Book of Mercy Page 2

  She unfolded the map, propped it against the steering wheel, and stared at it in confusion.

  After a few moments, Ryder said, “Uh, you know you’ve got it upside down, right?”

  Antigone rotated the map. “Sure, just getting a different perspective.” The boy gave her a skeptical look. More moments passed with her studying the map and him studying her.

  Ryder cleared his throat. “You expect those eggs to come to us?”

  Antigone turned, edged the sunglasses down, and peered over the top at her new navigator. “Okay, Mr. Bigshot Map Expert.” She shoved the map at him. “You find the nearest restaurant.”

  Ryder checked the road sign Antigone had been unable to read, traced one road then another on the map with his finger, and announced, “Left.”

  Antigone patted the stone in her pocket to make sure she turned in the correct direction and pulled out of the parking lot.

  AT THE TRUCK STOP, Ryder glared at the fat truckers stuffing their faces with greasy hash browns. The pretty woman sitting across from him was attracting way too much attention. He sat straighter, junkyard dog alert, staring down anyone who even thought of approaching. They were in a booth by the window—her idea, not his. The waitress took his plate, cleaned as if he’d licked it, and delivered the bill with a frown. “Just put it on the table,” Ryder said softly. She glanced at Antigone and then slid the check on the table. When Ryder continued to stare at her, the waitress harrumphed and swished away, swinging her polyester hips.

  His eyes went back to Antigone. He studied the woman, arm propping up her head, snoring into a plate of cold scrambled eggs. There were shadows under her eyes, which he remembered were green-brown. She’d bunched her streaky blonde hair up in a half-ponytail, half-bun, one of those weird styles girls accomplished with a twist of the hand. Her fingers were slender, but her nails were short, no polish.

  She’d tossed her wallet and keys on the table between them. He could slide them over his way without anyone being the wiser.

  Instead, he sat there, for hours—watching over her.

  Chapter 2

  The Ban of the Month Club

  THE APRIL MEETING OF the Mercy Study Club convened in Irene Crump’s solarium, a room ablaze with rich sunlight, understated elegance, and female resolve. Here seventeen women—dressed in silk designer suits and heels—changed lives. This room, with its ceiling fans stirring air while manicured hands stirred gold spoons in demitasse cups, was command central.

  The Study Club was a book club, a support group, and a force to be reckoned with. While their husbands struck deals over lunch in clubs still dominated by white males, their wives held on fiercely to their own pockets of power. When the need arose, these hothouse blooms could shake loose an amazing amount of cash and clout. They got what they wanted without breaking a sweat, raising a voice, chipping a fingernail, or bothering with official channels. Mercy was a one-industry North Carolina town of less than five thousand in danger of shrinking into oblivion. The textile mill was taking a beating from imports.

  The Study Club’s projects were invaluable to the community—the removal of asbestos in the high school; the fire department’s new hoses and uniforms; monthly contributions of canned goods to the local food bank. Any member could bring a need to the group. A majority vote determined action.

  On this unusually warm day, with the sun cooking the Jaguars, Mercedes, and SUVs parked outside her house, Irene was coolly determined. She was club president, program chair, and commander in chief. With a jerk on her silk jacket hem and an unconscious straightening of her spine (an action hot-wired into her body by a mother obsessed with posture), Irene brought the group to order. “I’ve been volunteering two mornings each week at the high school library. And it has been quite an eye opener. Librarian Nancy Sandhart has her hands full. The attitudes of today’s youth are appalling, and as we all know, Nancy is not exactly a dominant personality. In short, I found the library itself lacking in control and its contents nothing short of questionable.”

  Irene upended a Nieman Marcus shopping bag and poured books onto the ornate tile floor her contractor husband Arthur had special ordered from Italy. The befuddled members of the Study Club stared at the mound of literature. They were familiar with many of the books; some like Faulkner and Twain had been around when they were in high school. Other books such as the Harry Potter series looked new and were favorites of their children and grandchildren.

  Irene nudged the pile with the toe of her black Prada. “Our children have complete and unrestricted access to this filth. Nancy makes no attempt to guide the young and impressionable toward more appropriate reading. She says she’s too busy.”

