Southern Discomfort Part 22

He's wrong. I do think. It's just that I always think people will act logically.

Instead of bursting into tears and confessing that she'd administered several doses of a.r.s.enic to her father and Herman, and had slipped Carver Bannerman a first dose, too, her face filled with a dread and horror I'll see in my nightmares the rest of my life as it finally dawned on her what she was facing. In that instant, she turned and fled for the back door.

By the time I got to the veranda, she was nowhere in sight. Her car could be parked anywhere. I flicked on the yard lights and forced myself to stop and listen.

Over there! Cras.h.i.+ng through Aunt Zell's flowers.

I raced down the gra.s.sy path and saw her balanced on the rail of the arched bridge that spanned the pool. She hesitated for only a second, then pushed off from the rail with all the force she could muster to dive straight down.

Headfirst.

Into a pool she knew was only four feet deep.

I splashed into the water after her, but when I got there and turned her face up, blood was staining the water from the top of her head, and she wasn't breathing.

"Be careful!" screamed the preacher. "Her neck could be broken."

"Her neck may be broken, but if you don't get her out of the water and begin CPR, she's going to die here and now," the pragmatist said.

It was the worst dilemma I've ever faced.

As gently as I could, I laid her over the coping of the pool with her legs still in the water and performed the Heimlich maneuver till I thought her lungs were emptied of water, then I pulled her all the way up and started CPR till finally, finally she began to breathe again.

Blood was a dark halo on the white tile around her head.

A phone, I thought. The rescue squad.

And then blessedly I heard Dwight's car door slam.

Another Intensive Care waiting room.

"Why? O G.o.d, why?" cried Eleanor Byrd as we waited to hear if Paige's head injuries included a broken neck.

"She thought Herman was doing to Annie Sue what Perry did to her," I said.

"No!" she said wildly. "Perry never touched Paige. Never!" But her eyes couldn't meet mine.

I might never know exactly what Perry Byrd did to push their daughter over the edge, but I'd bet every dime I'll ever make that she did.

Dwight came back then and took me out of there. I was still in the damp, chlorine-smelling clothes I'd worn over in the ambulance.

"I didn't get a chance to tell you before," he said as we drove the short distance home through the hot, still night. "The lab report came right after you left my office this evening. No a.r.s.enic in Ralph McGee's body."

"They dug up the wrong man. It's Perry Byrd that should be exhumed."

"You think?"

"Yes. Remember when he had that first stroke and everybody thought he was going to die? She must have realized that if he did die, she'd be free of him. Because he was getting better, remember? Then suddenly, he just keeled over again."

For the last hour, I'd been facing the fact that I got Perry Byrd's seat mainly because his daughter had poisoned him.

"I can sort of understand why she'd slip a.r.s.enic in Bannerman's drink after he laid Cindy, but why poor old Herman? Was she starting an orphans' club or something?"

"She almost told me the night she confessed to killing Bannerman-and isn't that bizarre? Start to kill a man with slow poison and then wind up doing him in with a hammer."

"Herman," Dwight reminded me, turning down my street.

"Herman," I said, feeling tears begin to slide down my cheek. "She did it for Annie Sue and I wish to G.o.d Annie Sue never had to know. Because if she hadn't dramatized it, if she hadn't-if-"

"Hey," said Dwight. He parked the car in the side driveway, cut the motor, handed me his handkerchief, and opened his arms.

I was grateful for both.

"Paige misunderstood the way Herman yells and how Annie Sue always overreacts. If you ever heard her, you'd think he was David Copperfield's wicked stepfather and kept her chained in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Because Annie Sue was the first best friend she'd ever had-you know about teenage girls and their best friends?"

"Tell me," he said, gently smoothing my hair.

"It's hard to find the words because it isn't s.e.xual, even though it's almost as romantic as first love. Oh h.e.l.l, who am I fooling? It is first love! With all that pre-Freudian intensity. Flirting with each other. Telling innermost secrets. The hurts and jealousies if you think she likes a another girl better than you. You spend hours a.n.a.lyzing hairstyles and clothes, and then you spend even more time a.n.a.lyzing each other. You know her thoughts and moods as well as you know your own-better than your own maybe, because at that age you usually don't like your body very much and you certainly don't like the dark disturbing thoughts that are rolling around in your head. And you're protective as the devil if anything or anyone threatens her. I guess she thought Herman was abusing Annie Sue and, since she'd already stopped the abuse in her own life, why not make Herman sick and stop it in Annie Sue's?"

"Not kill him?"

I shrugged. "She could have just given him one big dose instead of several small ones. Maybe she thought if he felt a little sick, he'd leave Annie Sue alone. At the hospital Sat.u.r.day night, though. That's when she finally realized there was nothing perverted between Annie Sue and Herman, and that's the real reason she couldn't stay in that hospital room."

