was dozing in her chair. Joe Black and I were tiptoeing through the den when she raised her head.
“Joe, dear, don’t go yet. I have one more bit of business to ask you about. Tommy, will you go get that pie from Orene and put it in Joe Black’s car so that it won’t spill?”
When I came back, Joe Black was sitting on the ottoman, leaning in toward Bebe, talking in a very low voice. I could make out only a few words of what he was saying: “two ex-wives . . . goes to Las Vegas . . . circuit solicitors don’t make that kind of money.” Bebe arched her eyebrows. “Must have some powerful good credit.”
As I walked Joe Black to his car, I said something about appreciating his work on my behalf. “I really don’t know why you’re taking on all this trouble.”
He pulled a pure white handkerchief from his back pocket, bowed his head, and coughed into it. When he looked at me again, he wore a wistful smile and his cloudy blue eyes were wet. He leaned his head toward Bebe’s den and nodded slowly at me. “Son, I been in love with that girl in there since I was eight years old. I do anything in the world for her before she goes. Ya understan’? Anything.”
8
Marvin and I went into Eden Rise on the first Saturday morning after Jackie’s funeral for the simple reason that I needed a haircut. Crepe myrtles lined the four sides of the town square. A few water oaks, several dogwoods, and a big magnolia were scattered on lush Bermuda grass. Some azaleas clustered here and there, but their flowering days were almost over for this year. The local garden club had made sure that pink roses and yellow day lilies and some red cannas colored this June morning, along with a multi-colored bed of marigolds in the open area near the center of the square. The square’s man-made improvements were a couple of long benches and a monument to the Confederate soldier, armed and facing northward—awaiting as always the return of General Wilson’s raiders.
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