Night Fever

“Okay. I’ll get busy,” Harley said with a smile. “You might send Becky up to work on Kilpatrick. She might soften him up.”

Malcolm laughed gently. “He’d eat her for breakfast,” he told the other man. He turned to Becky. “You can help Maggie while I’m away, if you don’t mind. There’s some filing to catch up.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling. “Good luck.”

He whistled, smiling back. “I’ll need it.”

She watched him go with a wistful sigh. He was a caring kind of person, even if he did have the temper of a barracuda.

Maggie showed her the filing that needed doing with an indulgent smile. The petite, thin black woman had been with the firm for twenty years, and she knew where all the bodies were buried. Becky had wondered sometimes if that was why Maggie had job security, because she had a sharp tongue—she could be hard on clients and new secretaries alike. But fortunately, she and Becky got along very well—they even had lunch together from time to time. Maggie was the only person she could talk to except Granddad.

Jessica, the elegant blond secretary on the other side of the office, was Mr. Hague and Mr. Randers’s secretary. She enjoyed her status as Mr. Hague’s after-hours escort—he wasn’t married or likely to be anytime soon—and she primped a lot. Tess Coleman was one of the paralegals—a just-married young blonde with a friendly smile. Nettie Hayes, a black law student, was the other paralegal. The receptionist was Connie Blair, a vivacious brunette who was unmarried and in no hurry to change her status. Becky got along well with the rest of the office staff, but Maggie was still her favorite.

“They’re going to buy a new coffee urn, by the way,” Maggie mentioned while Becky filed. “I can go shopping for it tomorrow.”

“I could go,” Becky offered.

“No, dear, I’ll do it,” Maggie said with a smile. “I want to pick up a present for my sister-in-law while I’m out. She’s expecting.”

Becky smiled back, but halfheartedly. Life was passing her by. She’d never even had a real date, except to go to a VFW Club dance with the grandson of a friend of her grandfather, and that had been a real bust. The boy smoked pot and liked to party, and he didn’t understand why Becky didn’t.

The word around the office was that Becky was an old-fashioned girl. In such a confined society, eligible bachelors were pretty rare anyway, and the few who were left weren’t looking for instant matrimony. Becky had hoped that when the law firm moved to Curry Station, she might have a little more opportunity for a social life. For a suburban area, it did at least have a small-town atmosphere. But even if she found someone to date, how could she afford to get serious about anybody? She couldn’t leave her grandfather alone, and who’d look after Clay and Mack? Daydreams, she thought miserably. She was being sacrificed to look after her family, and there just wasn’t any way out. Her father knew that, but he didn’t care. That was hard to take, too—that he could see how overworked she was and it didn’t even matter to him. That he could go away for two years and not even call or write to see how his kids were.

“You missed two files, Becky,” Maggie said, interrupting her thoughts. “Don’t be careless, dear,” she added with an affectionate smile.

“Yes, Maggie,” Becky said quietly, and put her mind to the job.

She drove home late that afternoon in her white Thunderbird. It was one of the older models with bucket seats and a small, squarish body with a Landau roof. But it was still the most elegant thing she’d ever driven, with its burgundy velour seats and power windows, and she loved it, car payments and all.

She’d had to go downtown to pick up some files from one of the attorneys who’d left before the firm moved. She hated midtown Atlanta, and was glad not to be working there anymore, but today it seemed even more hectic than usual. She found a spot in a car park, got the files, and hurried back out—just in time to get in the thick of rush hour.

The traffic going past the Tenth Street exit was terrible, and it got worse past the Omni. But down around Grady Hospital, it began to thin out, and by the time she passed the stadium and the exit to the Hartsfield International Airport, she was able to relax again.

Twenty minutes down the road, she crossed into Curry County, and five minutes later, she rounded the square in Curry Station, still several minutes away from the massive suburban office complex where her bosses had their new offices.

Curry Station looked pretty much the way it had since the Civil War. The obligatory Confederate soldier guarded the town square with his musket, surrounded by benches where old men could sit on a sunny Saturday afternoon and pass the time of day. There was a drugstore, a dry goods store, a grocery, and a newly remodeled theater.

Curry Station still had its magnificent old red-brick courthouse with the huge clock, and it was here that superior court and state court were convened during its sessions. It was also here that the district attorney had his office, which they said was being remodeled. She was curious about Mr. Kilpatrick. She knew of the Kilpatricks, of course—everyone did. The first Kilpatrick had made a fortune in shipping in Savannah before he had moved to Atlanta. Over the years, the wealth had diminished, but she understood that Kilpatrick drove a Mercedes-Benz and lived in a mansion. He couldn’t do that on a district attorney’s salary. Curious, some said, that he’d chosen to run for that particular office when, with his University of Georgia law degree, he could have gone into private practice and made millions.

