Chapter Thirty
The house had been quiet all night. Aloysius sat at the kitchen table watching condensation trickle down the side of the pitcher of sweet tea. The bell hadn’t rung once since he’d gotten home. There’d been the low, murmured sound of voices punctuated by periods of gospel music. The back door opened and shut. The heavy clomps of boots on the side stairs.
Mama had been busy with her business.
At last, the house was empty and the silver bell tinkled.
He glanced to the antique hall clock. Ten after ten. She’d kept him stewing long enough.
He trudged up the carpeted front stairs one by one, and when he reached her bedroom he was startled, as always, by how someone so ruthless appeared in the guise of fragility.
Mama rested atop a pale silk pillow, a gold-leafed Bible on her nightstand. Inside the back cover she kept the IOUs—when townfolk approached her with a problem, she found solutions, for a price.
What that price was, he didn’t know. Nor did she want him to. Deniability of your mother’s potential criminality was important when you were the local judge.
“Cop a squat, sugar.” She reached for her remote control, fiddled with a button, and turned down the chorus to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
He walked to her recliner, the one where she made atut-tutsound. “Not there, dear. There.”
He shuffled to the tiny stool by the bed, heart sinking. The stool’s third leg was broken, making it impossible to sink your weight down. The result was a thigh-crunching balancing act to keep from toppling over.
Mama reserved this stool for those in the proverbial dog house.
“Sugar,” she murmured in her breathless way, reaching out and taking his hand between hers. Her skin was paper thin. You’d never think those were the hands that wielded a wooden spoon to strike fear and pain into a young boy’s hindquarters. “You disgraced yourself at the Everland park.”
The muscles of his stomach tightened. “Dunno what you’re taking about.” How had she heard about his interaction with Pepper Knight? He hadn’t known who she was, just that he liked the way she filled out her shorts. Bitterness bubbled inside him. He’d have been able to look his fill every day if Mama hadn’t forced him to let her go to hire that idiot Tommy Haynes.
“You gave that town cause to laugh at us.” Mama squeezed his hand harder and harder. For someone with arthritis, she had a constricting grip, like a python, choking off his blood supply. Her voice hardened. “When Everland laughs at you, they laugh at me, and when they laugh at me, they laugh at Hogg Jaw.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I tried to make a plan—”
“Trading your support in the Low Country Foundation to become Mr. Scallywag? Have you been in the moonshine again?”
She knew about that? Why was he even surprised? Of course she did. This was Mama. She knew if he was going to take a crap before his stomach rumbled. All he’d wanted was for her to see he was a man women would throw money at in order to spend the evening with. Not a laughingstock.
But her hoarse chuckling revealed he’d been kidding himself.
She pounded her chest. “It’s my life’s curse that the Good Lord only saw fit to bless me with one child. More’s the pity, you take after your father. Weak. Cowardly. A disappointment.”
Aloysius recoiled, impossible to move back on the wobbly stool, especially when she held him fast.
“But, Mama,” he whined. “I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked. Every time. I thought if I came up with a plan all on my own it would make you proud.” His whole life that’s all he ever wanted. She’s the one who pushed him into law, trampled all over his desire to be a dentist. Then she’d orchestrated his campaign to be judge. She had the vision for his life, and he’d stayed the course.
“People despise you, sugar,” she said bluntly. “That’s different than fear. I thought getting you installed as judge in the county seat would be a way to bring that high-horse town under our thumb at last.”
He wasn’t sure if Mama loved him, but she did care about her hometown. She and his father both were distant descendants of its founder, Redbeard’s second mate, Henry Hogg. Pirate blood flowed through her veins.
His too, he supposed.
She took her heritage seriously.
“But you hated the Valentines. I thought you’d like it if I played hardball and—”
“Son. Let me tell you a little story. Virginia Valentine was from Hogg Jaw, did you know that?”
He shook his head slowly. Mama recycled her tales to where he knew most by heart. But had never heard this one.
“Ginny was my childhood chum. We used to do everything together. And then she went and defected upriver. Married the man I set my cap on. The man that should have been mine, not your daddy, who got me pregnant on the rebound. Because I let hurt make me stupid.
“But not anymore. For far too long Hogg Jaw has been darkened by Everland’s shadow. But they’ve grown soft, complacent, weakened by their romantic whimsy, forgetting their legacy, turning their proud pirate heritage into a cheap sideshow.” She gasped, a wheezy crackle echoing through her chest, and motioned to the orange pharmacy bottle on the bedside table.
He undid the lid and shook out a small white pill, handing it over with her glass of water.
“Forget the Valentines.” She swallowed with a sigh. “They are small fish, and a much bigger one has swum into our river. Everland laughs at you today, son. But Mama’s here to fix it, same as always. Plans are in motion to stop their laughing once and for all.”
He leaned in. “How?”
Mother smiled, a gentle, sweet smile that belied the terrifying gleam in her rheumy eyes. “Steal their community spirit. Siphon it bit by bit, so slow and so steady that they won’t know they’ve been emptied until it’s too late.Now, son, I’m happy to share that you’ve been selected for leading the first task. Time to make Mama proud.”
