I turned my face up toward the top of the tree and cut Mrs. Roosevelt a dirty look. I was happy to still be a part of the world of the living, but I’d gone to a fair amount of trouble to get myself to my sycamore tree—no, walnut tree, thanks to dumb-ass Richmond—so I could pass in peace. Now it looked like it was all for nothing.
I looked around and saw my sycamore tree about fifty yards away, as twisted and beautiful as ever.
Richmond saw where I was staring. “You want to go over there?”
“I don’t think so. It appears I won’t be dying just yet. Let’s go back to the hospital. If we’re lucky, we might make it before James gets back. If he finds out about this, I might die on schedule after all.”
Richmond chuckled.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I was you. After James is done with me, he’ll want a piece of you, too.”
“Well then, we’d better get a move on.” Richmond got up on one knee and then bent and scooped me up from the ground.
“Really, Richmond, I don’t think you have to carry me. I can probably walk, if you help me.”
He began to climb down the hill with me in his arms. “No, no, you’re as light as a feather,” he lied, grunting with every step.
“You know, Richmond, I see why all the women love you so much. You talk a bunch of shit, but you make it sound good.” I wrapped my arms around my accomplice’s thick, muscular neck and enjoyed the bouncy ride.
Over Richmond’s shoulder, I smiled up at my mother in the walnut tree. She gazed back at me, looking as pleasantly surprised as I was to see me leaving this place alive. Then I focused my attention on that bothersome Eleanor Roosevelt, who had caused me so much concern and vexation throughout the year. I wanted her to know, before Richmond carried me out of sight, that she might have had me worried, but she never had me scared.
I balled my hand into a fist and shook it at Mrs. Roosevelt. And, just before Richmond and I reached the tall reed grass at the back end of Mama’s garden, I shouted as loud as my hoarse throat would let me, “I was born in a sycamore tree!”
Chapter 38
My first Sunday back at the All-You-Can-Eat came three weeks after I didn’t die beneath my tree. The restaurant was packed. Every chair in the place, except the ones waiting for James and me, was occupied. And from the unusual amount of trouble even skinny James had squeezing between the patrons, it seemed to me that Little Earl had added some tables to the dining room to handle the increased numbers.
As we made our way through the crowd, folks greeted me like I’d just returned from the battlefield. Erma Mae rushed up to me and kissed me on each cheek. Ramsey Abrams hugged me—a little too tight and a little too long, as usual. Florence Abrams shook my hand and contorted her face into that wince she believed was a smile. Every step we took, somebody stopped me to say how glad they were that I was on the mend. People had done the same thing when I’d returned to church that morning, and I have to admit I was flattered by the attention.
When we finally got to our window table, I took my seat between Clarice and Barbara Jean. James sat down at the men’s end of the table, and we both launched into conversations with our friends.
It was like things had never changed, and it was completely different at the same time. Clarice, bold and braless in a gauzy, shapeless white dress that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in six months earlier, was still the most dedicated gossip I knew. But, courtesy of the Unitarians, she wasn’t so filled up with fury now that every story or observation had to have a bite to it. And Barbara Jean was as beautiful as ever in a pearl-gray dress from her new toned-down and sobered-up collection, but she had a way about her that said maybe her soul was truly at peace for the first time in all the years that I’d known her.
I could hear the usual sports talk coming from the other end of the table. But they’d shuffled up things a bit there, too. Richmond had moved over one chair and now sat in the space that Lester