Richard’s question went unanswered. The eighteen-wheeler changed the subject. The semi’s blowout rendered the rig helpless and the trailer section plowed into the Honda’s passenger side. From the frenetic action inside the cab, the truck driver was doing a valiant job, but he lost the good fight. The eighteen-wheeler smeared Richard’s car across the freeway and drove it into the median.
Richard awakened in a hospital bed. Molasses-thick memories trickled back into his consciousness. Progress was slow. He tried to move but he only managed to move his head.
Suddenly with the intensity of a thunderbolt, he remembered and began to cry. The accident had left him a quadriplegic, but he wasn’t crying because he was incapacitated for life. He was remembering what Michelle had said to him the day after the accident.
“We’ve all decided,” she said. Standing on either side of her, Ted and Eleanor nodded and smiled. “There’s no point in buying a second home, Mom and Dad can live with us. They will look after you while I’m at work. Just think, honey, we can all be one big happy family. It’s the safest solution too. Did you know there were two murders near their home last night?”
SEWING CIRCLE
“The only Jew in town,” Morris said as Laney pulled into the church parking lot.
He pointed to the stained-glass window cut into the middle of the belfry. It looked expensive, more than a little country church could afford. Jesus smiled down from the window, arms spread in welcome and acceptance.
“The story’s about the sewing circle, not the church,” Laney said.
“Jesus as a ragpicker. Was that in the Bible?”
“You’re too cynical.”
“No, I’m just a frustrated idealist.”
Morris rubbed his stomach. He’d gone soft from years at a desk, his only exercise the occasional outdoor feature story, usually involving a free meal. He’d given up the crime beat, preferring to do the “little old lady in the holler” stuff, the cute little profile features that offended no one. Still, the fucking quilt beat was the bottom rung on the ladder he’d started climbing back down a decade ago.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Laney said. She was the staff photographer, and true to her trade, she managed to keep a perspective on things. Cautious yet upbeat, biding time, knowing her escape hatch was waiting down the road. For Morris, there was no escape hatch. The booby hatch, maybe.
“‘Fun’ is the Little League All-Stars, a Lion’s Club banquet where they give out a check the size of Texas, a quadriplegic doing a power wheelchair charity run from the mountains to the coast. But this”-he flipped his notebook toward the little Primitive Baptist church, its walls as white as pride in the morning sun-”Even my Grandma would yawn over a sewing circle story.”
“You can juice it up,” Laney said as she parked. She always drove because she had two kids and needed the mileage reimbursement. All Morris had was a cat who liked to shit in the bathtub.
“That’s what I do,” he said. “A snappy lead and some filler, then cash my checks.”
Though the checks were nothing to write home about. He’d written home about the first one, way back when he was fresh out of journalism school. Mom had responded that it was very nice and all but when was he getting a real job? Dad had no doubt muttered into his gin and turned up the sound to “Gunsmoke.” They didn’t understand that reporting was just a stepping stone to his real career, that of bestselling novelist and screenwriter for the stars.
They headed into the church alcove, Laney fidgeting with her lenses. Morris had called ahead to set up the appointment. He’d talked briefly to Faith Gordon, who apparently organized the group though she wasn’t a seamstress herself. The sewing circle met every Thursday morning, rain, shine, flood, or funeral. Threads of Hope, the group called itself. Apparently it was a chapter of a national organization, and Morris figured he’d browse the Web later to snip a few easy column inches of back story.
The alcove held a couple of collection boxes for rags. Scrawled in black marker on cardboard were the words: “Give your stuff.” Morris wondered if that same message was etched into the bottoms of the collection plates that were passed around on Sundays. Give your stuff to God, for hope, for salvation, for the needles of the little old ladies in the meeting room.
“Hello here,” came a voice from the darkened hallway. A wizened man emerged into the alcove, hunched over a push broom, his jaw crooked. He leaned against the broom handle and twisted his mouth as if chewing rocks.
“We’re from the Journal-Times,” Morris said. “We came about the sewing circle.”
One of the man’s eyes narrowed as he looked over Laney’s figure. He chewed faster. “‘M’on back,” he said, waving the broom handle to the rear of the church. He let the two of them go first, no doubt to sweep up their tracks as he watched Laney’s ever-popular rear.
The voices spilled from the small room, three or four conversations going at once. Morris let Laney make the entrance. She had a way of setting people at ease, while Morris usually set them on edge. His style was fine on the local government beat, when you wanted to keep the politicians a little paranoid, but it didn’t play well among the common folk in the Appalachian mountain community of Cross Valley.
“Hi, we’re with the paper,” Laney said. “We talked to Faith Gordon about the circle, and she invited us to come out and do a story.”
Five women were gathered around a table, in the midst of various stitches, with yarn, cloth scraps, spools of different-colored threads, and darning needles spread out in front of them.
“You ain’t gonna take my picture, are you?” one of them asked, clearly begging to be in the paper. That would probably make her day, Morris thought. The only other way she’d ever make the paper was when her obituary ran. She was probably sixty, but had the look of one who would live to be a hundred. One who knew all about life’s troubles, because she’d heard about them from neighbors.
“Only if you want,” Laney said. “But a picture makes the story better.”
“We just thought the community would be interested in the fine work you ladies are doing,” Morris said. That wasn’t so bad, even if the false cheer burned his throat like acid reflux.
“If Faith said it was okay, that’s good enough for us,” said a second woman. She was in her seventies, wrinkled around the eyes, the veins on her hands thick and purple, though her fingers were as strong as a crow’s claws. “I’m Alma.”
“Hi, Alma,” Morris said. He went from one to another, collecting their names for the record, making sure the spelling was correct. You could miss a county budget by a zero, apply the wrong charge in a police brief, and even fail to call the mayor on Arbor Day, and all these mistakes were wiped out with a Page 2 correction. But woe unto the reporter who misspelled a name in a fuzzy family feature.
Alma Potter. Reba Absher. Lillian Moretz. Daisy Eggers. The “other Alma,” Alma Moretz, no immediate relation to Lillian, though they may have been cousins five or six times removed.
“Just keep on working while I take some shots,” Laney said. She contorted with catlike grace, stooping to table level, composing award-quality photographs. The janitor stood at the door, appreciating her professional ardor. He was chewing so fast that his teeth were probably throwing off sparks behind his eager lips.
“So, how did you ladies meet?” Morris smiled, just to see what it felt like.
“Me and Reba was friends, and we’d get together for a little knitting on Saturdays while our husbands went fishing together,” Alma Potter said. “They would go after rock bass, but they always came home with an empty cooler.”
“God rest your Pete’s soul,” Reba said.
“Bless you,” Alma said to her.
Morris glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty column inches to go, plus he had to knock out a sidebar on a weekend bluegrass festival. All with the Kelvinator looking over his shoulder. Kelvin Feeney, Journal-Times editor and all-around boy wonder, a guy on the come who didn’t care whose backs bricked the path to that corner office at the corporation’s flagship paper.