Chapter Nine #2
She nods as she drinks her tea, looking down into the cup as if there’s something she wants to say but knows she shouldn’t. I try to give her time to come to it on her own, but when she doesn’t, I ask, “What is it, Thelma?”
She puts her cup down and sighs before finally saying, “It was a long time ago.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not from here so all the old news is new to me.”
“It’s not my place to say, honey, but … Will was having a real bad time at home. His daddy was a piece of work and then Will … you know he was always a more sensitive type. Very arty.”
She looks at me meaningfully.
“Will’s gay,” I guess.
“Well, we never knew for sure, did we? I knew he was having trouble. His daddy didn’t like the way he was turning out.
Tried to put Will in football, get him to toughen up.
But Will was sort of—My granddaughter says it’s called emo, but back when my daughter was younger, they called it goth.
Always wore black, always looked like someone stole his ice cream cone.
He was just a little wisp of a boy, poor thing.
He got a job at the florist’s shop in town and his daddy didn’t like that one bit.
But he was real good at it. Still is. He does all the arrangements for the altar.
But you know how people can be; the way they talk. ”
I nod my understanding. Not long ago I got a message from a friend I’d graduated high school with telling me our alma mater had elected its first queer Prom King.
But, when I was a teenager, there wasn’t a single openly gay kid in the school.
Even ten or fifteen years ago, a kid like Will—especially if his homelife included a homophobic dad—could easily have been miserably closeted his entire high school career.
Tiny conservative towns like this one are held up as the poster children of bigotry and homophobia, but it happens everywhere. I’ve seen it all over the world.
Thelma exhales a deep breath and then says, “Anyway, one summer—I think Will must’ve been about fourteen or fifteen—he had a breakdown.
I came in to church one morning and he was at the altar just crying his poor little eyes out.
I asked him what was going on and he wouldn’t say.
I tried to be subtle but let him know he could trust me.
My son, Ralph, is gay and it don’t make no difference to me. He’s a good man and I’m proud of him.”
She pauses to take another drink and I watch as she rattles the ice in the bottom of the glass, her gaze pensive, regretful.
“Anyway, Will wouldn’t say nothing to me. I went and got Brother Ezra from the parsonage to try and talk to him. Next thing I knew, Will was gone.”
“Gone?”
“He went off to some summer camp somewhere. It was only later I heard from Ralph that it had a reputation for—Well, have you heard the term pray the gay away?”
“Yeah,” I say, my stomach turning over. I remember how, the night before, Will had mentioned that Ezra had paid for him to go to a special faith-based camp. Now I understand even more. Will perceives Ezra as having saved him from his own sexuality or, the way he sees it, from his own sin.
“After that,” she says, “Will was dead set on Bible college, a wife, kids … all of it. He stopped wearing black and he even signed up for baseball, but I think he never actually got to play. In other words, his life was easier on the outside. And he really became attached to Brother Ezra—not, I should say, in any way that ever seemed untoward. Will thought of Ezra as a father and Ezra always showed the boy kindness, even if it was at arm’s length.
That’s more than can be said about Will’s own daddy. ”
“Do you think your church would accept a gay preacher?” I ask. “If Will ever…”
She opens her mouth to answer and my phone buzzes in my pocket.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, pulling it out. “I’m waiting for a call about the case.”
I expect to see Tina’s name on the screen but, instead, it’s a text from Leo.
Here’s your F-150 driver. Let me know if you need anything else.
There’s a DMV record for the truck and a copy of a driver’s license for a guy named Dean Griffon, along with a quick overview of his rap sheet: drunk and disorderly, theft, a few drug arrests, and charges for possession and intent to sell.
However much Leo had told me to temper my expectations about finding this guy on a holiday weekend, he somehow always manages to work miracles.
“Huh,” I say, looking at the man’s mugshot. He’s a stocky guy with bulging eyes and a hawk nose. I feel like I’ve seen the guy before, but I can’t place him.
“Oh, that’s Dean,” Thelma says, not bothering to hide the fact that she was craning her neck to get a look at my phone.
“You know him?”
“Of course,” she says. “He drives the truck for Ezra’s tent revival stuff. He’s had a hard way to go, poor thing.”
“What do you mean?”
She tilts her head a little, as if considering how much to say, and then leans a little closer.
“Well, I understand Dean used to have a pretty bad drug problem. But Brother Ezra ministered to him, gave him some work, helped him get on his feet. He can fix just about anything with an engine. My nephew found an old truck from the sixties—about half rusted, I thought—but Dean fixed it up for him and for a lot cheaper than the place in Lexington wanted.”
I’m about to ask another question when Thelma checks her watch and starts scooting her chair out.
“Oh, son of a gun! I’m sorry, honey, but could I trouble you to help me load those pies into the car? I’ve got to get them down to the picnic.”
“Sure,” I say and follow her back into the house, where she starts frantically prepping the little pies for transport.
“They’re still a little warm,” she says. “But I’ll put ’em on some ice down at the picnic.”
She sets one bar aside on a little paper plate, sprinkles powdered sugar over it from a metal shaker, slides the shaker into her bag, and then says, “Okay. I think that’s about everything.”
When we’re done loading up her car, she goes back in to grab her keys and purse and emerges with the extra pie, which she pushes into my hands. “Thanks for the help, honey.”
“No problem.”
She bustles around to the driver’s side of her Corolla and then it suddenly occurs to me to shout after her, “Oh, Thelma, I almost forgot. Do you remember getting any receipts to repair the parsonage door?”
She pauses and looks over the roof of the car at me, perplexed. “The door?”
“Yeah, I noticed the doorknob and dead bolt had recently been replaced. Will said you handle the receipts for repairs like that.”
“That’s right, I do. But I haven’t seen a thing about it.”
“Would Ezra have paid for it out of his own pocket?” I ask.
She blows a raspberry of a laugh and says, “Well, I doubt that. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Ezra wouldn’t even buy his own lightbulbs. Now, I’m sorry but I’ve got to scoot.”
She speeds away while I sit behind the wheel, devouring the gooey, sweet-tart pie. When my phone rings, my mouth is still full.
“Annie, I’ve got Honey loaded up, but I’m gonna need to show you something,” Tina says, without preamble. “And I figure the cops probably ought to be around when I do.”
It takes some doing—going through a harried Melissa Charles working dispatch—but I finally find out where Chief Dishman is. I call Tina back and tell her to meet me at the town square.
“A picnic?” Tina says. “Shit. I’ll see you there.”