Don’t forget to check the temperature of the chicken.” It was the third time this morning Kyla had reminded me. I guess she saw how focused I was on grading exams.
She was scrambling to leave for Sunday School. Common to both of us was the habit of forcing too much into too little time. Sometimes it worked, often it didn’t. Kyla had risen a little later than normal, but had already made a trip to Walmart, fed and watered the goats, replaced a set of white lights on the Christmas tree, baked a cake, and put on a whole chicken in the crock-pot for today’s lunch. Her hair was only half-dry as she tucked her Bible under her arm and headed for the front door. “Anything else I need to do?” I said, trying to look like a team player, though truthfully, I was enjoying being a professor again.
“Turn it to ‘Warm’ when it reaches 160 degrees.” Sis rolled her eyes and shook her head as she backed through the opened door onto the front porch. “And you can set the table before I return.”
“Yes, ma.” Kyla’s religious beliefs were a mystery, but she leaned toward some form of supernatural being, maybe even the Christian God. She seemed especially interested in Dr. Mork’s prayer prediction although I’d argued it was a post hoc fallacy: if B follows A, it doesn’t mean A caused B. Now, I didn’t know why I’d shared the doctor’s opinion or been verbally critical of his response.
Lillian was half-dozing in a Lazy Boy while listening to Pandora on her iPhone. I was glad she was using her earphones.
Three hours ago, I’d taken over the den and kitchen, arranging one-hundred three bluebooks neatly, by class, along the leather couch. Bluebook #6719 was at the opposite end of the table; a B minus earned by one of thirty-eight students in my Torts II class. I was now reviewing #4382, which had to be Jodie Allison’s almost incomprehensible scribblings. Although Dean Waters had granted my request to alter the end-of-semester exam and grading procedures (normally, exams are taken on computer and the professor reviews and grades them without knowing the student’s identity), Jodie’s awful penmanship was a megaphone, slowly, clearly, and loudly announcing every syllable of her name.
My teaching colleague Lea had called at 4:30 Friday afternoon and announced her and Steve had packed and shipped the hundred and five blue books an hour after they administered the last exam. Fed-X had delivered the package to Kyla’s before dark yesterday afternoon while Lillian and I were at her house, for the second time since the hospital released her from ICU a week ago.
I returned to Jodie’s (aka, #4382) poor penmanship but par excellence for legal analysis. This Grafton, West Virginia native had grown up with three strikes against her but was inspiring despite her stubbornness. By third grade, the school had identified her as learning disabled and placed the awkward child in special classes. Truth was, Jodie suffered from writer’s cramp and chose not to do any work that required the use of a pencil. Bored, she began reading every book offered by the library in her small and pitifully poor hometown. By age 14, she’d used cunning and shamelessness to misrepresent her age and earn her GED. How at 15 (and after one semester at Pierpont Community College in Fairmont, WV) she’d won a four-year scholarship to Yale was still a mystery. However, Jodie’s near-perfect score on her LSAT was clear-as-day proof why she’d been admitted to the law school. I’d learned a lot about her as a faculty adviser and had somehow convinced her to seek medical care. Jodie suffers from hand dystonia, which causes excessive muscle contractions in the hand and arm. Thankfully, after six weeks of arguing, I’d persuaded her to enroll in a long-term occupational therapy program. Unfortunately, it was too early to tell if penmanship improvements were on the horizon.
I placed an A+ at the top of #4382’s first essay and glanced at Lillian. To my surprise, she was looking straight at me. I returned her smile and slid my chair backwards. Given my mental trip to West Virginia, I needed to stay focused on my grading. Then, I remembered how close I’d come to losing the most important person in my life.
It was now December the twentieth, eight days since they had released Lillian from ICU. As far as we knew, she was doing well. The only noticeable change from her pre-injury status was her frequent naps. This had worried me the first few days after her discharge but now seemed natural and harmless since otherwise she was the same wild and crazy woman I’d fallen in love with.
Speaking of mysteries and injuries, the Etowah County investigators had refused to bring charges against Ray Archer. After interviewing Lillian last Tuesday, they concluded there was insufficient evidence to connect Ray to her injury. Their hypothesis was that a two by four board with an attached L-shaped piece of angle iron had fallen and struck Lillian’s head. Prior to falling, the board hung horizontally across the barn’s ceiling. Somehow, like the closing of a hinge, the end pointing to Cox Gap Road had fallen, hitting Lillian on the side of the head as the board completed its journey, ending in a vertical position against an interior wall. It was the weirdest coincidence I’d ever encountered, making me think it wasn’t. I stood, took three strides to Lillian, and knelt beside her chair, wishing Sherlock Holmes was real and currently applying his enormous mental skills to this deeply troubling mystery.
