Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) (21 page)

Jesse continued, “I hear lots of folks are visiting the airplane museum. You ought to be glad about that.”

“Yeah, but I’m the attraction,” said Mike.

“I get the idea that many of them want to know about my grandfather’s seaplane. Your man Jeremy has been interviewed. He can really talk, that one. He’s been telling about the finding of the old fighter plane.”

“The police can’t get anything from him,” said Mike. “I made sure he doesn’t know where we are.”

“My wife and I have heard so much about you and Robin. I think she sees you guys almost as relatives,” said Jesse, starting the Jeep engine.

“I bet the picture of me they’re using is terrible,” said Robin.

Jesse steered around a pothole. “In a way, I couldn’t have asked for more. My grandfather’s story is getting a second look. Before, the writers who looked into the affair had their own agenda. They were either communists or patriots, and none of them cared anything about Captain Lawson as a person. Now, people from all over the country are calling in to the talk shows interested in the facts, not the politics.”

He went on, “I’m impressed, Mike, that you got more out of my mother than I ever did. I used to ask her all the time about Grandmother and the airplane and she’d say she didn’t know anything.”

Mike said, “Loretta was afraid the same thing would happen to you as happened to your Dad. You can’t blame her.”

Jesse was silent for a moment, concentrating on his driving. Then, glancing at Mike, he said, talking loud over the noise of the Jeep, “I’m sorry it had to be the danger you two are in that prompted her to talk.”

“Us too,” said Mike, with a smile.

They had seen no police in this part of the Eastern Shore. Jesse had been driving about an hour over the high crown roads with the deep side ditches that are so prevalent on the Eastern Shore. The road led east to the counties that are far away from the shores of the Chesapeake and equally far inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Around them was a region of dusty fields and small villages with dilapidated fundamentalist Christian churches. Many residents were poor and Mike, from other trips in the area, knew that strangers were treated with suspicion as if the outsiders might be coming to confiscate the inhabitants’ few possessions.

Jesse told them he had been warned by the farmers closer to the Bay about expanding his business to the east.

“‘You won’t get your money out, boy,’ I was told. ‘Going to the east was the wrong direction from the Chesapeake Bay. Those people back in those counties not only got no water to grow their crops, but they got no water to cool their minds. They’d just as soon shoot you as look at you.’”

They came upon a large irrigation system spraying rows of soybeans. Jesse pointed to the rig. “That’s one of ours. You can see I didn’t follow the advice. We make a lot of money leasing that kind of equipment over here.”

“You must be pretty proud of what you‘ve done with Lawson Harvesting,” said Mike.

Jesse nodded. “All the employees are proud. We didn’t have much when we started, only two trucks and one of them had a bad transmission. The field tractors were worn out. We just about started from scratch.”

“Hey guys. You two figured out how we are going to get inside the Tabernacle?” asked Robin from the back of the Jeep.

“I don’t know yet,” said Jesse.

“Does it have an entrance, like a gate?” asked Robin.

“That’s where we’re headed.”

They came around a turn and the road narrowed.

“This is it,” said Jesse. He pulled to the side. A small road went off to the right. Across it was stretched a chain. Two men, dressed in farm clothes, stood casually nearby. Across from the gate was a country store with two motorcycles and a Ford pickup parked in front.

“Better just turn right around, mister,” said one of the men, sauntering toward the Jeep and speaking in a nonchalant voice.

Jesse nodded. “Name’s Jesse Lawson. I want to see the boss up to the Tabernacle.”

“Jesse Lawson?” the guard seemed to know the name. Then he said quickly, “Don’t know anything about no Tabernacle.”

“Farm equipment. I’m a custom harvester.”

“I don’t care who you are, Lawson. You come to the wrong place. Farmers around here don’t have no need for custom harvesters,” a young voice called from across the road. They turned and saw a man, about eighteen, his hair bleached yellow on top, his trousers baggy.

Yellow Hair continued, clenching his fists, “If I was you, Lawson, If that’s who you really are, I’d get the hell out of here before you get hurt.” He grinned and added, “You can leave that pretty lady if you want.”

