A Light in the Window (30 page)

He awoke with a start, crying out, and saw Barnabas looking at him with alarm.

In the dream, he’d been standing on the site of Hope House, where Buck Leeper had been seriously hurt. The wound above Buck’s knee lay open to the bone; blood soaked his pants and was spreading upward to his shirt.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe away the image of the nearly mortally wounded man whose face he had not seen but whose suffering had been palpable.

He had never been one to try and sort out the meaning of dreams, as a dog might worry a bone. He wanted to put it out of his mind, at once.

It was a half hour before the alarm would go off, but he got out of bed and took a hot shower, scrubbing his head more vigorously than usual, as if to drive out the image of the worst dream he’d had in a very long time.

“I ain’t seen you in a month of Sundays,” said Percy, who looked up from the grill.

“I’m having breakfast with Dooley these days.”

“Th’ boy gets you for breakfast, your house help gets you for lunch, an’ I ain’t open for supper, so there’s that.” Percy was hurt.

He grinned sheepishly. If ever you got on the good side of Percy Mosely, he would make you feel wanted and needed, no matter how big a scoundrel you turned out to be. Why, indeed, had he stayed away so long when the Grill was his favorite medicine?

“Where’s Velma?”

“Waitin’ on your buddies over there.”

He turned and saw Ron Malcolm and Buck Leeper at the table by the window. The dark pall of the dream settled over him again. He noticed Velma was standing by the table like a stone, her order pad poised.

“Howdy,” said J.C., as he slid into the back booth.

“How’s it going?”

“You ought to get you some of this gravy,” said the Muse editor, who had ordered biscuits and gravy, sausage patties, two fried eggs, and grits.

“And have a stroke before I hit the sidewalk? No thanks, pal.”

Mule came up to the booth and slapped him on the shoulder. “Where in th’ heck you been? Slide over. I been lookin’ through th’ obituaries to see if I could trace you.”

“A lot going on. Glad to see you. How’s business?”

“Slow as molasses. How’s yours?”

“Steady.”

It was a comfort to be back.

He could cook rings around Percy’s eggs, but Percy’s grits were another matter. While his own grits could be a dash watery, Percy’s had a good, firm texture and were yellow with butter. He hadn’t recently tasted anything so satisfying. And no wonder. For two mornings in a row, he’d weakened and had fried bologna with Dooley.

“Hope you haven’t been eatin’ your own cookin’ all this time,” said Mule, who tucked into an omelet with a side of livermush.

“Bologna two mornings in a row. The obituaries missed me by a hair. What’s new?”

“The Presbyterians are raffling off th’ Cadillac this month, but they’re doin’ it at the Legion Hall, to keep it ecumenical,” said J.C.

“Aha.”

“The school got a new flag, one that flew at the White House, and the Mixed Chorus is going to sing on Thursday while they raise it.”

“I heard about that. Dooley’s singing.”

“Rodney Underwood caught somebody climbin’ out th’ back window of th’ Collar Button. The burglar ran off, but they nabbed two suits of clothes, a sack of underwear, a dress shirt, and a fancy umbrella.”

“Keep this up, I won’t have to buy a paper on Monday.”

“This,” said J.C., “is old news. Already run in the paper last week. I figured you hadn’t read it. If you’re lookin’ for new news, buy Monday’s
Muse.”

“A poet and don’t know it,” said Mule. “Did you hear about ol’ Miz Cranford goin’ off to visit her daughter and asked Coot Hendrick to watch her house?”

“Didn’t hear about that.”

“Came back and Coot and his biggest boy had washed it. Top to bottom. Borrowed every ladder they could get hold of.”

J.C. was not a pretty sight when he laughed with his mouth full.

“I don’t get it,” said Father Tim.

“Coot thought she said wash ’er house, not watch it.”

“Um,” murmured the rector.

“You had to be there,” said Mule. “You know Joe Ivey’s down sick with th’ flu ...”

“Uh oh. I needed to walk up there this morning and get a haircut.”

“You’re lookin’ a little shaggy, all right. It’s hangin’ over your collar.”

“That bad, is it?”

Mule peered at him over his glasses. “A good time to step over and see Fancy.”

