The Reading Circle (15 page)

He pursed his lips and made a cursory smooching sound as he headed toward his easy chair in what they both referred to as the “entertainment room.” Its crown jewel was the latest, widest, and thinnest HDTV set on the market, affixed to the wall with stereo speakers strategically placed for theater quality sound. There was also a handsome mahogany spinet in the corner of the room that Evie only occasionally played for her own enjoyment. She would have been the first to admit, however, that she was not very good at it and had a repertoire consisting of a handful of forgettable ditties she had learned as a teenager from her piano teacher. Bonjour Cheri, in fact, became very agitated and started whimpering whenever her mommy started missing sharps and flats right and left. Needless to say, Evie never trotted out her talents when she and her husband entertained guests of any kind.

“I laid it all out for Maura Beth Mayhew this afternoon,” Councilman Sparks said after a few sips of his drink. “I let her know once and for all that she and her library won't wiggle off the hook this time.”

Evie was curled up on the nearby sofa, petting Bonjour Cheri, who had nestled against her and was staring up adoringly at her mommy. “And how did she react to that?”

“I think she was in a state of shock. At any rate, she ducked out with her tail between her legs. She usually has some smart-aleck response ready, but not this time around.”

Evie shot him a look of consternation. “Why don't you just shut the library down and get it over with, then? Do you really have to honor that one-year reprieve? After all, you call the shots in Cherico.”

He rattled his ice cubes and scowled. “I have to go through the motions because of what happened at the budget hearings in front of all those voters. But I let her know she was on my list and also what I thought of
All the King's Men
as her book club's next read. She vehemently denied any ulterior motives, of course, but I think she'd like nothing better than for the entire town of Cherico to think their local politicos are rotten to the core. I'll bet you anything they end up discussing something scandalous along those lines.”

“Why would they ever think that?” Evie said, looking down at Bonjour Cheri and making precious noises to her after she had posed the question. “Look how many times you and Chunky and Gopher Joe have been reelected. No one's come close to unseating any of you.”

Councilman Sparks finished off his drink and set the delicate crystal tumbler down forcefully on the nearby end table. A little harder and it might have cracked. “Miz Mayhew has her lovely red head buried in those library books all the time. She doesn't deal in the complexities of government the way I do. She's made a crusade of her career here in Cherico, and this town's entirely the wrong place to do it. Whether she realizes it or not, she's interfering with my legacy, and I just won't tolerate it. When my time comes, I will not be buried beside my father without leaving my stamp on this town. I want future Chericoans to know I passed this way and did some good!”

Evie stopped petting the dog as the anger level rose in his voice, and she caught his gaze. “When you get this agitated, it really makes me wish things were . . . you know . . . different for us. Maybe you wouldn't get as worked up as you do if everything wasn't so bound up in your job.”

He had no intention of getting into such a painful discussion yet again. “Look, I've made my peace with it. Why do you have to bring it up this way?”

“I'm not trying to hurt you deliberately, Durden. God knows, I don't like thinking about it any more than you do,” she told him. “I just don't like to see you getting so upset this way. These days it doesn't seem to take much to get you to explode.”

“Look, let's eat,” he said, determined to change the subject. “I didn't have much of a lunch today. I'm hungry for some of that Twinkle you brought us.”

At the dining room table, Councilman Sparks found himself enjoying Periwinkle's cuisine as usual. But it could not help him crowd out completely this latest reminder of the overriding disappointment of his life. He was sterile. That was the stark reality he could never avoid; that colored every decision he made or goal he set.

“We can always adopt,” Evie had pointed out when they had first received the distressing news.

But the proud and accomplished Charles Durden Sparks would have none of it. Only his very own flesh and blood would be fit to inherit the political legacy his father and Layton Duddney had begun. Under no circumstances would there be an anonymous pretender to the throne.

I
t was an early Sunday afternoon in May, and Maura Beth, Renette Posey, and Emma Frost had just finished decorating the library lobby for the
All the King's Men
potluck and review that evening. As was now the custom for The Cherry Cola Book Club, three posters had been strategically placed around the room: one of Oscar winner Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark in the 1949 movie version of the novel; another of Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke in the same film; and finally, a photo of the author, Robert Penn Warren, in later life, projecting an unmistakable air of gravitas.

“I think it's our best display yet, ladies,” Maura Beth said to her front desk clerks, standing back to assess the arrangement from a distance.

“I don't know who any of those people are,” Emma remarked. “But I do know those posters'll hold up nicely with all that cardboard we backed 'em up with.”

“Yep, we make a good team,” Maura Beth said just before giving Emma and Renette hugs and sending them home to rest up before the big event.

In truth, she had rushed things more than usual because she wanted to be sure and reach Jeremy in time. Two calls each to his landline and cell phone had gone unanswered, but she had left messages. Considering his near disaster a couple of months earlier on the Natchez Trace, however, she was unwilling to take any chances. So she went into her office and tried once more.

When he finally picked up, she felt the relief spreading throughout her body. But it did not last long. “Where are you? Have you left Nashville yet?”

“I'm leaving in just a few minutes,” he told her. “I should be there a little after four.”

