The Reading Circle (14 page)

Miss Voncille seemed lost in thought for a few moments but quickly perked up. “Looks like we both have deals to close. Meanwhile, Johnnie-Dell should know something in May. That's usually when we found out who was coming back and who wasn't.”

“Maybe right around the time of our
All the King's Men
review?”

Miss Voncille nodded triumphantly. “I've got Locke on the same timetable. Let's have a little toast, shall we?”

The two women hoisted their coffee cups and clinked rims. “To sisters in quest of that elusive nest!” Miss Voncille proposed. “And may our men come home to their hot mamas where they belong!”

I
t had been months since Maura Beth had spoken with Councilman Sparks or seen him in person. It hardly meant he had been out of mind, however. But suddenly, with the book club's
All the King's Men
review just a couple of days away, he had summoned her to his office to discuss “something important.” As had always been the case regarding these impromptu City Hall meetings, Maura Beth was nervous, fearing the worst. But she no longer felt rudderless while sailing upstream against Cherico's political tides.

“I wanted to ask you about your choice of Robert Penn Warren's novel for The Cherry Cola Book Club,” he began, once she had seated herself across from him in his office. “Evie and I picked up your flyer at The Twinkle last time we ate there.” He brandished the sheet of paper that had been lying on his desk and then let it slip from his fingers. They both watched it slowly flutter to the blotter below. “All this flyer prose you've concocted about discussing political intrigue and corruption and untimely death seems thinly veiled to me.” He leaned in threateningly. “I am not—I repeat—
not
Governor Willie Stark. So you can cut out the wishful thinking, and if you and that Cherry Cola Book Club gang of yours are hatching fevered plans to assassinate me on the steps of City Hall, you can forget it.”

“I would have to say you're reading between the lines, then,” Maura Beth answered, not about to be intimidated. But she was trying for levity. “That is, of course, if you'll pardon the pun.”

He smirked. “Clever. You've always had that going for you.” Then he reached down to open one of his desk drawers and retrieved a copy of
All the King's Men,
tossing it carelessly on the desk with a thud. “I suppose you think you can rouse the rabble again with this? Will you storm my castle on Perry Street with torches?”

“May I see that for a moment, please?” she said, ignoring his absurd comments.

He handed it over, and she started reading barely a few pages in, enunciating her words with great precision:
“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”
She snapped the book shut and handed it back to him. “I think that should put an end to what sounds like an absurd case of paranoia to me.”

Councilman Sparks leaned back in his chair, once again indulging his smugness. “Miz Mayhew, we're close to halfway through the year, and the best thing I can say about your little library is that you're holding your own. But not much else. All those hundreds of people you whipped up into a frenzy with your petitions last year seem to have settled back down to reality. If they were so all-fired intent on using the library, then why haven't they? I've been monitoring everything like I said I would—circulation figures, meeting room use, and the rest—and it looks very much to me like you have that same small but loyal core of library fans actually coming in. But it's nowhere near the number you got to sign your petitions in that ‘let's do something trendy' maneuver you pulled off. Today's voters can be manipulated so easily. I ought to know.”

Maura Beth was about to rebut him when the intensity in his face hardened further into a mask of hostility. She had never witnessed such a frightening transformation in her life, and it caused her to pull back at once.

“I want you to realize one thing,” he said, the pronounced softness of his tone somehow making his words that much more threatening. “You embarrassed me at the budget hearing back in November. You forced me to do something I didn't want to do in front of a big chunk of my constituency, and I'm not going to forget that. The kid gloves are off. The last time somebody did something like that to me was during middle school right here in Cherico. Miss Voncille Nettles started refusing to choose me when I raised my hand because she knew I always had the right answers to everything. It was her silent way of calling me out, and she never let up. You found a different way to do the same thing last year, and so I want you to know that you're on notice. The library's one-year reprieve was just that. And since you also turned down my offer to keep yourself gainfully employed here in Cherico by working for me, I'd be getting my résumé together if I were you. For the last time, forewarned is forearmed, Miz Mayhew!”

Maura Beth was stunned. Talk about the fury of women scorned! The restrained anger of men was something more breathtaking to behold by far, especially when they held superior positions of power.

Since she couldn't think of a syllable to utter, he continued his quiet little rant while staring her down. “I know you think you're on some kind of elite literary mission with that feelgood club of yours, but, really, what does that have to do with the stark realities of living? Chatting smartly about books while swapping recipes doesn't put food on the table every day, and it doesn't even come close to paying the rent or the car note. This town needs jobs and new businesses coming in so that people don't have to scrape by the way some of them are having to do. Okay, so maybe that does kinda make me a populist like Willie Stark. But my mission is taking care of Cherico, and one way or another, the Charles Durden Sparks Industrial Park is going to get up and running.”

For the first time ever in her dealings with Councilman Sparks, Maura Beth had no quick response. She realized she wasn't any better off than she had been a year ago, when he had first revealed to her his complete and utter disdain for the library. He was, in fact, just toying with her until he got what he wanted.

Somehow Maura Beth managed to gather herself enough to say something—anything. “Was that all you had to tell me today?” Her tone sounded casual, but she swallowed hard afterward, and that gave her away.

“I think that's it for now.”

She rose and headed for the door, her heart racing. “I'll see myself out, then.”

“Yes, you do just that,” he said, getting in the last word.

 

Connie walked into the great room to find Douglas sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace rifling through the pages of
All the King's Men
. It seemed all the more peculiar since both of them had finished the novel over a week ago.

“What on earth are you up to at that frantic pace?”

