“Good for you,” Esme said, and Grady echoed, “Good for you both.”
“Of course we all know your gramma. I have known Miss Birchie my whole, whole life.” Alston’s eyes were shiny, and the whites pinked as she spoke.
“Good for you what?” Lavender said. She was back with Punchkin.
Alston gave her head a little shake. She smiled at Lavender and took Punchkin’s leash. “Never you mind, young lady. You have work to do! And here I am standing here chattering and letting my heart rate drop.”
“Oh, yes, us, too,” Esme said. “Grady’s doctor says he needs to walk at least two miles every day.”
They paused only to exchange greetings with Birchie and Wattie, and then Esme and Grady hurried back toward their house, disappearing around the corner. Alston took off at a good clip, too, but poor old Punchkin lagged behind her, suffering. After a few hampered steps, she stopped and looked down at him with fond exasperation. He immediately flopped onto his butt again. In Birchville gossip was called “news,” and having some was social currency. I’d just handed Alston and the Franklins big fat wads of it to spend, and gossip waited for no exhausted dog. Alston picked him up and tucked him under her arm like a hairy clutch purse, then bustled away up the street.
We all went back to work. Alston must have gotten on her phone the second she was out of sight, because not ten minutes later Darnette and Larry Pearson came out of their pink brick ranch, set catty-corner across the street from Martina. They were each toting a comfy padded chair from their back patio. They went right to Birchie and Wattie and set them up in the shade, then stood chatting with them.
I hoped no one would ask Birchie questions she ought not to answer. Especially since she was already seeing rabbits. Wattie was right there in case someone tried, and I’d been as clear as I could be with Alston and the Franklins both. I kept picking toilet-paper bits, staying out of the town’s way as it churned and wavered. The air felt charged with a hundred simultaneous phone calls zooming through the airways overhead. The chairs were a good sign, though, especially since the Pearsons had chosen to sit in the center section last Sunday. This might shift them to Birchie’s side.
For the next half hour, even the most sedentary Baptists from both churches had sudden urges for midmorning walks that took them right past the Mack house. Most of these folks had not personally witnessed the lid of the old trunk swinging open. They had only heard about the bones, the skull with its empty eye sockets and its telltale stove-in dome. Hearing was not the same as seeing.
Here in the sunny yard, it was hard for folks to imagine Birchie with a hammer or Wattie stealing a car. I was having trouble imagining these things, and I’d witnessed Wattie’s crash into the mailbox. I’d tucked Birchie’s bare feet into soft socks and watched her do the Tomahawk Chop, her blue eyes blank and unsorry. It all seemed like a bad dream now, as folks from both churches came to rally around them.
I stopped working and simply watched when the first cars pulled up and parked. They were full of folks who lived too far to walk. They came anyway, not bothering with the pretense of happening by. I counted emissaries from more than thirty families, many of them First Baptist folks who had taken center seats on Sunday. We even got RaeAnn Leefly, who I’d seen in the pews behind Martina. She was stiff and uncomfortable at first, but she unbent as Birchie asked about her shingles and her youngest girl, who was having marriage trouble in Montgomery. Birchie, brain-sick as she was, was so hip-deep in the day-to-day life of Birchville that she remembered. Maybe it was Wattie, whispering, remembering for her, but there was no doubting the care behind the questions.
It was doing Birchie good to be out among friends again. Her little blue eyes were bright, and I kept hearing her ladylike trill of a laugh as we finished up. I could still see occasional movement in the curtains. Martina Mack could not be enjoying this now. The pleasure of watching us sweat and pick in her yard must be souring in her mouth. Good.
“They can work a crowd, though, can’t they?” Rachel whispered to me, and I nodded.
But it was more than that. My grandmother and Wattie had been a joint force in the lives of all these people. A force for good. They had brought handmade blankets to welcome new babies and warm pans of ham-and-potato casserole to countless funerals. Birchie owned the land their stores were on, and in lean years she’d helped them keep their businesses, in some cases their homes. Wattie’s husband had been the pastor at Redemption for decades, and Wattie had pastored right beside him, teaching Sunday school, counseling brides, sitting with the grieving.
The yard was filled, people spilling out into the road, and I realized I had never seen so many members of these two congregations intermingled. It looked like Birchie and Wattie were holding court under the puffball tree, seated side by side with lifted chins and crossed ankles. A steady stream of pilgrims brought them smiles and news and, in Lois Gainey’s case, a huge plate of muffins. Birchie and Wattie took all these offerings as their simple due, these little old ladies acting as the hinge between the two communities gathering in the yard. They were the human overlap.
Inside me I was growing a boy who belonged here in this yard. Today, in this unrepeated hour, the Mack lawn looked like his birthright.
A station wagon pulled up, packed to the brim with the enormous Ridley family. The kids spilled out of the back with gallon jugs of ice-cold lemonade and a Tupperware container full of homemade gingersnaps. They started pouring drinks and passing out the cookies.
Little Denise Ridley ran to me, braids bouncing, carrying a bathroom-size waxy Dixie Cup covered in flowers. She handed the tiny portion of lemonade to me with an equally tiny cookie.
“Thank you, hon,” I told her.
I put the cookie in my mouth. I drank the cup, all the while looking at a congregation my son belonged in, knowing that it existed only in this moment. I swallowed, and I felt like I was sharing in a spicy, tart communion, strange and rare. It was a taste of the world as I wanted it to be.
Inside the house the drapes twitched. The world as it actually was, present and watching. This peace, this beauty, was temporary. The world as it was—it was coming for us still.
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