in hopes of finding out how to get a roof leak repaired.” I check the driveway again, lean around my visitor, and look toward the cemetery. How did this man get here?
The dog moves a step closer, seeking to make friends. I know it’s against protocol to touch service animals, but I can’t help myself. I succumb. Among all the other familiar things I miss about California are Raven and Poe, the tabby cats who kept me in their employ before I moved. They, along with various human helpers, maintained the new and used books store where I worked for a little extra money, which mostly went back into books, anyway.
“Can I give you a ride to town?” I ask, although I’m not sure where I’d put Mr. Walker and his rather hefty sidekick in the Bug.
“Sunshine and I’ll sit here and wait for my grandson. He’s gone on over to pick us up some Cluck and Oink barbecue for the drive back to Birmingham. That’s where Sunshine and I make our place, these days.” He pauses to ruffle the dog’s ears and receives a wag of supreme adoration. “Had my grandson drop me here, so I could pay respects to my grandmother.”
He nods toward the graveyard. “Thought I’d walk over here and give my regards to Miss Retta, too. She was sure a friend to me after I stumbled in my ways—the judge was, too. Told me, ‘Louis, you better go be a lawyer or a preacher, because you like to argue your case.’ Miss Retta was the judge’s helper, you know. Many a wayward youngster, they took under wing. I spent a great deal of time on this porch, in my earlier years. Miss Retta helped me with my studies, and I helped her keep up the garden and the orchard. That garden saint still there by the steps? Nearly broke my back getting that thing in here for her. But Miss Retta said that statue needed a home after the library took it down. She never could turn her back on a need.”
I cross the porch and look into the oleander bushes and, indeed, encased in overgrown ivy and leaning against the wall, rests some sort of statue. “There it is, I think.” A sense of wonder strikes me, unexpectedly. My flower bed holds a sweet little secret. Garden saints are good luck. I’ll trim back the oleander when I get a chance, fix things up a bit for the old fellow.
I make plans in my head as Councilman Walker tells me that if I want to know anything about anything in Augustine, including how and where to secure help with a leaky roof on a Sunday, I should proceed forthwith to the Cluck and Oink and speak with Granny T, who will be at the counter now that church has let out. My rental house, he says, is most likely owned by someone in the Gossett clan. This land was part of the original Goswood Grove plantation, which once stretched almost all the way to the Old River Road. Miss Retta sold the land back to Judge Gossett years ago to finance her retirement, but was allowed to live out her days in the house. Now that the judge has passed away, someone will have inherited this particular parcel.
“You go on about your business,” he says as he settles on my porch swing with Sunshine at his feet. “If you don’t mind, we’ll wait here. We’re not bothered by the weather, us two. Into every life a little rain must fall.”
I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Sunshine or himself, but I thank him for the information and leave him there in his coat and rain hat, his face turned toward the graveyard, his countenance undampened by the weather.
The rain does not seem to muck up the spirits at the Cluck and Oink, either. The tumbledown building, which sits on the highway at the far edge of town, looks like the result of an unholy mating between a cow barn and an old Texaco station, surrounded by their spawn of portable storage sheds of various sizes and vintages, some attached, some not.
The low-slung porch along the front is crowded with waiting customers, and the drive-through line,