At noon Darlene sent me to pick up the weekly supply order from a store on Main Street called Thibodaux & Son, because apparently that was part of the job and also because, she said, it would be good for me to get out and be seen.
“Be seen?” I said.
“New faces don't stay new long in St. Francisville,” she said. “Better they see you friendly before they start making up stories.”
I remember looking at her and thinking — why would I care what people think? Then I remembered this was a religious town, and religious people liked things a certain way.
So, I took the list and walked the four blocks to Main Street in the full weight of the midday heat. By the time I pushed open the door to Thibodaux & Son I understood why the whole town walked slowly.
Thibodaux & Son was a store that sold everything and organized none of it, which meant the canned goods were next to the stationery which was next to a rack of sunhats which was next to, inexplicably, a display of fishing lures. I picked up a hint of freshly brewed coffee and an undertone of wood — looked around, saw wooden paneling on the walls and stopped thinking about it. A ceiling fan worked at the problem of the heat and made no meaningful progress. It felt like a kindred spirit.
Behind the counter, an older man who had to be Thibodaux Senior — seventy if he was a day, reading glasses on a chain — gave me a nod that was both greeting and assessment and went back to his newspaper.
Newspaper,I noticed and thoughthuh.I hadn’t seen an actualnewspaperin ages. My Nana, toward the end of her life, had collected them — old and new, didn’t matter — and cut out strange articles that had made sense only to her, and glued them in a scrapbook. Things like:
LOCAL MAN CLAIMS CATFISH SPOKE IN TONGUES, CONGREGATION DIVIDED
and
MISSING LAWN ORNAMENT RETURNS AFTER THREE YEARS
and
MAN SURVIVES LIGHTNING STRIKE TWICE, CONVERTS, GETS STRUCK THIRD TIME.
That last one had stuck with me. Divine irony. My father had said the man had been too sinful and God had needed to cleanse him.
I had long stopped believing what my father said.
I moved on.
I found the first three items on my list and was crouching to check an expiration date on the bottom shelf when the bell above the door announced two girls. They came in trailing laughter behind them.
Sixteen, seventeen. Cutoff shorts. Everyone knew the type — pretty girls who'd grown up pretty in a small town and had been cashing that check since middle school. One had her hair up. The other had a name tag on a sticker that said JESSIE in marker, which meant she'd come straight from somewhere with a dress code and ditched it at the door.
They hit the refrigerated section and didn't lower their voices once.
“—swear to God, Brie, I almost rear-ended Mrs. Fontenot's Buick—”
“Was it the grey shirt?”
“It was thegrey shirt.”
“I told you. I told you that shirt was a public safety hazard—”
“He was just gettingcoffee—”
“And?”
Jessie made a sound that was not a word but communicated everything. I found item four on my list and stayed very still.
“My mama lit an actual candle for me after last Sunday,” Jessie said. “She thought I was having a spiritual awakening.”
“You were having something.”
“Brie, oh myGod—”
“I'm just saying what we're both thinking.”
