“Congresswoman Spangler is from Wells Creek, Virginia, the next town over, the town where the six boys were sent to school. She was a year behind the graduating class of the Golden Six. Nobody knows what happened—and one heck of a lot a people have asked her—but she got her nose so put out of joint that year that after she graduated from her highfalutin college, she decided to do a hatchet job on the boys. She came back here to Calburn and asked ever’body lots of questions. Ever’body thought she was gonna write a book on how great the boys were, so they told her ever’thing they could remember. But she wasn’t writin’ somethin’ nice; hell, she wasn’t even writin’ the truth. She cut those poor boys to ribbons. She said that ever’thing they ever did was a myth, that they were nobodies and nothing. She even said that she believed that one of the boys had set the bomb in the school so they could fake bein’ heroes.”
For a moment Bailey paused with the tongs in her hand and looked at Violet. This had all happened many years before, yet she seemed to be as angry as though it had happened last week.
“So what happened after the book was published?” Bailey asked.
“Horror, that’s what. Not long after the book came out, one of the boys shot his wife, then himself. His pregnant wife. Another one got on a bus and never came back. And the others were never the same again. It was horrible, what that woman did to them. They’d already had their share of tragedy, I can tell you that.”
Bailey went back to the sink to pick up a tomato while Violet closed her eyes and dragged on her joint. Now is the time, Bailey thought. Her hands were trembling so much that she had to hold on to the sink. Every family seemed to have one
unbreakable taboo, and with her and Jimmie, what she wanted to say now, say out loud, was their biggest secret.
Bailey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Did you ever know a boy in Calburn, born in the late fifties, who had a cleft lip?” There, she thought. It was out.
Violet didn’t so much as open her eyes. “A harelip? Not that I remember, but then I wasn’t here then. I only moved here in 1970.”
Bailey wanted to kick herself. She’d just revealed her biggest secret needlessly.
“Of course, his lip would have been fixed right after he was born, wouldn’t it?” Violet said. Then, before Bailey could reply, the telephone rang.
Violet nodded that the call was from her friend, then stayed on the telephone for quite a while. There was a great deal of personal talk, with Violet asking how the woman’s children were, and listening for several minutes. When she at last got around to asking about the old Hanley place, Bailey listened as hard as she could, trying to hear what was said, but mostly Violet said, “Yes,” and, “I see.” A couple of times she glanced up at Bailey, who turned back to the tomatoes and pretended she wasn’t listening.
At last Violet came to the end of the conversation, and was about to hang up when she said, “Did you ever know a kid in Calburn who had a harelip? He’d be about your age.”
Bailey held her breath while she listened, but all Violet said was, “ ’Bye, and let me know how Katy’s recital goes.”
Slowly, Violet put down the phone, then leaned back on her chair. Bailey knew the woman was waiting for her to ask what her friend had said, but she would die before she did.
“You’re not gonna like it,” Violet said at last.
“Try me.”
“My friend told me a story I’d never heard before, but as I said, I didn’t grow up here. In fact, my friend didn’t hear of it until she was an adult.” Violet hesitated. “You don’t know how to fry chicken, do you?”
Blackmail, Bailey thought. This woman was blackmailing her in return for information. With a grimace, Bailey went to the old refrigerator—how many years had it been since they stopped making round corners?—and opened it. Inside, the freezer compartment was a solid block of frost; the flimsy door had been forced off long ago. On the shelves below were half a dozen plastic containers filled with fuzzy, gray-green substances; the stench was overpowering. With her breath held, cautiously, Bailey reached inside, grabbed a wet plastic bag that contained something looking vaguely like a chicken, and quickly shut the refrigerator door. Inside the bag was a poorly plucked chicken, head and feet still attached. She was not only going to have to cook it, but also remove the pin feathers, then cut it up. “So, tell me, Violet,” she said without any animosity in her voice, “are you the laziest person on earth, or are there other contenders?”
“Ain’t met anybody who can go up against me yet,” Violet said cheerfully as she reached for another joint.
Bailey rummaged in the pantry until she found some potatoes that weren’t rotten and a canister of flour. There were some cans of food also in the pantry, and she carried them into the kitchen and plunked them down on the table in front of Violet. “I take it that calories aren’t a concern of yours,” she said, and Violet snorted in answer. “All right. One lunch for information. What did your friend tell you about my farm?”
“Her great-aunt told her the story, and the aunt said that nobody knew all of it. The farm was owned by a woman nobody in town liked. She had a couple of kids—” Violet halted when Bailey looked at her sharply. “No, none of the woman’s kids had a harelip, nor anybody else that my friend remembered did either. Besides, I think all this at your farm happened a long time ago, too long ago for the dates you want, so those kids had nothin’ to do with the man you’re lookin’ for.” She paused for a moment, smiling smugly at having figured out so much from the little Bailey had told her.
“But anyway, the woman went off for a while and came back married to a man from outside. My friend said she thought he was named Guthrie or something like that. I like a little more pepper on my chicken than that,” she said as Bailey put salt and pepper in the flour to coat the chicken.
“Go on,” Bailey said as she shook more pepper on the chicken.
“My friend—her name is Gladys, by the way—well, Gladys said that the man was a big, hulking giant and kinda simpleminded. She said that when the woman—Gladys couldn’t remember her name—bought the farm, it was a run-down old place, and since the woman had a job in town, it stayed that way for years. But after she got married, her husband brought it back to life. You’ll like this: Gladys said that her aunt told her that the man used to make jams and pickles. She said the general store in Calburn used to sell them.”
For a moment Violet drew on her joint and watched Bailey as she fried the chicken in hot Crisco, then put sliced potatoes in another big cast-iron skillet to fry.
“So what’s the part that I’m not going to like?” Bailey asked.
“Gladys said that she didn’t remember all the details, but her aunt told her that the wife started having an affair with some man where she worked. And when she told her husband she was divorcing him and he had to get off her farm, the poor guy went out into the barn and hanged himself.”
Bailey paused with her tongs aloft. “My barn?”
“That’s the one. Told you you wouldn’t like it.”
For a few minutes Bailey moved the chicken about in the hot oil and thought about that poor man. She’d sensed that someone who truly loved the farm had lived there before her. Through marriage, the man had found a beautiful place where he could grow the things he loved. He’d even been able to sell what he made. But then he’d heard that it was all going to be taken from him by his adulterous wife. And if he was simpleminded, he could never hope to earn enough to buy his own farm. It was an awful story, she thought.