Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 01 - Hurricane Season (7 page)

At first, it seemed as if he wouldn’t answer, then she heard a strangled, “No’m.”

“Me neither.” She fitted the key into the lock. “Wouldn’t mind seeing it one day, though.” The safe swung open, and from the cash drawer inside she took three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. When she turned, she saw that he’d followed her, still proffering the dollar. “This what you need?”

He shoved the dollar at her and all but snatched the change out of her hand. Before she could blink, the screen had banged behind him. A moment later, she heard the door of the phone booth bang as well.

She felt cheated. Smoothing the dollar, relocking the safe, she wondered what on earth the rush was. Other people didn’t mind visiting for a few minutes, especially if Lily was doing them a favor by getting them change. There weren’t so many people out here at the beach, after all, that they could afford to be standoffish with one another. She heard running again and watched as the young man headed for the dock through the dusk. After all that, his phone call hadn’t lasted even two minutes.

Without stopping to think about it, she slipped through the screen door. His motor sputtered and caught, and she saw him turn his boat toward St. Elmo. She watched him cross the water, heading for the south end of the island, and she wondered briefly if he knew where he was going. There were no houses down that way. None of her business, after all, and if he
did
get lost that was none of her business either.

She went back to the store, locked it, and then, as she always did, walked along the beach for a few minutes. Removing her sandals, dangling them by the straps, she let the cooling waves slide around her ankles. As the swells spilled onto the shore, she could see a flicker of phosphorus in the water. The white sand was almost luminous in the dying rays of the sun. Lily stood still, thinking of nothing. A muscle twitched in her neck, then subsided. She turned back to see if Aubrey had come home for supper.

That evening, as Josh was hurrying back to the island, the St. Elmo Kiwanis Club’s Candidates’ Night Fish Fry was getting under way in the city park. Long trestle tables under the pines were draped with heavy white paper. The roofless enclosure where cooking was done over camp stoves by sweating Kiwanians was surrounded by smoke and the smell of grease.

At a Kiwanis fish fry, everyone who paid a dollar got deep-fried mullet, grits, hush puppies, slaw, coffee or iced tea. By six o’clock, the line of people fanning themselves with paper plates had reached the edge of the park. The St. Elmo mosquito-control truck had driven through the area a couple of hours before, emitting an all-but-impenetrable fog of DDT, so the insects weren’t biting too badly.

At a right angle to the tables stood a makeshift bandstand on which Sonny Smith and his Bluegrass Boys were playing dinner music, including their version of “Sleepin’ at the Foot of the Bed,” a local favorite. Red, white, and blue crepe-paper streamers hung limply at the corners of the bandstand. Also on the bandstand, behind Sonny and his boys, were rows of folding chairs for the candidates. None of the chairs was occupied, since the candidates were mixing with the crowd and handing out cards with their names and slogans printed on them. The slogan on Snapper Landis’s card was,
A Decade of Experience;
Gospel Roy Mclnnes’s said,
A Family Man of Integrity.
Standing under a pine tree, a circle of men around him, Snapper was telling how he had headed off Gospel Roy’s efforts to get an extra spot on the program by offering to sing “The Old Rugged Cross” as the invocation.

“I told them,” said Snapper, glancing around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, “I told them if Roy sang ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ they had to let
me
sing ‘Good Night, Irene.’ They moved on quick to the next order of business.”

Roy was helping the Kiwanians’ wives put ice in paper cups and pour tea. His obvious sincerity and virtue, coupled with his wavy hair and booming baritone voice, had made half the ladies in the First Baptist choir fall in love with him. They brought pound cakes and loaves of Sally Lunn to choir practice for him, and last Christmas they chipped in and bought him a new rod and reel. “All I’m saying is, we need a man in the job you good people can be
proud
of,” Gospel Roy was saying, and the Kiwanians’ wives nodded and thought they could surely be proud of Gospel Roy.

When everybody was served, Sonny Smith finished his program with a bluegrass version of “Dixie,” and he and his boys retired from the stage. After an invocation by Brother Chillingworth, the Methodist preacher, and the pledge of allegiance, the candidates—for city and county commission, for school board, for supervisor of elections—began having their say. Snapper sat in his folding chair, apparently rapt at the rhetoric. Gospel Roy adopted an attitude reminiscent of prayer, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.

