Текст книги "A Spool of Blue Thread"

Автор книги: Anne Tyler

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Oh, Abby, Lord preserve you,” Mrs. Whitshank said with a gentle laugh.

Loud, sharp heels clopped down the stairs and through the front hall. The clops crossed the dining room and Merrick appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing a red satin kimono and red mules topped with puffs of red feathers. Giant metal curlers encased her head like some sort of spaceman’s helmet. “Gawd, what time is it?” she asked. She pulled out a chair and sat down next to Abby and took a pack of Kents from her sleeve.

“Good morning, Merrick,” Abby said.

“Morning. Is that okra? Ick.”

“It’s for lunch,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. “We’ve got all those men out front who are going to need feeding.”

“Only Mom believes it’s impolite to make your workmen bring their own sandwiches,” Merrick told Abby. “Abby Dalton, are you wearing hose? Aren’t you melting?”

“I’m melting!” Abby wailed in a wicked-witch voice, and Mrs. Whitshank laughed but Merrick just looked annoyed. She lit a cigarette and let out a long whoosh of smoke. “I had the most awful dream,” she said. “I dreamed I was driving a little too fast on this winding mountain road and I missed a curve. I thought, ‘Oh-oh, this is going to be bad.’ You know that moment when you realize it’s just got to, got to happen. I went sailing over the edge of a cliff, and I squeezed my eyes tight shut and braced for the shock. But the funny thing was, I kept sailing. I never landed.”

Abby said, “That’s a terrible dream!” but Mrs. Whitshank went on placidly slicing okra.

“I thought, ‘Oh, now I get it,’ ” Merrick said. “ ‘I must already be dead.’ And then I woke up.”

“Was the car a convertible?” Mrs. Whitshank asked.

Merrick paused, with her cigarette suspended halfway to her mouth. She said, “Pardon?”

“The car in your dream. Was it a convertible?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact.”

“If you dream you’re in a convertible it means you’re about to make a serious error in judgment,” Mrs. Whitshank said.

Merrick sent Abby a look of exaggerated astonishment. “I wonder what error you could possibly be thinking of,” she said.

“But if the car is not a convertible, it would signify you’re going to get some sort of promotion.”

“Well, what a coincidence, I dreamed about a convertible,” Merrick said. “And the whole world knows you’re dead set against this wedding, so don’t waste your breath, Linnie Mae.”

Merrick often addressed her mother as “Linnie Mae.” The twisted sound of the name in her mouth somehow managed to imply all of her mother’s shortcomings – her twangy voice, her feed-sack-looking dresses, her backwoods pronunciations like “supposably” and “eck cetera” and “desk-es.” Abby felt bad for Mrs. Whitshank, but Mrs. Whitshank herself didn’t appear to take offense. “I’m just saying,” she said mildly, and she slid a handful of okra spokes into the bowl of milk.

Merrick took a deep drag of her cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“Anyhow!” Abby told Merrick. “I bet it was one of those dreams you were really glad to wake up from, wasn’t it?”

Merrick said, “Mm-hmm,” with her eyes on the fan blades spinning above her.

Then a girl’s voice called, “Mare? Hello?” and Merrick straightened and called, “In the kitchen.”

The screen door slammed, and a moment later Pixie Kincaid and Maddie Lane arrived in the kitchen, both wearing Bermuda shorts, Maddie carrying a powder-blue Samsonite vanity case. “Merrick Whitshank, you’re still in your bathrobe!” Pixie said.

“I didn’t get home from the party till after three in the morning.”

“Well, neither did we, but it’s almost ten! Did you forget we’re practicing your makeup today?”

“I remember,” Merrick said. She stubbed out her cigarette. “Come on upstairs and let’s do this.”

“Hi, Mrs. Whitshank,” Pixie said belatedly. “Hi, um, Abby. See you later.” Maddie just gave a little wave like a windshield wiper. Then the three of them walked out, Merrick’s heels clattering. A sudden quiet descended.

“I guess Merrick must be feeling kind of tense these days,” Abby said after a moment.