Rourke Kilpatrick had been appointed by the governor to fill the unexpired term of the previous D.A., who’d died in office. When his term ended a year later, Kilpatrick had surprised everyone by winning the election. It wasn’t the usual thing in Curry County for appointees to garner popular support at the polls.

Even so, Becky hadn’t been interested enough to pay much attention to the district attorney before. Her duties didn’t involve courtroom drama, and she stayed much too busy at home to watch the news, so Kilpatrick was only a name to her.

Her mind drifted as she stared out her windshield at the residential area she was passing through. There were a number of stately homes on the main street of town, ringed by big oak and pine trees, and dogwoods that spread their petals wide in the spring in white and pink splendor. On the back roads to town were several old farms whose tumbledown barns and houses gave silent testimony to the stubborn pride of the Georgians who had held on to them for generations, no matter what the sacrifice.

One of those old farms belonged to Granger Cullen, the third Cullen to inherit it in a genealogy that dated to the Civil War in Georgia. The Cullens had always managed somehow to hold on to their hundred-acre possession. The farm was ramshackle these days, with a white clapboard house that needed everything done to it. There was television, but no cable because it was too expensive. There was a telephone, but on a party line with three neighbors who never got off the phone. There was city water and city sewerage, for which Becky thanked her lucky stars, but the plumbing tended to freeze up in winter and there never seemed to be enough gas in the tank to heat the house until money was saved to buy more.

Becky parked the car in the leaning shed that served as a garage, and then just sat and looked around. The fences were half down, rusted, and held up with posts that had all but decayed. The trees were bare, because it was winter, and the field had grown up with broom sage and beggar lice. It needed turning over before spring planting, but Becky couldn’t operate the tractor and Clay was too wild to trust with it. There was plenty of hay in the loft of the old barn to feed the two cows they kept for milking, plenty of mash to feed the hens, and corn to add to the bulk of food the animals ate. Thanks to Becky’s tireless efforts last summer, the big freezer was full of vegetables and the pantry had canned things in it. But that would all be gone by summer, and more would have to be put up. In the meanwhile, Becky had to work. Her whole life was one long, endless sequence of work. She’d never been to a party, or to a fancy dance. She’d never worn silk against her skin, or expensive perfume. She’d never had her long hair professionally cut or her nails manicured, and probably she never would. She’d grow old taking care of her family and wishing for a way out.

She felt guilty at her own horrible self-pity. She loved her grandfather and her brothers, and she shouldn’t blame them for her lack of freedom. After all, she’d been raised in a way that would prevent her from enjoying any kind of modern life-style. She couldn’t sleep around because it was against her nature to be that casual about something so profound. She couldn’t do drugs or guzzle booze because she had no head for alcohol and even small amounts put her to sleep. She opened the car door and got out. She couldn’t even smoke, because it choked her. As a social animal, she was a dead loss, she mused.

“I was never meant for jet planes and computers,” she told the chickens staring at her from the barnyard. “I was meant for calico and buckskin.”

“Granddad! Becky’s talking to the chickens again!” Mack yelled from the barn.

Granddad was sitting on the sunny side of the porch in a cane-bottomed chair, grinning at his granddaughter. He was wearing a white shirt and sweater with his overalls, and he looked healthier than he had in weeks. It was warm for a February afternoon, almost springlike.

“As long as they don’t answer her back, it’ll be okay, Mack,” he called back to the grinning, towheaded youngster.

“Have you done your homework?” Becky asked her youngest brother.

“Aw, Becky, I just got home! I have to feed my frog!”

“Excuses, excuses,” she murmured. “Where’s Clay?”

Mack didn’t answer. He disappeared quickly into the barn. Becky saw Granddad avert his eyes to toy with his stick and pocketknife as she climbed the steps, purse in hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked the old man, placing an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

He shrugged, his balding silvery head bent. He was a tall man, very thin and stooped since his heart attack, and brown from years of outside work. He had age marks on the backs of his long-fingered hands and wrinkles in his face that looked like road ruts in the rain. He was sixty-six now, but he looked much older. His life had been a hard one. He and Becky’s grandmother had lost two children in a flood and one to pneumonia. Only Becky’s father, Scott, of all their four children, had survived to adulthood, and Scott had been a source of constant trouble to everybody. Including his wife. It said on the death certificate that Becky, Mack, and Clay’s mother, Henrietta, had died of pneumonia. But Becky was sure that she had simply given up. The responsibility for three children and a sick father, added to her own poor health and Scott’s ceaseless gambling and womanizing, had broken her spirit.