The speakers droned on, cigarettes were ground out in paper plates, and children began to whine. Lights that had been strung in the trees’ lower branches were turned on, attracting whatever insects were still alive. When the fourth candidate for county commission reiterated his final promise, it was time for the candidates for the state house of representatives to take the platform.

Because he was the incumbent, and also because the president of the Kiwanis was a buddy of his, Snapper had been allowed to speak last. Gospel Roy got up, straightened his tie, and began with, “My Friends. ”

Before Roy was well into his introductory jokes, Sheriff Woody Malone and Cecil Banks, his deputy, appeared at the edge of the crowd. Their presence was not unusual, as any public function called for at least a brief appearance to show everyone that Woody was on the job. Tonight, though, there was a noticeable pallor on Woody’s usually ruddy face, and Cecil, a fastidious young man who changed his clothes several times a day in hot weather, was smeared with mud and his pants legs were wet to the knee.

After a short but intense conversation with Woody, Cecil threaded his way through the tables to the bandstand and plucked at Snapper’s sleeve. Heads turned and weight shifted among the audience as Cecil and Snapper entered into a whispered conversation that was, no question about it, rude to Gospel Roy, who was trying to make his speech.

Gospel Roy became distracted and annoyed. “If my opponent would do me the courtesy to listen, in case he has an answer to these charges ” he said, glancing over at Snapper, who was shaking his head at Cecil.

Now, the crowd was paying more attention to Cecil and Snapper than to Gospel Roy. Heads turned to one another in inquiry, and people craned their necks toward Woody, who was standing in the back, fingering his holster.

Gospel Roy carried on gamely in the face of this mass distraction, but nobody at all was listening to him by the time Snapper cried, “Great God Almighty!” and jumped to his feet, his folding chair clanging over behind him.

He jumped from the bandstand and followed Cecil through the crowd, half-running. When they reached Woody, the three turned and headed through the trees, and in a moment a County Sheriff’s Department car flashed by.

Back on the bandstand, Gospel Roy was fumbling. “I don’t know why my honored opponent has felt it necessary—” he began, when he was interrupted by Fish Arnold, the challenger for the post of supervisor of elections. Fish, a colorless individual whom nobody could imagine running for office, had been sitting next to Snapper. He got up and, with a polite nod to Gospel Roy, commandeered the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret to tell you Congressman Landis has had to leave. From what I overheard Deputy Barnes saying, his daughter Diana has been murdered.”

The hullabaloo that followed consisted of shouted questions and general milling about and conjecture. Fish Arnold was the central figure until it became evident that he had told exactly as much as he knew and no amount of pumping would produce further information. He then faded into the background.

Afterward, however, when St. Elmo’s soothsayers totaled up profits and losses, they decided that two people were sure election winners as a result of Candidates’ Night. One was Fish Arnold; the other was Snapper Landis.

Four late-model Oldsmobiles were pulled up under a live oak tree in the front yard of the rambling house. Any St. Elmo resident who drove by the place, five miles or so out of town, could have made an educated guess about what was going on. “Old Man Calhoun’s got the boys out to his place,” the person might say. “Reckon they’re about ready to get the new still set up.”

In fact, the Calhouns were working steadily on their new moonshine operation. They had a location in the river swamp, with a ditch excavated and a log frame built around it. Construction was proceeding on schedule, but the new still was not the reason Old Man Calhoun had summoned Bo, Sonny, Lester, and Purvis to their childhood home. Old Man Calhoun had other things on his mind.

The living room at the Calhouns’, where the old man was reading the riot act to his sons, showed evidence of a fundamental difference of outlook between the old man, who had spent most of his life in the swamp making moonshine, and his wife, Miss Myrna, who was a member of the Daughters of the American Confederacy and had pretensions to culture. Gold-framed reproductions of
Pinky
and
The Blue Boy
hung on one wall; a businesslike rack of shotguns on the other. Most of the furniture was a version of French provincial designed by someone who had never been north of Macon, but the chair in which the old man sat was worn, nondescript, and obviously just right for his scrawny behind. Porcelain quail billed on the coffee table, while beneath it Deacon, the old man’s fourteen-year-old bird dog, scratched and broke wind.