“Oh, no, that’s just how she is,” Mrs. Whitshank said cheerfully. She had finished slicing the okra. She stirred the slices around in the milk, using a slotted spoon. “She was a snippy little girl and now she’s a snippy big girl,” she said. “Nothing much I can do about it.” She began transferring the okra slices to the cornmeal mixture. “Sometimes,” she said, “it seems to me there’s just these certain types of people that come around and around in our lives, know what I mean? Easy types and hard types; we run into them over and over. Merrick’s always put me in mind of my granny Inman. Disapproving kind of woman; tongue like a rasp. She never did think much of me. You, now, you’re a sympathizer, same as my aunt Louise.”

“Oh,” Abby said. “Yes, I see what you’re saying. It’s kind of like reincarnation.”

Mrs. Whitshank said, “Well …”

“Except it’s within one single lifetime instead of spread out over different lifetimes.”

“Well, maybe,” Mrs. Whitshank said. Then she said, “Honey, you want to do something for me?”

“Anything,” Abby said.

“Fetch that pitcher of water from the icebox and those paper cups on the counter and take them out to the men, will you? I know they must be dying of thirst. And tell them lunch will be early; I’ll bet they’re wondering.”

Abby stood up and went to the refrigerator. Her stockings were sticking damply to the backs of her legs. It might not have been the best idea to wear them on a day like today.

As she was crossing the front hall, she overheard Mr. Whitshank talking on the phone in the sunroom. “This afternoon? What the hell?” he was saying. “Goddammit, Mitch, I’ve got five men out there waiting on you to tell them how to do that tree stump!” Abby made her footsteps lighter, thinking he might be embarrassed that she’d caught him using swear words.

Outside, the air hit her face like a warm washcloth, and the porch floorboards gave off the smell of hot varnish. But the soft, fresh breeze – unusual for this time of year – lifted the damp wisps along her hairline, and the water pitcher she was hugging chilled the insides of her arms.

Landis had gotten hold of a second chainsaw from somewhere, and he and Earl were slicing the thickest branches into fireplace-size logs. Dane and Ward were hacking off the thinner branches and dragging them to a huge pile down near the street, while Red had set up a chopping block and was splitting the logs into quarters. They all stopped work when Abby arrived. Earl and Landis killed their chainsaws and a ringing silence fell, so that her voice sounded shockingly clear: “Anybody want water?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Earl told her, and they set down their tools and came over to her. Ward had taken his shirt off, which made him look like an amateur, and he and Dane were deeply flushed. Red, of course, had been working this hard the whole summer, but even he had rivulets of sweat running down his face, and Earl and Landis were so drenched that their blue chambray shirts were almost navy.

She distributed paper cups and then filled them while the men held them out, and they emptied them in one gulp and held them out again before she’d finished the first round. It wasn’t till halfway through the third round that anyone said more than “Thanks.” Then Red asked, “Did Dad get ahold of Mitch, do you know?”

“I think he’s on the phone with him now.”

“I still say we just go ahead and take the whole thing down,” Earl told Red.

“Well, I don’t want Mitch showing up and saying we made his job harder.”

Dane and Abby were looking at each other. Dane’s hair was damp, and he gave off a wonderful smell of clean sweat and tobacco. Abby had a sudden, worrisome thought: she didn’t own any nice underwear. Just plain white cotton underpants and white cotton bras with the tiniest pink rosebud stitched to the center V. She looked away again.

“Hello?”

It was a beefy man in a seersucker suit, parting the azalea hedge that bordered the lawn next door. Twigs crackled under his chalk-white shoes as he walked toward them. “Say, there,” he said when he reached them. He had his eyes fixed specifically on Red.

“Hi, Mr. Barkalow,” Red said.

“Wonder if you realize what time your men started work this morning.”

Landis was the one who answered. “Eight o’clock,” he said.

“Eight o’clock,” Mr. Barkalow repeated, still looking at Red.

Landis said, “That’s when me and Red and Earl here started. The rest of them showed up later.”