  “Nancy buys these things?” asked seventy-six-year-old Arabella Richey, wrinkling her nose with distaste at a book about the adventures of a character called Captain Underpants. Arabella, wife of the bank president, was a mystery junkie and not ashamed to admit it.

  “Apparently, they come out of the library’s budget. Many were requested.”

  “People asked for this?” Arabella poked the underpants book with her cane.

  “The children did.” Irene swept her hand across the pile. “In effect, ladies, we paid for them. This is our tax dollars at work.”

  Several members looked at the heap in consternation.

  “How can you be sure they’re all filth?” asked a soft voice. Irene turned to Julie Masterson Clark, a thirty-five-year-old who sneaked romances into her shopping cart at the grocery store. Their daughters were on the same soccer team. Julie’s grandmother founded the Mercy Study Club in 1919 as a place “where women of intelligence and culture could shine, keep abreast of the events of the day, and exercise their minds.” Julie’s mother had been a past president and a respected member until her death five years ago.

  “Have you read any of them?” Julie asked.

  “I’ve perused all of them,” Irene snapped. “I also consulted some librarians I know in other towns. And I found tons of information on the Internet. I even read some of those blogs. Most of those people are idiots, but a few were insightful.”

  “Obviously, you’ve done your research, Irene, as usual,” said Arabella, popping a petit four into her mouth, whole. The woman was scrawny, not a muscle left in her pampered body, but she could pack away French pastry like a sumo wrestler.

  Irene balanced a pair of half-moon reading glasses on her nose and opened a dainty and expensive leather journal. In it was a nutshell description of every book in the pile. As she read the description of a book, she roamed the room, pulling books from the pile and tossing them at the feet of the members. Members scooted away as waves of “filth” edged closer and closer to their well-shod toes.

  “The Stupids Step Out,” Irene said. “Describes families in a derogatory manner and might encourage children to disobey their parents.”

  Arabella huffed in disgust. “That’s an absurd name for a family, fictional or otherwise. What if Tolstoy had called her Anna Idiot instead of Anna Karenina?”

  Arabella got no argument from Irene, who constantly fought the battle for eloquent language with her own children. She thought “suck” should be something you did with a straw, not a description of your homework. She continued, “Forever by Judy Blume. Contains profanity, sexual situations, and themes that allegedly encourage disrespectful behavior . . . Personally, I don’t want my daughter reading any of Blume’s books.

  “Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. One California library gave students copies of the book with all the ‘hells’ and ‘damns’, pardon my French, blacked out.”

  “Not a bad idea, if you ask me,” said one member.

  “I agree,” Irene said then went on to the next book. “A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them . . .”

  Irene paused for dramatic effect, watching the other members of the Study Club shift uncomfortably in their seats. She was a forty-five-year-old woman married for twenty year
s to a man who liked to get his way. She was also the mother of a sixteen-year-old son who thought he was smarter than she and a seven-year-old daughter, who, like her father, tended to bulldoze her way to her desires. In a family of power brokers, Irene had learned the value of controlled silence.

  Julie cleared her throat and attempted a half-hearted smile. “Irene, surely when you were a child, you too hated doing the dishes.”

  Irene peered over her glasses at Julie. “We had a maid for that. Even so, there is never an excuse to take a hammer to the Wedgewood.”

  Julie looked to the others for help. Several members refused to meet her gaze. “But, Irene, some of these are classics—Faulkner, Steinbeck, Twain.”

  Irene shoved William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying under Julie’s nose. “Masturbation and abortion.”

  She pushed John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath toward Julie. “Takes the name of the Lord in vain. Repeatedly.”

  At Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Irene sighed. “Where do I start? It’s a challenge magnet. I think they ought to replace the N-word with the word slaves, just like that professor suggested.”

  Mary Sue Hampton, a mother of five who refused to allow even her three-year-old to interrupt her afternoon reading time, sliced the tension in the room. “What is it you think we should do, Irene?” Forty-year-old Mary Sue was known to take a scalpel straight to the heart of a situation. She had time management down to a science. She made schedules of piano recitals, ballet lessons, and soccer games on her personal laptop computer, printed out copies, and posted them weekly in the kitchen, bathroom, and children’s rooms. She was a born CEO and could easily have taken over her father’s successful textile business.

