Part 1 (1/2)
Southern Discomfort.
Margaret Maron.
PROLOGUE.
PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS.
”The construction drawings, plus the specifications to be described later, are the chief sources of information for the supervisors and craftsman responsible for the actual work of construction.”
i.
The male mockingbird teeters on the edge of a whitewashed brick wall and flexes his wings in a motion designed to flush unwary insects from the ground below.
Nothing.
He glides down to an open patch of sunlit gra.s.s between the wall and a rhododendron bush and again flicks open gray-feathered wings, exposing flashes of white.
A startled cricket hastily dives under a sheltering blade of centipede gra.s.s.
Too late.
The mockingbird pounces, tweezers it from the gra.s.s with a sharp and deadly accurate bill, then flies up to a crepe myrtle and checks for enemies. At the far end of the long wall, a big yellow cat drowses in the shade provided by tall rhododendrons, extravagant in lavender bloom.
They are old adversaries who long ago established a modus vivendi of mutual respect. He knows she would eat his babies were they left unguarded, but a warning chirr usually discourages her predatory nature. His nest is well hidden among spindly, difficult to climb twigs; and if she tries, his outraged screams will marshall other birds to hurl raucous threats and help peck her unprotected back.
Only this morning, he and his mate banded with the thrashers and blue jays that inhabit this quiet suburban street to chase a snake from their territory. The sleeping cat is no real threat. The mocker swoops down onto the wall, pauses a moment to pound the cricket into a more easily digested mush, then hops along the bricks to where dogwood twigs brush the top of the wall at this corner.
Here in mid-May, the dogwood has finished blooming. No white flowers gleam among the broad leaves, only swelling green berries that will redden in the fall and provide sustenance when spiders and insects have buried themselves out of sight against winter's coming.
Here in the heart of the tree, the mockingbird and his mate have built a nest safe from prying eyes, and four half-fledged babies open their soft bright yellow beaks the instant they sense his arrival. He stuffs the broken cricket down the most insistent gaping mouth and flies off in search of more food.
All is quiet on this tree-lined street save the drone of a nearby power mower, and nothing disturbs the orderly coming and going of birds at work.
Cars pa.s.s, occasional screen doors slam, the lawn mower goes silent, and the mockingbirds shuttle back and forth with their beaks full of gra.s.shoppers and beetles to stuff those insatiable little gullets.
Babies must be fed. The young are always hungry...
Into the silence comes the sound of a crooning voice.
The mockingbird buzzes a raspy alarm and watches as a human at the end of the wall stretches out a hand to the cat. She rises, sniffs the strange hand, then allows it to stroke her sleek back.
No threat to his mate or their babies, the mockingbird decides, and goes back to scanning the yard. His eye locks onto a huge gra.s.shopper there at the base of a nearby flowering judas. It's one of those big brown-and-green creatures, enough to fill at least three ravenous beaks. The instant the bird approaches, it springs up; but the bird is quicker and catches it on the wing.
Intent on smas.h.i.+ng the struggling gra.s.shopper into manageable bits, the mockingbird pays no attention to what's happening at the far end of the wall; and by the time he flies up to the nest to distribute his grisly morsels, the cat has vanished from his tiny brain as completely and as finally as she has vanished from the wall.
There are babies to feed.
Only the babies matter.
ii.
Boxer shorts.
That's how she always thinks of him.
The old-fas.h.i.+oned kind made of striped cotton. With snap fasteners. Except that half the time they'll be unsnapped, with a little circle of damp where he's gotten up to use the bathroom and has been careless about the last drop or two before tucking his thing back inside the striped cotton.
If it's after midnight and her light is still on, he comes into her room without knocking, as if hoping to catch her doing something forbidden.
”Time you were asleep,” he growls before lumbering back down the hall.
That's okay. A lot of fathers do stuff like that.
What's not okay are the nights she gets home after they've gone upstairs and he comes to the head of the stairs and stands there looking down at her, his bathrobe hanging open. Or he's waiting in the living room, sitting spraddle-legged in his lounge chair, and he makes her sit down on the couch across from him while he cross-examines her about the evening.
”Why is your skirt so wrinkled? Were you in the backseat of his car? Did you let him put his tongue in your mouth? That's the first thing men want with a girl-to get their hands inside her blouse, put their hands in her panties. Did you let him? Did you? Is my daughter nothing but a s.l.u.t? Look at me when I talk to you, young lady!”
But she doesn't know where to look. At his eyes, hot and greedy for something she doesn't understand? At the gaping slit in those boxer shorts where his thing hangs dark and disturbing against those wrinkled hairy lumps?
When he sees her looking there, the striped fabric quivers and rises as the thing beneath engorges and swells. He usually stands then. ”I just want your solemn word that you're still a virgin,” he says.
Sobbing now, she swears that she is.
And now he knots his robe around him and retires in patriarchal seemliness to the master bedroom.
Her mother often complains of insomnia; yet somehow, she never wakes up when he lectures her at night like this.
iii.
The kitchen is even filthier than the rest of the trailer-every surface littered with fast-food cartons, soft drink cans, wilted lettuce leaves, dirty dishes, gummy knives and forks.
”What'd you expect,” she bristles. ”House Beautiful? Supper on the table? When half the time you don't even come home for three days? What's the matter? Couldn't find any fresh meat to poke it into tonight?”
And now she's in there on the couch crying 'cause she got the slapping she was begging for. Well, d.a.m.n it all to frigging h.e.l.l, a woman pushes a man like that, what's she expect?
A bunch of roses?
All her fault.