Or unless Clate Jackson lost all patience and simply called the police. At that point, who cared about the men in white coats?
With a loud groan of pure frustration, Piper flung herself to her feet and into her keeping room, where she dragged out crocks of flour and sugar and a tub of frozen homemade butter, a bit of wheat germ, some yeast, a little salt, and started to throw some bread dough together.
* * *
Chapter 5
The proliferation of gas stations, motels, and fast-food places along interstate exchanges hadn't reached the winding roads deep in the hills of east Tennessee, where Clate had spent his first sixteen years. Nothing much had changed in his tiny, poor hometown since he was a scraggly eleven-year-old with a tattered fishing pole and a bad attitude.
He eased off the gas pedal as he came to the crossroads that passed for the center of town. A little white church stood on one corner. He could see cars and pickups crowded in the gravel parking lot. He cut off his air-conditioning and rolled down his window, feeling the drop in humidity from the Nashville basin, smelling the fresh-cut grass, the cedar trees, all the rich, fragrant smells of a southern summer.
His grip tight on the wheel, he pulled into the church parking lot. Two or three dozen people were gathered out back. Young, old, black, white. He could see picnic tables laid out with coleslaw, biscuits, ham, tomatoes, fried corn, fried pies, watermelon. He used to crash funerals, just because the food was usually good.
The service itself would be over. Irma's friends and neighbors, many of them former students, would be laughing, crying, remembering how she'd badgered, cajoled, done whatever she had to do to persuade even the most troubled and stubborn of her sixth-graders that poverty and isolation didn't mean they couldn't learn, couldn't make a contribution, whether they stayed in their little town or left, whether they got rich or stayed poor. She'd already retired by the time she'd got hold of Clate. But that hadn't stopped her or even slowed her down. She introduced him to books, manners, the peace and power of sitting quietly on her front porch and watching the sun set, odd ways, perhaps, to save a boy's life, but without them, he knew, he would have crashed and burned long before now. He doubted he'd have lived to twenty-one. From the time he turned eleven, he knew he was destined for jail or an early grave.
Irma Bryar had helped him see his destiny in a new way, as something that was entirely within his control.
A warm breeze carried the smoke from the barbecued chicken and ribs. Clate climbed out of his car and stood there in the hot sun, breathing in the smells, absorbing the sounds. His chest was tight, his throat raw. There was no blaming the southern air, the long trip from Cape Cod, the phone calls and meetings and catching up he'd done at his offices in his Nashville hotel before heading into the Cumberland hills. He was home for the first time in years and he was tense as hell.
He smiled, almost hearing Irma's reproach for swearing. She had saved him from himself, set him free, and had never asked him one thing in return.
He crossed the crabgrass-infested yard in front of the church. In spite of the crushing heat, he wore a dark suit. Irma would have expected that much courtesy from him. He could hear a booming laugh from the crowd behind the church, but forced himself not to speculate whose it might be. He'd given jobs over the years to people from his hometown, people who still had family there, friends. Irma usually sent them. She never asked him to provide a job, simply had them stop by with a bit of country ham from home, a peach cobbler, a batch of fried apricot pies. Mabel Porter, his new assistant, was one. She was smart, crafty, and maybe as ambitious and jaded as he'd been when he'd first arrived in Nashville.