“Eight o’clock in the morning,” Mr. Barkalow said. “A Sunday morning. A weekend. Does that strike you as acceptable?”

“Well, it seems okay to me, sir,” Red said in a steady voice.

“Is that right. Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning seems a fine time to run a chainsaw.”

He had ginger eyebrows that bristled out aggressively, but Red didn’t seem intimidated. He said, “I figured most folks would be—”

“Morning, there!” Mr. Whitshank called.

He was striding toward them down the slope of the lawn, wearing a black suit coat that must have been put on in haste. The left lapel was turned wrong, like a dog’s ear flipped inside out. “Fine day!” he said to Mr. Barkalow. “Good to see you out enjoying it.”

“I was just asking your son, Mr. Whitshank, what he considers to be an acceptable hour to run a chainsaw.”

“Oh, why, is there a problem?”

“The problem is that today is Sunday; I don’t know if you’re aware of it,” Mr. Barkalow said.

He had transferred his bushy-browed glare to Mr. Whitshank, who was nodding emphatically as if he couldn’t agree more. “Yes, well, we certainly wouldn’t want to—” he said.

“It is perverse how you people love to make a racket while the rest of us are trying to sleep. You’re hammering on your gutters, you’re drilling out your flagstones … Only yesterday, you sawed an entire tree down! A perfectly healthy tree, might I add. And always, always it seems to happen on a weekend.”

Mr. Whitshank suddenly grew taller.

“It doesn’t seem to happen on a weekend; it does happen on a weekend,” he said. “That’s the only time we honest laboring men aren’t busy doing you folks’ work for you.”

“You ought to thank your lucky stars I don’t report you to the police,” Mr. Barkalow said. “They’re bound to have ordinances dealing with this kind of thing.”

“Ordinances! Don’t make me laugh. Just because you all like to lie abed till noon, you and that spoiled son of yours with his big fat—”

“When you think about it,” Red broke in, “it doesn’t really matter if there are ordinances or there aren’t.”

Both men looked at him.

“What matters is, we seem to be waking our neighbors. I’m sorry about that, Mr. Barkalow. We certainly never intended to discommode you.”

“ ‘Discommode’?” his father repeated in a marveling voice.

Red said, “I wonder if we could settle on an hour that’s mutually agreeable.”

“ ‘Mutually agreeable’?” his father echoed.

“Oh,” Mr. Barkalow said. “Well.”

“Does, maybe, ten o’clock sound all right?” Red asked him.

“Ten o’clock!” Mr. Whitshank said.

“Ten?” Mr. Barkalow said. “Oh. Well, even ten is … but, well, I guess we could tolerate ten if we were forced to.”

Mr. Whitshank looked up at the sky as if he were begging for mercy, but Red said, “Ten o’clock. It’s a deal. We’ll make sure to abide by that in the future, Mr. Barkalow.”

“Well,” Mr. Barkalow said. He seemed uncertain. He glanced again at Mr. Whitshank, and then he said, “Well, okay, then. I guess that settles it.” And he turned and walked off toward the hedge.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Mr. Whitshank told Red. “Ten o’clock, for God’s sake! Practically lunchtime!”

Red handed his paper cup to Abby without comment.

Landis said, “Uh, boss?”

“What is it,” Mr. Whitshank said.

“Did you get the word from Mitch?”

“He’s coming by this afternoon with his brother-in-law’s stump grinder. He says take the trunk on down.”

“So, cut it low to the ground?”

“Low as you can get it,” Mr. Whitshank said, and by then he had already turned away and was halfway up the hill again, as if he’d washed his hands of all of them. The hem of his suit coat hung unevenly, Abby noticed – sagging at the sides and hitching up at the center, as if it belonged to a much older and shabbier man.

She circulated among the others, collecting their paper cups in silence, and then she started back up the hill herself.

“Sometimes Junior thinks the neighbors might be looking down their noses at him,” Mrs. Whitshank said when she heard about the scene in the yard. “He’s a little bit sensitive that way.”

