Miss Julia Hits the Road (20 page)

I shuddered at the thought of that grizzled old man with his wet, shiny lips getting close to me again. It was beyond me why such a short, repulsive man found me so attractive. For once, I could understand why widows wanted to remarry so quickly. They couldn’t stand being pawed at by men who swarmed up from the bottom of the barrel.

“Okay, Lillian,” I said, having had enough of ruminating over such unappetizing matters. “I’ll call Sam and see if he’ll have dinner with us. And I might as well call Mr. Pickens, too, whether Hazel Marie wants him here or not. Though she probably does. He was the one with the Poker Run idea, so we need to get that started. I declare, I feel like we’re feeding them every night.”

“That’s jus’ about what we doin’,” she said. “But they batchin’ it, so we he’pin’ ’em out. What you want me to fix?”

“I don’t know. What about a pork tenderloin? And some sweet potatoes, and whatever else. That’s a good fall dinner.”

She nodded and went toward the pantry to see what she’d need from the grocery store. I left to do the telephoning, determined to be happy about the money I was raising without worrying too much about the way I was getting it.

When I dialed Sam’s number, it was a relief to catch him at home. I realized that I hadn’t heard from him all day, and wondered if he’d been lying on the side of the road somewhere. “Sam,” I said, “where have you been?”

“Collecting money, Julia. Why? You worried about me?” I could hear the smile in his voice, which got my back up.

“Not one bit. I just thought you’d check in sometime today, since hardly a day goes by that you don’t.”

“Day’s not over yet, Julia.”

“I know that, but here’s why I called. How are you doing with your collecting? Are people responding like they should?”

“Pretty well, I’d say. But we’ve got a long way to go. I thought I’d talk to Gibbs and see how much time he’ll give us.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to think fast. “I wouldn’t do that, Sam. I’m still negotiating with him. In fact, I’m supposed to call him tomorrow morning to see if we can come to some agreement.”

“That’s fine, then. If he’d give us six months, I know we could come up with his price.”

“Hold on. I’ve got to sit down,” I said, and did. Six months, I thought. Lord, we had to do better than that. Clarence Gibbs would have both my house and his water-bottling plant long before then. “He gave me the impression that he won’t wait that long. He wants to get started on something.”

“The only thing we can do is just keep raising the money,” Sam said. “I might as well warn you, though. There’s all kinds of talk around town. I’ve heard that he’s listing it with a realtor, that he’s thinking of an asphalt plant, or maybe an office building. And the word is still going around about a water-bottling plant.”

“Oh, Sam, we have got to nip all of that in the bud,” I said, wishing I could strangle Clarence Gibbs for his underhanded way of doing business. He was supposed to be giving me a little time, and instead he was letting the rumors run rife. And I knew why—to make me anxious enough to seal an agreement concerning my house.

Sam said, “You’ll be happy to know that I got pledges of about thirty thousand today, and Binkie has the fund set up, with you as the treasurer. It’s all legal and safe-guarded, so we can begin funneling donations into it any time.”

“Good. But, Sam, pledges’re not good enough. We have to have the money in hand. You know how people are about pledges; they tend to put off paying them. That’s the way it works for the church, anyway.”

We chatted a little while longer, and several times I was on the verge of telling him about my visit to Thurlow Jones. But each time I opened my mouth to do it, I closed it again, or filled it with something else. I knew Sam would tell me I shouldn’t have done it, not that that would’ve stopped me, but still. I didn’t want him to know exactly how I’d been able to extract a hefty donation from the most unlikely source he could imagine.

“I fixed you a sam’ich for lunch,” Lillian said as I walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, thank you, I do need to eat something. Now, Lillian,” I said as I sat at the table, “there’s something else I need to do, and I’ll need you to help me.”

She hung a dish towel on the rack, and said, “Ever’time you want me to help with something, you get us in trouble. You not aimin’ to go see that ole man again, are you?”

“Lord, no,” I said. “I’m as through with him as I can get. No, Lillian, I need to make a trip up to that spring so I can see just what kind of water is in it. I need to know what we’re up against. For all I know, Clarence Gibbs is bluffing, trying to make out like that land is more valuable than it is. I aim to call him on it.”

“Well,” she said, turning away. “I kinda thought when Little Lloyd get out of school, we’d go over to my house one las’ time. That Rose of Sharon need diggin’.”

“Oh, Lillian,” I said, just done in by my own thoughtlessness. Of course, her plants could stay right where they were, if I played my cards right. But I didn’t want anybody to know what kind of hand Clarence Gibbs had dealt me. “I’d forgotten about moving your plants, being so taken up with all this fund-raising. We’ll pick up Little Lloyd at school and go right on over there.”

She glanced back at me. “I don’t want to mess up yo’ plans if you need to see ’bout that water.”

“My plans can wait, but not for too long. Besides, it might be better to make that trek to the spring after dark, anyway.”

“After dark?” She stared at me, her eyes wide. “Le’s do it in the mornin’, if you have to do it.”

“No, it’d be better if nobody saw us. I tell you, Lillian, you don’t know what kind of man I’m dealing with in Clarence Gibbs. It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if we got up there and found nothing but a mud puddle, with him carrying on like he’s Moses getting a miracle out of a rock. We’ll run up there as soon as Sam and Mr. Pickens leave tonight.”

She didn’t look too happy about the prospect of traipsing around after dark, but I couldn’t help that. It had to be done before I risked my house the next morning.

