James Ennis pulled his small black truck in behind a late-model SUV that was parked on the shoulder of woodlands that were back in his family again, only this time it was his mother’s name on the deed and not his grandmother’s, despite the older woman’s self-pitying indignation that she no longer had a say in how the land was to be used or dispersed. She trotted out the Biblical commandment to honor thy father
“Sorry, Mama,” Mary Pritchard Ennis had said. “You gave our land away once. You don’t get a chance to do it twice. After I’m gone, it’s going to my boys.”
Before he got out of the truck, Ennis made a note of the SUV’s license plate. One bumper sticker read JESUS LOVES YOU; the other THIS CAR HAS GPS—GOD’S PROTECTIVE SALVATION.
He lifted his .22 rifle from the gun rack across the rear window, stepped onto the pavement, and studied the ditch bank until he saw where someone had gone into the woods. The trail was easy to follow. A hippopotamus could not have trampled down a wider swath of weeds and briars, and dead limbs had been knocked off some of the pines to make for easier passage.
A wren scolded from its perch on a wild cherry branch in lacy white bloom and a brown thrasher flew up from a clump of dried broom sedge still standing from last fall.
About fifty feet into the woods, where the land began to slope down to a stream, he saw an oak that had come down in one of the hurricanes to create a rough clearing beyond the pines. A chunky-looking white man labored there with a shovel. He wore dark blue slacks, a blue-and-white striped open-necked polo shirt, and shiny polished town shoes that had probably started off a lot shinier than they were right now. As Ennis watched, he saw the man wipe his face with a large white handkerchief that he stuffed back into his pocket before climbing down into the hole he had dug. It was waist-deep on the man and as damp dirt flew up from the hole, Ennis could hear him puffing with the unaccustomed effort of digging through rocks and roots.
He moved out of shadows into the sunlight, the rifle held loosely in the crook of his arm, and looked down on the man. “Mind telling me what you’re doing, mister?”
Startled, the man stepped back with the shovel across his chest as if for protection, slipped, and went down heavily on his rump. Sweat poured from his soft face and his eyes widened as he looked up and saw the rifle.
“This is private property, mister, and you’re trespassing,” James Ennis said, standing over the trench the man had dug. “How come you’re out here digging?”
“This your land?” The voice changed to warm molasses. “Then you must be one of Sister Frances’s grandsons, right?”
Ennis gave a tight nod.
“I’m—”
“I know who you are, Preacher, and you don’t own one square inch out here any more, so I ask you for the last time”—he shifted the rifle significantly in his hands—“what are you digging for?”
Faison McKinney pulled out his handkerchief again and looked at it distastefully. It had begun the day ironed and neatly folded just as he liked his handkerchiefs, but now it was so streaked with dirt and sweat stains Marian might never get it clean. Nevertheless he wiped his face, then used the shovel to hoist himself to his feet. There was only wet sandy clay beneath his shoes. No parachute, no bones, no sign that this soil had ever been disturbed.
“You ever get left all night at the end of a long dirty ditch holding a bag?”
“No, sir, can’t say as I have.”
“Well, this here’s the ditch and I’m the fool that thought it was full of snipe.”
G. Hooks Talbert finished ordering and handed the elaborate menu back to the waiter. Located off Glenwood Avenue, this was one of Raleigh’s best restaurants, the food adventurous, the service impeccable. Tonight, the tables would be filled. Here at lunchtime, however, he and the plainly dressed woman seated across the table from him had a corner of the room to themselves, which was precisely why he had chosen it.
Talbert considered himself a connoisseur of beautiful women and this woman would never be beautiful, but with better clothes, an expert hairstylist, and proper makeup, she could be striking.
She looked like hell, he thought, but his words were kindly when he said, “I wish you didn’t have to dress like one of those born-again cult women.”
“I am born again, but our church is no cult.”
“Then why dress like it? There are lots of good religious women who don’t consider it a sin to wear nice things. You don’t have to look like all your clothes came from a Goodwill store.”
“If you’ll recall, Hooks, I didn’t grow up with silks and satins. After the divorce, Mother was lucky if she could keep me in denim and cotton.” She was not complaining, merely stating the facts.
“You may not have had it so plush as a kid, but you got a generous inheritance. Don’t tell me it’s all gone?”
The younger woman shrugged and Talbert shook his head in disbelief.
“But I offered to invest it for you, to give you security.”
“I invested it in my marriage.” She smiled serenely as he gave an involuntary scornful humph. “How many wives have you gone through now, Hooks? Three?”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Our father had four.”
She smiled a thank-you to the waiter who set butter and a woven silver basket of freshly baked yeast rolls before them, then turned back to her older half brother. “I’m still married to the only man I ever gave myself to.” She took one of the warm rolls, breathed in its fragrance, and reached for the butter.
“And what kind of marriage is it, Marian?” he asked, unable to control his dismay. “You drink his spit. Do you eat his shit, too?”
“If he asked me to.”
