphora didn’t know what he was looking around to see. The light was so bright that when it fell across the photinia, Saphora thought he had spotted her. But he was too intent on returning to his hole. There was no tree nearby or any sort of plant with a root ball that might fit into such a large hole.

Luke looked down into the hole. Then he took the tip of the spade and tapped all around inside the hole, a strange ritual. “You can either stand there all night or come and help,” he said.

Saphora looked beyond his digging place to see who Luke might be addressing.

“Mrs. Warren, is that you?”

She came out of the dark and said apologetically, “It’s me. Did I scare you?”

“Just Johnson.”

“Johnson?”

“My cat.”

“I can help, if you need it,” she said, nervous and embarrassed that she looked nosy rather than helpful.

He picked out a second shovel from a utility cart and gave it to her.

When she took her place on the other side of the hole, he said, “If you don’t mind, there’s another hole I need about two feet back from where you’re standing.”

Saphora stepped off the distance; but after marrying Bender she had decided to never agree to anything without full disclosure. “Are we planting something?”

“Just let me know if you find anything.”

The ground had been saturated. She saw the water hose running the length of the fence. The sandy soil was soft, so she got at least a half shovelful out of the first try. She dug until she heard a sharp clink against the tip of her shovel. The sound did not escape Luke’s attention. He came alongside her and helped dig. As she lifted out shovelfuls and dropped them alongside the fence, he got down on his knees and grubbed out the sifting soil around her spade.

Finally she pushed downward on the top of the spade with her toe and lifted, but the shovel resisted. “I’ve hit something. Don’t know what,” she said.

Luke ran and got a small hand spade. He dug around the object until he could get his fingers around it. “You’ve brought me luck, Mrs. Warren.”

“The suspense is killing me,” she said. She had never had any
luck with any games of chance or the state lottery. She dropped the shovel and fell alongside him. She paused, looking at her nails. So much for the manicure! She dug her nails into the soil.

Luke pulled on the object. She dug around it, loosening it while he yanked. After a dozen hard tugs, he pulled it out of the ground.

“Whatever it is, it’s coated in mud,” said Saphora.

Luke turned on the hose and blasted the object. Then he held it up as Saphora aimed the flashlight at it. “It’s an old roller skate,” he said.

“Is that important?” she asked.

He tossed it aside. “Not to me.” He was so let down that he extinguished the lantern and then sat on a bench at the edge of his garden.

“If I knew what it was I was looking for, I could be of better service.” When he did not answer, she said, “You know treasure hunters use Geiger machines or something, don’t they? Have you thought of using better equipment?”

“It’s getting late. I don’t want your husband worrying, Mrs. Warren.”

“He’s practically comatose on his cancer drugs, Luke.”

“Cancer? How long has Dr. Warren known?”

“Longer than me. A month. I don’t know for sure.”

“He kept it a secret?”

“Until the day of my
Southern Living
party. He figured he couldn’t go it alone after that.”

“Why do they do that?” He talked under the full light of the moon. He picked dirt from under his nails, saying, “They don’t want to worry you. It’s like they want to be strong, protect you from the pain as long as possible.” He sounded glum, as if all of the sadness
flooded the land from the river to the spot where he sat, pouring into the hole of his life.

“Don’t they know it’s worse to not share the news?” she said.

“That’s it. But you shouldn’t feel guilty, Mrs. Warren. I carried enough guilt for me, Mabel, and the whole Weston clan.”

“Was that her family?”

“Mabel Birch from Jackson, Mississippi. My family is the Westons. I never would have thought I’d marry a cheerleader.”

“Why not?”

“I had my nose in a book since age four. Won the Virginia state science fair in the seventh grade.”

“Class nerd.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Warren.”

“I’m fond of nerds. My daughter, Gwennie, was like that. Always scholastically driven. She made cheerleader just to prove she could do it, but then turned them down flat.”

“Mabel was head cheerleader.”

“Gwennie would have taken over, that’s for sure.”

“Mabel always had a cause. We rented this house year after year. We called it our summer place even though it was a rental. But I was too stubborn to buy it for her. She wanted it so she could volunteer to baby-sit turtle eggs or keep watch for rare birds. She would have taken Tobias right into our house. That’s how I got Johnson.”

“So you know about Tobias?”

“My cousin’s an idiot.”

Saphora did not know how to answer.

“Is he all right?” he asked.

“You know kids. They act all right for our sake.”

“Wayne’s a gutsy kind of guy. Catches those big fish, marlin, tarpon.
Caught a kingfish once, hours on end he sat in that hot Atlantic sun reeling and fighting the fish until he pulled it on board. But he wouldn’t know anything about what a kid like Tobias goes through. He was just taking care of business. That’s Wayne for you.”

Saphora couldn’t share Luke’s sympathy for Wayne. “I should get back.”

“You tell Tobias to hang in, all that.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.” She got up.

“Mrs. Warren, you’re a great lady.” He came to his feet. He bent to kiss her.

It was only a cheek peck. Still, it left her flushed from the chest up. “I’ve got to go,” she said. She nearly tripped getting through the gate.

She had trouble opening the french door because her fingers were caked with mud. Finally, she gripped the knob two-handedly and pushed the door open with her hip. Electronic sounds of fighter knights and raging dragons filtered downstairs from Eddie’s room. He needed to turn that love of adventure toward a good book every now and then. But Turner was so overwhelmed working long hours just to pay day-care costs he never thought to sit Eddie down before bed to read to him.