Tied to the Tracks (9 page)
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
“I was just wondering, will you be shooting digital video or film for your documentary?”
“Digital for the most part,” Angie said. “Some film for texture, but mostly high-definition video. You interested in filmmaking?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was going to take some time to get used to the
ma’am,
but there was no help for it; she might as well object to palmetto bugs and magnolias. And Angie liked the kid right away, in part because he went to such trouble not to brag as he told her about what he had been working on. For his age he had a lot of experience, most of it through the local-access television station.
ma’am,
but there was no help for it; she might as well object to palmetto bugs and magnolias. And Angie liked the kid right away, in part because he went to such trouble not to brag as he told her about what he had been working on. For his age he had a lot of experience, most of it through the local-access television station.
“Channel twelve, right?” Angie said. “I saw a little of one of the programs last night, political talk.”
“That’s Scoot Sloan’s show,” Markus said. “
The Right Side of Ogilvie,
it’s called. You should come down to the station sometime, have a look around.”
The Right Side of Ogilvie,
it’s called. You should come down to the station sometime, have a look around.”
He peeked at her to see how well she took to southern circumlocution, and he looked so eager and shy all at once that Angie was thoroughly charmed.
She said, “I’d like to see what you’ve done. Maybe you could bring a tape by the media studio this week.”
“I’d like that,” he said, looking her full in the face for the first time.
“Do you want to sit down?” She patted the chair beside her again, but he stepped backward.
“No, thank you, ma’am. There was just one other thing I wanted to ask you about. You know that memory book you put out, the one for people to write in about Miss Zula?”
“At the library,” Angie said.
“Well, what I wanted to tell you was, I’ve got this idea that the book’s not going to do you much good where you’ve put it.”
He was so serious that Angie was a little taken aback. “Why is that?”
“Because of Miss Annie. The librarian? She’s got a bad case of the curiosities, and everybody knows it. You couldn’t write anything down in that book without Miss Annie right behind you, like white on rice. And then she’ll talk about it.”
“Ah.” Angie thought for a moment. “You have a better idea where to put the book?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. There’s only one place in town where everybody goes, and that’s the Piggly Wiggly. Wouldn’t nobody be watching, either, when folks want to spend a few minutes writing. Not if you put it over by the recycling bins?” He glanced over to the men around the barbecue grill and then cleared his throat. “I work there, at the Piggly Wiggly, bagging? I could keep an eye on it for you, make sure the younger kids don’t get up to mischief. If you want. Just an idea.”
“A good one,” Angie said. “Thank you.”
He backed away, scratching his chin distractedly. “Well, it was sure nice talking to you.”
“Markus, if you have any other ideas, I hope you won’t keep them to yourself. And come by with one of your tapes this week. I’m in the studio most afternoons.”
He gave her a real grin, shy and sweet.
“Hey, Markus! If you’re through flirting, move your skinny butt. Father Bruce is here.”
An older man wearing a roman collar had appeared on the porch with a large bundle in his arms, and boys were running toward him from all directions. Markus gave her one last apologetic glance and trotted off to join the rest of Junie Rose’s twelve grandsons—the youngest seven, the oldest close to twenty.
“Oh, Lordie,” called one of the ladies in the circle around Miss Junie. “What’s Bruce up to this time?”
Angie sat up straighter. She had heard stories about the local priest and had put him on her list of people to interview, but the last place she had thought to run into him was at Miss Junie Rose’s birthday party. And yet, there he was, a slight man of more than sixty and less than eighty in an old soutane that was more gray than black, lopsided eyeglasses with lenses the size of silver dollars, and a halo of pure white hair standing straight up around a pink scalp. He looked like an elf up to mischief.
“Bruce means well, but he does work those grandnephews of his up into a frenzy.”
A woman sat down in the empty chair next to Angie. She had the kind of blinding white smile usually found on movie screens, a mass of too-red hair, and her nails and lipstick were the alarming orange of traffic cones. Like all the women Angie had seen thus far, she was as carefully dressed as she was groomed. She wore a dress of deep blue silk with a wide lace collar, bone white leather shoes and matching purse, and heavy gold jewelry on her wrists and fingers and ears. She might have stepped out of a Talbot’s catalog. Not for the first time Angie wished she had dug something better than a shapeless yellow sundress out of her closet.
“I’m Patty-Cake Walker. Miss Junie’s husband, Bob Lee, was my half brother? I’ll bet your head is just spinning trying to keep us all straight.”
“It is a little confusing,” Angie agreed. “Father Callahan is Miss Junie’s brother?”
“He is. You don’t see the resemblance now, but when they were younger, lots of folks took them for twins. Or so I’m told.”
Angie said, “I didn’t think there were many Catholics in this part of the country.”
“Mostly you’re right,” she said, smoothing out her skirt. “But I believe Ogilvie must have the biggest Catholic congregation in all of Georgia.” She put a hand on her chest, fingers spread wide. “Not my people and not my husband’s, either, you understand—the Roses and the Walkers have been worshipping at Ogilvie Methodist since it opened its doors way back before the War Between the States.”
“Is that the little church on Decatur Road?”
“No, you’re thinking of Turn Around Circle. They’re Presbyterians, but Low Church, if you know what I mean. I’ve got cousins who worship there.”
The first rule of effective field research was letting people talk without interrupting them unless the conversation lagged. Now there was nothing to do but settle down and let the monologue runs its course.
“The closest I personally come to the Church of Rome is my half brother Bob Lee?” Patty-Cake was saying. “He was supposed to marry one of the Stillwater girls, but then Miss Junie caught his eye, and that was that. It was a big deal back then, let me tell you, marrying outside your faith.” She pursed her mouth as if to stop herself from saying any more.
