The Knights of the Cornerstone Read Free Page B

Tugboat Annie. She had large arms, as if she wrestled bears and was good at it. “Gas?” she asked him, her voice sounding like gravel on sandpaper.
    He considered a humorous reply, and then rejected it. “Pump number two,” he said, handing her the two twenties and then rooting a third out of his wallet. “Take the book and coasters out of it first. And that case of grape soda.” As an afterthought he grabbed a single bottle out of the cooler. “A cold one, too.” He hadn’t had a grape soda inyears, and he was full of a sudden nostalgia for the taste of purple.
    “You’ve got enough left out of the sixty for about an eighth of a tank,” she said.
    “I’m only going a few more miles,” he told her, waiting while she punched buttons on an old cash register. There was a ringing noise when the cash drawer flew open. “I’m looking for the turnoff over to New Cyprus, down along the river I haven’t been out there for years, and I remember that last time I passed right by the turnoff and drove another ten miles before I knew I’d missed it.”
    “It ain’t marked,” she said. “Used to be a red cross painted on the highway right there, but it’s been blacktopped over half a dozen times. That’s their mark, you know, those New Cyprus folks.” She looked at him intently, as if it somehow made a difference whether he knew or didn’t know.
    He nodded, wondering abruptly whether Uncle Lymon was one of the Knights who had received the head. There wasn’t a lot to do in New Cyprus, which was isolated even in a land of isolation, and it was a rare evening that Uncle Lymon wasn’t off at the Knight’s clubhouse, the Temple—or else the Temple Bar, depending on its function on any given day—wearing a tunic with a red cross embroidered on it and half covered with badges of rank and retired fishing lures.
    “You’d think they’d repaint it,” she went on, “but New Cyprus is homestead territory, so nobody’s in charge of anything. Either that or everybody’s in charge of everything, which amounts to the same thing. It’s not a bad way to be, either. My old man used to drive out there for lodge meetings, but he’s been dead these past three years.”
    “The Knights of the Cornerstone? My uncle’s some kind of officer in it.”
    She nodded her head as if she had known it all along. “You’re Al Lymon’s nephew. That’s what I thought.”
    “Calvin Bryson,” he said, putting out his hand.
    She shook it and nodded. “Shirley Fowler. I see the Lymons now and then when I drive over the hill to visit my granddaughter, but not as often as I’d like. How’s Nettie? She doesn’t get out much these days.”
    Calvin shrugged. “Her cancer was in remission, but it’s bothering her again, although I don’t know how bad. She’s had about all the treatments, and there’s not a lot that can be done about the pain. She spends some time in the past, too, I guess you’d say.”
    “Well, the past isn’t a half bad place to visit once in a while. Tell her Shirley Fowler sends her regards.”
    “I’ll be go-to-hell!” a voice said behind him, and Calvin turned around to discover a heavyset bearded man, maybe seventy, just then stepping out from behind a rack of Little Debbie snack cakes. Had he been there all along … ?
    “I’m Fred Woolsworth,” the man said. “So you’re Cal Bryson? I’m a friend of your uncle’s. He told me his nephew was coming out for a spell.” He was loaded up with Navajo silver—a big squash blossom on his bolo tie and a watchband that must have weighed half a pound.
    “Glad to make your acquaintance,” Calvin said. “
Wool
-worth, like the dime store?”
    “
Wools
worth, with an
s
. Like ‘money’s worth,’ but wool. My daddy used to say, ‘When you go out to shear sheep, make sure you get your woolsworth!’” He laughed out loud.
    Calvin smiled and nodded, trying to think of a gag line of his own involving sheep, but coming up with nothing but “ewe,”