Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind (25 page)

I
RAN FROM
the room, heading for the stairs, as Pastor Ledbetter yelled, “The man’s crazy! Call the police!”

“That’s what I’m doing,” I yelled back, hitting the stairs as fast as I could. No time for the telephone; I had a live-in deputy upstairs.

Brother Vern’s voice, loud with outrage and righteous indignation, echoed from the kitchen under Lillian’s screams for me to save her.

I got to the top of the stairs, out of breath and terrified, fearing what Brother Vern could do to us all.

“Deputy Bates! Wake up, get up, we need you!” I pounded on his door.

“What is it?” he called, but the door stayed closed.

I pounded harder. “Hurry, hurry! Open up, we need you right now!”

I heard rustling sounds behind the door, almost drowned out by the commotion downstairs. Pastor Ledbetter came to the foot of the stairs, adding his bass rumble to the din.

“Miss Julia!” he called. “If you won’t call the police, I will. This is intolerable! We can’t have this, we just can’t have it!”

I leaned over the banister and said, “Pastor, I’m calling the police as fast as I can. Now, get in the kitchen and keep that fool
away from Lillian.” A pan banged off the kitchen wall and clattered on the floor.

I pounded at Deputy Bates’s door again, screaming, “Get up! We got to save Lillian. Deputy Coleman Bates, get outta that bed, you hear me!”

Behind me, another door banged open and Little Lloyd ran out, eyes big and frightened, his mother right behind him.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is there a fire? Run, Junior, we got to get everybody out!”

“Fire! Fire!” Little Lloyd screamed, jumping around with his skinny arms flying every which way.

“No, no!” I grabbed him and held him close, trying to calm him down. “It’s not a fire, it’s Lillian. I’ve got to get Deputy Bates up to help us.”

Hazel Marie banged on the door along with me as the racket from the kitchen grew louder. She had on one of my dresses, looking for the first time like she might rejoin the living.

“Deputy Bates!” we both screamed.

The door opened a crack, revealing one of Deputy Bates’s eyes, glinting fiercely, and a shock of hair.

“What is it?” He didn’t sound pleased at being summoned to duty.

“It’s Lillian! And Brother Vern!” I felt Hazel Marie’s shock at hearing the name, and thought for a minute that she was going to turn and run. “Get out here and arrest him! I want him in jail before he hurts Lillian!”

Deputy Bates reached down and zipped up his dark blue uniform pants. Then he grabbed a white undershirt and pulled it over his head. “Is he attacking her?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! He’s attacking her and right here in my own house!”

“Deputy Bates,” Little Lloyd cried, “don’t let him hurt Miss Lillian!”

“Where’d you come from, Bud?” Deputy Bates stopped, clearly surprised to see Little Lloyd, then he got a good look at Hazel Marie. Her face had healed considerably, but it could still pretty much stop a truck if you weren’t prepared for it. Which he wasn’t.

“See there,” I said, pointing at her. “There’s an example of what that man is capable of. He did that, or let it be done. And had my house ransacked, too. Now he’s trying to take Little Lloyd away from his mother!” Then I remembered that he didn’t know her. “And this is his mother.”

“Ma’am,” he said, nodding at her. He may have been having trouble absorbing the situation.

A piercing scream from Lillian and men’s voices yelling at her or at each other shook the rafters.

“He’s killing Miss Lillian!” Little Lloyd screamed, his skinny little legs dancing up and down, his arms flailing like a windmill. “We got to help her!”

“Well, goddamn, I believe it!” Deputy Bates left the door open and ran barefooted to the closet. He reached up and brought down from a shelf his black-holstered police weapon. “Y’all stay up here outta the way.”

He swung the door wide as he brushed past us, pulling the gun out and tossing the holster aside as he ran. I had no intention of staying upstairs, but the spectacle in his room stopped me cold.

“Binkie?” I asked, staring at her. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing in my upstairs back guest room, rented now to a paying boarder. “Oh,” I said, the light dawning as she hurriedly buttoned her blouse.

“Hi, Miss Julia,” she said, two spots of red in her cheeks. “Nice to see you again.”

She stepped into her shoes and ran her fingers through her hair. It needed a comb and a brush.

Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd stood beside me, unsure of what
to do or where to go. I got myself together and made the introductions.

“Pleased, I’m sure,” Hazel Marie said with a quick, knowing smile.

There was a sudden break in the action downstairs, and in the quiet of the cease-fire, we heard Deputy Bates say, “Everybody just calm down now, and let’s get this straightened out.”

It’s amazing what the appearance of a man in uniform, even half a uniform, can accomplish, to say nothing of a man with a gun in his hand.

“Well, Binkie,” I said, pulling myself together. “It’s a good thing you’re here. I expect several of us’re going to need a lawyer in the next few minutes. We better get on downstairs.”