I clutched her right hand with both of mine and kissed her fingertips. “Have I told you this morning that I love you?”
“Two times, not counting that one.” She lowered her footrest and pulled my head forward. “I’m not complaining,” she whispered as our lips met. It seemed Lillian’s injury and recovery had affected me more than her. I was now a full-blown romantic: more touchy, talkative, and embarrassingly clingy than I’d ever been with Rachel. My discovery of intimacy had to be the product of brushing against the near loss of the sensuous Lillian.
I was still feeling guilty for not going with her and Jane last night to Gadsden. It was the first time we’d been apart since her release from the hospital. I should have joined their shopping and worshiping adventure. Jane had broached the idea, saying it would do Lillian good to go to church and express her thankfulness for her new lease on life. And the shopping would be like icing on the cake.
My left leg was cramping, so I stood and pulled a chair from the dining room table and nestled it close to Lillian’s Lazy Boy. “Don’t forget to give me the receipt.”
She reached to the end table to her left and snatched a slip of paper. “Two hundred thirty-eight dollars and forty-two cents, including taxes and shipping.”
“When should they arrive?” After Lea had called late Friday updating me on the bluebooks, I’d realized I’d forgotten to buy her and Steve a thank-you/Christmas gift. Lillian had suggested HoneyBaked of Rainbow City, relaying that their hams and turkeys had been her choice for the past ten years.
“Tuesday. Even though you paid for overnight shipping. They won’t process your order until tomorrow.”
“Thanks again for taking care of me.” I’d given my debit card to Lillian and insisted she buy Lea and Steve each a turkey and a ham, and another ham for our own Christmas dinner at Harding Hillside. Lillian had taken Kyla’s cooler and a few icepacks and left our ham protected in Jane’s trunk as the two attended a revival service at First Baptist Church in Gadsden. The evangelist must have been long-winded since it was after nine when Lillian walked through the front door with notable sadness on her face.
Now I looked into Lillian’s eyes and saw the same sadness. “What’s wrong, you’ve seemed distant since you returned last night?” I had a feeling I knew the answer. It had everything to do with how I felt. No doubt we brought it on when she helped buy my airplane ticket. We were at her place in Sardis when I reviewed my To-Dos in Evernote. It was a practice I’d let slide since coming to Alabama. I’d seen the one instructing me to buy Lea and Steve a gift. Thankfully, Lillian had the answer to that. Then, I’d seen the task I’d dreaded and subconsciously postponed: the purchase of a plane ticket heralding my departure from Alabama and the woman I loved. I’d used Lillian’s laptop to purchase a Delta one-way ticket to New Haven, departing Birmingham at 2:50 PM on Friday, January the 29th. That date seemed like a semester away, but in the grand scheme of things, the forty-one days would pass like a single sunset.
A lone tear rolled down Lillian’s right cheek. She glanced at me and lowered her footrest. “I can’t stand it. Lee, how long are we going to postpone the inevitable?” I knew what she was talking about. One of us had broached the subject several times since her release. Each time it had been after we’d made love and were lying in her oversized bed in her undersized bedroom.
“You know I’m against you staying in Boaz while you wait for the divorce proceedings to end. That’s why I wanted to purchase two tickets.” I didn’t care if Lillian ever divorced. During the days she was in a coma, I discovered how truly important she was to my very existence. I wanted us together forever, and I intended to make that happen.
“Ray will be in jail before you leave town. I’ll be safe for the few weeks it takes to settle everything. By spring at the latest, I’ll be knocking on your door.” Lillian was exuding her self-confidence.
I thought differently. “You can be so naïve. Why not come with me and deal with the legal wrangling from a distance?” We both stood at the same time.
“I need more coffee and you need to get back to grading papers.” Lillian reached toward the end table for her mug and headed to the coffeemaker beside the sink. I reluctantly returned to my bluebooks.
I mumbled under my breath, “what you need is glasses,” before attacking Jodie’s response to essay question #2.
Before I could absorb three paragraphs of the brilliant student’s near-incomprehensible scribbling, Lillian’s half-scream (a high pitch, ‘oh’) brought me to my feet. She had wandered to the kitchen counter closest to the front door. Her hands were outstretched, holding onto the edge of the countertop. Something was wrong. Was she having a stroke? A heart attack?
