Whisper Town (17 page)

“Enough about him, then.”

Lucky got up and crossed the parlor to join the others in fixing supper.

Jeb was relieved to finally hear out of both ears and to walk around without feeling as though his head would explode, especially
during the Sunday sermon. He preached, went home, went to bed, and got up Monday, the first Monday since Thanksgiving that
was clear of sleet pebbling the window.

Lucky stayed home with Myrtle and he dropped off the Welbys at school. He drove downtown to pick up a newspaper and drink
Beulah’s coffee, hotter than he could make it and, for his sore throat, a relief.

“I seen you coming, Reverend, and I got your cup ready,” Beulah said. “God help those poor puffy eyes of yours.”

Jeb took his cup and sat in a booth instead of at the bar. “Nothing to eat,” he told her.

He read the front page of the
Nazareth Gazette,
a piece about how families celebrated Christmas in Europe next to an editorial about the rise of Germany’s enigmatic leader,
Adolf Hitler. The United States’ sanctions imposed on foreign trade had been relegated to the back page.

Jeb pulled out a letter from his brother Charlie, learned that he was once again an uncle, only this time by their younger
sister in Temple, Texas. He remembered to smile occasionally at Beulah to keep his coffee warmed.

The diner’s quiet resonance could not be overcome, it seemed, even by the enticement of a Monday blue plate special advertised
out on the sidewalk. Jeb read the sign before returning to his paper.

The clipped walk of the banker’s nephew made him sigh. Oz Mills ferried the mail down the walk and in to Val Rodwyn, who kept
the mail flowing in the Honeysack’s General Store.

“I hear you won an essay contest.” The voice came from behind Jeb, a man seated in the adjoining booth addressed him in a
gentle manner.

Jeb turned and offered a handshake, polite and fast so he could return to the coffee and the news. “I surprise myself sometimes.”

“Reverend Alexander, from the Lutheran church. We’re on the other side of town from you.”

Jeb fumbled through the paper, turning the pages.

“I read it in the Sunday paper from Hot Springs last week,” he said. “Going to speak at the Lincoln Memorial, it said. Sounds
‘big time.’”

“It’s a modest event, I believe, and won’t take place until the summer. Would you happen to have that newspaper on you?”

“Wife used it to line the garbage can.” The Lutheran minister laughed. “You trying to fix the South, I hear.”

“Not the whole South,” said Jeb. “Not even a fixing of any kind.” He invited the minister to join him at his booth, if only
to keep the conversation private.

Reverend Alexander got up and took a seat across from Jeb.

“I’ve come by two more children that aren’t mine. I’d be more interested in finding them a home than fixing anything. There’s
this girl that I’d like to marry and I have too many kids around.”

The Lutheran laughed.

“I’m not much good at fixing matters, it seems. Not that I wouldn’t wish I could.”

“But you wrote an essay.”

“I was mad, that’s all.”

“Apparently it got someone’s attention.”

Jeb wanted Alexander to lower his voice, but he didn’t know him well enough to ask. He lowered his own voice. “If anyone around
here knows about the essay, well, it wouldn’t matter to them. I don’t bring it up.” He could not tell if the Lutheran comprehended
what he was saying or not.

“You’re stuck in the middle of something, not of your own making.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“You’d rather be fishing.”

“I would. I would.”

“Is the girl pretty?”

“No one prettier. I think sometimes that I could just blow off this town and take her out of here.”

“She wouldn’t go?”

“Fern has too much character.”

The Lutheran kept laughing, and every now and then, he would say how much he liked Jeb and the way he looked at things.

“Let me buy you coffee sometime, Alexander,” said Jeb.

“I will. Beulah, bring him your biscuits. The man’s stomach is talking.”

Before Jeb could stop the biscuits, two lay on a hot plate in front of him. He didn’t know he was hungry until he ate the
first one. He thanked the minister.

The bell over the door tinkled. Oz Mills bellied up to the coffee bar. If he saw Jeb, he didn’t say anything.

