The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

unfamiliar path without a map, without a clue where you were headed or how you were going to get there. And nobody cared that you were walking home by yourself in a sun already so hot you could fry an egg on your front porch steps. Nobody noticed that when you passed by A.M. Strange Library, sorrow dripped from dead Alice’s cedar tree and trapped you if you didn’t know how to run.

      Billie ran home so fast the sun couldn’t even catch her shadow.

      Six

      THE FIRST THING CASSIE did when she woke up was put on her white pique robe with the pink piping, then step outside to get the paper. She wanted to see if that haunting little ad she’d seen in the classifieds of The Bugle was also in the Sentinel. It was a daily and four times as thick as the weekly newspaper. Still, Cassie had never tried to get a job there. Joe had always believed it was because Cassie was first and foremost a housewife who had only taken a part-time job to have a little something extra to keep her busy. Letting him think that had been easier than explaining how she could get by with expressing her unpopular opinions in The Bugle because Ben wasn’t about to fire her. In small Southern towns, big connections kept crusading women with radical opinions safe—as long as they were all talk and no action.

      Cassie had beat the mailman. She stood in her front yard beneath a catalpa tree, shading her eyes for him. The hot air was so sharp it looked like stars. The canopy of the catalpa tree had grown so thick nothing could get through, not even heartache. A cardinal swooped from its branches and zoomed right past her head, so close its wings hummed like a harmonica riff. It was the kind of day where anything could happen. Time could rewind, her womb could bring forth a child, or Joe might come around the corner saying, Surprise, it was all a mistake.

      “Morning, Cassie.” The mailman waved the Sentinel at her, then trotted across the lawn. With his short, stumpy legs, wide face and toothy grin, J. D. Cotton looked like a friendly troll. “I brought you some fresh tomatoes. My garden’s just run over with them.”

      “You’re spoiling me, J.D.”

      “Pretty woman like you deserves it. No offense meant.”

      “None taken.” You might as well take offense at the Easter Bunny. As long as J.D. was on the route, housewives in Tupelo could expect fresh tomatoes and okra in their mailboxes in the summertime. Kids could expect letters from the North Pole at Christmas. Cassie took the heavy sack from him. “It looks like it’s going to rain. Wait here and let me get Joe’s rain slicker for you.”

      “I’d be much obliged.”

      Cassie hurried inside, set her tomatoes on the kitchen cabinet, tossed the Sentinel on the table, then rummaged in the hall closet for Joe’s raincoat. There was no use hanging on to it.

      Still, when she handed the yellow slicker to J.D., her heart broke in two.

      “I’ll get the coat back to you, Cassie.”

      “Keep it, J.D. I should have gone through Joe’s things months ago.”

      J.D. waved as he left to continue his route, and Cassie hurried into the house.

      It was today’s dedication ceremony that had Cassie on edge. She had better things to do than stand in front of a crowd and make an empty speech about how much renaming the baseball field meant to her. She couldn’t hug a baseball field.

      She brewed Maxwell House coffee, then sat down at her kitchen table with a cup while she scanned the Sentinel for signs of the woman who wanted to give away her child. Seeing none, she called Ben at home.

      “Who placed that Dying Woman ad in The Bugle, Ben?”

      “Woman up in Shakerag. Goober said it was somebody calling herself Betty Jewel Hughes. Name sounded familiar because her husband used to be a famous bluesman.”

      “I want to do the story.”

      “This is the wrong time for a white woman to be poking around Shakerag.”

      “All the more reason, Ben. Somebody has to speak out for these people.”

      “They’re sitting on top of a powder keg up there just waiting to blow wide open. Can’t let you do it, Cassie. It’s too dangerous.”

      “A dying woman and a little girl about to become an orphan? Come on, Ben. That’s a story, and we need to tell it.”

      “It’s none of our business. Go to the baseball field today and enjoy the ceremony.”

      “Just be Joe’s widow. Is that what you’re saying?”

      “If you go to Shakerag and stir things up, there’s no telling what will happen.”

      “I’m not going to stir things up, Ben. I’m going to help save a little girl.”

      Ben’s sigh was audible. If she could see his expression, she knew it would be long-suffering. Though he blustered and tried to keep his best friend’s wife safe, Ben was proud of Cassie’s spunk. Whatever she did, he would support her.

      “Dammit, Cassie.”

      “Thank you, Ben.”

      “For what? If you go up there, you’re fired.”

      “I know.”

      “I’m not kidding this time.”

      “Bye, Ben. I’ll see you at The Bugle this afternoon.”

      “I’ll be at the dedication, Cass.”

      The dedication. One more reminder that Joe was gone.

      If Cassie had her way, she’d wear slacks and a T-shirt to the dedication of the baseball field. Fashion meant nothing to her; comfort, everything. But there was her father-in-law to think about, dear, old-fashioned Mike Malone, who would be mortified if she showed up looking anything less than a proper lady, as befitted his son’s widow.

      She put on a yellow linen sundress with a white bolero and matching pumps, even gloves, for Pete’s sake. A glance at the clock told her she was a full fifteen minutes early. She wished she could break herself of obsessive punctuality. She was so anxious that nobody be inconvenienced waiting for her, she always ending up wasting a lot of time waiting for them. And now that she was all dressed up, she couldn’t run out to her garden and pull a few weeds or start any little thing that entailed getting dirty.

      Deciding to brave her former Empty Room, Cassie turned the doorknob. Her rocking chair beckoned—nothing to fear there—so she sat down to watch for her sister-in-law. The sight of her favorite pictures made her smile, but she couldn’t say she felt the sort of favorite-retreat contentment Fay Dean had predicted.

      At the sound of tires, she looked out the window and saw Fay Dean coming up the walk with Mike. Cassie hurried to the door and kissed her father-in-law’s cheek.

      “Mike, what a lovely surprise.”

      “I wanted to come by early and see if there was anything you needed me to do.”

      “That’s sweet of you, but I think I have everything under control.”

      “Pshaw. You need some help taking care of Joe’s house. Where are those insurance papers?”

      “I’ve already paid the house insurance, Mike.”

      “I’ve told you, I’ll take care of all that, hon. No need for you to try to do a man’s job.”

      “Daddy, Cassie’s not senile. The only thing she needs is an occasional shoulder to cry on.”

      “Well, she for damned sure doesn’t need a psychiatrist. One of my mailmen saw her coming out of O’Hanlon’s office and asked if she’d gone mental.”

      “For God’s sake, Daddy. Who gives a shit?”

      Mike stormed off to the front porch, and Cassie said, “Leave Mike alone, Fay Dean. He means well.”