or I would have been inconsolable. Mother was ecstatic. She has sported a new Lincoln every five years since then. The latest one—baby blue with white leather seats, was a mere four months old when the ramshackle, mud-spattered farm truck broadsided us at the corner of Harrison and Oak streets.
“Damn it, Mother! Didn’t you see that stop sign?”
“I most certainly did! But I stopped twice back there for that silly squirrel. How many times do I have to stop in one block?”
I shook my head in bewilderment rather than answer her in the mood I was in, and tried to open my door. I pushed and pulled, but even though the truck had bounced back after the impact, I was unable to budge the door an inch.
“Get out, Mother.”
“The manual clearly states that the driver should always remain in the car after an accident unless the vehicle is in immediate danger of another collision or fire,” she pontificated.
“Get out of the bloody car, please.”
“Really, Paisley, watch your language! I know you’re under some stress. I don’t like being involved in a traffic accident either, but…”
“Being involved? You caused the accident! And I can’t open my door. Please let me out!”
“I cannot believe you wish to flout the rules by exiting the car before the authorities arrive.”
“Mother!”
“Very well, then, if you insist on rebelling.”
As she opened her door, she noticed for the first time the crowd that had gathered to watch our predicament.
“Oh, dear! Paisley, where is my handbag? Is my makeup on straight?”
By the time I finally got us out of the car, Andy Joiner and his deputy chief of police had arrived. They took one look at the mess of metal and chrome that had been Mother’s pride and joy and promptly arrested all three Mexican laborers in the other vehicle.
“But, Andy,” I argued heatedly, “the accident wasn’t their fault.”
“She’s quite right for once,” agreed Mother. “I was trying to avoid hitting one of God’s smaller creatures, and I’m afraid I was too distracted to remember to stop at the corner.”
“Sorry, Miz Sterling. But I have to take them in. There’s not a valid driver’s license between the three of them, and I’m almost positive what little documentation they do have is fake. Besides, one of them was drinking a beer. There’s a law against drinking alcohol in this county.”
“Then you’d better hurry on out to the Country Club. It’s just about time for cocktails.”
“Don’t be cheeky, Paisley.”
“It’s true, Mother, and you know it. This whole town is in on the secret. I guess you only get arrested for drinking if you’re too poor to hire one of the lawyers that gets drunk at the Rowan Springs Country Club every night.”
“That’s quite enough, dear,” whispered Mother in my ear. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
“Well, damnit! It’s just not fair. Those poor guys probably haven’t got a pot to pee in, and we come barreling along in your fancy car to ruin their day and maybe even get them deported.”
I watched as Andy’s deputy handcuffed the three men and pushed them roughly into the back seat of the police cruiser. The Mexicans weren’t a pretty sight. They had obviously been working in the tobacco fields all day. Their clothes were sweat-stained and dirty, and they all were in need of a shave and a haircut. I thought I would see my outrage mirrored in their faces, but instead they seemed only weary and resigned to their fate, as though being hauled off to prison were not a new experience for them.
“Looks like we’d better call a tow truck for your car, Miz Sterling. I can drive you home when Jimmy returns with the cruiser, if you don’t mind waitin’,” offered Andy.
Under the gentle insistence of their Chief of Police, the crowd gradually dispersed. Once they were gone, and Mother no longer felt like she needed to put up a front, she sank gratefully into the backseat of her ruined car and closed her eyes.
“Mother, are you okay?” I asked in alarm. “You weren’t hurt were you?”
“No,dear. Only my pride is a bit wounded. You were quite right to chide me. It was my fault. I was driving carelessly. And now look at my beautiful car.”
I knew better than to think she would cry outside the confines of her own bedroom, but this was as close to it as she would come. I slid in beside her.
“Never you mind,” I said, patting her hand. “The car will be as good as new before you know it.”
“Am I getting too old to drive, Paisley? Tell me the truth. Am I getting senile?”
“Senile? You?”
I started laughing. I guess it was the reaction setting in from the accident—hysteria perhaps—but I laughed until my sides were hurting, and my mother was about as mad as she ever gets. She looked at me with fire in her eyes and whipped out her makeup mirror. Once she was assured that every silver-white hair was neatly pulled back into the soft French twist and the makeup was perfect on her patrician features, she climbed out of the car and went into the drug store to call the town’s only taxi. When it came, she left without even waving goodbye.
When Jimmy returned with the cruiser, he supervised the towing of the Lincoln so Andy could take me home.
“Sorry ’bout you havin’ to ride in the back, but it’s the law,” Andy apologized. “Hope it doesn’t smell too bad back there.”
“It is a mite rank,” I admitted. “Those men, how long will you keep them in jail?” I asked, trying not to breathe too deeply.
“I’ll have to run a check on them. See if any of them have a sheet. And we’ll have to look into those bogus-looking papers.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you worry about those guys, Paisley. I’ll see they get a fair shake; but if they’re here illegally I’ll have to send them back. You know that, don’t you?”
I sighed and lifted the hair off my forehead. I didn’t have time to dry it before we left for town and now the auburn curls were tangled and messy. I had stuck a rubber band in my jeans pocket before we left the house. I pulled it out to make a pony tail and promptly dropped it in the seat.
“Damn!”
“What’s that, Paisley?”
“Nothing, I just…never mind, I found it.”
I pulled the hair off the back of my neck, vowing once again to have a haircut in the immediate future, and looked at the other object my searching fingers had encountered. It was a small, well-worn, silver medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe—the patroness of Mexico. I knew then that somehow I would have to help those men. They were a long, long way from home and friendless. I knew what that was like. I, too, had once been a stranger in a strange land.
Chapter