Jeb folded up the newspaper and gave his last biscuit to the Lutheran. “There’s a man I need to see and that’s him at the
bar.”

“You should pop the question, ask this Fern to marry you,” said Alexander. “Maybe she’d say yes now.”

Oz’s head turned slightly, like his ear had picked up a radio wave.

“I’ll see you around, Reverend,” said Jeb. He rose from the booth and took several steps to sit one stool away from Oz. Their
eyes met in the mirror above Beulah’s workstation.

“Morning, Nubey,” said Oz.

To the best of Jeb’s recollection, Oz had never addressed him as Reverend. Jeb talked about the cold weather, his head cold,
and, finally, the upcoming Christmas social at the church.

Oz let out a sigh.

Jeb moved to the next stool. “Oz, I know something’s gone on between the Blessed girls and that group of cronies you hang
out with.”

“I don’t know the Blesseds.”

“Jewel Blessed. From Hope.”

Oz laid his money on the counter and thanked Beulah for the coffee.

“Something transpired the day that Frank Pella attacked Lucky Blessed.”

“You have it backward and I don’t run in those circles. I knew of the Blesseds. What can I say? They’re not of my ilk.”

“Has Frank Pella ever known Jewel Blessed, as in, has he ever had the chance to be alone with her? Has he ever obsessed over
her?”

“You’re headed downriver, Nubey. As usual, no paddle.” Oz slid off the stool and pulled on his overcoat. Before he pushed
the door open, he said, “Your church is falling apart. Maybe you ought to tend to things that you can fix.”

Angel lay stomach down to write a school paper.

Lucky swept the floor, leaning into the broom to chase the dust from the floor cracks. She dabbed at the ceiling with the
broom straw, executing a spider.

The sky marbled and the cold settled all around the parsonage, moaning through the attic. Angel buttoned her sweater up all
the way to the neck. Lucky rubbed her arms and looked through the parlor window and up at the sky.

“Two more days and we’re out of school. I guess you don’t miss it,” said Angel.

Lucky swept dust into a pan.

“I kind of like writing. Reading’s my best subject. You ever think about reading?”

Lucky let out a breath.

“I taught Jeb to read.”

“He know you tell people that?”

“Nothing wrong with saying it.”

Lucky put the broom against the corner wall.

“I could teach you to read, if you want,” said Angel.

“Maybe you think I’m dumber than a sack of hammers.”

Angel stared at Lucky. She shifted from one foot to the other and then said, “I don’t think that.”

Lucky pulled a book out of Jeb’s library. She threw open the book and slowly read from it:

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that
place to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain
place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open
the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with
a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”

Angel lifted up off the floor with both hands, brought her feet forward, and came seated.

“Mr. Bunyan’s got hisself a nice way with words.” Lucky closed up the book and slid it back onto the shelf.

“Lucky, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you could read.”

“My father, in spite of his ways, made sure that his kids could read. But how you talk to other people, like the way you talk
down to me, is not because you learned to read. It’s from not knowing how others might see the world differently from you.
I think they call that ignorance, but you can check the dictionary on that count.” She spelled “ignorance.”

Angel picked up her pencil.

Lucky picked up her broom and chased invisible things from the wall corners.

“I know I’m not perfect, Lucky.”

“It’s a good thing you know it. The way you hold your cup would make the queen turn whiter than she already is.”

Angel laughed. “You know the queen?”

“We’re chums, me and Queeny.” Lucky waltzed into the kitchen and back out into the parlor. She turned on the radio. An orchestral
piece played. “Come here,” she told Angel. She held out her hands. “You got to move, one, two, three, without stepping on
a boy’s feet.”

It was time to commence supper preparations. Instead, they danced.

Ruben Blessed left his father’s old Ford parked back in the woods. He had borrowed it saying that Jewel needed his help making
all her laundry deliveries. Jewel let him make a delivery so it would not be a lie.

