Death's Half Acre

Three of the four women wore print dresses with modestly cut sleeves, high necklines, and hems that stopped at the calf, not the knee. The woman Portland had pointed out wore a loose white tee under a shapeless beige cotton jumper that buttoned down the front. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and held away from her face with a mock tortoiseshell headband. No apparent makeup. No jewelry that we could see from where we sat.

“That’s Marian McKinney.”

“Who’s Marian McKinney?” I asked.

“The wife of the preacher at Christ Eternal. The one who drank her husband’s spit water.”

I almost gagged on my margarita and Jamie was looking vaguely nauseated, too.

“Did she leave him yet?”

“No, and she doesn’t plan to. She told her prayer group that she was proud to serve as an example of selflessness for the other women who might question God’s commandments. Even though my cleaning woman quit that church, she still hears what’s going on there. Y’all know Nancy Wolfe?”

We both shook our heads.

“She’s the office nurse for Dr. Linda Maloof over in Cotton Grove.”

I know Dr. Maloof by hearsay. She’s Minnie’s GP in the medical group that she and Seth go to, but I’d never heard Minnie mention a Nancy Wolfe.

“And her husband works at the farmer’s market.”

At that far table, the waitress had brought four glasses of iced tea—“Lips that touch wine shall never touch mine”?—and we watched as the women joined hands and bowed their heads.

“Which one is Nancy Wolfe?” asked Jamie.

“She’s not there. Besides, Nancy wears slacks,” Portland said with a grin. “And makeup.”

“I thought that wasn’t allowed,” I protested.

“It isn’t encouraged,” Portland corrected me. “According to Rena, Nancy wasn’t all that thrilled to leave the old church and follow McKinney, but it was what her husband wanted. And their teenage daughter was the only one in the breakaway congregation that could play the piano, so that was another reason to come. But Rena says that Nancy walked out of that church Easter morning before the service ended and she’s told her husband he’s welcome to stay there if he wants to but she’s never going back and neither is their daughter.”

“Good for her,” said Jamie.

I was in complete agreement. “Why on earth would any woman stay in such a church?” I wondered. But then I thought of Nadine, brought up in a patriarchal family where the husband is God’s chosen head of the household. Her father had been a kindly man and my brother Herman is easy enough to manipulate, so any self-imposed gender yoke must rest lightly on her shoulders.

And Daddy certainly considered himself the undisputed head of his household, as do his sons, no matter how much evidence to the contrary their wives give them.

Occasionally, when she thought I was getting too hardheaded and confrontational, Mother would tell me about her grandmother, who did not see the necessity of women’s rights. In her world, any woman who was worth her salt could always get her own way by manipulating her man with a combination of sex and sweet talk.

“But I’ve seen you and Daddy fight,” I once protested.

“Only when I intend to let him win,” she had said with a knowing grin.

I savored another taste of my lumpy guacamole and said, “I guess there’s a comfort in knowing your place in the universe.”

“ ‘He for God only, she for God in him,’ ” Jamie said, wrapping a warm tortilla around her steak and peppers.

“Shakespeare?” I asked.

“Milton.”

I laughed. “No wonder you got on Candace Bradshaw’s nerves. I bet she never even heard of Milton.”

“A whole bunch of women never heard of Milton, sweetie,” she said. “And that didn’t drive ’em into Danny Creedmore’s bed.”

“Anyhow,” said Portland, “my cleaning woman says that Marian McKinney’s taking piano lessons so her husband will never again have to depend on some uppity woman.”

Back at the courthouse, I was happy to hear that the civil case over the smashed swimming pool had settled amicably. The insurance company would pay for a new pool and fence and for filling half the pool. The pool owner dropped his claims for punitive damages.

I seemed to have hit the trifecta that day. Two cases asked for continuances with legitimate reasons and two more settled. By two-thirty, I was technically done for the day. I suppose I could have asked some of my colleagues if they wanted help, but before I could get involved in something else, I called Will and asked if he’d spoken to his friend at the consignment shop about that earring I’d seen in Daddy’s hand on Friday.

When Will heard I had the afternoon free, he said he’d swing by in his van and pick me up and tell me all about it on the way out to Candace Bradshaw’s house.

“What?”

“Yeah. Dwight and his people have finished with it, so Cameron Bradshaw called me and asked if I’d go take a look at the place, see about maybe making him an offer on the contents of the house, which is what Dee wanted me to do. But first he wants me to box up her dollhouse. He’s going to donate it to the shelter for battered women so the children can play with it.”