Man in the Blue Moon Read Free Page B

there’s one playing about a preacher . . . I mean a priest. See, he protects these people over there in the war. The people over in France. He protects them from the Germans.”
    Samuel shrugged Keaton away. “We won’t have time to go to no picture. We need to just get this package that we’re probably paying too much money for and get back to the store.”
    “You’re beginning to sound as crotchety as Narsissa,” Ella said.
    “As it is, we’re missing out on the busiest time of the day.” Samuel popped the reins, and the mule bobbed his head.
    “Need I remind you, the letter said that the package was paid in full? If we have to pay the freight, so be it,” Ella said, trying to convince herself as much as Samuel. “And another thing . . . we work at that store six days a week from sunup to sundown. It won’t kill anybody to have an afternoon off.”
    “ The Cross Bearer —that’s the name of the picture. The Cross Bearer ,” Keaton said.
    The rocking motion of the wagon seemed to pacify everyone but Ella. She kept toying at her wedding ring, flicking it around her finger until it threatened to rub the skin raw. Her thoughts and fears alternated back and forth between her son’s disease and her husband’s desertion. No one spoke for the remainder of the thirty-five-minute ride to Apalachicola.
    Along the way they passed the few buildings that made up the Dead Lakes community. A church with a weathered cemetery and a schoolhouse that rested on cinder blocks marked the official spot where Dead Lakes was noted on the Florida map. The store, like Ella herself, was distant from the center of the village. Ella enjoyed the wide porch that swept around the side of her clapboard house and the acreage of timber that obstructed her view from neighbors on either side. There were the occasional visitors to the aquifer spring that the Creek Indians vowed had healing properties. Sometimes during summer evenings when Ella sat on the porch rocking in the chair that Harlan had ordered for her special from North Carolina, she could hear muffled voices and splashing water from the hidden pool. Even Harlan had heeded Narsissa’s warning that calamity would fall on his family if he barred access to those he deemed superstitious fools.
    Although Ella had privacy on either side of her, the front of her house was clearly visible to the neighbors who lived across the road. When times were good and her worries fewer, Ella used to pity her neighbors for their lack of privacy. Their houses were built so close to one another that Mrs. Pomeroy, the doughy-cheeked woman who lived with her middle-aged husband in the house with the red door, routinely came into the store complaining about the eavesdropping Myer Simpson, who lived with the reverend in the parsonage next door.
    When the wagon passed the gray-shingled house that belonged to the woman who had once been Ella’s confidante at finishing school, the mule bowed his head and chewed harder at the bit. Neva Clarkson was now the teacher in Dead Lakes. Washtubs filled with pansies covered the front lawn. Neva had been Ella’s best friend until Harlan redirected his affections from Neva to Ella. Behind her back, the townspeople called Neva a certified old maid. There was a time when Ella had felt sorry for Neva. Now she envied her. A chill snaked down Ella’s system and settled so deep that not even the spring sun could thaw it.
    They made their way around the low-lying lakes and cypress trees draped in Spanish moss and headed toward the red clay fields, plowed and ready for planting. An island of trees and kudzu sat in the middle of the beekeeper’s farm. Ella shaded her eyes and looked out at the land, wondering if Harlan had taken refuge in a place like this and was weaning himself off the opium. Maybe he had been hired on as a laborer at such a property and would come to his right mind when the poison cleared his system.
    Harlan might have surrendered himself to the powdered