Then she returned to the messages she had left. “I just wanted to be sure you got those weather warnings. You need to get down here before six. That's when that awful front is supposed to come through Cherico.”

“Hey, I've learned my lesson well,” he said. “No more rushing around for me. And, yes, I was aware of the bad weather you're expecting down there tonight. But I expect to be safe and warm at your place in plenty of time.”

“That's all I needed to hear. I love you, and you be careful now.”

“I love you, too, Maurie. See you soon.”

After they had hung up, she almost felt like waltzing around the library. She liked his new nickname for her. No one had ever called her anything but Maura Beth—which was fine, but there were times when it sounded a bit too formal. But they had taken things to another level during her visits to him in the hospital after the car wreck. They had talked about everything bedside the way they had when they had first met at his aunt Connie's lodge last fall.

She always entered the room with a homemade balloon bouquet, a touch that had worked beautifully for Becca and Justin when he had been hospitalized with his angioplasty up in Nashville last year. Now, it never failed to lift Jeremy's spirits, and their conversations soared from there.

“I want you to know how much your visits have meant to me,” he told her the evening before his discharge. “And the messages on the balloons. You're very original, you know that?”

She tried to be nonchalant about it all but couldn't resist. “Okay, which was your favorite?”

He thought for a while and finally rewarded her with his best smile. “I'd have to say, ‘All Volvos Go to Heaven.' That was bittersweet, but I really loved it. I'll really miss my little car when I get out, you know. I single-handedly rescued it from the junk pile and took it into the millennium by putting in a CD player, air-conditioning, you name it. Of course, there's my insurance that'll allow me to start all over with a vengeance.”

The look she gave him was sly and saucy. “I have to admit that all the boys I had crushes on in high school were the ones who ran around in souped-up cars. Now, don't get me wrong. They weren't straight out of the cast of
Grease,
or anything like that. But there was something appealing about a guy who knew his way around under the hood of his car. And even something a little dangerous.”

Jeremy took a long sip from his water glass and shrugged. “That's me. Good ole dangerous Jeremy. And don't ask me to explain my love for both literature and old cars. Except maybe that I have a fondness for classic things.”

“There you go,” Maura Beth said, feeling closer to him than she ever had before. “As a librarian, I'm rather eclectic myself.” Then she had reached over and taken his hand as she often did during these bedside talks. Though the air-conditioned hospital room was cold, his hand was warm, and there was something else besides. She could sense the growing bond between them, the ease with which they just sat in silence smiling and knowing that the best was yet to come.

After his discharge, he had found the time to make a couple of trips down, during which he had not stayed with his Aunt Connie and Uncle Doug out at the lake. Instead, he had been introduced to the charms of her “many shades of purple” efficiency on Clover Street, and it had not taken Maura Beth long to realize that the heartbreak she had experienced at the hands of Al Broussard, Jr., during her LSU days was powerless to hurt her anymore. Jeremy McShay was definitely “the one.”

 

That late-spring cold front roared down as predicted from Canada to terrorize the northern third of Mississippi, having no mercy on the Cherico landscape below during the early evening hours. Driving rain, swirling wind, and even a suggestion of hail sent young, yellow-green leaves flying about, many pasting themselves to doors and windows in haphazard artistic fashion. Meanwhile, umbrellas and raincoats offered scant protection from the raging elements as people scurried about trying to run their errands and conduct their daily business.

As a result, The Cherry Cola Book Club's review of
All the King's Men
was not particularly well-attended, but Jeremy's presence—without a scratch or bruise on him—gave Maura Beth all the incentive she needed to generate a lively discussion among her loyal cadre. Fortunately, she did not have to go out of her way to draw any parallels between Councilman Sparks and Governor Willie Stark to get things started. Those insights appeared front and center without prodding.

“After we both finished reading the novel, I told Connie that I thought Willie Stark and Durden Sparks were frequenting the same back rooms as part of their ‘end justifies the means' ethic,” Douglas McShay offered. “Seems like populism frequently ends in corruption.”

Miss Voncille waved her hand at the other end of the front row. “I couldn't agree more. What happens to politicians when they get into office and stay there unchallenged year after year? My reading of
All the King's Men
suggested to me that Willie Stark had no quarrel with the liberties he took as governor because he had this cynical, almost ‘original sin' view of humanity. He thought people didn't deserve any better than they got from what he doled out to them. I'd like to take issue with that view of life. I continue to believe there's something basically good about the human spirit. In my lifetime I've seen people go off to war and still try to hang on to that hopeful notion. What could be a greater test than that?”

It was the attractively dressed and coiffed Nora Duddney who answered Miss Voncille's observations. “I can't speak for soldiers, but I think the nature of politics may be the culprit here. I saw and heard more than you can ever imagine from my trusty secretarial station in Councilman Sparks's outer office. Sometimes the door to his inner office was left cracked a tad bit, and I was dismissed and forgotten as a piece of furniture while things were said and plots were thickened, so to speak.”

Miss Voncille's eyes widened as if she had seen an apparition, but she managed a reply anyway. “I have to say, Miz Duddney, that your response is as eloquent as the prose we're reviewing here tonight. I'm surprised but delighted at the same time.”