Lord, when I drove up and parked us in front of Lillian’s house that afternoon, I was overcome with the sense of emptiness of the whole street. There were no chairs or swings on the porches, no hanging baskets, no dogs lying in the shade, no curtains on the windows. The little houses looked so weather-worn and lonely as they waited for the yellow monsters parked in the field beyond, that I wondered how wise it was to’ve brought Lillian back.

Still, I didn’t blame her for wanting one last look around before the wreckers reduced her house to kindling. It was heartbreaking, though, and I could’ve cried for her. Although I will say that if you looked with cold business eyes at the shape the houses were in, you’d have to admit that leveling them would be a decided improvement.

And that made me mad all over again, for it was Clarence Gibbs who’d let them get in such a state. Right then and there, I decided that Little Lloyd and I would make a tour of inspection of all our rental property and make sure we weren’t letting them deteriorate as he had let his.

Still, as I looked closer at the houses, I could see possibilities for refurbishment. The houses were not as far gone as Mr. Gibbs had made out when he’d had them condemned. Do a little masonry work on the foundations, replace a few roofs, and put on a coat of paint, plus upgrading the interiors, and those houses would be fit to live in. It would cost time and money. But, then, what didn’t?

“Well,” Lillian said as she opened the car door and maneuvered both the hoe she’d been holding and herself out. It wasn’t easy to do with her huge pocketbook gripped under her arm. “Settin’ here ain’t gettin’ it done.”

“I sure don’t like this,” Little Lloyd said, stepping out with a shovel in his hand. “I mean, I sure don’t like that you have to move, Miss Lillian. But I’m glad we can take your flowers with us. Come show me what you want dug up.”

“They ’round yonder in the back,” she told him. And the two of us followed her around the house. “I sho’ hate to leave my apple tree an’ the grape arbor back there, but they too big to take.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “And I doubt we’d get them in the trunk, either.”

They both smiled at that, but we were a serious trio, as we trooped to the back of the house.

“What all you want, Miss Lillian?” Little Lloyd asked as he surveyed the side yard, which was lined with a chicken wire fence, overhung with ivy and honeysuckle.

“That Rose of Sharon right there.” She pointed to the bush. “An’ my snowball bush, if we can get it outta the ground. An’ maybe one or two of them daylilies. We don’t need many of them ’cause they spread out an’ grow by theyselves. An’ if you not too tired, Little Lloyd, my penny bush. I already cut it back, so it won’t take up much room.”

“Penny bush?”

“Peony,” I whispered, but he didn’t know the difference, so I needn’t have bothered.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said, beginning to wonder if I’d started suffering from a mental weakness of my own. “Lillian, I need to put something in the trunk of the car, some plastic or something. I completely forgot about that.”

“Yessum, that car be ruint we put all that dirt in there.”

“Well, I’ll run to the hardware store and get something. Little Lloyd, you go ahead and start digging, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am. And maybe you ought to get something to tie down the trunk. We’re going to have so much, it might not close. Good thing, though,” he said, as he pushed the shovel with his foot into the soil, “that the leaves’re all gone. They might not’ve fit in the trunk at all.”

As I turned to leave, Little Lloyd called out, “Miss Julia, you might better bring back a mattock, too. This ground is pretty hard.”

I waved, not too sure what a mattock was, but sure that someone at the hardware store would know. I heard Lillian caution Little Lloyd against cutting any roots, as she began hacking at the daylily bed with the hoe.

I left them to it, and drove to Prince’s Hardware. It was not my favorite place to shop since I didn’t know one thing from another in it. But it was far and away better than one of those huge sprawling things outside of town where you had to dodge some old man wanting to hug you and where you couldn’t find anything or anybody to help you. Give me a business that’s family-owned and operated anytime. And I’m talking about a local family, not one that lives in Arkansas.

Clabe Harris greeted me as soon as I stepped inside the store, but he did it without running at me with arms outspread. He knew I’d not tolerate any such familiarity, nor would any other well-positioned woman in town.

“Mrs. Springer,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

I looked around at the baskets of nails of all sizes, the stacks of shining snow shovels ready for a change in the weather, the shelves of sorted hinges, bolts, screws, and other hardware oddments. A man I didn’t know was examining a leaf blower with the help of another clerk, and I hoped to goodness he wouldn’t fire it up. The noise of those things could deafen a person.

“How do you do, Mr. Harris,” I said, noting his thinning hair, his checked sport shirt, his khaki trousers, and his running shoes that looked enough like the ones Hazel Marie had bought for Lillian to’ve been their twins. “I need something called a mattock, and something to put in the trunk of my car to hold some plants we’re digging, and something to tie the lid down if it won’t close.”

“Yes, ma’am, you want a liner and a tie-down. We got ’em right down this aisle.” He led me past shelves filled with plumbing apparatus to an area with all kinds of gardening equipment. “Now, what size mattock you want?”

Not knowing that they came in different sizes, I thought for a minute and said, “Boy size.”

He picked up a yard tool that I immediately recognized, hefted it, and said, “I think this’ll do you. Just right for a youngster or a lady gardener.”

“It’s not for me,” I informed him, but then thought I might have to use it if Little Lloyd and Lillian gave out. I’d do it, too, because I intended for Lillian to have what she wanted from that yard. “It’s for Little Lloyd, at least for a start. Do you think he can manage this thing?”