As soon as I got back to my car, I took out my cell phone and called Daddy’s number. Not surprisingly, Maidie answered. Technically, she doesn’t work on the weekends, but nobody ever put up a time clock for her to punch at the kitchen door, and since she and Cletus live just down the lane from Daddy’s shabby old farmhouse, she’s in and out whenever it suits her. If she happens to be in when the phone rings, she answers it automatically because my father doesn’t like talking on the phone and won’t pick up if he knows she’s around.
“Is Daddy there?” I asked.
“Him and Cletus just got back from the long pond with a mess of brim for supper,” she said. “Don’t you want to come eat some? They’s plenty.”
“Sure,” I said promptly, knowing that pond fish meant Maidie’s crispy cornbread and a medley of late summer vegetables, including the best fried okra in North Carolina. “And while I have you, are Eric and his parents still coming out for dinner after church with y’all tomorrow?”
“Far as I know they are. Why?”
“I just thought that maybe you’d tell him to bring his swimsuit and he and Stevie can go swimming off my pier.”
“I bet he’d like that,” she said. “I’ll call him right now before I forget it.”
“Be sure and tell him I’m particularly looking forward to seeing him. I haven’t had a chance to talk to either of them in a long time.”
“I’ll tell him,” she said. “You want to speak to your daddy a minute?”
“Has it ever been more than a minute?” I asked.
She laughed. “Hang on, honey.”
A moment later, I heard Daddy say, “Yeah?”
No
And much as it pains him to take a local call, long distance makes him crazy, even when he’s not paying for it. My brother Adam, one of the little twins, will deliberately call from California and see how long he can keep Daddy on the line before he says, “Well, less’n you got something to say worth ten cents a minute to say it, I’m gonna get off ‘fore you go broke.”
Adam hasn’t yet made it to five minutes.
“You going to be there for the next hour?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m just Ieaving, the festival here in Dobbs. I’ll run past my house and change clothes and then I’ll be over,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s—” I hesitated. No point in just blurting it out. Better to wait till I could soften the news with words and judge his reaction as to how much to tell.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“Fine,” he said, and hung up.
Next I called Haywood’s house. I didn’t really expect Stevie to answer, so I wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t. I left a message on the machine that I hoped would sound innocuous to Haywood or Isabel but would let my nephew know I meant it when I said I really wanted to catch up with everything that’s been happening to him lately.
Dwight should know by now that I won’t leave trouble alone when it involves my family.
As a teenager, I used to make the drive from the farm to Dobbs in just under twenty minutes. With all the new housing developments and population growth, the speed limit’s dropped to forty-five miles an hour and it now takes me closer to thirty, which means that there was plenty of time for Daddy to drive down the lane past Maidie’s house, through the cut, and around the fields to my house.
His truck was parked at my back door when I pulled into my yard, and he was sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette.
Ladybelle came over and nuzzled my hand in greeting as I got out of the car, but Blue continued to sprawl with his head on Daddy’s workboot and merely thumped his tail in welcome.
“He’s getting lazy,” I said.
“Naw, just getting old,” said Daddy. “He’ll be twelve, come Thanksgiving.”
He’s partial to those two hounds, but like most farm people, he’s realistic. Over a long lifetime, he’s watched a lot of puppies turn into good dogs, then grow old and die.
He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up so I could hug him. “You look mighty pretty in that blue dress, shug. Real ladylike.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I said lightly, not looking to pick a fight. “Come on up on the porch and let me get you some tea.”
I opened the screen door and stepped inside to switch on the ceiling fan above the circular glass-and-metal table. I don’t like air-conditioning any more than he does. Long as the air’s stirring and I don’t have to do stoop labor out under a hot sun, the heat doesn’t really bother me. Oh, I’ll complain about it right along with my friends, but that’s only pro forma. In actuality, I love our hot, muggy summer days unless they drag on and on through early fall without a break. Makes our winters more special.
Daddy pulled out a chair, took off the white straw planter’s hat he wears from April till October, and hung it on a nearby peg. His hair has been snow white since before I was born and was still thick across the crown.
