Southern Discomfort Part 8

"Anthony Carl Powell, I'm gonna wear your bottom out!" his mother threatened as she leaped from the porch.

The child dropped the hose and fled, confident that she wasn't really angry, that the chase would end in a tumbled heap on the long gra.s.s under the trees.

Lu and Betty Ann looked at their soggy cigarettes ruefully.

"Time I was getting home anyhow," said Betty Ann and went off to her truck.

"Me, too," said Lu as she headed toward her own car. "You'll be back next Sat.u.r.day, Deborah?"

"Sure," said Annie Sue. "She's going to help me pull wire, right?"

I sighed. "Right."

"Maybe we could even get started one evening next week?"

"Maybe," I said noncommittally.

Lu laughed and called goodbye to BeeBee, who was toweling her children off with her son's wet T-s.h.i.+rt so they wouldn't get mud on the seat of her car.

"Y'all aren't leaving now?" BeeBee asked.

"My dad's coming by to check that I've got everything marked out right," Annie Sue told her. "I thought he'd be here by now."

"Probably making sure everybody's gone first," I said.

"See you next week then," said BeeBee as she finished buckling little Kaneesha into the backseat. Anthony Carl was buckled up, ready to roll, and both children waved to Paige and Cindy till the car pulled out of sight.

The two girls were drenched to the skin. Their hair hung in wet strands and their thin cotton s.h.i.+rts were plastered to their young bodies, outlining b.r.e.a.s.t.s and nipples.

At that moment, a bright red Jeep without its rag top screeched to a halt and a virile young white man pulled himself up by the roll bar. Sunlight glinted off his mirror shades.

"Well, well, well!" A salacious leer spread itself across his handsome face. "Did someone forget to tell me about the wet T-s.h.i.+rt contest?"

He stepped down from the Jeep, hitched up his low-slung jeans and strolled across the gra.s.s. "h.e.l.l-lo, little ladies! I'm your friendly neighborhood building inspector and I'd be happy to inspect your framing any old time you say."

The girls laughed at his burlesque of crude seducer. I just sat where I was and watched. Motionless on the floor behind the others, my baseball cap perched on one drawn-up knee, I could have been another teenager for all he noticed. He still hadn't pulled his eyes off those wet s.h.i.+rts; but I knew his face and now I remembered his name: C-for-Carver Bannerman, my cousin Reid's lead-foot, the man I'd fined a hundred dollars for grossly speeding in a residential zone and for failure to yield to an ambulance.

"Don't tell me you gals know how to hammer a stud into place?"

He marched right on up to them in that s.p.a.ce-invading tactic men like him use, knowing most women will step back. Annie Sue and Paige did. Cindy stood her ground, dimples flas.h.i.+ng, her green eyes daring him to further flights of outrageousness. Her back was against a porch support and he reached past her to brace himself, his chest less than six inches from hers. With his free hand, he pulled off his sungla.s.ses and stared straight down into her pretty face.

It seemed a good time to pull the plug on this nonsense. I stuck my cap back on my head and leaned forward. "Good evening, Mr. Bannerman."

"Just wait your turn, dollface," he drawled. "I'll get to-" He hesitated, seeing me now, almost remembering my voice, but unable to think how he knew me.

Paige and Annie Sue were smiling as broadly as Cindy, who slipped out from under his arm and said, "This is Ms. Deborah Knott. Judge Deborah Knott."

"Oh, s.h.i.+t!" He downs.h.i.+fted from the cliche of walking p.e.n.i.s to the cliche of boyish penitence, which he'd tried to use on me in court Tuesday. "Stepped into it again, didn't I?"

"You do seem p.r.o.ne to it," I agreed.

The smile stayed on his lips, but the eyes went hard before he slipped those concealing gla.s.ses on again. A young man who liked to jab, not be jabbed. He kept his cool though. Continued to tease the girls, albeit with considerably less lechery than he'd used initially. They seemed not to notice and laughed when he asked what part I'd worked on "so I can judge the Judge."

