Lenora had quit sobbing by then. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m pregnant with your baby.”
He held out his hands, heaved a sigh. “That’s part of it, the book says, not understanding. But you think about it. How could I be the daddy? I’ve never touched you, not once. Look at you. I’ve got a wife sitting at home that’s a hundred times as pretty and she’ll do anything I ask, and I do mean anything.”
She looked up with a dumbfounded expression on her face. “You’re saying you don’t remember all the things we did in your car?”
“I’m saying that you must be crazy to come into the Lord’s house and talk such trash. You think anyone’s gonna believe you over me? I’m a preacher.” Jesus, he thought, standing there looking down at this red-nosed, sniveling little hag, why hadn’t he just held out and waited until the Reaster girl came around. Pamela had proved to be the finest piece he’d had since the early days with Cynthia.
“But you’re the father,” Lenora said in a soft, numb voice. “Hasn’t been nobody else.”
Teagardin looked at his watch again. He had to get rid of this wench fast, or his whole afternoon was going to be ruined. “My advice to you, girl,” he said, his voice turning low and hateful, “is you figure some way to get rid of it, that is, if you even are knocked up like you say. It would just be some little bastard with a whore for a mother if you keep it. If nothing else, think of that poor old woman who’s raised you, brings you to church here every Sunday. She’ll die from the shame of it all. Now you get on out before you cause any more trouble.”
Lenora didn’t say another word. She looked at the wooden cross hanging on the wall behind the altar, then stood up. Teagardin unlocked the door and held it open, a scowl etched on his face, and she walked past him with her head down. She heard the door quickly close behind her. Though she felt faint, she managed to walk a couple hundred yards before she collapsed under a tree a few feet from the edge of the gravel road. She could still see the church, the one she had gone to all her life. She had felt the presence of God there many times, but not once, it occurred to her now, since the new preacher had arrived. A few minutes later, she watched Pamela Reaster come up the other end of the road and go inside, a look of happiness spread across her pretty face.
That evening, after supper, Arvin drove Emma to the church for the Thursday night service. Lenora had pleaded sick, said her head felt like it was splitting open. She hadn’t touched her food. “Well, you don’t look good, that’s for sure,” Emma said, feeling the girl’s cheek for fever. “You go ahead and stay home tonight. I’ll have ’em say a prayer for you.” Lenora waited in her bedroom until she heard Arvin’s car start up, then made sure Earskell was still asleep in his rocker on the porch. She went out to the smokehouse and opened the door. She stood and waited until her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She found a length of rope coiled in a corner behind some minnow traps and tied a crude noose on one end. Then she moved an empty lard bucket over to the center of the small shed. She stepped up on it and wrapped the other end of the rope seven or eight times around one of the support beams. Then she hopped off the bucket and closed the door. It was dark in the shed now.
Stepping back up on the metal bucket, she put the noose around her neck and tightened it. A trickle of sweat ran down her face, and she caught herself thinking that she should do this out in the sunlight, in the warm summer air, maybe even wait another day or two. Perhaps Preston would change his mind. That’s what she would do, she thought. He couldn’t have meant what he said. He was upset, that’s all. She started to loosen the noose and the lard bucket began to wobble. Then her foot slipped and the bucket rolled away and left her dangling in the air. She had dropped only a few inches, not nearly enough to break her neck clean. She could almost touch her toes to the floor, just another inch or so. Kicking her legs, she grabbed hold of the rope, tried her best to raise herself up to the beam, but she didn’t have enough strength. She tried to yell out, but the choking sounds wouldn’t carry beyond the shed door. As the rope slowly squeezed her windpipe shut, she became more frantic, clawing at her neck with her fingernails. Her face turned purple. She was vaguely aware of urine running down her legs. The blood vessels in her eyes began to burst, and everything got darker and darker. No, she thought, no. I can have this baby, God. I can just leave this place, go away like my daddy did. I can just disappear.
37
A WEEK OR SO AFTER THE FUNERAL, Tick Thompson, the new sheriff of Greenbrier County, was waiting at Arvin’s car when the boy got off work. “I need to talk to you, Arvin,” the lawman said. “It’s about Lenora.” He had been one of the men who helped carry her body out of the smokehouse after Earskell saw the door unlatched and found her. He’d been called to a few suicides over the years, mostly men, though, blowing their brains out over some woman or a bad business deal, never a young girl hanging herself. When he’d asked, right after the ambulance pulled away that evening, Emma and the boy both said she had actually seemed happier lately. There was something about it that didn’t add up. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep all week.
Arvin tossed his lunch bucket in the front seat of the Bel Air. “What about her?”
“I figured it might be best to tell you instead of your grandmother. From what I hear, she’s not taking things too good.”
“Tell me what?”
The sheriff took his hat off, held it in his hands. He waited until a couple of other men walked by and got in their vehicles, then cleared his throat. “Well, hell, I don’t know how to say it, Arvin, other than just say it. Did you know Lenora was carrying a baby?”
Arvin stared at him for a long minute, a puzzled look on his face. “That’s bullshit,” he finally said. “Some sonofabitch is lying.”
“I know how you must feel, I really do, but I just came from the coroner’s office. Though ol’ Dudley might be a drunk, he ain’t no liar. Near as he can figure it, she was about three months along.”
The boy turned away from the sheriff and reached in his back pocket for a dirty rag, wiped his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, struggling to keep his upper lip from quivering.
“Do you think your grandmother knew?”
Shaking his head, Arvin took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, then said, “Sheriff, my grandma would die if she heard that.”
“Well, did Lenora have a boyfriend, someone she was seeing?” the sheriff asked.
Arvin thought about the night, just a few weeks ago, when Emma had asked that same question. “None that I know of. Hell, she was the most religious person I ever seen.”
Tick put his hat back on. “Look, here’s the way I see it,” he said. “Ain’t nobody has to know about this but you, me, and Dudley, and he won’t say nothing, I guarantee it. So we’ll just keep it quiet for now. How does that sound?”
Swiping at his eyes again, Arvin nodded. “I’d appreciate that,” he said. “It’s been bad enough everyone knowing what she did to herself. Hell, we couldn’t even get that new preacher to—” His face suddenly grew dark, and he looked away toward Muddy Creek Mountain in the distance.
“What is it, son?”