Not too long before, I would’ve been outraged at the thought of something illegal, illicit, and immoral taking place in one of my bedrooms. However. I had too many other worries to get bent out of shape over Binkie and Deputy Bates jumping the gun, so to speak. Wesley Lloyd would’ve had a different view, but so would every other hypocrite.

It crossed my mind that Binkie might have a touch of the problem that Pastor Ledbetter accused me of having. But if she did, Deputy Bates didn’t seem to mind it very much.

D
EPUTY
B
ATES HAD
Pastor Ledbetter, Dr. Fowler, Brother Vern, and Lillian all in the living room, seated and separated, by the time the four of us joined them. Deputy Bates stood in front of the fireplace, holding his gun down by his side, looking fully in control of the situation in spite of his state of dress, his bare feet, and what he’d been doing when I interrupted him.

“Oh, Miss Julia,” Lillian cried, lifting her face out of her apron. “Don’t let ’em put me in jail! You know I didn’t go to kidnap that baby!”

Little Lloyd ran to her and put his arms around her. Hazel Marie stood beside her, patting her shoulder. I said, “You’re not going to jail, Lillian. Binkie, do something.”

“What’s the charge, Deputy?” Binkie asked, all business in spite of her blouse being misbuttoned.

“No charges yet on anybody,” he said, giving her a quick smile. “Still trying to find out who’s done what.”

“I can tell you that,” I said. But everybody else started talking at the same time.

“That woman,” Brother Vern said, pointing at Lillian and drowning out the rest of us, “kidnapped that child.” He pointed at Little Lloyd. “And that one,” he bellowed, aiming a finger at
Hazel Marie, “is a woman totally without morals and unfit for motherhood.”

“Miss Julia.” Pastor Ledbetter started to rise, the better to pontificate, but Deputy Bates held up his hand. The pastor took his seat again. “Miss Julia, I have to protest. Just what is going on here? Who is that woman? Who is this man, and why are Dr. Fowler and I being held against our will?” He looked from Hazel Marie to Brother Vern, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. Dr. Fowler had filled his notebook and was now searching his pockets for scrap paper so he could keep writing.

“You’re not being held—” Deputy Bates started, but Brother Vern popped up out of his chair.

“I demand you arrest that woman for kidnapping! And if you won’t do it, I’ll make a citizen’s arrest right here and now!”

“Just try it, buster,” Binkie said, getting right in his face.

“Now, folks,” Deputy Bates said. “Let’s all calm down.”

“I can’t calm down,” Lillian sobbed. “They gonna put me in jail!”

“No they’re not, Miss Lillian!” Little Lloyd cried, throwing his arms around her. “I won’t let them put you in jail.”

“Stay out of this, boy,” Brother Vern said, giving him a cold look. “You’ll be in a foster home or juvenile hall. I’ve had all the trouble outta you I’m gonna take.”

“You just shut your trap, Vernon Puckett,” Hazel Marie said, pulling Little Lloyd to her and standing closer to Lillian. “We’ve all had all we’re gonna take from you. I’ve been beat to within an inch of my life on your say-so, and you took my boy from me, and I’m gonna swear out a warrant on you!”

“Listen, listen,” Pastor Ledbetter said, unaccustomed to having to struggle to be heard, “this has got to stop. I don’t know what’s been going on here, but it’s evident that somebody’s taken leave of their senses.” He looked at me. “And no telling what’s been allowed to take place upstairs in this very house, what with
both these young women up there with this law officer. Looks to me like you’ve been keeping a disorderly house, Miss Julia, among the other things I know about. Somebody’s got to step in and do something.”

That was a clear threat if I’d ever heard one, and I shriveled up inside at the thought of him being led to tell everything he knew, or thought he knew. Even if his diagnosis was wrong, even if Dr. Fowler hadn’t made a point of his own, so to speak, I didn’t want to stand there and be shamed in front of them all.

“It’s not what it seems, Pastor. Please, it’s just a mix-up.” I folded my arms protectively across my chest, bringing to mind the pink paper pinned to the inside of my dress.

“Knock, knock, anybody home?” Sam stuck his head in the door. He looked around the room and said, “Looks like you’re busy, Julia. I’ll come back later.”

He turned to leave, but I called him back. “Don’t go, Sam, I need you here.” If I had to be relieved of responsibility for myself, I wanted Sam to see that it was done right.

“That’d be a change,” he said with a wry smile, but his eyes were traveling around the room taking in the unlikely group gathered there. Hazel Marie he didn’t know, and he hadn’t met Brother Vern or Dr. Fowler, but I saw him make some quick associations. I wanted to go stand beside him, but I was afraid of what I might do and what Pastor Ledbetter would think of it.

Sam raised his eyebrows as he noticed the gun in Deputy Bates’s hand. “Trouble?”

“More noise than anything,” Deputy Bates said, laying the gun on the mantel. But he didn’t move away from it. “Now, folks. Let’s get some things straightened out, and I don’t want everybody talking at once. Miss Lillian, you first. Did you kidnap that boy?”

