The Matriarch (16 page)

“Are you a preacher?” the girl asks.

“That I am,” Dott says. She’s happy for the opportunity to call herself that. She used to qualify such questions by saying she was self-educated and self-ordained, but she soon tired of the contempt that statement seemed to generate. Dott Pringle knows that in the eyes of the Lord—the only eyes that concern her—she is indeed a preacher.

“C’mon in,” she says.

The girl walks by her with a shuffling gait, like she hurts somewhere. Or maybe she’s just tired. She takes no notice of the large circular interior of the tent, which is set up and ready for its daily crowd of redemption seekers. She stops a few steps into the big room, her back to Dott.

“I can’t sleep,” the girl says.

“That’s a shame.” Dott places a hand on her shoulder. She guides the girl to a canvasback chair in her room. It isn’t much of a room—just a cot and small table screened off by a denim cloth on a clothesline. Dott hauls a folding chair out from under the cot along with a box of donuts. There are three left—all jelly.

“I’ll get us a soda to wash these down with,” Dott says. Then she remembers where she’s seen this kid. She’s the girl who set her Coke on the floor at Dante’s memorial service. The one with the bitchy mom. Dott goes to her small fridge and brings out two cans of Dr. Pepper. Bitchy moms always piss Dott off. She remembers wanting to take that anorexic broad by her shoulders and shake some motherly sense into her.

Like a spilled Coke is important! Opportunity, that’s what a spilled drink is. An opportunity for a loving mom to take her little girl into her arms and hold her hard until she begs for breath—until the spill becomes unimportant. Dott had wanted to knock over a drink or two herself right then to show the girl how little a spilled drink matters.

Motherhood is a God-given gift that Dott will never know. Not her choice, that’s for sure, but sometimes prevailing circumstances are neither pleasant nor good. So many women, Dott finds, have only a casual acceptance of the natural bearing of children, as if their children are born
for
them. As if the birth is something they’re owed as inhabitants of civilized society. But not Charlotte. No. She feels certain that Charlotte Russo understands the selfless holy magnitude of bringing another life into the world.

Dott sits down across from the girl. “I don’t remember your name.”

“Molly.” She sits motionless, eyes down, hands clasped together in her lap. “Hammond.”

“Yes, Molly Hammond.” Dott’s hands itch to take those hands into hers and then to hold her and tell her what a wonder she is, what a joy. “You were at the service.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. Why do you suppose that is?”

The girl looks up at Dott with huge brown eyes. Shiny brown-black hair hangs over her pale forehead, almost touching her thick black brows. She has a substantial nose, a generous mouth, and a well-defined chin. The girl will be pretty in a year or two, if those years are kind. Dott thinks again of Charlotte and what lovely children she’ll have.

“You’re … confidential, aren’t you?”

“How do you mean, Molly?”

“If I tell you something, you can’t tell anyone else. I mean, preachers can’t, right?”

“Oh, I understand.” She’s on some sort of pubescent guilt trip. Maybe she’s discovered masturbation and isn’t comfortable telling that judgmental mother of hers about it. She’s not a woman who invites sensitive disclosure. “You’re talking about confession. A confidential confession.”

Molly nods.

“How old are you, Molly?”

“Almost twelve.”

Dott decides to hear the girl’s confession if that’s what she wants—call it one friend listening to another.

“So what’s the problem?” Dott reaches for a donut. She selects one and pushes the box toward Molly.

Molly pushes it back. “I can’t eat. I’m sick.”

“Wow. Can’t eat and can’t sleep.” Dott tries to keep her voice light and unemotional.

“Ever since I ate those figs. Too many.” She rubs her stomach. “So when I confess, you won’t tell?”

“I won’t.”

The girl screws her face into a grimace of worry, a worry much too harsh for her years. “I need you to promise.”

“I promise.” Easy enough. She’ll tell Dott her big sin, and then Dott will tell Molly that it’s no big thing and that God loves her. Then she’ll tell the girl to lighten up, to go with God and to get on—

“I killed Victor tonight.”

Dott didn’t hear her. She
could not
have heard her.

“I hit him with a hatchet. The one for kindling. Right onto his head.”

“Who … who’s Victor?”
Dear Lord, please let Victor be a hamster, a gerbil, a turtle
—

“My stepfather.” Molly leans back in her chair, already calmed by confession. “My mother’s husband.”

Dott sees a faint smile come to Molly’s lips.
No! No way!
She leans forward, snakes a hand out, and gathers up a fist full of tee shirt. She yanks the girl up and out of her chair.

“The Lord hates a liar, Molly Hammond—he truly does.” She gives the shirt another tug, bringing Molly’s face close to hers. “Why are you telling me such a lie?”

Molly’s eyes grow huge, and her lips tremble. Her hands flutter helplessly around Dott’s hand clutching her shirt. Dott peers into the girl’s eyes as they fill with tears. She unclenches her hand and gently pushes the girl back into her chair. Dott is drained of strength, completely exhausted.

At times she knows herself to be blessed with the gift of perception, an affinity for the truth. This is one of those times. She knows that Molly Hammond has just told her the truth about killing Victor Hammond. Dott raises sluggish hands to her face and scrubs at her eyes, as if she might erase this girl and her words. She hears Molly sniffling and forces herself to look at her. There are tears running down the girl’s cheeks and onto her chin.

Through her stunned fatigue, Dott feels the presence of a truly awesome responsibility. And opportunity. It’s no accident that she answered Molly’s tentative knock. No. God has delivered this wretched child to her, to Dott Pringle. Now she knows her true place in this confusing world. She’s this girl’s advocate. Her true mother.