“Why, thank you, Miss Voncille,” Nora said, nodding in her general direction.

“Everything and everyone is so tangled up emotionally in
All the King's Men—
Willie Stark, Jack Burden, Anne Stanton,” Miss Voncille continued. “And, no, I don't think Robert Penn Warren was a fly on the wall during Governor Huey P. Long's administration. But I did some research, and I happen to know that he did teach at LSU before Huey Long was assassinated. Perhaps he was privy to certain rumors here and there.”

Nora's face brightened. “I don't know about that, but I do know that I was a fly on the wall all the time I worked for Councilman Sparks.”

“So what's the inside story on him?” Becca Broccoli Brachle asked. “Or are you not at liberty to tell us?”

“There's not much the rest of you don't already know,” Nora answered without hesitation. “He comes from a political family that's been running Cherico for most of the time it's been incorporated. He believes that it's his God-given right to continue running things as he sees fit. That's the truth of the matter. Believe me, I've heard more than one person in this town refer to him as our very own banana republic dictator.”

“I may have used that term myself,” Maura Beth said, risking a smile. But she soon returned to her duties as review moderator from the podium. “As for the inspiration Robert Penn Warren may have taken from Huey P. Long's reign, it's well-known that the LSU football team was a pet project of The Kingfish. I received my library science degree from LSU nearly seven years ago, so I know what I'm talking about. The governor wanted to expand Tiger Stadium back in the thirties, but there was no money available at the time. But there was money dedicated to building more dormitories. So Huey Long's solution was to expand the stadium by literally squeezing dormitories between the support structures underneath. I imagine those were some noisy dorm rooms on Saturday nights in the fall. At any rate, there's your perfect illustration of the ‘end justifies the means' proposition.”

“One the LSU football fans could all cheer for, I imagine,” Stout Fella said, while everyone appeared amused by the remark.

The very next instant, however, a deafening boom caused the ancient, corrugated iron structure of The Cherico Library to shake from ceiling to floor. In fact, it would have been possible to count to “five-Mississippi” with gasps and shrieks for an accompaniment.

Maura Beth verbalized what everyone in the room was thinking. “That felt like it was right over our heads. I hope lightning didn't strike that worn-out roof!”

A couple of loud rumbles akin to an aftershock followed as some people cowered in their seats. “Just as long as we don't lose power!” Mamie Crumpton cried out. “Sister and I simply cannot stand being in the dark, can we?”

But for once Marydell Crumpton did not answer dutifully. Maura Beth could see that she was too terrified to utter her usual meek, “Yes.”

Then, what Mamie Crumpton had greatly feared came upon them all. The library lights dimmed once, made a valiant attempt at recovery, but succumbed quickly the second time. There were more gasps and one-word exclamations as everyone was plunged into darkness, except for the illumination provided by various cell phones that emerged from pockets and purses.

Disjointed, overlapping snatches and snippets of conversation broke out everywhere. Sometimes the source was easy to identify, other times not so much.

“Sister dear, take my hand until the lights come back on.”

“Do something, Maura Beth!”

“Are there any candles?”

“Was that an earthquake or a tornado?”

“Is there a fuse box we can get to?”

“Miz Mayhew, I'll see if I can get through to the power company on my cell.”

“Thank you, Renette. I'll go get the flashlight from behind the desk!”

During a brief lull, there was welcome humor from a deep male voice. “Do ya think God didn't like our review?”

Miss Voncille's distinctive voice chuckled richly, joining an assortment of snickers and giggles. “Locke Marshall Linwood, did you just say that?”

“No, that was me—Harlan Lattimore!” came the reply.

Periwinkle's hearty laugh easily rose above the others. “I'm gonna have to give you a ten for that one, Harlan John!”

But the laughter soon gave way to silence in the darkness, and Maura Beth knew she had to make an executive decision sooner rather than later. “Folks, if we don't get our power back fairly soon, I think we're going to have to call it quits.” If the lights had come on at that moment, everyone would have seen her shaking her head in disgust. “I don't know why we can't seem to have one of our reviews without some incident disrupting us. But while I have the chance, I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out in this terrible weather. You really are my literary troopers.”

The next comment, however, was like a ray of light for Maura Beth. “Let's just hang on a little longer and see what happens, Maurie.”

 

Maura Beth was staring through the darkness of the library lobby at Jeremy's carefully contrived, goofy face. It was hilarious to behold by any definition of the word, and she could hardly stop laughing. His eyes were crossed, and he was sticking his tongue out for additional effect. In short, he had transformed himself into the perfect clown, and she applauded him generously for his efforts.

“My turn again,” she said, holding her hand out for the flashlight. “But I'm going to have to go some to outdo you now.”

“Nah, I bet you can come up with something even more awesomely silly,” he told her.

She took the flashlight from him and positioned it under her chin. Jeremy began laughing even before she had moved a muscle, and she feigned irritation. “But I haven't even done anything yet.”

“The flashlight's done it for you, Maurie. You look sideshow freaky already.”