Abby didn’t say so, but she could see his side of it. During her years as a scholarship student she’d had a few dealings herself with Mr. Barkalow’s type – so entitled, so convinced that there was only one way to live. No doubt all his sons played lacrosse and all his daughters were preparing for their debutante balls. But she shook that thought away and folded the sheet of dough on the counter a second time and a third. (“Fold, fold, and fold again” were Mrs. Whitshank’s instructions when she’d taught Abby how to make her biscuits. “Fold till when you slap the dough, you hear it give a burp.”)

“Anyhow,” Abby said, “Red got them to compromise. It all worked out in the end.”

“Red is not so quick to take offense,” Mrs. Whitshank said. She drew a large bowl from the refrigerator and removed the dish towel that covered it. “I think it’s because he grew up here. He’s used to people like the Barkalows.”

The bowl contained pieces of chicken in a liquid white batter. Mrs. Whitshank lifted them out one by one with canning tongs and laid them on a platter to drain. “It’s like he’s comfortable with both sorts,” she said. “With the neighbors and with the work crew. I know if he had his way, though, he’d quit college right this minute and go on the work crew full-time. It’s only on account of Junior that he’s sticking it out till graduation.”

“Well, it never hurts to have a diploma,” Abby said.

“That’s what Junior tells him. He says, ‘You want the option of something better. You don’t want to end up like me,’ he says. Red says, ‘What’s wrong with ending up like you?’ He says the trouble with college is, it’s not practical. The people there aren’t practical. ‘Sometimes they strike me as silly,’ he says.”

Abby had never heard Red talk about college. He was two years ahead of her and they seldom ran into each other on campus. “What are his grades like?” she asked Mrs. Whitshank.

Mrs. Whitshank said, “They’re okay. Well, so-so. That’s just not how his mind works, you know? He’s the kind that, you show him some gadget he’s never laid eyes on before and he says, ‘Oh, I see; yes, this part goes into that part and then it connects with this other part …’ Just like his daddy, but his daddy wants Red to be different from him. Isn’t that always how it is?”

“I bet Red was one of those little boys who take the kitchen clock apart,” Abby said.

“Yes, except he could put it back together again, too, which most other little boys can’t. Oops, watch what you’re doing, Abby. I see how you’re twisting that glass!”

She meant the glass that Abby was using to cut out the biscuits. “Clamp it straight down on the dough, remember?” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Let me fetch you the skillet.”

Abby wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The kitchen was heating up, and she was swathed in one of Mrs. Whitshank’s bib aprons.

If it was true, Abby thought, that she represented a recurring figure in Mrs. Whitshank’s life – the “sympathizer”—it was equally true that Mrs. Whitshank’s type had shown up before in Abby’s life: the instructive older woman. The grandmother who had taught her to knit, the English teacher who had stayed late to help her with her poems. More patient and softer-spoken than Abby’s brisk, efficient mother, they had guided and encouraged her, like Mrs. Whitshank saying now, “Oh, those are looking good! Good as any I could have made.”

“Maybe Red could join his dad’s company full-time after college,” Abby said. “Then it could be Whitshank and Son Construction. Wouldn’t Mr. Whitshank like that?”

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “He’s hoping the law for Red. Law or business, one. Red’s got a fine head for business.”

“But if he wouldn’t be happy …” Abby said.

“Junior says happiness is neither here nor there,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. “He says Red should just make up his mind to be happy.”

Then she stopped hunting through the utensil drawer and said, “I’m not trying to make him sound mean.”

“Of course not,” Abby said.

“He only wants what’s best for his family, you know? We’re all he’s got.”

“Well, of course.”

“Neither one of us has to do with our own families, anymore.”

“Why is that?” Abby asked.

“Oh, just, you know. Circumstances. We kind of fell out of touch with them,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “They’re clear down in North Carolina, and besides, my side were never in favor of us being together.”

“You mean you and Mr. Whitshank?”

“Just like Romeo and Juliet,” Mrs. Whitshank said. She laughed, but then she sobered and said, “Now, here is something you might not know. Guess how old Juliet was when she fell in love with Romeo.”

