Читать книгу The Sweetest Hallelujah - Elaine Hussey, Elaine Hussey - Страница 11

THE FIRST THING CASSIE did when she woke up was put on her white pique robe with the pink piping, then step outside to get the paper. She wanted to see if that haunting little ad she’d seen in the classifieds of The Bugle was also in the Sentinel. It was a daily and four times as thick as the weekly newspaper. Still, Cassie had never tried to get a job there. Joe had always believed it was because Cassie was first and foremost a housewife who had only taken a part-time job to have a little something extra to keep her busy. Letting him think that had been easier than explaining how she could get by with expressing her unpopular opinions in The Bugle because Ben wasn’t about to fire her. In small Southern towns, big connections kept crusading women with radical opinions safe—as long as they were all talk and no action.

Cassie had beat the mailman. She stood in her front yard beneath a catalpa tree, shading her eyes for him. The hot air was so sharp it looked like stars. The canopy of the catalpa tree had grown so thick nothing could get through, not even heartache. A cardinal swooped from its branches and zoomed right past her head, so close its wings hummed like a harmonica riff. It was the kind of day where anything could happen. Time could rewind, her womb could bring forth a child, or Joe might come around the corner saying, Surprise, it was all a mistake.

“Morning, Cassie.” The mailman waved the Sentinel at her, then trotted across the lawn. With his short, stumpy legs, wide face and toothy grin, J. D. Cotton looked like a friendly troll. “I brought you some fresh tomatoes. My garden’s just run over with them.”

“You’re spoiling me, J.D.”

“Pretty woman like you deserves it. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” You might as well take offense at the Easter Bunny. As long as J.D. was on the route, housewives in Tupelo could expect fresh tomatoes and okra in their mailboxes in the summertime. Kids could expect letters from the North Pole at Christmas. Cassie took the heavy sack from him. “It looks like it’s going to rain. Wait here and let me get Joe’s rain slicker for you.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

Cassie hurried inside, set her tomatoes on the kitchen cabinet, tossed the Sentinel on the table, then rummaged in the hall closet for Joe’s raincoat. There was no use hanging on to it.

Still, when she handed the yellow slicker to J.D., her heart broke in two.

“I’ll get the coat back to you, Cassie.”

“Keep it, J.D. I should have gone through Joe’s things months ago.”

J.D. waved as he left to continue his route, and Cassie hurried into the house.

It was today’s dedication ceremony that had Cassie on edge. She had better things to do than stand in front of a crowd and make an empty speech about how much renaming the baseball field meant to her. She couldn’t hug a baseball field.

She brewed Maxwell House coffee, then sat down at her kitchen table with a cup while she scanned the Sentinel for signs of the woman who wanted to give away her child. Seeing none, she called Ben at home.

“Who placed that Dying Woman ad in The Bugle, Ben?”

“Woman up in Shakerag. Goober said it was somebody calling herself Betty Jewel Hughes. Name sounded familiar because her husband used to be a famous bluesman.”

“I want to do the story.”

“This is the wrong time for a white woman to be poking around Shakerag.”

“All the more reason, Ben. Somebody has to speak out for these people.”

“They’re sitting on top of a powder keg up there just waiting to blow wide open. Can’t let you do it, Cassie. It’s too dangerous.”

“A dying woman and a little girl about to become an orphan? Come on, Ben. That’s a story, and we need to tell it.”

“It’s none of our business. Go to the baseball field today and enjoy the ceremony.”

“Just be Joe’s widow. Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you go to Shakerag and stir things up, there’s no telling what will happen.”

“I’m not going to stir things up, Ben. I’m going to help save a little girl.”

Ben’s sigh was audible. If she could see his expression, she knew it would be long-suffering. Though he blustered and tried to keep his best friend’s wife safe, Ben was proud of Cassie’s spunk. Whatever she did, he would support her.

“Dammit, Cassie.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

“For what? If you go up there, you’re fired.”

“I know.”

“I’m not kidding this time.”

“Bye, Ben. I’ll see you at The Bugle this afternoon.”

“I’ll be at the dedication, Cass.”

The dedication. One more reminder that Joe was gone.

If Cassie had her way, she’d wear slacks and a T-shirt to the dedication of the baseball field. Fashion meant nothing to her; comfort, everything. But there was her father-in-law to think about, dear, old-fashioned Mike Malone, who would be mortified if she showed up looking anything less than a proper lady, as befitted his son’s widow.

