long as he didn’t actually speak to her or threaten her or come onto her property or get within thirty feet of her as an earlier judgment had enjoined him from doing.
Reid tried to argue that it was only when the young woman came to her window to yell obscenities that the thirty-foot prohibition was violated. In other words, his client got there first and it was the girlfriend who chose to step outside her perimeter. Long-suffering neighbors who called the police wanted a larger perimeter around both of them. I decided they had a point and told the young man he might have obeyed the letter of the law, but I was going to let him sit in jail for three days and think about the spirit.
Despite my ruling, Reid came up to me as I was leaving the courtroom and said, “So how ’bout I pick you up around eight?”
“You’re really serious about going to Steve’s this evening?”
“Well, sure I am,” he said. “Good barbecue? A chance to see the boys, catch up with them?”
Reid was Mother’s first cousin, so he’s known my brothers all his life, but being a lot younger and growing up in town to boot, it’s not as if they were close or anything, although he used to trail along when his father came out to the farm to hunt or fish.
When Reid passed the bar, Brix Jr. cut him a piece of the firm and retired to fish and play golf full-time. That’s when Daddy switched over to John Claude for all his legal needs. Out of loyalty, most of the boys gave me their business while I was in practice there and they still use Lee and Stephenson. They’ll even turn to Reid in an emergency—when the kids get in trouble and John Claude’s out of town—but like Daddy, they feel safer with John Claude.
In short, Reid does not have a particularly warm and fuzzy ongoing relationship with my brothers, so why this sudden urge to (as Haywood would say) fellowship with them when rain was falling and a hurricane was heading toward our coastline?
Come eight o’clock though, there he was, rapping on my side door. I’d left my two-car garage open so he could drive in out of the rain. He still had on his gray suit but he held a hanger in one hand, slacks and knit shirt in the other.
“Didn’t have time to change,” he said. “Borrow your bedroom?”
Since I’d sort of flung things around when I went from dress and pantyhose to jeans and sneakers, I pointed him to the guest room instead. While he changed, I neatened my bedroom, hung up clothes and straightened all the surfaces. Maidie’s promised to find me someone to do the heavy scrubbing and vacuuming one morning a week, but she hasn’t gotten to it yet.
When Reid came out, I handed him my guitar case and went around locking doors, something he watched with amusement.
“You don’t need to worry about burglars out here in the middle of Knott land, do you?”
“I’m not so worried about burglars as I am about Knotts,” I said lightly.
Half my brothers think nothing of opening an unlocked door and sometimes they’re just a little too curious about my personal business. Seth and Maidie are the only ones I trust with a key, which is why I’m trying to get in the habit of locking up every time I leave. I pulled the side door closed behind us and made sure it was securely latched.
“What happened to your fender?” I asked as I circled the front of Reid’s black BMW.
It had a serious dent just behind the right headlight.
“Damned if I know,” he said. “I found it like that after court yesterday. Two days out of the shop and somebody backs into me. Didn’t even have the courtesy to leave me his name.”
Considering a courthouse parking lot’s clientele, this did not exactly surprise me. What did surprise was that he wasn’t bitching about it louder. Reid’s as car proud as my nephews and with a five-hundred deductible, every little ding comes out of his pocket.
Rain was falling heavily again and my rutted drive had washed out in a couple of places so that we had to go slower than usual to ease over the humps. We didn’t get to Steve’s till almost eight-thirty.
Despite the pounds of barbecue I’d eaten in the last month, that tangy smell of vinegar and smoked pork did make me hungry. We sat down at a long wooden table where Haywood and Isabel were finishing up and we both ordered the usual: pig, cole slaw, spiced apples and hushpuppies. We even split a side order of fried chicken livers. (Yeah, yeah, we’ve both heard all the horror stories of cholesterol and mercury in organ meat, but Miss Ila, Steve’s seventy-year-old cook, knows how to make them crispy on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth-moist on the inside and neither of us can believe something that good can do lasting hurt if you don’t indulge too often.)
Except for Steve, Miss Ila and a dishwasher, we four were the only ones in the place till Andrew’s Ruth and Zach’s Lee and Emma came dripping in from choir practice a few minutes later and ordered a helping of banana pudding with three spoons.
“We just came by to tell y’all we can’t stay,” said Ruth, pushing back her damp hair. “Mom’s worried about the roads flooding.”
“The water was almost hubcap-deep at Pleasants Crossroads,” said Lee, “but that ol’ four-by-four’s better’n a duck. We won’t have any trouble getting home.”
All the usual customers had scattered earlier and it was clear that the rest of our families were staying home, battening down miscellaneous hatches in case we got any of Fran in the next twenty-four hours. Aunt Sister had already called to say that none of her crowd would be coming. When the kids left, Miss Ila and her helper were right in behind them. Steve put the CLOSED sign up, but we didn’t reach for our instruments. Instead, we talked about Fran and what more rain would do to our already-saturated area, amusing each other with worst-case scenarios in half-serious tones, the way you will when you’re fairly confident that any actual disaster will bypass you. Hurricanes do hit our coast with monotonous regularity, but this far inland, we seldom get much fallout beyond some heavy downpours.
Crabtree Valley Mall was built on a flood plain and it does indeed flood every three or four years. (The local TV stations love to film all the new cars bobbing around the sales lots like corks on a fish pond.)
Bottomland crops may drown when the creeks overflow, a few trees go down and mildew is a constant annoyance, but most storms blow out before they reach us.
