Chapter 8 - The Clearing of the Road
By midnight, the gravel lot behind the diner was clear.
The state sedans were gone, their taillights having disappeared down Highway 17 toward the federal holding facility in New Bern two hours ago. The two black county trucks had been towed by Dale Miller’s five-ton, parked in his impound yard behind the rail siding where they would sit until the state auditor finished going through the county maintenance receipts.
The big yellow Caterpillar D8 was still sitting by the ditch, its twelve-foot blade resting in the weeds, cold and dark under the stars.
Inside the diner, the overhead spots were on.
Abel Tuck was sitting at stool four. He hadn't gone home to his well pump after all. He was sitting with his hands wrapped around a clean white mug, watching the steam rise into the cool night air.
Jesse was at stool three. Bobby Vance and his cousin Wayne were in booth six, sharing a plate of cold biscuits and country ham I had found in the walk-in cooler.
Nobody was talking about Wade Rusk. Nobody was talking about the courthouse.
They were talking about the winter of sixty-three, when the river froze three inches thick from the landing down to the railroad trestle, and John Braddock had hooked four teams of mules to a road drag to pull the coal wagons up the hill to the old schoolhouse.
The front door opened.
The brass bell gave its high, single chime.
It wasn't a state agent this time. It was a girl in a clean white cotton shirt and a blue denim skirt, her hair combed back and tied with a yellow ribbon.
It was Dee Hollis.
She stopped two feet inside the door. She looked at the counter. She looked at Abel Tuck. She looked at me, standing behind the till with my mother’s apron knotted twice around my waist.
"Quinn," she said, her voice small.
"Your sister’s car is still in Florence, Dee," I said. "Staff Sergeant Miller called me at ten. He said she had two plates of pancakes and was watching the television in the room."
Dee walked toward the counter. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying anymore. She had her hands out of her pockets now.
"The magistrate called my house an hour ago," she whispered. "He told my daddy that the county holding company’s lien on our trailer was set aside by the federal court. Said the deed was back in my daddy’s name."
"It is," I said. "The federal receiver took over the Rusk holding companies at eight o'clock tonight. Every property with a contested tax lien is frozen until the grand jury finishes its review in December."
She stopped by stool one. She looked at the pie case.
The two clean white china plates were sitting on the middle shelf, empty and dry.
"Miss Lottie’s gonna need lemon meringue for tomorrow morning," Dee said. "She always makes three on Wednesdays. One for the counter, two for the carry-out boxes for the ladies down at the bank."
"My mother is at the hospital, Dee," I said.
"No, she ain't," Dee said.
I looked up from the till.
Outside the front window, an old white Ford station wagon had pulled up to the curb. It was Dr. Trexler’s car—the nineteen-eighty-six Country Squire with the fake wood paneling along the doors that had been peeling since the second Bush administration.
The passenger door opened.
A woman got out.
She had a white gauze pad taped over her left cheekbone, held in place with two strips of brown medical tape. Her left arm was in a dark blue sling that was pinned to the shoulder of her cotton housecoat with three large silver safety pins.
She was seventy-five years old. She walked with a slow, careful hitch in her right hip, her flat-soled leather shoes clicking against the concrete sidewalk with the steady, stubborn rhythm of a clock that had never lost a minute in fifty years.
Dr. Trexler tried to take her right elbow as she reached the curb.
She pulled her arm back—not hard, but firm enough that the old doctor let his hand drop with a dry, knowing grin.
She pushed the diner door open with her good right hand.
The brass bell chimed. Ping.
The six men in the room stood up.
Abel Tuck didn't hitch his hip this time; he stood straight, his felt hat in his hands, his old back flat against the red vinyl of stool four. Bobby Vance and his cousin Wayne stood up in booth six, their paper napkins dropping to the table like white leaves.
Lottie Braddock stopped three feet inside her door.
She looked at the ceiling spots. She looked at the pie case. She looked at the floor behind the till—the duckboards that had been scrubbed with soda ash until the wood was the color of clean wheat.
Then she looked at me.
She looked at the white duck canvas apron. She looked at the grease stain shaped like the state of Ohio covering my chest.
"Quinn," she said. Her voice was cracked, dry as corn shucks, but it didn't shake. Not an inch.
"Mama," I said.
She walked behind the counter. She didn't look at the cash register. She reached up with her good right hand, took hold of the canvas loop of the apron where it hung around my neck, and pulled it down until I had to lean my face toward hers.
She touched my cheek with her thumb. Her skin was cold, smelling of witch hazel, hospital soap, and the yellow lard she used for her crusts.
"You gathered a storm, baby," she whispered.
"The storm was already here, Mama," I said. "I just opened the door so it could blow through."
She looked at the six men standing in the room.
She looked at Abel Tuck.
Abel was crying now, the tears running down through the deep, sun-baked gullies of his cheeks, dropping off his jaw onto the bib of his clean overalls.
"Abel," my mother said, her voice returning to that clear, unhurried cadence that had settled fifty years of arguments over tractor prices and river boundaries. "You're letting your coffee get cold on that stool."
Abel wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. "Yes, Miss Lottie," he said, and sat back down on stool four.
My mother turned back to me.
"Take that apron off, Quinn," she said.
"Mama, the doctor said you have to stay horizontal for three days—"
"I’ve been horizontal since yesterday morning," she said. "And the grease on that grill needs seasoning before the timber shift comes in at five. Dee, go into the scullery and bring out that five-pound crock of lard from under the bread table. Bobby, if you’re gonna stand there with your mouth open like a dry pump, you can go out to Jesse’s truck and bring in them two sacks of yellow potatoes."
Nobody argued.
Dee ran for the scullery. Bobby Vance grabbed his orange vest and headed for the back door with his cousin behind him.
I stood there behind the till, the apron loose in my hands now.
My mother took the white canvas from my fingers. She couldn't tie it with her left arm in the sling, so she held the strings out toward me with her good hand.
"Tie the knot, Quinn," she said. "Two times around the waist. Square knot. Don't leave them ends hanging where they can catch the burner."
I stepped behind her.
I wrapped the long white canvas strings around her thin waist—twice, just like she had shown me when I was six years old and had to stand on an overturned lard tub to reach the dish basin.
I tied the square knot, pulled it snug against the small of her back, and let the ends fall flat against the duck canvas.
May you like
She turned around, picked up the spatula from the magnetic rack with her right hand, and laid it flat against the cold cast-iron steel of the front grill.
"Now," my mother said, looking out through the clean plate glass at the courthouse square, where the morning light was just beginning to touch the green oaks. "Let’s see if we can get some breakfast made for these people."