She put on a yellow linen sundress with a white bolero and matching pumps, even gloves, for Pete’s sake. A glance at the clock told her she was a full fifteen minutes early. She wished she could break herself of obsessive punctuality. She was so anxious that nobody be inconvenienced waiting for her, she always ending up wasting a lot of time waiting for them. And now that she was all dressed up, she couldn’t run out to her garden and pull a few weeds or start any little thing that entailed getting dirty.

Deciding to brave her former Empty Room, Cassie turned the doorknob. Her rocking chair beckoned—nothing to fear there—so she sat down to watch for her sister-in-law. The sight of her favorite pictures made her smile, but she couldn’t say she felt the sort of favorite-retreat contentment Fay Dean had predicted.

At the sound of tires, she looked out the window and saw Fay Dean coming up the walk with Mike. Cassie hurried to the door and kissed her father-in-law’s cheek.

“Mike, what a lovely surprise.”

“I wanted to come by early and see if there was anything you needed me to do.”

“That’s sweet of you, but I think I have everything under control.”

“Pshaw. You need some help taking care of Joe’s house. Where are those insurance papers?”

“I’ve already paid the house insurance, Mike.”

“I’ve told you, I’ll take care of all that, hon. No need for you to try to do a man’s job.”

“Daddy, Cassie’s not senile. The only thing she needs is an occasional shoulder to cry on.”

“Well, she for damned sure doesn’t need a psychiatrist. One of my mailmen saw her coming out of O’Hanlon’s office and asked if she’d gone mental.”

“For God’s sake, Daddy. Who gives a shit?”

Mike stormed off to the front porch, and Cassie said, “Leave Mike alone, Fay Dean. He means well.”

“I swear to God, Daddy’s going to drive us both crazy.”

“I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t take much to push me around the bend.” That brought a laugh from Fay Dean, which was exactly what Cassie intended. Though she waded knee deep into every controversial cause, she tried to avoid personal conflict.

You never say what you’re thinking, Joe had told her that awful summer she’d lost her third baby, the summer it felt as if he had vanished to the moon and she was left behind trying to see into outer space. Yell, scream, cry … Just, for God’s sake, don’t shut yourself off from me.

“Are you ready?” Fay Dean linked arms, and Cassie pushed the uncomfortable memory from her mind. “Let’s get this over with.”

They climbed into Mike’s steady Chevrolet sedan, and as they drove the few blocks to the baseball field, Cassie found herself struggling to recall the exact shape of Joe’s jaw, the way his dark hair had felt against her cheek, the way he’d pull his harmonica from his pocket and start playing so his music came through the door before he did. Even the smell of Joe’s old baseball jacket could no longer bring her husband clearly to mind.

Blistering in the sun beside Mike and Fay Dean, Cassie was thinking how love can waylay you when you least expect it. She was thinking how one minute you can have your future mapped out and the next you’re arguing over whose fault it is you can’t carry a baby full term.

And if the sound of a blues harp happened to float by on the breeze, as it was doing now, you might actually believe it was a sign. Was it Joe, telling her he’d always loved her, even during those hard months after they’d lost the third baby and drifted apart?

Last night she’d gone outside to stand under the stars. Venus had shone down on her, a heavenly reminder of the grace that had enabled her and Joe to get past their hurt and come back together.

Shored up by memories, she went onto the baseball field where the mayor would call Joe a hero.

Leaving her gloves and bolero in the car and clutching Joe’s posthumous award under her arm, Cassie entered The Bugle’s offices on the corner of Spring and Court streets. They were in a venerable building in the center of town with twelve-foot tall windows and ivy climbing the redbrick walls.

Joe used to say she could live at The Bugle, and it was true. She loved the clatter of the presses and the smell of ink. Cassie settled Joe’s plaque on the corner of her desk and her coffee cup on a ceramic trivet painted with rainbows. Give Your Soul a Bubble Bath, it proclaimed.

Searching her phone book for the number, Cassie dialed Betty Jewel Hughes.

“Hello.” The woman at the other end of the line spoke with dark, honeyed tones that made you want to sit outside in the sunshine and listen to the universe.

It turned out the woman was not Betty Jewel, but her mother, Queen Dupree. Her daughter, she said, wouldn’t be home till late that afternoon. Though Queen sounded both ancient and anxious, she finally agreed for Cassie to come to Maple Street.

Cassie glanced at her calendar. “I’ll be there today at five.”

A dying woman doesn’t have any time to lose.