and it is obvious to me that Dwight’s death has affected her greatly. Still, she will have to make a living. She wrote in December that she had kept the books for the farm, but she had never worked in town. Who would hire a woman almost fifty with no skills? There were no jobs anyway.
“It’s not too late for God,” I say, pretending to look out the window.
“Are you still religious?” she asks, getting up again to warm up the soup which is in a pot on the kitchen counter.
“I’m more spiritual than formally religious, but Dwight went to the First Baptist Church every Sunday and Wednesday night until the month before he died. It didn’t seem to accomplish much.”
I watch as she takes two bowls from the cupboard above it and ladles soup into them. Angela seems to be swinging back and forth between bitterness and nostalgia. I know the feeling. Death is the ultimate thief.
“Rosa’s death cured me once and for all. I probably was looking for an excuse to give it up, and breast cancer was a real good one.”
As Angela places one of the bowls into the microwave above her, she says brightly, “You must not have heard our big news. Paul Taylor was charged yesterday with murdering Tommy Ting’s father. It’s the most incredible story you can imagine. Paul was supposed to have hired a worker in his meat-packing plant to cut his throat. It’s ridiculous!”
Angela’s face has become red with indignation.
I say, “I’m representing the plant worker.”
“You are?” she says, surprise giving way to enthusiasm.
“That’s wonderful. You can help Dick get this case dismissed against Paul.”
How strange! I realize now that I had unconsciously thought that I would get pressure from whites not to take Bledsoe’s case.
“How do you know Paul’s not guilty?” I ask.
“That summer we began going out, you regularly called the Taylors exhibit A of a bankrupt way of life.”
A faraway look steals over Angela’s face as she rearranges her mostly unused silverware on the mat.
“I doubt if they were any worse than anybody else.”
“They were, too!” I yelp, and tell her the story of Paul’s buying at a tax sale my mother’s eighty acres left to her by her father. I had lost contact with her during those years, and she probably never heard what had happened.
Angela had always liked my mother, and she murmurs sympathetically, “That was terrible, Gideon. Paul can be ruthless. I know that.”
“Ruthless, hell!” I exclaim, thoroughly worked up now.
“He threatened to kill that old man a month before he died,” I say and relate to her what I have learned at the prosecutor’s office.
Angela will keep anything secret I ask her.
Angela holds her face in her hands while I talk and responds when I am finished, “Surely he wouldn’t have someone murdered. Why would he do such a thing?”
“Greed!” I practically shout at her.
“They’ve always been like that. You know they have.
They’re so damn rich they just have to have more and more.”
Angela shakes her head.
“Not as rich now. Like a lot of people, Oscar and Paul overextended in the eighties and lost quite a bit of their land. It’s been really tough over here.”
“Well, that explains his motive then,” I say, understanding now why he was desperate enough to hire someone to kill to get his hands on the plant. God, I wish I had been around to see their faces when they realized what was happening to them. I still my right foot, which has been tapping the linoleum, and cross my legs.
Where is this acid surge of venom pumping from? It is as if a volcano has been waiting to erupt, and now that it has started, it won’t stop.
I’m not sure I want it to. After all these years, it feels good.
Angela looks worried instead of indignant as I thought she would be.
Maturity has made her cautious.
“Gideon, you need to be careful about what you’re getting into. Paul is still very powerful here. Taylor Realty probably still holds half the mortgages on the square even though they’re not worth much because the economy’s so depressed.”
I am pleased by the concern in her voice. I think I like this older version better. She was so sure of herself as a teenager it used to bug me.
“Tell me what he’s been up to,” I say, dredging up a spoonful of corn, green beans, onion, and beef from the bottom of the bowl. It has been almost thirty years since we have had an extended conversation, yet I sense I would have been comfortable if I had married this woman. Living with Rosa on a daily basis was sometimes like having a Roman candle go off daily in the house. Rain or shine, I could count on several bursts of heat and light. If I was within earshot, she could turn the job of scrubbing the sink into the Passion Play.
For the most part, I loved it. Older now, I could enjoy somebody less wired.
“Until yesterday, Paul Taylor,” Angela declares, pushing away her untouched bowl and dabbing needlessly at her mouth with a paper napkin,
“could have been elected governor. He’s got that much energy. He’s smart, well-read, and interested in everything.”
She smiles at some private memory, and, irrationally, I wonder just how well she knows him.
Still, this is a small town. Bear Creek numbers barely six thousand people and more than half of them are black. Subtract them, the kids, old folks, and women, and there can’t be too many men in her age group.
They couldn’t help being at least acquaintances even if they hated each other.
“How’s he holding up?” I ask.
“His father put on some weight as he got older.”
Angela glances up at a calendar on the GE.
“He runs in the Dallas Marathon every year. He looks good. He stays in shape.”
I finger the roll around my gut and decide against another bowl, though I could eat the whole crock pot.
“It sounds like you keep up with him pretty good,” I say, chagrined by the irritation I’m beginning to feel. God, I’m glad I don’t live here anymore. I haven’t been in Bear Creek two hours, and already my nose is out of joint.
“You know what it’s like here,” Angela says, cheerfully, not issuing a denial.
“You can’t hide anything in Bear Creek. He’s been having an affair with Mae Terry off and on for years, and everybody in town knows it, including Jill.”
“Mae Terry?” I exclaim, my memory kicking into overdrive.
“She’s been in a wheelchair since we were in high school!”
Angela takes my cup for a refill.
“Paul is absolutely crazy about her. It obviously can’t be the sex.”
I study her face, thinking I detected a hint of protectiveness in her voice. For all I know, Angela had just climbed out of bed with him before I drove up.
“Angela, he’s an asshole!” I say, not even bothering to try to hide my hostility. Actually, I’ve kept up with Bear Creek more than I thought I had. Bits and pieces of gossip have made their way to me for years from eastern Arkansas, and I only pretended I wasn’t paying attention.
Though I haven’t heard about Paul’s sex life, I’ve known Jill and Mae forever. Both passed as small town beauty queens in high school until Mae was in an automobile accident her senior year that left her a paraplegic. She was, and is, I guess, the smartest person ever to come out of Bear Creek. Blessed or cursed with a photographic memory and supposedly an un testable IQ, until a decade ago she taught English at
Duke, and then abruptly quit and came home to Bear Creek. I heard stories years ago she had been suspected of major plagiarism and cut a deal to retire with full benefits.
“Jill is cold as Christmas, Gideon. You remember how she was. She could divorce Paul in a second and clean his clock in the process,” Angela says breezily.
“But Sean is only twelve, and she’s afraid he’d choose to go with his father and a judge would let him. Paul takes him practically everywhere with him. Actually, he’s a wonderful father.”