“Look there, that’s Connie Yaeger. Now, in’t that dress just the prettiest thing? And those bright colors draw attention away from her less fortunate features. Connie’s been teaching eighth grade at Our Lady of Divine Mercy for just about ever. “ She pushed out an irritated sigh. “I guess you could say that Bob Lee running off to marry an Irish Catholic girl made us the first truly integrated family in this part of Georgia. And Junie brought her girls up proper Catholics, too. Naturally having a priest for a brother made that a lot easier.”
Patty-Cake leaned forward and Angie got a blast of flowery scent that billowed up out of her powdered cleavage.
“You and I are going to be working together. I’m the senior secretary in the English department? You probably don’t realize this, but there’s a lot to running a big department like that. I’ve got a staff of one full-time secretary and two part-time girls, plus work-study students. But in the summer I handle it all on my own. The faculty never show their faces, which just between you and me is just fine. They are a pesky lot during the school year, always needing something. I’m the keeper of the keys, to use an old-fashioned phrase. Why, a body can’t get hold of a paper clip unless I say so, and I’m careful with the resources that are put in my care. There’s a lot of responsibility on my shoulders.”
“I’m sure there is,” Angie said solemnly.
“You come and see me tomorrow and I’ll get you all set up,” Patty-Cake finished. “We’re going to get to know each other real well. And bring the other two along with you, now.” Her gaze shifted in Rivera’s direction and her smile sharpened just a little more. “Why, look at that girl,” she said. “You’d think she grew up right here in Ogilvie.”
Rivera was telling a story. Miss Junie had covered her face with her hands and her shoulders were shaking with laughter. Miss Zula rocked back and forth and fanned herself with one hand. Miss Maddie looked slightly confused, but delighted with the company.
“Now, tell me,” Patty-Cake said. “Did you two young ladies leave your boyfriends up north, or should I start introducing you around? There are some fine young men in Ogilvie who would be pleased to make your acquaintance. And you’re not getting any younger, now, are you?”
Angie opened her mouth to attempt some kind of answer that would cause the least complications, but a commotion from the other side of the lawn saved her.
“Bull’s-eye!” shouted a boy’s voice, and at that the men who had gathered around picnic tables and the grill moved off toward the porch.
“Oh, Lordie,” said Patty-Cake, brushing at her skirt as she stood up. “Bruce has gone and given those boys bows and arrows. I don’t know if he’ll ever learn. And now the men are going to get into it. There will be tears before bedtime, you mark my words. And there’s your cameraman, taking photographs of the whole thing.”
Tony had appeared from around the side of the house. He had the Nikon out and he was dancing back and forth, the Tony ballet, Rivera called it, when he liked what he was seeing in his viewfinder. Of course it would be far better if he were shooting over here—Miss Zula’s laughter was worth a few frames at least—but Angie and Rivera had learned to trust Tony’s instincts about where to point a camera.
Then the crowd opened up a bit and Angie saw the youngest of the grandsons, a little boy with a round potbelly, a head of streaky blond curls, and a fat strawberry of a mouth. He stood on a chair aiming an arrow at a bull’s-eye set up on an easel at the other end of the veranda, all his concentration on the target. Angie doubted he even heard all the men shouting directions and encouragement at him, while the women for their part shouted warnings. As Angie stood up to get a better look, John Grant came around the corner.
Patty-Cake said, “There they are finally, my niece Caroline and Dr. Grant—the department chair? Her fiancé.” Those words were still hanging in the air when the arrow left the bow with a twang that could be heard all the way across the garden.
John’s face, familiar and strange and beautiful. How could she have forgotten that face? The answer was, of course, that she had not. She had forgotten nothing at all. In that split second when he met her eye, Angie saw that same flash of recognition, even as Patty-Cake’s words ordered themselves in her mind to add up to an understanding of another kind: too late.
Somebody screamed. John, who looked down at the blossom of blood on his neatly creased trousers, made no sound that Angie heard. He touched the arrow embedded in his upper left thigh, not quite center, tilted his head as if trying to make out a whispering voice, and then fell over, gracefully, elegantly, into the arms of the woman he was going to marry.
“Len!” Somebody shouted. “Front and center!”
“It’s a good thing Eunice married a doctor,” breathed Patty-Cake, her hands fluttering around her face. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever have one of these birthday parties without making a trip to the emergency room.”
SIX
I have lived in Ogilvie long enough to know that nobody will have the nerve to bring up the subject of Miss Louisa, who was Miss Zula’s mother, and so I suppose it’s up to me. I don’t hold much with modern psychology and prying into personal matters, but in this case I do believe you must know the mother to understand the children, all three of whom I watched grow up. There’s an old saying, spare the rod, spoil the child, and Miss Louisa lived by it. Her rod was made of hard words, which any caring person can tell you may leave a scar worse than any slap.
Your Name:
Sister Ellen Mary. I am Father Bruce’s housekeeper, and you may find me at the rectory at Our Lady of Divine Mercy. Though if you’d like to talk to me, you had best be quick about it. I am ninety years old and wait daily for the Good Lord to tap me on the shoulder.
By the end of their first full week in Ogilvie, Angie had established a routine: up long before Rivera and Tony ever stirred, she went down to the screened porch that overlooked the garden and the river, where she waited on an ancient black-and-white-striped couch until the coffee was ready. Then she took her cup with her to the riverfront and sat in the cool of the morning, planning her day, making lists in her head, and contemplating running away.
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