They followed him through the house, chattering and giggling. I stayed where I was. Lu had led me to expect a lot of sarcasm and nitpicking, and I didn't want to hear it; but when they returned, Bannerman's only criticism was that two-by-two ledger strips ought to be nailed on the ceiling joists, a valid oversight and something easily corrected.

He dated and signed his okay on the building permit's framing line and hopped back in his red Jeep.

"How old would you say he is?" I heard Cindy ask as Carver Bannerman roared away.

At least twenty-one," said Paige.

"Twenty-two easy," Annie Sue guessed.

"Well I don't care," said Cindy. "If he's there tonight, I'm dancing with him."

They stirred restlessly.

"I guess Cindy and I'll go on," said Paige. "Want us to come by for you, Annie Sue?"

"Okay." She looked at her watch for the third time in ten minutes. After six and still no Herman. "Give me a call when you're ready to come, in case something comes up.

No sooner had they, too, driven away than a teenage black girl walked into the yard. She was the young clerk who'd come up earlier from the convenience store. From the way the two girls greeted each other, I realized they must be cla.s.smates at Dobbs Senior High. "Your mother just called, Annie Sue. Said for me to tell you your daddy's not feeling good and he's not coming."

"Thanks, Patsy," Annie Sue said. "Give you a lift back to the store?"

"No, thanks. I'm through for the day. And it's Sat.u.r.day night, girl!"

As I feared, I was stiffer than a two-by-two as I rousted myself up off the porch and climbed into the truck.

Annie Sue was almost as lively as she'd been at seven that morning. "He was kind of cute, wasn't he, Deb'rah?"

I shrugged.

"You didn't take all that stuff he said serious, did you? He was just playing."

"Half-joke, no fooling," the preacher said starchily.

"Forgotten what it's like to be sixteen?" asked the pragmatist.

Trouble was, I remembered only too well. Still... "Yeah, he was cute," I said. "Too bad he's too old for you guys."

"He asked for our phone numbers."

"Oh?"

She looked so poised and mature, her hands relaxed and in control of the truck's steering wheel. "Cindy gave them to him."

"You wouldn't go out with him, would you?"

"He probably won't ask me." She sighed wistfully and suddenly looked fourteen. "Anyhow, Dad would kill me!"

CHAPTER 8.

FRAMING SQUARES.

"The framing square consists of a wide and long member called the blade and a narrower and shorter member called the tongue, which forms a right angle with the blade... The problems that can be solved with the square are so many and varied that... only a few of the more common uses of the square can be presented here."

New Deliverance was borderline charismatic and not the sort of church I felt comfortable attending; but at lunch the day before, Nadine had caught me off guard-a fudge delight cookie has the power to cloud minds-and laid on the guilt. "Isabel says you went to her and Haywood's church last Sunday and to Seth and Minnie's Sunday before last, but you haven't been to ours in almost two years."

With Jacob's pottage rich and chocolaty on my tongue, I had no quick words with which to resist.

"Besides," said Nadine. "I know Zell and Ash are driving down to Southern Pines to visit Brix Junior tomorrow, so you can come have Sunday dinner with us afterwards."

Which is how I wound up sitting in the unadorned plainness of New Deliverance on Sunday morning listening to a man who'd dropped out of high school in the tenth grade preaching from I Timothy 2:9-15, my least-favorite pa.s.sage in the Bible.

"-because Adam was not deceived, my friends. He was doing what G.o.d told him to do. It was the woman who listened to the serpent, it was the woman who picked the apple, and it was the woman who talked Adam into eating it. Woe unto mankind the day poor weak Adam listened to the wo-man."

I was accustomed to how women my age and older could sit quietly and listen to sanctimonious fossils expound on how woman brought the first sin into the world by tempting man, and how women continue to tempt men by "adorning themselves in contrariness to G.o.d's holy ordinance." But when I looked at the Young Folks Choir seated directly behind him, I saw no rebellion or repressed resentment on any of the female faces, teenage faces that were certainly adorned with lipstick, eye shadow, earrings, and necklaces.

On the other hand, most of them didn't seem to be listening very hard. From the half-frown on her lips and the faraway glaze in her eyes, Annie Sue for sure had something else on her mind besides a sermon underpinned by St. Paul's view of woman's place.