“Nossir, I did not.” She sat up straight and smoothed out her apron. She trusted Deputy Bates, knowing he’d hear her out and
not jump to conclusions. “That Brother Vern got this baby away from Miss Julia under false pretensions, claiming he’d take him to his mama, but ’stead of that, he taken him off an’ put him on teevee, an’ then we find out he let Jerome beat up on this pore little thing here.” She looked up at Hazel Marie. Then dabbing at her eyes, she went on, “An’ knocked out her teef too. That man a menace to decent folk.”

“Menace!” Brother Vern shouted, jumping out of his chair again. Deputy Bates tapped his shoulder, and Brother Vern sat back down. But he didn’t stop talking. “I’ll tell you who’s a menace. It’s all these women running wild, interfering with the Lord’s work! Hazel Marie’s been living in sin for lo these many years and borne its fruit, which all I’m trying to do is look after. His daddy would’ve wanted somebody responsible in charge, an’ that ain’t her!” The words poured from his mouth like the sweat from his forehead. Brother Vern was mortally exercised.

“And now,” he shouted, “here’s this woman, a black woman and kitchen help at that, who walked right into my studio while I was
on the air
and put that child right back into this den of iniquity! And that’s what this place looks like to me!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Pastor Ledbetter said, looking at Brother Vern with something close to approval. “And, Brother, you don’t know the half of it.”

I grasped the back of a chair to keep from falling. Lord, I prayed, don’t let him tell. Please don’t let him tell.

“Just a minute, here,” Binkie said. “Let’s take one thing at a time. It seems to me that the kidnapping charge is moot. Here’s the child; there’s his mother. Where’s the kidnapping?”

“But,” Brother Vern said, “she took him from me.”

“But you took him from me,” I managed to say.

“But he’s my child,” Hazel Marie chimed in. “And I left him in Miz Springer’s care, not his, and he has no right to claim him or raise a fuss when I got him back.”

“Kidnapping’s not going to stick,” Binkie said with all the authority of Wake Forest Law School behind her. “What do you think, Sam?”

“I think you’re right. The boy’s where he belongs.”

“Well. Well,” Brother Vern blustered, “well, what about the reward? Miz Springer, you offered a sizable reward and I think I have a claim to it. If it wasn’t for me, this child’d still be hid away somewhere.”

“I think you have a point, Reverend Puckett,” Pastor Ledbetter said, astounding us all. Even Brother Vern was stunned to have such an unlikely defender. “Miss Julia made a rash promise against good advice, and it seems to me she ought to make it good. She’s been doing too many rash things lately, and has to accept the consequences of her actions. If, that is, she is able to understand them.”

“Just a minute, here,” Sam broke in. “Before you go off halfcocked, what reward are you talking about?”

“Yeah,” Binkie said.

Pastor Ledbetter silenced Brother Vern with a take-charge look. “Miss Julia offered a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for the recovery of this kidnapped child. I was witness to it, and so was Dr. Fowler, just as we were also witnesses to something even more astonishing. I think you have to honor it, Miss Julia.”

“But—”

“There was no kidnapping,” Binkie said, cutting me off. “No kidnapping, no reward.”

“There’s something we’re all overlooking here,” Dr. Fowler said, proving that he could speak as well as write. I braced myself for his contribution. “Now, I realize that I’m an outsider and not familiar with all that’s gone on, but it seems to me we need the answer to one important question.”

“What’s that?” Binkie demanded, squinting her eyes at him.

“Well, my understanding is that the child was taken from
somewhere in another town, but now he’s found right here. This woman”—he pointed at Lillian—“admits to having him. But the question is, how did she get him? Did she walk? Did she drive? Did she have help?”

Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd looked at me. Lord, where was Dr. Fowler going with this?

“Miss Julia,” Lillian wailed.

“That’s right,” Brother Vern cried. “Somebody was driving that car! Everybody agreed that somebody else drove the car.” He turned to me and narrowed his eyes. “Was that somebody you, Miz Springer? Were you a party to kidnapping?”

Binkie said, “Don’t answer that.”

Sam said, “There was no kidnapping, so it doesn’t matter who drove what.”

“But there was a
conspiracy
to kidnap,” Pastor Ledbetter said. “Then add to that all the aimless driving around the county, plans to turn this fine house into a dog kennel, bizarre answers to common questions, apparent lying to the police, attempting to buy narcotics, getting involved with people she doesn’t know and taking them in like members of the family, promising to give away twenty-five thousand dollars to a virtual stranger, and certain intractable behavior that would repulse you all if I told you of it. Well, you can see how it begins to stack up. None of you is doing Miss Julia a favor by ignoring these clear changes in her personality. She needs help, and if it takes a court case to get it for her, then so be it. At least I and her church family care enough to prevent any harm coming to her. We mean to take care of her, since it’s abundantly clear she can’t take care of herself.”

“Clear as a bell,” Dr. Fowler said. “As I will so testify.”