Southern Discomfort

The smile stayed on his lips, but the eyes went hard before he slipped those concealing glasses on again. A young man who liked to jab, not be jabbed. He kept his cool though. Continued to tease the girls, albeit with considerably less lechery than he'd used initially. They seemed not to notice and laughed when he asked what part I'd worked on 'so I can judge the Judge.'

They followed him through the house, chattering and giggling. I stayed where I was. Lu had led me to expect a lot of sarcasm and nitpicking, and I didn't want to hear it; but when they returned, Bannerman's only criticism was that two-by-two ledger strips ought to be nailed on the ceiling joists, a valid oversight and something easily corrected.

He dated and signed his okay on the building permit's framing line and hopped back in his red Jeep.

'How old would you say he is?' I heard Cindy ask as Carver Bannerman roared away.

At least twenty-one,' said Paige.

'Twenty-two easy,' Annie Sue guessed.

'Well I don't care,' said Cindy. 'If he's there tonight, I'm dancing with him.'

They stirred restlessly.

'I guess Cindy and I'll go on,' said Paige. 'Want us to come by for you, Annie Sue?'

'Okay.' She looked at her watch for the third time in ten minutes. After six and still no Herman. 'Give me a call when you're ready to come, in case something comes up.

No sooner had they, too, driven away than a teenage black girl walked into the yard. She was the young clerk who'd come up earlier from the convenience store. From the way the two girls greeted each other, I realized they must be classmates at Dobbs Senior High. 'Your mother just called, Annie Sue. Said for me to tell you your daddy's not feeling good and he's not coming.'

'Thanks, Patsy,' Annie Sue said. 'Give you a lift back to the store?'

'No, thanks. I'm through for the day. And it's Saturday night, girl!'

As I feared, I was stiffer than a two-by-two as I rousted myself up off the porch and climbed into the truck.

Annie Sue was almost as lively as she'd been at seven that morning. 'He was kind of cute, wasn't he, Deb'rah?'

I shrugged.

'You didn't take all that stuff he said serious, did you? He was just playing.'

'Half-joke, no fooling,' the preacher said starchily.

'Forgotten what it's like to be sixteen?' asked the pragmatist.

Trouble was, I remembered only too well. Still... 'Yeah, he was cute,' I said. 'Too bad he's too old for you guys.'

'He asked for our phone numbers.'

'Oh?'

She looked so poised and mature, her hands relaxed and in control of the truck's steering wheel. 'Cindy gave them to him.'

'You wouldn't go out with him, would you?'

'He probably won't ask me.' She sighed wistfully and suddenly looked fourteen. 'Anyhow, Dad would kill me!'

CHAPTER 8

FRAMING SQUARES

'The framing square consists of a wide and long member called the blade and a narrower and shorter member called the tongue, which forms a right angle with the blade... The problems that can be solved with the square are so many and varied that... only a few of the more common uses of the square can be presented here.'

New Deliverance was borderline charismatic and not the sort of church I felt comfortable attending; but at lunch the day before, Nadine had caught me off guard—a fudge delight cookie has the power to cloud minds—and laid on the guilt. 'Isabel says you went to her and Haywood's church last Sunday and to Seth and Minnie's Sunday before last, but you haven't been to ours in almost two years.'

With Jacob's pottage rich and chocolaty on my tongue, I had no quick words with which to resist.

'Besides,' said Nadine. 'I know Zell and Ash are driving down to Southern Pines to visit Brix Junior tomorrow, so you can come have Sunday dinner with us afterwards.'

Which is how I wound up sitting in the unadorned plainness of New Deliverance on Sunday morning listening to a man who'd dropped out of high school in the tenth grade preaching from I Timothy 2:9-15, my least-favorite passage in the Bible.

'—because Adam was not deceived, my friends. He was doing what God told him to do. It was the woman who listened to the serpent, it was the woman who picked the apple, and it was the woman who talked Adam into eating it. Woe unto mankind the day poor weak Adam listened to the wo-man.'

I was accustomed to how women my age and older could sit quietly and listen to sanctimonious fossils expound on how woman brought the first sin into the world by tempting man, and how women continue to tempt men by 'adorning themselves in contrariness to God's holy ordinance.' But when I looked at the Young Folks Choir seated directly behind him, I saw no rebellion or repressed resentment on any of the female faces, teenage faces that were certainly adorned with lipstick, eye shadow, earrings, and necklaces.