Death's Half Acre

The waiter returned with Daddy’s butter and took our orders—steak for Minnie and Seth, broiled shrimp for Daddy, grilled chicken salad for me.

“Linsey would have explained exactly what a stump dump was and illustrated it with photographs from the one that caught on fire over in Johnston County,” said Minnie, handing her menu to the waiter.

“He’d’ve printed who was asking for the permit and whether or not an impact study had been done,” Seth agreed.

Daddy frowned. “Don’t believe I’ve seen a single mention of it in the paper.”

“No, and you won’t,” Minnie said. She broke a roll in half and shared it with Seth, who grumbled that he was with Daddy when it came to dunking your bread in olive oil instead of buttering it like God intended. “Ruby’s not going to rock any boats. Long as the advertising keeps coming in, her bosses in Florida don’t care that she can’t put together a decent paper.”

Ruby Dixon is a tall, horse-faced woman who had been a good reporter till gin got the best of her. Even falling-down drunk, she could write like an angel. Linsey had inherited her from his dad and didn’t have the heart to fire her. Before his death, she’d managed to stay sober till late afternoon. After he died, she was handed the editorship and now we hear that she starts her days with a glass of liberally laced orange juice sitting on her desk. The best reporters have drifted away and the Ledger doesn’t print much substantive news any more.

What saves her is the county’s explosive growth. The paper’s advertising department sells so many ads that the inserts weigh at least three times more than the eight or ten sheets of newsprint. As long as deaths, weddings, and high school ball scores are reported, and which churches are having revivals or guest gospel singers, which kids have made the honor roll, and what the school cafeterias are serving this week, most people don’t seem to care that the Ledger no longer takes unpopular stands or tries to educate and inform. There will never be any crosses burned or windows shot out while Ruby’s the editor.

“Any word around the courthouse as to how Candace Bradshaw feels about stump dumps?” Minnie asked me.

“However Danny Creedmore’s told her to feel,” I said cynically. “You know well as I do who pulls her strings.”

Daniel Creedmore is the owner of Creedmore Concrete Corporation. He began twenty-five years ago with a single cement truck and made concrete blocks for cheap houses and migrant camps. Now he owns a fleet of trucks and Triple C probably pours at least a third of the foundations for new construction in the county.

Oh, and did I mention that he runs the Republican party in Colleton County?

As for Candace Bradshaw, who now chairs the board of commissioners, maybe if I’d been born poor and raggedy with a slut for a mother, I might have a warped view of powerful men and money, too. At fifteen she quit school, moved in with her grandmother here in Dobbs, and went to work for Bradshaw Management and Janitorial. She cleaned apartments and scrubbed toilets for a couple of years and eventually took night classes at Colleton Community College till she earned her GED. Two months later, she married her boss and seven months after that, they were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. A real Horatio Alger story, right? With everybody living happily ever after?

Unfortunately, she couldn’t help bragging to her best friend about how clever she’d been to notice that Cameron Bradshaw kept books of poetry in his office. She batted her green eyes at him, tucked a strand of her sexy long hair behind her ear, and asked his advice about a paper she had to write. One thing soon led to another, as it usually does with cute young women and naive older men. Even before the baby was born, her best friend had confided in her best friend and it was soon all over Dobbs that Candace deliberately got pregnant so that Cameron Bradshaw, a well-regarded businessman more than twenty years her senior, would do the honorable thing and marry her.

Bradshaw Management provides janitorial services for half the businesses in Dobbs, including my old law firm. It also manages a couple of apartment complexes and two rest homes. It took Candace a few years to learn all the ropes, but once she felt competent enough, she pushed her husband aside and took over the business after their separation. Gossip says her goal in life is to be rich and powerful and that she compensates for her lack of smarts by working hard. Gossip also says that she landed some of her biggest contracts by working hard between the sheets.

She ran for the county board of commissioners the first time I ran for judge, which is when I finally became aware of her and heard all the gossip. She won her primary. I lost mine.

Of course, her party bosses had quietly agreed on a single slate of local candidates before the primary so that she could run unopposed, while my primary was the usual free-for-all with four of us slugging it out for the same slot.

It would be hypocritical for me to sling mud at how she got her seat. It’s what she does with it that tightens my jaws. Yes, Daddy blackmailed a crook to get me appointed, but neither he nor any of my friends or family have ever gotten a cent out of it, unlike the men who put Candace Bradshaw on the board, where she happily does their bidding with girlish giggles and much tossing of her long brown hair.

Our food came and, as we ate, talk turned to the familiar—the children, neighbors, our gardens, and whether or not Dwight and I were ever going to take a real honeymoon. I married him a few days before Christmas and his eight-year-old son had stayed on to spend the holidays with us before returning to his mother in Virginia. Three weeks later, she was murdered and Cal’s been with us since January.

“Maybe when school’s out,” I murmured, spearing one of Daddy’s shrimp.

“You’re going to take Cal with you on your honeymoon?” Minnie shook her head as the waiter refilled our tea glasses. “You and Dwight need time alone, honey. Any of us would be glad to keep him for you.”

“I know,” I said, “and we will. Only not just yet.”

Seth looked at Daddy. “Did you and Mama Sue have a honeymoon?”

He gave a crooked smile. “With all of you young’uns? We couldn’t farm y’all out to one family and Sue didn’t want to split you up.”

Every time I get to thinking how hard it is to be a stepmother before I was used to being a wife, I think of those eight little motherless boys: some too young to know what was going on, some shyly wanting to love their daddy’s new wife, two or three of them resenting the hell out of her, and all of them as wary as ditch cats waiting to see which way to jump. How on earth did she do it?