The rector ducked his head and buttered his toast.

“She cut J.C. last week.”

The rector inspected J.C., who turned red.

“He looks the same to me.”

“Well, that’s the beauty of it,” said Mule. “You go to just any jack-leg, and you come out lookin’ like a total stranger. Go to a professional and you come out lookin’ like yourself.”

The rector grinned. “So, you’re going the unisex route, J.C.?”

“I hope to God you won’t spread it around that I went to a beauty shop. Dadgummit, Mule, I asked you to keep that to yourself.”

“All I’ve told is the preacher, here, hope t’ die,” said Mule.

Father Tim roared with laughter.

J.C. sopped his plate with the last crust of toast. “I ought t’ stop comin’ in this place ...”

“Twenty percent off for clergy,” Mule assured him. “That’s five more’n what you get in Wesley, plus you burn gas runnin’ over there, not to mention th’ potholes from all th’ bad weather that’ll take your hubcaps off, plus your exhaust pipe. About a two hundred dollar run is what you’d have, not includin’ th’ tip.”

“How long can the flu last? I can get by another day or two.”

“Yeah, but Joe just took sick. He’ll probably be down for a couple of weeks. You know Joe. He won’t barber with the flu.”

Puny Bradshaw sprang instantly to mind. She was the one for the job. She could trim him up in no time.

“I’ll think about it,” he lied. Actually, J.C. did look different, after all. He appeared as if he might be wearing bangs.

“Slide in,” J.C. said to Ron Malcolm, who walked up to the booth. “I’m leavin’. Some people in this town have to work.”

“I’m bustin’ out of here, too,” said Mule, who stood up and took his meal check. “Listin’ a new house. Speakin’ of which,” he said to the rector, “how’s that good-lookin’ woman I slipped in next door to you? Haven’t seen her around.”

“Living in New York for a while.”

“I got him a neighbor and a half,” Mule told Ron. “Nicest pair of legs you’d ever want t’ see.”

Mule Skinner had no qualms about taking full credit for an act of providence, thought the rector. All he’d done was handle some paperwork on the little yellow house, which was deeded to Cynthia by her uncle’s estate.

Velma came around with the coffeepot. “It’s me again,” said Ron, looking sheepishly at Percy’s wife. “I’ll take a fresh cup, if you don’t mind.”

Velma grunted and stomped away.

“She’s sour as milk about Leeper. Any friend of his is an enemy of hers.”

“What now?”

“Same old, same old. He’s short with her, demanding, kind of high and mighty. She’d like to stab him with a fork.”

“I had a horrifying dream about him last night. An accident on the job. Terrible, haunting.”

“Worst that ever happened to him is he lost two fingers. One off each hand, a matched set, he says. You ever notice?”

“Our social exchanges have been pretty hasty. No, I didn’t notice. What about his family? A wife? Kids?”

“No kids. Three wives. I won’t go into what happened with the last one. I promise you don’t want to know, and it sure didn’t sweeten his temper any.”

“Where does he live? What does he find to do around here?” Velma set Ron’s coffee on the table, with two packages of Sweet ’N Low. “There you go,” she said tersely.

“Rents the old Tanner cottage, remember it? Go to the end of Church Hill, take the right that goes off in the woods. The cottage sits down in there. Pretty secluded. Beats me what he does. Not much, probably, after the kind of days he puts in. Somebody told me he used to do models, maybe of airplanes, I don’t know.”

“You said he hits the drinking pretty hard.”

“Bottom line, it’s not known to interfere with his work. Same way with his daddy for a lot of years, then it got him.”

“What’s his poison, anyway?”

“Vodka. Straight up.”

The rector whistled.

“I have to tell you,” said Ron, “there’s something about him I like. Nope, I’m not condoning his social behavior, but there’s something in the man ... kind of like that little piece of nut you can’t quite get out of the shell, even with a pick. Just that little piece stuck in there, somehow, that’s all right.”

“How’s the job coming?”

“The weather poked a hole in us, but Buck’s got it back on line. I tell you, he’s the best in the business. If his ol’ daddy hadn’t kicked his butt so hard when he was a kid ...”