Ruben hung a lantern in the tree. He looked toward the minister’s house and waited to see if Lucky would look out and see
him. He could see movement through the window curtains. The moon hung high in the west, but not bright enough to give away
his whereabouts.

A car slowed up at the main road. Ruben doused the lantern and stepped back into the woods. The sound of feet running, of
limbs swishing, caught his breath. He went all the way down on the cold forest bed. Wet leaves soaked through his clothes.

He heard a voice like a young man’s. Two young fellows ran past him. They stole a look into the parsonage window. Whoever
had been moving around inside did not see the young men. The boys crouched down and crept back up the tree line all the way
to the car.

Ruben saw a rope hanging from a tree. He untied it and retied it to the bottom of the trunk. He crouched down and his hand
felt steel. He had brought his tire iron in case he ran into a dirty rat.

He could see inside the house past an opening through the window drapes. Lucky and some girl twirled around the room. The
two of them laughed like girls do when they think they are alone.

The two young men ran back from the road. The moon shone off something one of them held, like polished metal. He was not sure
about anything except that they aimed straight for the parsonage.

He saw the face of one as he ran past. He pulled the rope and the boys sprawled onto the forest bed, things clattering out
of their hands.

“I know you,” said Ruben. He took him out, laying the tire iron to the side of his head, his aim hitting sweet-as-you-please
against his temple before the young man could react.

The other one ran for the road. He drove away and left his buddy lying on his face in the woods.

The curtains parted. The girls looked out, but they did not see Ruben. He was running back into the woods to find his daddy’s
old car and drive home.

J
EB WAITED OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY, HAPPY THAT
he had canceled the Sunday-evening service for Christmas. The librarian took both Christmas wreaths off the doors to take
home on the eve of the holy day. His watch said a quarter after five, the time Fern said she would be finished at the library.
She met the librarian, who was a friend of hers, to help her with some gifts for her family. Fern had hidden them at her house.

Loaded with ribboned boxes, the librarian came down the steps.

Fern had told Jeb that she would drop by the parsonage and help Angel and Lucky start the holiday dinner, like the pumpkin
pie crusts and the special dishes that could be made up early.

Jeb told the girls to start the dough on their own, that he would surprise Fern and pick her up at the library. He had Evelene
Whittington wrap a locket for her in her better Christmas wrap. He wanted to give it to her without the pack looking on.

The door opened and Oz Mills came out the door, walking backward and talking. Fern followed him out.

Jeb stared, not able to breathe or move.

Oz kept touching her arm. He said something that made her laugh.

Jeb came to himself. He turned to head back to Front Street, where he had left the truck parked. He had gone a half block
when he heard Fern call his name. He stopped halfway between Front Street and the library, right outside Lincoln’s Barbershop.

“I thought that was you.”

By the time he turned around, Oz was nowhere in sight. He wanted to tell her that he had come to surprise her and that he
obviously had caught her by surprise. But the sight of her made him forget altogether what he was thinking of saying. She
wore something red and the skirt of the thing blew around her knees, exposing her kneecaps. The cold made her stand funny,
like her kneecaps almost faced one another. She crouched a bit, bending, and her bottom stuck out.

“You look pretty,” he said.

“Oz Mills was here.”

“What do you have to say about that?”

“All of my Christmas stuff, the presents, the things I want to cook for you, that’s all in my car. We can come back for your
truck?” She held out her keys like she knew Jeb would come and take the keys from her and drive her back to his place. He
opened the door for her and she sidled in and he shut the door on her red skirt. She opened it and fixed her dress and looked
up at him and laughed. She closed her own door.

Jeb climbed into the driver’s seat. “It’s noisy back at my place,” he said.

“If we go to my place, I’ll want to—”

When she stopped, Jeb said, “I want to too.”

Fern came across the seat. “Happy Christmas, honey.” She kissed Jeb.

He slid out from under the steering wheel. “Oz didn’t kiss you or anything, did he?”

She drew back enough to say, “He met a woman. They want to elope.” She pulled Jeb’s arms around her.

“Did you tell him he should do that?”