There was no way this paternalistic pair of jockey shorts could have known I'd be there this morning, so I didn't have to take his choice of text personally. In this part of the world, antifeminism is but another club with which to bash the hydra-headed beast of secular humanism. As long as a woman knows her place-on a pedestal or on her back-men of the preacher's generation will give her protection and a thousand courtly courtesies. But let her try to climb down or stand up-aagghh!

As soon as he started in on "suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence," I knew I either had to tune out or walk out. On the pew beside me, Herman's sigh almost masked mine.

There was a gray drawn look about his face today that made me uneasy. It was so unlike him not to check in behind Annie Sue last night. Even though she hadn't drilled a single hole or put a piece of wire on anything except the utility box, if he'd been able to drag one foot in front of the other, he'd have been there to look over her plans.

It'd be different this week if she followed through on her plan to try to finish the rough-in before Sat.u.r.day. Last night there'd been an invitation on my answering machine from K.C. Ma.s.sengill, inviting me up to her place on the lake next weekend. If I helped Annie Sue during the week, surely that would excuse me from stuffing fibergla.s.s insulation in the walls next Sat.u.r.day? And then- To my relief, I suddenly realized that the preacher had called for the closing hymn. The pianist swung into a toe-tapping rendition of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," and we reached for our hymnals. Herman's slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. Nadine fished it out and I saw her anxious look as we all stood to sing.

"You okay?" I murmured to him.

He nodded and began to, well, it wasn't what a purist could call singing exactly-in a music-loving family, Herman was the one who could never stay on pitch-but it was certainly a conscientious effort toward making a joyful noise unto the Lord.

A benediction followed, then the preacher placed himself in the doorway and shook everyone's hand as we left. When it was my turn, his craggy face broke into a genuine smile.

"Judge Deborah!" he exclaimed. "We're all just so proud of you!"

Go figure, as Lev Schuster used to tell me.

"Mom's going to try and make Dad see Dr. Worley tomorrow," said Annie Sue as she rode home with me from New Deliverance. She was so quiet in the car that I remembered her withdrawn look earlier.

"Something bothering you?" I asked.

"Oh, no," she answered hastily. "I'm just a little tired, I guess."

"So how was the dance last night?"

"Okay."

There was a cherry red zit on her chin. It'd started the morning covered with makeup, but she'd touched it so much during preaching that it blazed now. As her hand strayed toward her chin again, I reached over, pushed it down, and asked with a smile, "Did what's his name-Bannerman?-show up?"

There was a stricken silence.

"Honey?"

She twisted in her seat to look me in the face. "Can I tell you something and you won't tell Mom and Dad?"

"Depends." I took my foot off the gas and slowed down a little. "If you're in trouble-"

"Not me. A friend."

"Cindy or Paige?"

"Cindy," she admitted. "Carver Bannerman did drop by the dance last night, and he was coming on strong to all three of us, but Cindy liked him best and she let him take her home."

"And?"

"He didn't take her home. I called over there this morning and Miss Gladys said Cindy was spending the night with Paige. So I called Paige, but she didn't."

"I see," I said slowly. "You think she went home with Bannerman?"

She didn't answer.

"He's lucky. Sixteen used to be statutory rape if a parent found out and wanted to bring charges."

Annie Sue groaned. "I swear I just don't know what's got into Cindy. Ever since her daddy died, it's like she's been on speed or something. I mean, she was always crying about how mean and strict Mr. Ralph was, when I don't think he was half as mean as Judge Byrd and I know he wasn't as strict as Dad. But this past month, it's like she's been let out of prison for the first time in her life. If Paige and I didn't pull her in-"

"You can't hold yourself responsible for her bad decisions," I said.

"She swears this is going to be the summer she loses her virginity. That's so stupid."

"And these days pretty dangerous."

"We know." Annie Sue leaned over and patted my hand on the steering wheel. "Honest. We do get AIDS lectures."

"Yeah, but does Cindy listen?"

She shrugged. "The thing is, what if it's not that? What if they had a wreck or something?"