no reason to believe they’d parted company. Still, there are some people you just don’t expect to come across in an old friend’s living room.
Mama said, “Eleanor ain’t good for much these days—can’t be, the way she drinks and carries on—but she’s got a real knack for knowin’ who’s about to go.”
I whispered, “Well, tell her she’s likely to have a long wait. Lester’s been kicking at death’s door for more than ten years, but it never opens up for him.”
Clarice and Richmond came in burdened with yet another ham, and Clarice was immediately set upon by people eager to tell her how they had loved her piano playing at the service. After she escaped her admirers, Clarice came to the table and passed her ham to Lydia. Mama moved away then, presumably to tell Big Earl, who had wandered off somewhere with Miss Thelma, that the ham count was up to eight. Clarice saw the fountain in the living room and groaned. “Would you look at that? What that woman has done to this house is a crime.” She stopped herself; her good upbringing wouldn’t allow her to go on an anti-Minnie tirade in the woman’s own home an hour after Minnie’s husband had been put into the ground.
We filled our plates and joined Barbara Jean, Lester, and James in the living room. When we got there, Lester was complaining that the blinking light in the fountain’s pool was beginning to give him a headache. “Probably a loose bulb. Wouldn’t take but three seconds to fix.” I expected Barbara Jean to warn Lester away from any notions he might have had about fixing the underwater light in the fountain. It would be just like Lester to splash around in that water and come up with some sort of microbe that landed him in the hospital for a week.
But Barbara Jean was staring at something else. Her eyes were locked on the picture window and on the crowd gathered around Minnie out on the porch. Something she saw there caused a look to come over her face that was a mixture of amazement and terror. I was certain for a moment that I wasn’t the only person in the room newly able to see ghosts. Slowly, like she was a puppet being hauled upright by tightening strings, Barbara Jean began to rise from her chair. In her trance, she didn’t seem to remember that she had a plate of food on her lap and I had to lunge and grab the plate before it slid onto the floor.
Clarice saw me snatch the plate from the air and asked, “What’s going on?”
Then we looked to where Barbara Jean’s gaze was focused, and we both understood. There, among the circle of cinnamon and mahogany faces surrounding Minnie on the front porch, was one white face. It was a face I recognized, one that I never thought I’d see again. Almost thirty years had passed since Clarice and I had last laid eyes on him, but we both knew it was Chick Carlson. His black hair was streaked with gray and he was thicker around the waist now. But he had just grown out of boyishness when he’d left Plainview, so that wasn’t a surprise. Even from where I sat, I could see the pale blue of his eyes and see that he was, in middle age, a mature version of the beautiful kid Clarice had proclaimed “King of the Pretty White Boys” on the day we got our first look at him in 1967. Barbara Jean and Chick had loved each other deeply and foolishly, the way only young people can do. And it nearly killed them both.
As Chick leaned over to take Minnie’s hand and offer condolences, Barbara Jean, wobbling a little on her red high heels, stepped away from us and toward the front window.
Then things got crazy.
A loud noise in the room drew everyone’s attention. It was a kind of a low-pitched “whoop,” like the short, insistent bark of a large dog. After that, there was a loud pop and the lights went out. It was still midafternoon and plenty of light came in from the windows, but the sudden dimness made people gasp anyway. Then we heard a series of thudding noises, another barking sound, and a splash.
Lester stood next to me now. His best black funeral suit was sopping wet and his sleeves were rolled up. He said, “I was just trying to fix that damn light