Dott reaches out and takes Molly’s hands into her own. “Why? Why did you … do that to your stepfather?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he hurting you in some way?”

Molly shakes her head, brow furrowed.

“You can’t take a hatchet to somebody’s head and not know why. Tell me what you felt when you picked up the hatchet.”

Please child, talk to me!

Molly’s frown deepens, and a sheen of perspiration suddenly appears on her face. “It was like a … a strength. No, like a pressure. In my head. A pressure to do what I did. It felt so right, like I couldn’t
not
do it. Then, when it was over, I got sick.” Molly pulls her hands away from Dott and puts them on her stomach. “I’m still sick.”

The discussion of evil Dott had at Frank’s house enters her mind then like a candle in darkness suddenly flaring to life. Along with that monstrous tree and everyone’s reaction to it. Including Louie’s.

“Those figs you ate, Molly—before you hurt Victor—were they from Frank Murphy’s tree?”

“Arty Banyon?” Charlotte sounds dazed. “My God! How terrible!” Frank sits across from me at the kitchen table. He looks dazed as well.

“Yeah.” I hold the phone close to my head. I can almost see her face, serious and stunned. I think of yesterday in my truck when she had combed her hair back with her fingers and reached over to me then, rubbing my arm as if to assure herself that I was really there. She had done this in a familiar way, as if we had an intimate history together.

“How did he die?”

I hesitate, and then decide, what the hell; she has to know. “It was probably his wife, Lindee. A deputy sheriff says she apparently killed him with some kind of hammer.” I hear Charlotte gasp. “Do you know of any more wives starting divorce actions?”

“I did hear of one. Oh my God, Cass, what’s going on? These marriages going on the rocks in the last few days—what are the odds?” She’s whispering into the phone as if by speaking softly, she can lessen her alarm.

“Take it easy, Charlotte, please.”

Frank has planted himself in front of me and is waving a hand at me to hang up.

Christ, but he’s a pain in the butt sometimes!

But I’ve got to remember the old guy is blown away right now. He’s not himself.

“What’s her name, Charlotte, that other wife who wants a divorce?”

“I think it’s Kate Hammond. I met her at Dante’s funeral. So did you.”

A picture of the woman comes to me instantly—the pale and hostile brunette who had been so furious with her daughter for putting her Coke on the floor. I met Victor there as well. He had seemed like a nice guy.

“The gossip is that her husband Victor has taken off, apparently abandoning Kate and daughter, Molly. The daughter isn’t Victor’s biological child, by the way.”

“Kate Hammond has filed for divorce,” I say to Frank, whose expression changes from irritation to bewilderment. “You know anything about her?”

Frank shakes his head.

“Charlotte, what if we go to see Kate and Molly. Maybe we could find out more about the situation. I’d like to know if figs are involved at all.”

“What are you thinking of, Cassidy?” Frank cries, his eyes wide with surprise. “Have you lost your mind?”

I turn away from him, trying to listen to Charlotte.

“I don’t think Kate’s the type to exactly welcome our interest, you know?” Charlotte says.

“No, but—” I begin, but Frank’s in my face again.

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” the old man yells.

“I give up,” I say, and tell her I’ll call back later.

“You’d do well to mind your own business, Cassidy Murphy,” my uncle says as I hang up. “And your business is to get to work on the quake damage. We need,” he goes on, his voice breaking, “to do some work and get our minds off these … these damned tragedies.”

I decide to do as he asks.

Shelly grinds her cigarette out beneath her tennis shoe as she watches Lester-Lee put a saddle blanket up onto Georgie. He’s speaking to the horse in a soft singsong voice that settles Georgie down, and Shelly as well. It’s been a very long time since she’s been astride a horse, but she feels safe with Lester. There’s something calming about the big man—a gentle strength. He makes a stirrup of his hands for her shoe and helps her up onto the big gelding’s back. Lester has explained that when they ride together atop Georgie, a saddle won’t really work and that the blanket will be enough. The horse’s warm back under the blanket feels good to Shelly as Lester hands her the reins.

“I’ll lead Georgie for a time, so’s you can get used to the feel of him,” Lester says. He fastens a short rope onto the horse’s bridle. “We’ll go slow.” Georgie shakes his head and pulls away. Lester frowns and shortens his hold on the rope, pulling the horse’s head down, “Georgie, you behave!”

Shelly isn’t worried; she has confidence in Lester-Lee if not the horse. Lester pulls Georgie along, and she soon comes to love his rocking gait. The morning sun on her neck and bare arms is soothing. She closes her eyes and allows the man and horse to take her where they will.

She feels a warm hand on her denim-covered knee. “You all right?”

“Oh sure,” she says. “I’m just enjoying Georgie and the sun.”

“Yeah, it’s a comfort all right. Nothing finer than a ride on old Georgie, though he’s been a little fussy lately. I’d be pleased to take you out on him any time.”

Shelly smiles down at him, sees him blush, and then look away. She thinks him handsome with his strong jaw and thick reddish hair, now shielded from the sun by his cowboy hat. His skin is pale, but not given to freckles. Every time she looks at this man, a ruddy glow comes to his cheeks, and it gives her a delicious sense of power. She closes her eyes again, as his image burns into her mind’s eye.

He’s obviously a little slow, but that doesn’t bother Shelly a bit. He’s comfortable, an easy fellow to be around. She likes his name too. A rural old-fashioned sort of name, “Lester-Lee.” He has a raw-boned country boy look to him—a lot of strength in a big gentle man.