They found Paige's car parked in front of Miss Sallie Anderson's the next day. An empty bottle of Terro Ant Killer was in a little box under the front seat.

Her neck wasn't broken, but it was four days before she came out of the coma. There's residual paralysis on her left side and the fingers of her left hand tend to curl, but they're hoping therapy will help. She says she doesn't remember a thing about that night and that these past few months have a dreamlike quality, as if they happened to someone else. Paige doesn't deny what she's done, she just doesn't quite understand why.

Considering the severity of her head injury, her doctors say she's probably telling the truth. Zack Young's counting on their testimony when she goes to trial this fall. He thinks it'll be a mitigating factor in her sentencing.

Annie Sue and Cindy have rallied around. They say Paige isn't quite the same. Quieter. Maybe not quite as sharp as before she hurt her head. "But still real sweet."

They don't hear the pity in their own young voices.

CHAPTER 23.

TRIM WORK.

"The part of the finish which is purely ornamental is called trim."

BeeBee Powell's house was dedicated at a ceremony the weekend before Labor Day.

Living room, large kitchen, three small bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths. The siding was painted pale creamy yellow with black shutters and porch railings, and a burnt orange door. Inside, everything was fresh and clean and sparkled almost as brightly as Kaneesha's snaggle-toothed grin.

She and Anthony Carl had colored two bright THANK YOU!! posters and hung them by the front door.

Retha Dupree and Ava donated the Coffee Pot's services and catered a picnic in the yard. (After pulling a two-week drunk in South Carolina, Ba.s.s Langley had sweet-talked his way back into Ava's good graces and was back lifting and toting and was.h.i.+ng dishes again.) Mr. Ou hadn't put in the gra.s.s yet, but neat borders of liriope lined the new front walk, and azaleas were mixed with Korean boxwoods around the foundation. People were trying not to step on anything.

Everyone who worked on the house was there, including a few who merely donated money or materials. Not Paige, though. She was at a rehab place over in Durham, not far from the detox center where Graham Ogburn had stashed his son to wait for his jury trial.

I could thank Zack Young for that nugget of information because there was certainly no on-the-record mention of young Layton at the dedication. This was blue sky PR all the way. Lu introduced the owner of Tri-County Building Supply, and the Ledger's photographer bounced strobe flashes all over the house as Graham Ogburn announced his intention to furnish all the materials for a second house-"At cost, ladies and gentlemen! In honor of what family values can accomplish when a whole community pulls together!"

(Applause. ) Clapping loudest were Kimmer Norris and her three kids, who'd been promised that house.

The women of the community college's cabinetry cla.s.s had donated their labor on the cabinet work and, in the end, they took pity on some of their male cla.s.smates who felt discriminated against, so it wasn't totally an all-woman project after all. By then, no one really cared. The point had been made.

Annie Sue and Cindy hung in till the end. They could have ducked out without blame, but Annie Sue was determined to finish what she'd begun and Cindy wouldn't admit she couldn't handle it, too.

As each person's contribution was called out and Knott Electrical was recognized, Herman didn't try to stand, just reached back for Nadine's hand on the wheelchair handle and made a joint wave. They smiled proudly when Annie Sue was named, but there was still a worried look in their eyes.

And with reason.

Annie Sue's done a lot of growing up this last month, but she knows how much blame she deserves for what happened to Herman and she's quit dramatizing anything. No more stomping off in anger, but no more flamboyance either.

Not so oddly, I think Herman sort of misses it. More than what he's lost, he's troubled by what Annie Sue has lost.

The following Sat.u.r.day, I was still at the breakfast table when Dwight came by to pick me up. K.C. Ma.s.sengill was having an end-of-the-summer weekend party at her lake cottage, and he'd been invited, too.

The puppy met him at the back door, yipping importantly like a real watchdog, but then spoiling it by wagging his little tail like a crazed metronome.

Dwight accepted Aunt Zell's invitation and sat down across from me with a hot corn m.u.f.fin and a cold gla.s.s of milk.

"What'd you end up naming him?" he asked her.

"I just can't decide," Aunt Zell sighed. "I thought sure I'd find a name in Paris, but he's too American to be a Jacques or a Pierre, isn't he? I think I've narrowed it down, though. Copperfield, because he was orphaned, too. Or Mowgli. Which do you think, Dwight?"

"What about Q?"

"Short for Barbecue," he said innocently.

I about strangled on my coffee.

Aunt Zell looked at me anxiously. "You all right, Deborah?"

"Or Pork Chop's a nice na- Ow!"

Dwight suddenly reached down and rubbed his s.h.i.+n.

My sandals weren't designed for effective kicking, but it's like building a house: one does what one can with the tools at hand.

end.