The child nodded vigorously.
“We’ll see,” said Clara as the phone rang again.
“For you,” Ralph told her, handing over the receiver.
“Sister Clara?” came a woman’s strong voice. “This is Grace Thomas and I sure do hate to bother you this early in the morning, but I wanted to catch you ’fore you got off.”
Grace Thomas was a fiercely independent old woman who lived a few miles out from Cotton Grove. She and her late husband were childless, her only niece lived in Washington, and there were no near black neighbors. Even the nearest white neighbor was a quarter-mile away. None of this had been a problem until she broke her leg last week.
“You’re not bothering me a bit,” said Clara. “How’s that leg of yours?”
“Well, it’s not hurting so bad, but I still can’t drive yet and with the hurricane coming and all, I was wondering if maybe you or one of the other sisters could fetch me some things from the store?”
“I’ll be happy to.” Clara signalled to Stan to hand her the notepad and pencil that lay on the counter.
She was in the habit of listing her plans for the day and the list already had four or five items on it.
Now she added Mrs. Thomas’s needs: bread, milk, eggs, cat food, lettuce, lamp oil and a half-dozen C batteries.
“Batteries might not be a bad idea for us,” said Ralph as he finished eating and carried his dishes to the sink. “I doubt we’ll lose power, but you never know. Best be prepared. Isn’t that the Scout motto, Shandy?”
The child wasn’t listening. Instead, she wiggled her finger around in her mouth and pulled out something small and white.
“My tooth fell out! Look, Daddy! I wasn’t biting down hard or anything and it just fell out. Am I bleeding?”
She bared her teeth and there was a gap in her lower incisors. Three of the upper ones had been shed so long that they were half-grown back in, but this was the first of the lower ones.
“Better hurry up and put it in a glass of water,” Stan teased. “You let it dry out and the Tooth Fairy won’t give you more than a nickel for it.”
The Tooth Fairy had been yet another of the many forbiddens in Clara’s childhood and she was eternally conscious of her father’s strictures concerning anything supernatural. Ralph, though, likened it to believing in Santa Claus, just another harmless metaphor for an aspect of God’s love. She suspected there was something faulty in his logic—Santa Claus might be an elf, yet he was modeled on a real saint, whereas the Tooth Fairy—? But Ralph had more book-learning and he was her husband, the head of their household, she told herself, and it was her wifely duty to submit to his judgment in these matters. Besides, they’d allowed Stanley to believe and it didn’t seem to have interfered with his faith in Jesus.
So her smile was just as indulgent as Ralph’s when Lashanda carefully deposited her tooth in a small glass of water and carried it back to her bedroom.
Their shared complicity made it the first time since Sunday that things had felt normal to Stan. His mother’s smile transformed her face. Forever after, whenever he remembered that moment, he was always glad that he’d reached out and touched her hand and said, “You look awful pretty today, Mama.”
She was usually too self-conscious to accept compliments easily, but today she gently patted his cheek. “Better go brush your teeth, son, or we’re going to be late.”
When they were alone in the kitchen, Clara lifted her eyes to Ralph in a look that was almost a challenge.
He picked up his umbrella and briefcase. “I’ll be home by four-thirty,” he said as he went out to the carport.
In the days to come, it would be his burden that there had been no love in his heart for her this morning.
That he hadn’t said, “Your mama
That he hadn’t even said goodbye.
* * *
“Hello? . . . Hello?” The man’s voice became impatient. “Is anybody there? Hello!”
The rain was coming down hard, drumming on her red umbrella like the racing of her heart. Rosa Edwards swallowed hard and tried to speak, but she was so nervous, she knew she’d botch it.
Instead, she abruptly hung up and moved away from the exposed public telephone outside the convenience store. She had thought out everything she meant to say, but the minute she heard his voice, knowing he was a murderer, she couldn’t speak.
Telephones were so fancy these days. Buttons you could push and it’d call the person you last called. Another button and it’d tell you what number last called you. Not that it’d get him anywhere if he did find out she was calling from this phone. Wasn’t in her neighborhood.
Her feet were soaking wet as she splashed back to her raggedy old car that just came out of the shop for $113.75. While rain beat against the piece of plastic she’d taped over the broken window on the passenger side, she rehearsed it in her mind all again, the way she’d just say it right out, no messing around. Then, when she was perfectly calm, she walked back to the phone, inserted her coins and dialed his number again.
As soon as he answered, she spoke his name and said, “This is the gal that saw you coming out of Room 130 at the Orchid Motel Saturday evening.”
First he tried to bluster, then he tried to intimidate her, but she plowed on with what she had to say.
“Now you just hush up and listen. What you done to her ain’t nothing to do with me. You give me ten thousand dollars cash money and I won’t never say nothing to nobody. You don’t and I’m going straight to the police. You get the money together and I’ll call you back at this number at six o’clock and tell you where to leave it.”
She hung up without giving him a chance to answer, and even though the concrete was wet and her tires were