“Thirteen,” Abby said promptly.

“Oh.”

“They taught us that in school.”

“They taught Merrick that, too, in tenth grade,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “She came home and told me. She said, ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’ She said that after she heard that, she couldn’t take Shakespeare seriously.”

“Well, I don’t know why not,” Abby said. “A person can fall in love at thirteen.”

“Yes! A person can! Like me.”

“You?”

“I was thirteen when I fell in love with Junior,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Oh, goodness, and here you are now, married to him!” Abby said. “That’s amazing! How old was Mr. Whitshank?”

“Twenty-six.”

Abby took a moment to absorb this. “He was twenty-six when you were thirteen?”

“Twenty-six years old,” Mrs. Whitshank said.

Abby said, “Oh.”

“Isn’t that something?”

“Yes, it is,” Abby said.

“He was this real good-looking guy, a little bit wild, worked at the lumberyard but only just sometimes. Rest of the time he was off hunting and fishing and trapping and getting himself into trouble. Well, you see the attraction. Who could resist a boy like that? Especially when you’re thirteen. And I was a kind of developed thirteen; I developed real early. I met him at a church picnic when he came with another girl, and it was love at first sight for both of us. He started up with me right then and there. After that, we would sneak off together every chance we got. Oh, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other! But one night my daddy found us.”

“Found you where?” Abby asked.

“Well, in the hay barn. But he found us … you know.” Mrs. Whitshank fluttered a hand in the air. “Oh, it was awful!” she said merrily. “It was like something out of a movie. My daddy held a gun to his neck. Then Daddy and my brothers ran him out of Yancey County. Can you believe it? Law, I think back on that now and it feels like it happened to somebody else. ‘Was that me?’ I say to myself. I didn’t lay eyes on him again for close onto five years.”

Abby had slacked off on the biscuit cutting. She was just standing there staring at Mrs. Whitshank, so Mrs. Whitshank took the glass from her and stepped in to finish up, making short work of it: clamp-clamp.

“But you kept in touch,” Abby said.

“Oh, no! I had no idea where he was.” Mrs. Whitshank was laying the biscuits in the greased skillet, edge to edge in concentric circles. “I stayed faithful to him, though. I never forgot him for one minute. Oh, we had one of the world’s great love stories, in our little way! And once we got back together again, it was like we’d never parted. You know how that happens, sometimes. We took up right where we left off, the same as ever.”

Abby said, “But—”

Had it never crossed Mrs. Whitshank’s mind that what she was describing was … well, a crime?

Mrs. Whitshank said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you, though. It’s supposed to be a secret. I’ve never even told my own children! Oh, especially my own children. Merrick would make fun of me. Promise you won’t tell them, Abby. Swear it on your life.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” Abby said.

She wouldn’t have known what words to use, even. It was all too extreme and disturbing.

Mr. and Mrs. Whitshank and Red, Earl and Landis, Ward, Dane and Abby: eight people for lunch. (Merrick would not be eating with them, Mrs. Whitshank said.) Abby traveled around the table doling out knives and forks. The Whitshanks’ silverware was real sterling, embossed with an Old English W. She wondered when they had acquired it. Not at the time of their wedding, presumably.

Her parents just had dime-store cutlery, not all of it even matching.

Suddenly she felt homesick for her bustling, sensible mother and her kindly father with his shirt pocket full of ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils.

All the dining-room windows were open, the curtains wafting inward on the breeze, and she could see out to the porch where Pixie and Maddie sat in the swing with their backs to her, talking in soft, lazy voices. Merrick’s makeup session must be finished; Abby heard the shower running upstairs.

She went to the kitchen for plates, and as she returned, one of the chainsaws roared to life again. Till then, she hadn’t noticed the silence. The noise was so close that she bent to peer out a window and see what was going on. Apparently the men were tackling what remained of the trunk. Landis stood to the left, watching, while Earl stooped low with his saw. He was working on the far side of the tree, nearly out of her angle of vision, probably cutting a notch so it would fall away from the house, but Abby couldn’t be sure from where she stood. She always worried men would get crushed doing that, although these two certainly looked as if they knew what they were doing.