“Clay’s gone off with those Harris kids,” her grandfather said finally.

“Son and Bubba?” she sighed. They had given names, but like many Southern boys, they had nicknames that had little to do with their Christian appelations. The name Bubba was common, like Son and Buster and Billy-Bob and Tub. Becky didn’t even know their given names, because nobody used them. The Harris boys were in their late teens and they both had drivers’ licenses. In their case, it was more like a license to kill. Both brothers were drug users and she’d heard rumors that Son was a pusher. He drove a big blue Corvette and always had money. He’d quit school at sixteen. Becky didn’t like either one of the boys and she’d told Clay as much. But apparently he wasn’t taking any advice from his big sister if he was out with the scalawags.

“I don’t know what to do,” Granger Cullen said quietly. “I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. He told me he was old enough to make his own decisions, and that you and I had no rights over him. He cussed me. Imagine that, a seventeen-year-old boy cussing his own grandfather?”

“That doesn’t sound like Clay,” she replied. “It’s only since Christmas that he’s been so unruly. Since he started hanging around with the Harris boys, really.”

“He didn’t go to school today,” her grandfather added. “He hasn’t gone for two days. The school called and wanted to know where he was. His teacher called, too. She says his grades are low enough to fail him. He won’t graduate if he can’t pull them up. Then where’ll he be? Just like Scott,” he said heavily. “Another Cullen gone bad.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Rebecca sat down heavily on the porch steps, letting the wind brush her cheeks. She closed her eyes. From bad to worse, didn’t the saying go?

Clay had always been a good boy, trying to help with the chores and look out for Mack, his younger brother. But in the past few months, he’d begun to change. His grades had dropped. He had become moody and withdrawn. He stayed out late and sometimes couldn’t get up to go to school at all. His eyes were bloodshot and he’d come in once giggling like a little girl over nothing at all—symptoms, Becky was to learn, of cocaine use. She’d never seen Clay actually use drugs, but she was certain that he was smoking pot, because she’d smelled it on his clothes and in his room. He’d denied it and she could never find any evidence. He was too careful.

Lately, he’d begun to resent her interference in his life more and more. She was only his sister, he’d said just two nights ago. She had no real authority over him, and she wasn’t going to tell him what to do anymore. He was tired of living like a poor kid and never having money to spend, like the Harris boys. He was going to make himself a place in the world, and she could go to hell.

Becky hadn’t told Granddad. It was hard enough trying to excuse Clay’s bad behavior and frequent absences. She could only hope that he wasn’t headed toward addiction. There were places that treated that kind of thing, but they were for rich people. The best she could hope for, for her brother, would be some sort of state-supported rehabilitation center, and Granddad wouldn’t agree to that even if Clay would. Granddad wanted nothing that even looked like charity. He was too proud.

So here they were, Becky thought, staring out over the land that had been in her family for over a hundred years, hopelessly in debt, and with Clay headed for trouble. They said that even an alcoholic couldn’t be helped unless he realized he had a problem. Clay didn’t. It was not the best ending to what had started off as a perfectly terrible day anyway.

Chapter Two

Becky changed into jeans and a red pullover sweater and gathered her long hair into a ponytail to cook supper. While she fried chicken to go with the mashed potatoes and home-canned green beans, she baked biscuits in the old oven. Maybe she could straighten Clay out, but she didn’t have a clue as to how. Talking wasn’t going to do the job. She’d tried that herself. Clay either walked away and refused to listen, or flew off the handle and started cursing. And to make matters worse, lately she’d noticed bills missing from the jar containing her egg money. She was almost certain that Clay was taking them, but how could she ask her own brother if he was stealing from her?

In the end, she’d taken the remaining money out of the jar and put it in the bank. She hadn’t left anything around that could be sold or pawned for easy cash. Becky felt like a criminal, which added to her guilt about resenting her responsibility for her family.

There was no one she could talk to about her problems except Maggie, and she hated to bother the older woman with her woes. All her longtime girlfriends were married or out on their own in other cities. It would have helped if she’d only had that. She couldn’t talk to Granddad. His health was precarious enough already, without taking on Clay. So she’d told Granddad that she’d handle it. Maybe she could talk to Mr. Malcolm at work and have him advise her. He was the only person outside her family who might do that.