  Irene sat, tugged at the hem of her already neat jacket, and crossed her long, slim legs. Patting her hair, which was never mussed, she announced: “I think we have to ban.” A soft gasp went up from the group. “Remove them from circulation—permanently. At the very least, they should be weeded from general circulation and stored safely on reserved shelves. Where they can be controlled.”

  “You mean checked out only with parental permission,” Julie said.

  Mary Sue pressed her lips together in thought. “This is a serious action.”

  “This is a serious issue,” Irene retorted.

  Julie stuttered, “This-this is censorship.”

  “Pornography is judged by the standards of the community,” Irene reasoned. “And we are the community. We set the standards. If your mother were alive today, she would agree with me.”

  Julie reared back, as if slapped. Irene personally believed that the Masterson family gene pool had gotten watered down when it came to Julie. Irene wanted to shake her and scream: “Snap out of it. You come from doers not whiners.”

  Arabella huffed. “I agree with Irene. As it says in Proverbs, ‘Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it.’ My goodness, we can’t have children running around with primers on how to cast spells and make babies. I won’t allow those Potter books in my house, and I had to take a Harlequin away from my thirteen-year-old granddaughter the other day. Thirteen and already a head full of sex. Things are getting out of hand.”

  Irene turned to Julie as if to say, “See?” and was surprised to find Julie had recovered. Her chin was lifted, and there was something close to determination in her eyes. Maybe there was a streak of her mother in her after all. “My mother would never have climbed on this bandwagon.” She stared down Irene. “She knew when something smelled rotten, just as I do. Whatever happened to free speech? Americans don’t censor.”

  “We don’t torture either,” Irene said. “But sometimes there are bigger issues at stake.”

  “A bigger issue than freedom?” Julie exclaimed. “We protect speech so people can get the information they need to make decisions, so they can participate in change, so they can have a say in their own lives.”

  “So, you put the rights of some sleazy pornographer over protecting your own children,” Irene said.

  Julie’s mouth snapped shut. Then she turned pleading eyes to the group. “Of course not, but . . .”

  “Then you agree we have to control offensive literature,” Irene said.

  “No.”

  Irene flung up her hands. “Then which is it, Julie? Make up your mind.”

  Julie seemed to shrink in her seat. She studied the hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  Sensing victory, Irene leaned forward. “Julie, someone has to protect the children.”

  “Yeah,” Julie muttered, “from us.”

  Irene sat back. She was about to launch another salvo at Julie, when Mary Sue interrupted, “Do you have a plan, Irene?”

  “Of course,” Irene pulled her stare away from Julie and faced Mary Sue with a smile. “It’s simple. We just instruct Nancy Sandhart to take the books off the shelf.”

  “Just like that,” Mary Sue said with skepticism.

  “I am the president of the school board. But I think it can be done quietly—like all of our projects. I believe Nancy will be cooperative. She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman eager to invite confrontation—or attention.” Irene thought of the nervous woman who sneaked smokes in the women’s rest room. Last year Nancy was caught smoking in the teachers’ lounge—four times. The principal, who had a stern policy about maintaining a tobacco-free campus and about teachers setting an example for students, warned Nancy that if he caught her smoking on school property again, she would be suspended without pay. While volunteering, Irene had learned about all of Nancy’s little hiding places, the cigarettes stuffed in the back of her bottom desk drawer and stashed behind the dusty old slide projector in the supply room.

  “Yes, I’m sure Nancy will be delighted to help us.” Irene grinned.

  Mary Sue gave a curt nod. “Then I call for a vote.”

  “Wait!” Julie cried. “We must discuss this . . .”

  But there was no further discussion by the Mercy Study Club. Its members voted: fourteen for and three against. The motion carried. Satisfied, Irene smoothed the lapels of her jacket. “Then it’s agreed. I’ll contact Nancy today and give her our list.”