She set the plates around and then counted out napkins from the sideboard and laid one beside each fork. She returned to the kitchen and asked Mrs. Whitshank, “Shall I pour the iced tea now?”

“No, let’s wait a bit,” Mrs. Whitshank said. She was standing at the stove frying chicken. “Go sit on the porch and cool off, why don’t you? I’ll call you when it’s time.”

Abby didn’t argue. She was glad to leave the hot kitchen. She untied her apron and draped it over the back of a chair, and then she went out to the porch and settled in one of the rockers some distance from Pixie and Maddie. She looked for Dane and found him hauling a huge leafy branch down toward the pile near the street. His hair took on an almost metallic sheen when he stepped into a shaft of sunshine.

What would she tell her mother? “I’m going to spend the night at Ruth’s,” she could say, except that then her mother might phone her at Ruth’s; it had been known to happen. And even if Abby dared to ask Ruth to cover for her, there was the problem of Ruth’s parents.

Red was tossing split logs into a wheelbarrow. Ward was mopping his forehead with his balled-up shirt. Earl killed the chainsaw just as Merrick stepped onto the porch and said, “Whew,” letting the screen door slam behind her. “Feels like I’ve washed a rubber mask off my face,” she told Pixie and Maddie. She was eating from a bowl of cornflakes. She walked over to a cane-bottomed chair, hooked it with one foot, and pulled it closer to the swing and sat down. Her hair was still in curlers but she had on Bermudas now and a sleeveless white blouse.

“We were just wondering who the James Dean was,” Pixie told her.

“The who? Oh, that’s Dane.”

“He’s gaw-juss.”

“If next Saturday’s like today,” Merrick said, “my foundation’s going to streak clear off my face. And my mascara will give me raccoon eyes.”

“You’ll match your mother-in-law,” Maddie said with a giggle.

“Oh, just go ahead and kill me if I ever get circles like hers,” Merrick said. “You know what I suspect? I suspect she paints them on. She’s one of those people who like to look sick. She’s always trotting off to her doctor and of course he tells her she’s fine but when she comes back she says, ‘Well, he thinks I’ll be all right …’ ”

“Will he be at the wedding?” Pixie asked.

“Will who be at the wedding?”

“That Dane person.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Will Dane be at the wedding?” Merrick called down the porch to Abby.

Abby said, “He wasn’t invited.”

“He wasn’t? Well, feel free to bring him if you like.”

“Oh, you two go together?” Pixie asked Abby.

Abby gave a half shrug, hoping to imply that they did go together but that she could take him or leave him, and Pixie heaved a theatrical sigh of disappointment.

“Now, here is the sixty-four-dollar question,” Merrick said. “My curlers.”

“What about them?” Maddie asked.

“You see how big and bobbly they are. I’ve been going to bed in these since I was fourteen years old. My hair is straight as a stick otherwise. What am I going to do on my wedding night, is the question.”

“Ask me something hard,” Maddie said. “You go to bed without them, silly. Then early, early in the morning you wake up before Trey does and you sneak off to the bathroom and put your curlers in and take a hot shower. Don’t actually wet your hair; just steam it. Then get under the hair dryer – you’ll have to slip your hair dryer into the bathroom the night before—”

“I can’t bring my hair dryer on my honeymoon! It needs its own huge suitcase.”

“Then buy yourself one of those new kinds that you can hold in your hand.”

“What, and electrocute myself like that woman in the paper? Besides, you don’t know how stubborn my hair is. Two minutes of steam won’t have any effect at all.”

Pixie said, “You should do your hair like her.”

“Like who?”

“Her,” Pixie said, poking her chin in Abby’s direction. She was wearing a little smirk. “Abby.”