He looked up, slightly startled. “Oh, I was trying to find a passage that's been on my mind.”

She sat down beside him and watched as he continued his diligent scanning, using both his eyes and index finger. “What was it? Maybe I can help.”

“Something that Willie Stark said.” He kept on flipping pages. “I can't find it now. I should have bookmarked it.”

Momentarily, he pounced upon it with a “Gotcha!”—pressing his finger to the spot as if he had just squashed a mosquito. He settled back and smirked. “The gist of what's on this page is you gotta find a way to make the best of bad situations. That's all anyone's got.”

Connie waited for more, but Douglas apparently had finished. He was looking at her now with an intensity she had observed only occasionally in their many years of marriage. “Yes,” she said finally. “I remember him saying that. He was just trying to justify everything he did, all the corners he was cutting in politics. At least, that's what I got out of it. I'm sure Maura Beth will want you to bring that up in our discussion. Good for you.”

He closed the book slowly and stared into the small fire he had thrown together to take the chill out of the room. “Forget the discussion, Connie. It hit home. Here's this Willie Stark character summing up his career, and it could be me saying things like that about myself.”

Connie had heard similar versions of her husband's introspection for some time now. He would return to them every so often, and her strategy had always been to listen quietly and be as supportive as possible until the latest crisis had passed. “
All the King's Men
is a great novel, so I'm not surprised you found yourself relating to it. It's appealed to millions over the years. You never know when a writer's work will reach out and shake hands with you like an old friend. I don't know how many times I've found myself thinking, ‘Now that's just what I've been trying to say.' ”

Her efforts to lighten things up fell flat, however. “I can never do enough fishing to clear my conscience.” He spoke with no emotion in his voice, and he seemed incapable of turning away from the fire and facing his wife.

“Douglas, it was just the nature of your profession. You did the best you could,” she said, trying to rouse him.

He indulged a crooked little smile. “I did pretty damned well, and you know it. For example, I earned the money to build this lodge for us when I proved that Mrs. Edna Hessmer's fortune in silver and antique furniture had been irreparably damaged by the environmental discharge from the Baker City, Tennessee, paper mill exactly ten and a half miles from her house. At least that's my ‘trial lawyer-ese summation'version of it. I should never have taken that case. The reality was—it was essentially frivolous.”

“Why should you feel bad about that, Doug? Would we have this house if you hadn't taken the case? You presented the evidence, and it held up. As they say, case closed.”

His peculiar smile expanded right alongside the skepticism and disdain in his voice. “The connection was tenuous at best. I knew it. Everybody knew it. It was the terrible smell certain people in Baker City really objected to. Of course, what paper mill doesn't stink to high heaven? But I took the case anyway. The truth was, Edna Hessmer was a rich, crotchety old widow with denture breath who didn't care about a living soul but herself, and that judgment against the paper mill ended up putting it out of business eventually. Down the road, hardworking people lost their jobs, and I walked away with the spoils. To turn what Willie Stark preached on its head, you might say I made something bad out of good.”

Connie knew it was useless when Douglas veered into “career revisited” mode. His second-guessing just had to run its course. But she continued to try and pull him out of it anyway. “If we're going to play worst-case scenario here, I'll take a shot. You had to make lots of tough decisions as part of the legal profession, same as we always did at the hospital. The difference was, when you weren't up to snuff, someone might lose some money or property or something like that. When we made the wrong decision at the hospital, God forbid, somebody might die. Try to put things in perspective.”

His features finally softened as he turned her way. “Most of the time I've managed to do that, or I couldn't live with myself. But lately, while I'm out there on the water just floating around without a care in the world, I keep thinking I should make something good out of bad, like Willie Stark, now that my finagling days are over And, no, fishing on the lake doesn't qualify by a mile.”

“Then what would?”

He inched closer to her, and she felt the chill of his hand atop hers. It might be May with a bright, balmy day outside and everything in bloom within view of the great room windows, but inside the drafty lodge, the fireplace had been unable to get its self-doubting owner's blood moving sufficiently.

“We have more money than we'll ever need,” he said finally. “This is our home now. Maybe we can help Cherico in a significant way.”

Something suddenly clicked in Connie's head and she freed her hand, gesturing with it dramatically. “I think you may finally have said something that makes sense. Haven't you had enough of looking back? Think of our future right here on the lake.”

He rose from the sofa and moved closer to the fireplace, vigorously rubbing his hands together. “That's just what I intend to do, even though I haven't worked out the details. But when I do, you'll be the first to know.”

Connie joined him fireside and put her arm around his waist. “I can't wait to hear what you come up with. Especially if it's something we can do together.”

Evie Sparks and her pampered poodle, Bonjour Cheri, greeted the alpha man in their lives at the kitchen door of their Perry Street residence. Both of them were all over him, in a manner of speaking, so much so that he often found himself addressing them as a package when he came home from work. There were even times when he petted them reflexively on their clipped heads the same way.

“And how are my two pretty girls tonight? Did we have a good day?” Councilman Sparks said, throwing his keys on the kitchen counter with a clatter.

Bonjour Cheri offered up a couple of lively barks, as if she understood exactly what he was saying, while Evie gave him her usual wifely attention. “Here's your scotch and soda,” she said, handing him the drink she had just made at the wet bar. “Then we're having takeout from The Twinkle. It's warming in the oven right now. I went with Periwinkle's rosemary chicken and new potatoes tonight, and there's a slice of Mr. Parker Place's Mississippi mud pie for you if you have room. I know you keep telling me to go easy on the desserts, but I thought if either one of us had a sweet tooth, what would be the harm?”