Thankfully, in two seconds I learned she was reading yesterday’s Sand Mountain Reporter that Kyla had retrieved from the mailbox earlier this morning and had laid, along with a stack of bills and junk mail, at the end of the counter. “This better be good for the scare you gave me.”
“Read this.” Lillian pointed to an above-the-fold article titled, “Hikers Discover Two Bodies in Dekalb County.” To the right of the text was a bird’s-eye view of a map where the bodies were found. The artist had identified and labeled several locations in the small town of Valley Head, including Valley Head Baptist Church. Each location was to the west of the heavily forested discovery area.
I stood beside Lillian, who was ready to turn the page and read the rest of the article on page 9. “Hold on. Let me catch up.” The first sentence declared the moderately decomposed bodies of two men related to a puzzle local law enforcement were trying to solve. The article didn’t disclose their names but did share those matching tattoos across their lower backs pointed to the same two men from Guntersville who’d been missing for over a week. Before I motioned Lillian to flip the pages, the journalist reported that a 2015 pickup truck found a week ago by a St. Clair County Sheriff’s deputy at Horse Pens 40, a nature park in Steele, Alabama, was likely owned by one of the men. “I’d bet they know more than their sharing.”
“How so?” Lillian said, turning to page 9.
“This article is too aggressive. Better put, the newspaper wouldn’t have announced a connection between these two events—the bodies in Dekalb County and the missing truck in St. Clair County—unless they had confirmed these facts with the investigative agencies.” I tried to think of a way to learn more. I’d always heard and believed the Sand Mountain Reporter was a first-class operation, one with outstanding journalistic integrity.
Lillian seemed to read my mind. She flipped back to page 1. “Nick Lancaster. That’s Stella Newsome’s brother.”
“Uh?” I quickly answered my question when I noticed who’d written the article.
“Jane and Stella are good friends. Maybe she could get us an inside view. I’ll call Jane.”
“Not yet. Flip back to page 9. Let’s see what else Nick has to say.” I couldn’t help but think of what Jane had told me in the hospital’s dining room a few minutes before Lillian had awakened from her coma. Jane had followed Ray to Dogwood Trail and waited. Later, she’d seen him turn right onto Cox Gap Road with his Suburban pulling a flatbed trailer. On it was Buddy’s jacked-up pickup. Before continuing our reading, Lillian and I exchanged looks. Without words, our expressions were clear. We both were confident Ray had killed Buddy and Billy.
“Ray was transporting more than Buddy’s truck. If Jane was being truthful, Ray had killed the brothers at the farm and was moving them to what he thought was their eternal resting place.”
“Like he did Sharon Teague and Kyle Bennett.” I said, sick of the man’s horrendous brutality. Almost as bad was the vivid reminder that he and Lillian had shared a bed for half a century.
On page 9, Nick was even more aggressive. He described a third piece of the puzzle: Sheriff’s deputies had discovered several incriminating items inside Buddy and Billy’s travel trailer. The two had rented space from the State Park in Guntersville for over three years. A nephew had become suspicious when his uncles disappeared. He had attempted to find them, including calling their cell phones, visiting The Shack, the restaurant where they both worked, and finally, breaking into their camper. Inside, he’d discovered a sizeable amount of cash and two paperbacks describing the process of remotely starting a fire.
Nick was thorough. He even answered my question, why would the nephew disclose his findings? There were two reasons. One had to do with the campground’s manager who’d threatened to call the police after being tipped off that a burglary was in process. The second reason, probably the most important, was that the nephew was a preacher. “Though tempted, God gave me strength to do the right thing,” was a direct quote by Nick.
After Lillian and I read the full column on page 9, she repeated her “oh,” thankfully not as loud as the first one, and added a “my goodness.”
“What now? What’d I miss?” I was feeling guilty over the misuse of my grading time.
“The preacher, Alex Mandy, last night at the revival. He’s the nephew, Billy and Buddy’s nephew.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s highly unlikely.”
“Hear this before you walk out that limb.” Lillian refolded the newspaper and returned to the coffeemaker. Without looking back at me, she said. “Last night, before the evangelist started preaching, he asked the congregation for prayer. He shared that his two uncles had gone missing, and their bodies had recently been discovered. He said they’d been murdered. At the end of his sermon, Mr. Mandy returned to the subject of his uncles saying that as far as he knew, the two had never accepted Christ as savior, and now it was too late. There were four people in the congregation who responded to the evangelist’s end-of-sermon altar call. Two said Jesus saved them.”
All I could say was, “it’s a small world,” before returning to the bluebooks.
The Pencil Driven Life 