“Hobble said he wants to know anybody comes this far,” the guard said to Yellow Hair. Then the guard looked at Jesse. Mike noticed that he was more respectful of them than he had been before. He guessed that Robin had done her magic once more. She had a way with men who were trying to push her around. She made them calm down. The guard said, his voice hesitant, “You folks best wait in the store.”

The store had a worn unpainted wooden porch with one empty chair. A soda machine was at the back of the porch against the store wall and it was surrounded with signs for beer and bakery goods. One faded metal sign had once advertised Nehi beverages while another mentioned Quaker State Motor Oil.

They entered the store, the wood framed screen door ringing an overhead bell with a pleasant chime, and Robin and Jesse sat at a table. Mike stood by the door, keeping his eye on the Jeep and the guard.

Inside in the dim light shelves were filled with candy and household goods. To the back was a butcher’s counter and a table with two people seated. To the right a black man about thirty, stripped to his waist, sat on the end of a bench and was doing curls with a set of barbells. No one was behind the counter, but a radio in a back room was playing hip hop music with a lot of static.

Even at this early hour, the man and woman at the table were drinking beer from long necked bottles. The table was covered with a checkered red and white shelf lining on which stood several already emptied bottles.

Robin looked around the room. The woman, dressed in a tank top pulled up well over her navel and below it, a pair of stained short shorts, stared back at Robin. When she spoke, her voice was slurred from the beer.

“What are you lookin’ at, missy?” the woman said.

“Maybe we ought to wait outside,” Robin said to Mike, as she stood up to move toward the door.

“I recognize you, Mr. Lawson,” said the man, slender in a tee shirt and jeans, his feet in boots.

Jesse looked at him, as the man, a drunken smile on his reddish face, said again, “You’re sure the big Mr. Lawson.”

“I know you too. You were one of my drivers last year,” said Jesse.

“You fired me.”

“You were drinking on the job,” said Jesse.

“Mister Lawson, you should be nice to my friend,” said the woman in short shorts, giggling as the long neck she held to her mouth dribbled down the front of her clothes.

The ex-employee stood up and walked toward Robin, while the weightlifter kept on with his exercises as if he was in another world.

“You too good to sit down in here?” he said.

“You can leave her alone,” said Jesse.

The man grabbed at Robin. Robin, shifting her weight to her left foot, kicked with her right, throwing him backwards into one of the counters. Bakery goods fell to the floor and a bag of white flour broke and sent up a cloud of dust.

“Bitch,” the ex-employee said as he clambered to stand up.

His girl friend, screaming, “Fight, fight, fight,” ran forward. She teetered in the high heel cowboy boots she was wearing as she began to flail at Robin’s arms. Robin slapped the woman who fell back and then rose on her elbows, shaking her head.

Yellow Hair rushed in from outside and shouted, “You leave my friends alone.” Then, without warning, he lunged at Jesse.

Mike stepped in front of him and set him back with his right. Yellow Hair caught himself and came forward again. Mike dropped him with a left hook. The young man fell outside, through the doorway and lay flat on his back, breathing hard. He did not try to get up.

A big man, balding, appeared around the corner of the meat counter, in a white stained apron, holding a shotgun.

Jesse yelled, “Behind you, Mike.”

“I ain’t going to shoot nobody,” said the man, gruffly. “You all hold it right there. You,” he called to Yellow Hair, “Your old man don’t like you fighting.”

“You got to be invited to the Tabernacle. You ain’t going to be invited,” said the woman, pointing at Robin and then standing up.

She laughed and said, “That shotgun has a hair trigger. I know ‘cause he shot it at me. Here, see,” she said to Robin. She pulled her shorts and underwear down to her knees and showed Robin, then moved sideways to show the weightlifter the small scar on the left cheek of her backside. He didn’t look and when she started to show Jesse her trophy, the man who had been drinking with her said, “You sit down, whore.” She pulled up her skirt and returned to her chair. Reaching for her beer, she took a long swallow, and then said, “Shit, I don’t care.”