Merrick didn’t bother responding to that. “If I could just get away from Trey for a couple of measly hours,” she said. “If there was a beauty parlor in the hotel and it opened at five in the morning—”

The chainsaw roared up again, drowning out the rest of her words. Landis walked over to a dogwood tree and bent for a hoop of rope. Dane started up the hill toward where he’d left his axe.

Before the men came in for lunch they ducked their heads under the faucet at the side of the house, and so they walked in dripping wet, squeegeeing their faces with their hands. Earl actually shook himself all over, like a dog, as he took his seat.

Mr. Whitshank sat at the head of the table, Mrs. Whitshank at the foot. Abby sat between Dane and Landis. She and Dane were a good eighteen inches apart, but he slid his foot over so that it was touching hers. He kept his eyes on his plate, though, as if he and she had nothing to do with each other.

Mr. Whitshank was holding forth on Billie Holiday. She had died a couple of days before and Mr. Whitshank couldn’t see why people were so cut up about it. “Always sounded to me like she couldn’t hold on to a note,” he said. “Her voice would go slippy-slidey and sometimes she’d mislay the tune.” He had a way of rotating his face slowly from one side of the table to the other as he spoke, so as to include all his listeners. Abby felt like some sort of disciple hanging on her master’s every word, which she suspected was his purpose. Then she altered her vision – she was good at that – and imagined she was sitting at a table of threshers or corn pickers or such, one of those old-time harvest gatherings, and this cheered her up. When she had a home of her own, she wanted it to be just as expansive and welcoming as the Whitshanks’, with strays dropping by for meals and young people talking on the porch. Her parents’ house felt so closed; the Whitshanks’ house felt open. No thanks to Mr. Whitshank. But wasn’t that always the way? It was the woman who set the tone.

“Now, the kind of music I favor myself,” Mr. Whitshank was saying, “is more on the order of John Philip Sousa. I assume you all know who I’m talking about. Redcliffe, who am I talking about?”

“The March King,” Red said with his mouth full. He was deep in a leg of fried chicken.

“March King,” Mr. Whitshank agreed. “Any of you recall The Cities Service Band of America?”

No one did, apparently. They hunkered lower over their plates.

“Program on the radio,” Mr. Whitshank said. “No kind of music but marches. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ and ‘The Washington Post’ march, my favorite. I like to had a fit when they took it off the air.”

Abby searched for any trace in him of the wild boy from Yancey County. She could see why some might call him good-looking, with that straight-edged face of his and not a sign of a paunch even in his fifties or maybe sixties. But his clothes were so proper, almost a caricature of properness (he had corrected the wayward lapel by now), and his eyes had a disenchanted droop at the outside corners. There were gnarly purple veins on the backs of his hands and distinct black dots of whiskers stippling his chin. Oh, let Abby not ever get old! She pressed her left ankle against Dane’s ankle and passed the biscuits on to Landis.

“My father thinks Billie Holiday’s the greatest,” Dane offered. He took a swig of his iced tea and then leaned back, clearly at ease. “He says Baltimore’s biggest claim to fame is, Billie Holiday used to scrub front stoops downtown for a quarter apiece.”

“Well, I and your father will have to agree to disagree,” Mr. Whitshank said. Then he gave a quick frown. “Who is your father?”

“Dick Quinn,” Dane said.

“Quinn as in Quinn Marketing?”

“None other.”

“Will you be going into the family business?”

“Nope,” Dane said.

Mr. Whitshank waited. Dane stared back at him pleasantly.

“I would think that would be a fine opportunity,” Mr. Whitshank said after a moment.

“Me and Pop tend not to see eye to eye,” Dane told him. “Besides, he’s ticked off because I got fired from my job.”

He seemed perfectly comfortable volunteering the information. Mr. Whitshank frowned again. “What’d they fire you for?” he asked.

“Just didn’t work out, I guess,” Dane said.

“Well, I tell Redcliffe, I say, ‘Whatever you do in life, do your best. I don’t care if it’s hauling trash, you do it the best it’s ever been done,’ I say. ‘Take pride in it.’ Getting fired? It’s a black mark on your record forever. It’ll hang around to haunt you.”