Dominating the room was a console-model television set, the first ever in St. Elmo when the four Calhoun boys had given it to their parents two years ago. Since the nearest broadcasting station was a hundred miles away in Tallahassee, the set rarely picked up anything but snow despite the tallest antenna money could buy. This didn’t prevent the Calhouns from having it turned on all day long and, the sound a bare murmur, it was on now.

The old man’s voice was bumpy with phlegm, and spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. The boys sprawled on the uncomfortable furniture, all looking as if they were listening to something they had heard before.

Purvis, the baby at age twenty-six, finally interrupted. “Daddy,” he said, speaking loudly and slowly, “we’ve said if we find out who done it they’ll be sorry. But what else can we do?”

Old Man Calhoun’s sparse gray hair stuck out featherlike from the top of his head. He blinked at Purvis, looking like a baby bird. “I don’t give a good goddamn—” he began, but Bo waved his hand, saying in a low voice, “Don’t bother him about it, Purv.”

Bo, the second son, was the unofficial leader of the younger Calhouns. Sonny, the eldest, was too soft, Lester too dumb, and Purvis too young for the position. Bo was the only one the old man would shut up for. Although the room fell silent, Bo seemed disinclined to continue. He was, in fact, more distracted than he usually was at Calhoun family meetings.

Before the old man got his breath back, Bo’s wife Sue Nell entered the room and said, “Miss Myrna wants to know do you-all want coffee.”

Sue Nell had always been more than any of the Calhouns, including the old man, could handle. Quirky and given to sulks, she had alienated the more conventional wives of the other Calhoun sons, who retaliated by telling each other she was cruel to her three children, although there was no evidence of this. She and Miss Myrna got along only marginally, Sue Nell pretending no interest in the Daughters of the American Confederacy. Her offer of coffee was an uncommon occurrence. She looked bad today, her skin the color of curdled milk.

“I’ll drink a cup, sugar,” said the old man, and Sonny, Lester, and Purvis nodded assent. She looked at Bo. “Do you want some, William?”

“Sure, honey,” he said, not looking at her.

When she left the room, Lester said, “How come it is she called you William?”

Bo shrugged. “It’s my name.”

“Yes, but—” Lester began, but Old Man Calhoun evidently felt he had yielded the floor long enough.

“What I say,” he began, “is that nobody blows up a Calhoun’s still and gets away with it. Don’t you boys have a bit of pride? If my daddy had saw that, he would’ve pumped every ass in the county full of buckshot. But you boys—you boys let the time go by, and—”

Sue Nell reentered, carrying mugs on a tray. “Help yourself,
William,”
snickered Lester in an undertone. Sue Nell glared at him, her eyes poisonous. The mugs rattled when she set the tray on the coffee table, startling Deacon and sending him, toenails clicking, down the hall. Somewhere in the house a phone rang once.

“Daddy,” Bo said distinctly, “I will promise you this. We’ll get even. Take my word that we’re working on it. Will you do that for me?”

“I be goddamn,” started the old man, but subsided when Sue Nell handed him his coffee.

He slurped at it, attention distracted. Sue Nell sat on the arm of a chair while the Calhoun sons talked among themselves.

“I been in touch with Elmore,” said Sonny.

“What’d he say?” asked Purvis.

“Well. ” Sonny put sugar and cream in his coffee. “He didn’t say a whole lot, but looks to me like he ain’t hurting while we’re out of business. He
says
he’s cutting back, but I tell you the truth. I think he’s getting liquor somewhere else.”

Lester socked his fist into his palm. “I’d sure like to get ahold of that—”

“Shut up.” Bo glanced at their father, who was drinking noisily, then surveyed his brothers. “You all know what we have to do?”

“Watch Elmore,” Sonny said.

“Damn right, watch him,” said Bo. “Find out who the hell he’s getting that whiskey from. Find out, and you’ll find the son of a bitch that blew up the still.”

The room was silent except for the old man’s slobbering. Then came the sound of footsteps, and Miss Myrna entered the room.

Miss Myrna, small and white-haired, had spent her life turning her back on what her husband did for a living. The effort had left her dazed, and befuddlement was her usual expression. Now, however, she looked more alert than usual. “The most awful thing,” she said. She looked around, waiting until the old man noticed her and put his coffee cup down.