Light From Heaven Read Free Page A

some time it’s good, some time it ain’t fit for slop.” He noted that Louella said ain’t now that Miss Sadie, who forbade its use, had passed on. “You take th’ soup—th’ menu has th’ same ol’soup on it every day, day after day, long as I been here.” She looked thoroughly disgusted.
    “What soup is that?”
    “Soup du jour! If they cain’t come up with more’n one soup in this high-dollar outfit, I ain’t messin’ with it.”
    “Aha,” he said.
    “My granmaw, Big Mama, said soup was for sick people, anyway, an’ I ain’t sick an’ ain’t plannin’ to be.”
    “That’s the spirit.”
    Louella rocked on. The warm room, the lowering clouds beyond the window, and the faint drone of the shopping network made him drowsy; his eyelids drooped....
    Louella suddenly stopped rocking. “I been meanin’ to ask—what you doin’ ’bout Miss Sadie’s money?”
    He snapped to attention. “What money is that?”
    “Don’t you remember? I tol’ you ‘bout th’ money she hid in that ol’ car.”
    “Old car,” he said, clueless.
    “In that ol’ Plymouth automobile she had.” Louella appeared positively vexed with him.
    “Louella, I don’t have any idea what you mean.”
    “Your mem‘ry must be goin’, honey.”
    “Why don’t you tell me everything, from the beginning.”
    “Seem like I called you up an’ tol’ you, but maybe I dreamed it. Do you ever dream somethin’ so real you think it happened?”
    “I do.”
    “A while before she passed, Miss Sadie got mad ’bout th’ market fallin’ off. You know she made good money in that market.”
    “Yes, ma’am, she did.” Hadn’t she left Dooley Barlowe a cool million plus at her passing? This extraordinary fact, however, was not yet known to Dooley.
    “She say, ‘Look here, Louella, I’m goin’ to put this little dab where those jack legs at th’ market can’t lose it.’ I say, ‘Miss Sadie, where you goin’ to put it, under yo’ mattress?’ She say, ‘Don’t be foolish, I’m goin’ to put it in my car an’ lock it up.’ She’d quit drivin’ an’ her car was up on blocks in th’ garage. She say, ‘Now don’t you let me forget it’s in there.’”
    “And?” he asked.
    “An’ I went an’ let ’er forget it was in there!”
    The 1958 Plymouth had been sitting for several years in the garage behind Fernbank, Miss Sadie’s old home on the hill above Mitford. Fernbank was now owned by Andrew Gregory, Mitford’s mayor, his Italian wife, Anna, and his brother-in-law, Tony.
    “Well, it probably wasn’t much,” he said, reassuring.
    “Wadn’t much? It mos’ certainly was much. It was nine thousand dollars!”
    “Nine thousand dollars?” He was floored.
    “Don’t holler,” she instructed. “You don’t know who might be listenin’.”
    “You’re sure of that amount, Louella?”
    “Sure, I’m sure! Miss Sadie an’ me, we count it out in hun‘erd dollar bills. How many hun’erd dollar bills would that be? I forget.”
    “Umm, that would be ninety bills.”
    “Yessir, honey, it was ninety, it took us ‘til way up in th’ day to count them hun’erds out, ’cause ever’ time we counted ’em out, Miss Sadie made us start all over an’ count ’em out ag’in!”
    “Good idea,” he said, not knowing what else to say.
    “We got a rubber band and put it aroun’ all them bills, an’ took out a big envelope and whopped ’em in there, an’ I licked th’ flap and sealed it up tight as Dick’s hat band, so nothin’ would fall out.
    “She say t’ me, ‘Louella, you th’ best frien’ I ever had, but you cain’t go down there with me, this is between me an’ th’ Lord.’
    “Then she struck out to th’ garage, an’ when she come back, she was proud as a pup wit’ two tails.
    “I say, ‘Miss Sadie, where you put that money in case you pass?’ She say, ‘I ain’t goin’ t’ pass any time soon, don’t worry about it. Sometime later she mention that money; we was livin’