Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“We’re making a documentary.”

“A documentary on what?”

“The agrarian culture of the South. Small-town hospitality and that sort of thing. You’ll probably see it as a short in your local theater. Are you from close by?”

“I live in southwest Houston.”

“Just visiting, huh?”

“I have a family member in a retirement home here. Why do you want to photograph me in front of an old run-down store?”

He held up his camera and looked through his lens, pushing up the brim of his panama. “You’re photogenic. The wide-brim flowered hat is perfect. So is the light. Do you mind?”

“I’m not sure. Who did you say you were?”

“Jack Valentine. I’m with Castle Productions.”

“Castle Productions? I never heard of it.”

“It’s a forgivable sin,” he said.

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt anything.”

She heard him clicking the shutter, advancing the film by pushing a lever with his thumb, moving quickly from one angle to the next. “Wonderful,” he said. “Now turn your head toward me. No, don’t turn your body, just your head. Look straight at me. That’s fine. You must have done this before.”

“Not often.”

“I’m going to bring the Bolex over here. I just want you to walk back and forth on the porch. We’ll be recording, too. I’ll ask you a couple of questions. Say whatever is on your mind. Smile, look gloomy, pout, whatever you feel like.”

He was going too fast for her. “You’ll bring the what?”

“The sixteen-millimeter. You put me in mind of Miss Garland. The same smile, the same freshness, the same country-girl innocence. See? You’re blushing.”

“Judy Garland? That’s silly.”

“I worked with her on two pictures. What’s your name?”

“Linda Gail Pine.”

“Are you married, Miss Linda?”

She realized with a flush of guilt that she had been hiding her left hand and her wedding ring in the folds of her dress. “My husband is Mr. Hershel Pine. He’s from a plantation family in Avoyelles Parish. He’s president of the Dixie Belle Pipeline Company.”

“If he doesn’t object, we’re going to get you on film.”

The black man turned off the compressor. “It’s a dollar thirty-two for the gas, ma’am. You can pay inside. Right now you’re ready to go.”

She stared at her car, and at the molten redness of the sun, and at the cinnamon-colored dust that was rising into the sky like a veil obscuring all the mysteries she should have been privy to. The smell of herbicide made her eyes water. The workers in the fields were still chopping with their hoes among the cotton plants even though the hour was late. Then she realized these were not ordinary workers. They were convicts, and their warders were picketed on the edge of the field, dressed in khaki, mounted on horseback, each armed with a shotgun he rested across the pommel or butt-down on his thigh. The words Hershe

l had said to her days ago were as audible inside her head as if he were standing five inches from her ear: We just cain’t live as high up on the hog as we thought, hon. It’s not so bad. Worst comes to worst, we can live at my folks’ place till Weldon and me get on our feet again.

“The windows are thick with dust,” she said to the black man. “Please wash them. In fact, throw a whole bucket of water on them.” She turned to the man with the pencil-line mustache. His eyes were blue-green, the color eyes she imagined a Spanish buccaneer would have. “Will there be any remuneration for these pictures?”

“Quite possibly,” he answered.

She touched at her brow with the tip of her handkerchief and tilted up her face so it caught the sunset. “I’m at your disposal, sir.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, on our pipeline right-of-way south of Beaumont, I smelled alcohol on Hershel, the boilermaker variety, heavy levels of it deep down in the lungs and the blood and the lining of the stomach. It was six-thirty A.M., the sun not over the trees, the air still blue, ground fog billowing out of the woods. He was smoking a Camel, turning his face to exhale, as though protecting me from the smoke. His eyes were as rheumy as broken eggs.