in his lapel. ‘I’m getting elected head of the vestry today.’
He doesn’t envy Wade, but in a way he envies Wade. ‘Pop would be proud.’
For a second there, his staid younger brother shows a gleam of the old Wade sparkle. ‘Pop would be astounded.’
Where he hasn’t smiled in days, Walker breaks wide open in a grin. Put it to the lazy morning, the sunshine, the fact that soft as he is, tubby and out of shape, his baby brother cleans up real nice. And unlike his older brother, Wade Pike is happy now. ‘OK then, enjoy.’ Walker starts the motor.
‘I thought you were waiting for a guy.’
‘I am. But he said if he didn’t show up by ten, I should look for him in front of the Fort Jude Club.’
Wade says, ‘We don’t open until noon.’
‘We?’
His brother grins that insider’s grin. ‘I’m the next Commodore.’
‘Well, look at you.’ Walker takes off the hand brake and lets the car roll an inch or two, to let Wade know that talking or not, he has to go. ‘Better step back, you don’t want to crud up your suit.’
‘Noon sharp. For the champagne brunch.’ Even though the car’s moving, Wade sticks his head in the window to add, ‘When we all get out of church.’
‘Bye, Wade.’ Walker pulls away gradually, so his brother has time to jump aside. When he comes around the block again he sees Wade handing Jessie into that shiny Explorer he likes so much, What is it with these people and big cars. Jessie has the pocketbook with matching shoes today, Manolos, he thinks, take that, motherfuckers. He sees that for Morning Prayer at the Fort Jude Episcopal Cathedral, his childhood friend from Pierce Point is elegant and subdued in silk. He also sees that Jessie’s body is sexy as ever and every man in that church will know it, no matter how carefully she pins up the front of her staid little dove grey wraparound dress, but nothing will come of it. They are, after all, in church.
He is struck by the way ritual keeps these people in place. Dates marked on every monthly calendar. Everything by the book.
Watching the Explorer go, Walker marvels at how sweet this is.
He loves this town in spite of itself because in Fort Jude at least, for some people, Sunday mornings are boring and predictable because the core society works hard to keep everything in place. They set store by ritual. The inevitability of certain things. People here rely on the power of shared history, ceremony and the continuity of the seasons to reinforce and support them, beginning with Buccaneers and Gators games in the fall and the Chamber of Commerce Harvest Festival on through the Christmas debutante ball and January Superbowl parties, relying on the predictability of meetings and fundraisers, cocktail parties and dances to keep them in place until baseball season starts for the Devil Rays and members gather for the big Easter egg roll at the Fort Jude Club, the first big event of the spring. In a subtropical city with no autumn, no dreary winters to mark the seasons, Wade’s friends use these events to signify the time of year as surely as church bells remind them that it’s Sunday again.
The Pikes’ position in this tight society was always marginal, predetermined by birth and signified by their location, clinging like sandspurs to the sandy tip of Pierce Point. His parents were peripheral personnel that the inner circle of Fort Jude might recognize on sight, but wouldn’t know, because in this town there are people you know, and people you don’t need to know. Walker saw it in the way they looked at him when he got off that school bus at Northshore, and if Wade wants to change that? Fine.
When Wade Pike goes out now, they all know him. He’s one of the invited. The society tells him who he is, even as each occasion tells him what to do. The Fort Jude his brother fits into so smoothly is a complex living organism, a self-contained, self-sufficient unit, but it’s nothing Walker wanted, then or now.
It took Wade years to slip into the stream where he flows along with the others, serene and comfortable, perfectly safe. No matter what hopes or doubts or what burden of dread or private grief keeps pace with them, on Sunday mornings these people get up and dress nicely and go to church, where they can sit or kneel under colored light filtering