(a teacher’s pet wannabe if there ever was one) also stayed to help out, and the work was done in half an hour. I thought of going to Al’s or Billy’s house to play guns or something, but I knew they’d want to talk about the Terrible Sermon and how Mrs. Jacobs had gotten herself and Morrie killed because she was shitfaced drunk—a rumor that had indeed gained the credence of absolute fact—and I didn’t want any part of that, so I went home. It was an unseasonably warm day, our windows were open, and I could hear my sister and my mother arguing.
“Why can’t I come?” Claire asked. “I want him to know at least some people in this stupid town are still on his side!”
“Because your father and I think all you children should stay away from him,” my mother said. They were in the kitchen, and by now I was lingering outside the window.
“I’m not a child, anymore, Mother, I’m seventeen!”
“Sorry, but at seventeen you’re still a child, and a young girl visiting him wouldn’t look right. You’ll just have to take my word for that.”
“But it’s okay for you? You know Me-Maw’ll see you, and it’ll be all over the party line in twenty minutes! If you’re going, let me go with you!”
“I said no, and that’s final.”
“He gave Con back his voice!” Claire stormed. “How can you be so mean?”
There was a long pause and then my mother said, “That’s why I’m going to see him. Not to take him a meal for tomorrow but to let him know we’re grateful in spite of those terrible things he said.”
“You know why he said them! He just lost his wife and son and he was all messed up! Half crazy!”
“I do know that.” Mom was speaking more quietly now, and I had to strain to hear because Claire was crying. “But it doesn’t change how shocked people were. He went too far. Much too far. He’s leaving next week, and that’s for the best. When you know you’re going to be fired, it’s best to quit first. It allows you to keep a little self-respect.”
“Fired by the deacons, I suppose,” Claire almost sneered. “Which means Dad.”
“Your father has no choice. When you’re no longer a child, you may realize that, and have a little sympathy. This is tearing Dick apart.”
“Go on, then,” Claire said. “See if a few slices of turkey breast and some sweet potatoes make up for the way he’s getting treated. I bet he won’t even eat it.”
“Claire . . . Claire-Bear—”
“Don’t call me that!” she yelled, and I heard her pounding for the stairs. She’d sulk and cry in her bedroom for awhile, I supposed, and then get over it, the way she did a couple of years ago when Mom told her fifteen was absolutely too young to go to the drive-in with Donnie Cantwell.
I decided to hustle my butt into the backyard before Mom left with her special-made dinner. I sat in the tire swing, not exactly hiding but not exactly in full view, either. Ten minutes later, I heard the front door shut. I went to the corner of the house and saw Mom walking down the road with a foil-covered tray in her hands. The foil twinkled in the sun. I went in the house and up the stairs. I knocked on my sister’s door, which was graced by a large Bob Dylan poster.
“Claire?”
“Go away!” she shouted. “I don’t want to talk to you!” The record player went on: the Yardbirds, and at top volume.
Mom came back about an hour later—a pretty long visit just to drop off a gift of food—and although Terry and I were in the living room by then, watching TV and jostling each other for the best place on our old couch (in the middle, where the springs didn’t poke your bum), she barely seemed to notice us. Con was upstairs playing the guitar he’d gotten for his birthday. And singing.
• • •
David Thomas of Gates Falls Congo was back for a return engagement on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The church was once more full, maybe because people wanted to see if Reverend Jacobs would show up and try to say some more awful things. He didn’t. If he had, I’m sure he would have been shut up before he got a running start, maybe even carried out bodily. Yankees take their religion seriously.
The next day, Monday, I ran the quarter mile from