Katie heard a muffled sound coming from the other side of the door. It sounded almost like a sheep bawling.
“Welcome home, Mary,” the black woman said to Aunt Mary. They embraced.
“It’s good to be here,” Aunt Mary said.
Aunt Mary put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “This is Katie,” she said. “Katie, this is Lottie, my good friend.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Katie,” Lottie said in a soft, smooth, Southern way. She knelt down and hugged her. “You’re gonna be real happy here. Real happy.”
Katie heard the sound coming from behind the door again-“ nnggghhaaaaah ”-and looked nervously up at Aunt Mary.
“He knows you’re here,” Lottie said to Aunt Mary. “He’s missed you something terrible.”
“Why don’t you take Katie upstairs and get her settled?” Aunt Mary said. “I’ll look in on him.”
Lottie picked up Katie’s suitcase with one hand, wrapped the other around Katie’s hand, and led her toward the stairs. Katie looked back over her shoulder and saw Aunt Mary disappear into the same room from which Lottie had emerged. She heard the bawling sound again, this time much louder.
“That’s Luke,” Lottie said as they made their way slowly up the stairs. “He’s a special boy. I expect you’ll meet him tomorrow.”
7
“I gave these damned things up a long time ago,” Ray Miller says as he blows a smoke ring toward the night sky and leans against the rail on the deck. “Now look at me.”
Dinner was awkward. Caroline fixed lasagna and salad, and she and Toni chatted while we all downed a couple of glasses of wine. After dessert, Ray stepped outside to smoke, and I tagged along to keep him company. I don’t know how much he had to drink before he came over, but he seems lethargic and distracted. He hasn’t uttered a complete sentence since he walked in the door.
I, too, lean against the rail, not knowing what to say. I know all about the turmoil surrounding his life, but I don’t know whether he wants to talk about it. I finally decide to breach the line.
“So, how are you holding up?” I try to be nonchalant as I search out the Big Dipper to the north. I hear him take a short breath, as though I’ve startled him.
“You don’t want to know,” Ray says. He’s a substantial man, and his voice is a deep baritone.
“Sure I do, Ray. I’m your friend, remember?”
Ray takes a long drag off the cigarette. The smoke rises slowly around his tired face, framing it eerily for a brief moment before disappearing into the darkness.
“We got a foreclosure notice in the mail this afternoon,” he says. “We’re three months behind on the mortgage.”
“Why didn’t you say something? I’ll loan you some money.”
“I appreciate it, but I don’t borrow money from my friends.”
“You’ll pay it back.”
“You don’t understand, Joe. I’m three months behind now. It’s going to be at least another six months before I can get a hearing in front of the board. If I get my license back, which isn’t guaranteed by any means, it’ll take me another six months to get back on my feet. The mortgage is twenty-five hundred a month. You want to loan me thirty grand that I won’t be able to pay back for a year or two?”
“Sure. Caroline has taken good care of our money. I can handle thirty grand.”
“Thanks, buddy,” he says, “but I can’t accept. I just can’t. I wish I’d had your foresight. Saved a bunch of money, you know? God knows I’ve made a lot of it in the past fifteen years. But I grew up with nothing, and I’ve always wanted Toni and Tommy to have the best of everything. Nice home, nice cars, nice clothes, good food. And Christmas? I’m a damned fool at Christmastime. Toni calls me Santa.”
“I know,” I say, smiling at the thought. Ray spends thousands on food and gifts for underprivileged families every year. He donates to churches and welfare organizations. “I’ve seen what you do at Christmas.”
“I’m not that far in debt except for the mortgage, but Tommy’s college expenses ate up almost all of our savings.”
Duke University’s baseball program gave Tommy a scholarship that paid for half of his tuition and his books. But Ray pays the rest: the other half of the tuition, Tommy’s food and clothing, his car and insurance and gasoline, the rent for his apartment, his walking-around money. Ray has told me that it costs him nearly forty thousand dollars a year to keep Tommy in school at Duke.
“If it weren’t for Toni’s job, we’d starve,” Ray says.
I shake my head and sigh. “Amazing, isn’t it? The power that one man can have over another just because he wears an ugly black dress.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed about killing him. I’d like to kill him slowly.”
His tone is ominous. I decide to change the subject.
“Isn’t there anything else you can do for a while? For money?”
“Like what? I’ve been on the front page of the newspaper four times already. Green’s got everybody thinking I’m some kind of criminal, a whack job lurking in the shadows, just waiting for my opportunity to take down the entire system. Nobody around here is going to hire me. Besides, the only thing I know how to do is practice law.”
“I heard about Tommy having to leave Duke.” I look over at Ray. “I’m sorry, Ray, truly sorry.”
Ray’s shoulders slump forward and his head drops. I can hear him breathing slowly in the stillness.
“That’s the worst part of all this,” he says. “The effect it’s having on my wife and son. Tommy acts like it’s no problem. He hasn’t complained, hasn’t said a word about it other than to tell me he knows I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And Toni? Everything good with her?”
“I think it’s beginning to wear on her. I’m not exactly a joy to live with these days, and she loves the house. Losing the house will tear her up. And the thought of her being torn up tears me up.”
I look at him and see a tear glistening on his cheek. He wipes it away with the back of his hand.
“Jesus,” he says. “I’m acting like a child.”
“Don’t apologize. I probably would have fallen on my sword by now.”
Ray turns toward me. His eyes lock on to mine briefly, then drop toward the ground.
“Do you remember a couple of years back?” he says, his head still down. “I think you’d just started at the DA’s office. Judge Glass had charged Sheriff Bates with contempt over something stupid, and your office refused to prosecute. Didn’t you handle that in court?”
I remember it vividly. Judge Ivan Glass, the cranky, seventysomething judge, was presiding over an afternoon hearing two years ago when a question arose about a policy at the sheriff’s department. Judge Glass told a bailiff to telephone Sheriff Leon Bates and order him to come to court to testify and clear up the matter. Sheriff Bates politely told the bailiff he was busy. Judge Glass told the bailiff to call back and tell the sheriff if he didn’t come to court immediately he’d be charged with contempt. The sheriff told the bailiff to tell the judge to kiss his biscuits, and the judge filed the contempt charge. When the day came for the hearing, I went into court, and on behalf of the district attorney’s office, told Judge Glass he had no authority to order the sheriff into court, that the charge had no basis in law or fact, and that the district attorney’s office refused to prosecute the case. The courtroom was packed with Bates’s political supporters, and Judge Glass was forced to back down and drop the charge against the sheriff.
“Yeah, I handled it,” I say.
“I hate to ask you, but what are the chances of your doing the same thing for me? I have to go in front of the son of a bitch on Monday.”
“Who? Judge Green?”
“Plea deadline on the contempt charge. All you’d have to do is go in there and say the DA’s office refuses to prosecute. It’s a bullshit charge and everybody knows it.”