  As the Study Club filed out of Irene’s spacious home, Irene closed the massive front door behind them. She leaned against the solid oak wood. Turning her eyes to the foyer’s impressive cathedral ceiling, she recalled the words of her mother, who often had implied that they—the O’Connells—might be related to the Kennedys (another good Irish Catholic family). “The Kennedys always accepted that with great privilege came great responsibility. Something we must remember, Irene.”

  Irene came from governors, senators, mayors, men who would be kings in their own circles. Manners and privilege had been drilled into her. And if, while growing up, she sometimes wished she could just throw a fit, she smothered the urge. She’d been an obedient child, until she met Arthur Crump, a man with nothing who dreamed of having everything. She was swept up by Arthur’s passion for life, such an unrestrained energy like she had never known. She married penniless Arthur over her parents’ objections and was shocked when they cut off her inheritance.

  “What will we do?” she’d cried.

  But Arthur was unconcerned. He simply shrugged and whisked her away from the mansion in Raleigh to a dumpy apartment in this little town. At first, Irene thought she would die. But she survived—not that she wanted to make a habit of clawing her way out of General Store flip flops and into Pradas. She was, after all, an O’Connell, a name back in Ireland that meant strong as a wolf. She and Arthur had built their own legacy. They’d scraped and worked together, creating their own world and their own wealth.

  And nothing—certainly not a few bags of filthy books or a few weak-minded women—was going to ruin it.

  Chapter 3

  Inferno Love

  WHILE ANTIGONE BINGED, SAM Thorne welded. The first time he’d lit the torch and cut into a 1980 Mustang was a week after their six-month anniversary. He’d known
her history, how she cranked up the radio on her convertible, put it in gear, and didn’t come back for days. But he thought the binge driving would end once they were married. He was wrong.

  It was their first fight, he couldn’t remember about what, and she went off in a huff to get a gallon of milk. She didn’t come back for a whole day. Twenty-four hours of calling the police and hospitals in a panic; checking with neighbors and friends; listening to his mother’s I-told-you-so’s.

  When Antigone returned, he wavered between being too furious to forgive and deliriously grateful that she was safe. He marched out into the junkyard behind Sam’s Garage and began dismantling cars. He pried off hubcaps, pulled off radio knobs, and dissected other parts with a torch. Then with steel and hammer and welder, he began to craft a hubcap face that resembled a Picasso woman. When he was exhausted, he turned off the welder, threw down his hammer, stood back, and assessed his first sculpture. Then he flipped the hubcap face into the field like a Frisbee, smiled, and walked away.

  Now, after five years of marriage, the field behind Sam’s Garage, an otherwise normal looking service station, was overrun with sculptures, a dreamy resting place for cannibalized automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles. Star, their neighbor, called Sam’s sculptures his visions. But he knew the truth: they were his therapy. Every sculpture sprouting in the tall grass, every creation propped against a tree or lying beside a rusted axle was an attempt by Sam to understand his wife. It was here, among the automotive art, that he felt less alone and better able to keep himself going until her return.

  In the spring rains, the ice storms, the occasional snowstorm, and the relentless Carolina summer sun, the sculptures rusted and weathered. And it seemed to Sam that the elements became a part of the sculptures. He was amazed at their ferocity, at their will to claim life from cold steel and tremendous heat. His wife was like that: a determined piece of work.

  On this warm April day, Sam worked just inside the large back doors of the garage, which he’d rolled open to catch the stray breeze. Inside his protective jacket, sweat trickled down Sam’s chest; it slid down his arms and into his leather gloves. He was waiting for his wife to return from parts unknown, and once again, he was controlling worry by commanding heat and steel. He fired up the welder, flipped his mask down, and pointed the welder’s electrode at the joint to be joined. White-yellow sparks, appearing eerie green through the light-sensitive mask, exploded like fireworks as metal surrendered to more than three thousand degrees. The only sound was the quiet whoosh from the argon gas tank and the low sizzle of metal transforming. The perfect weld was smooth, continuous, like a stack of dimes fanned on its side. From the nozzle of the welder flowed a tiny metal wire, no bigger than pencil lead, called a bead. When he touched the wire to the joint, an electric arc was formed and the intense heat of the arc melded both the steel and the bead into one. When he pulled the wire away, the arc was broken. The sparks disappeared.