The man with the apron moved towards the front of the store where Jesse was standing. He pointed to Yellow Hair who was still on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

“Hobble ain’t going to like that. You hit his son.”

The gate guard stepped over Yellow Hair and looked inside the store. He said to Jesse, “Hobble says for you people to come on into the village.”

In a few minutes they were driving up the side road, over the chain which had been dropped by the guards. Mike sat in the back with Robin. Heavy brush lined the side of the road as they went along, but in the breaks in the tangled growth, Mike could see well-groomed fields.

“I expect we’re being watched,” said Jesse.

They came to a large white gate, the kind with heavy wooden crossbars, that stretched across the road. As the Jeep pulled up, the gate, by itself, opened back to one side. No guards were in sight. Mike looked hard at the brush on both sides of the road and near the gate posts, wondering if they were being watched, if guns were trained on them.

Jesse drove more slowly after they passed through the gate. They approached a sharp turn to the left. Just after they made the turn, they had to stop. A man, with a beard long over the front of his red work shirt stood in front of the Jeep, slowing them down with his hands.

Jesse stopped the car.

“Now what?” said Mike.

From the woods along the road several other men and women came out and, without speaking, surrounded the Jeep. Then they parted to let through a man with a long ponytail, wearing a blue and white checkered shirt and coveralls. He reached the side of the Jeep and said, “Which of you is Jesse Lawson?”

Before Jesse could say anything, the man in the red shirt called out, “Hobble said not to bother with that. He doesn’t want to waste time. He said to take them all directly to the graveyard.”

Mike grasped Robin’s hand. The two of them looked at each other, thinking the same thing, wondering if the graveyard destination meant they were going to be killed. Then all of them got out of the Jeep, and, surrounded by the men and women, with Jesse in front, they followed the man with the ponytail.

Chapter Fourteen

8:30 AM, July 3

The Tabernacle, Maryland

The escort led the three of them, single file, without saying a word. All around them were great magnolia trees and the air was filled with the scent of the fragile white blossoms. They moved into an open area, with buildings arranged on both sides of the central road or street and with a large grassy space to one side of the street like a common area. Mike thought this must be the cluster of small buildings along a road that they had seen from the air.

In the middle of the cleared area was a grandstand, a small platform with a covering roof and railings, around which benches had been constructed to seat an audience of perhaps a hundred people.

Along the road Mike studied the small houses, some of them only one story, but all neat and orderly. They lacked paint but the yards that surrounded each building had flower beds and vegetable gardens. He noticed the women and men who stood along the side of the road watching him and the others. All were alike, dressed in the shoulder strap coveralls, the women with shirts underneath, most of the men bare shouldered in the heat. They passed a small store or what would pass for a store because inside Mike could see shelves and a counter. In front of the store, sitting on a shady porch, a black woman with short white hair was reading to a group of very young children. The children, a mix of races, were bare above the waist and some of them, the smallest, were naked.

He noticed a fair amount of regulation among the inhabitants. All the people seemed to favor the same hair arrangement, a short cut for both male and female of all ages, with the men and grown male adolescents also sporting beards. Most of the people looked up from their gardening or housecleaning projects as his group passed; their faces were upturned and curious but not particularly violent. None waved their hands in any kind of defiance. As a matter of fact, Mike had a strange feeling that Jesse, who walked first, was actually being inspected more than he or Robin, and was being given a look more of reverence than hatred, as if he were some type of god figure.

Ahead, surrounded by a close growth of the magnolia trees, was the cemetery, a small affair, with not more than twenty simple stone markers. The perfume of the magnolia blossoms was everywhere and heaviest near the center of the place. The stones were arranged in order around a larger piece of white marble. Small bouquets of fresh flowers had been placed in water jugs on all four sides of the white marble.

Mike and the others were allowed to enter. The man with the ponytail pointed to the large panel and Mike and Jesse kneeled to read the inscription chiseled deeply into its face.

“Edward Lawson, Aviator, died July 4 1946”

Jesse turned to Mike and read the words out loud. His face was tortured, unbelieving.