Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement by Grif Stockley Read Free Book Online Page A

in a roomy green and purple wind suit, the evidence of any damage done
    by thirty years of gravity is well camouflaged.
    “Are you doing okay?” I ask.
    For an answer she wipes her eyes. What a stupid question.
    “Follow me to the kitchen. What are you doing here?” she asks over her shoulder as she leads me through a living room filled with furniture that has seen better days.
    “You’ve got that serious expression you used to get when you’d try to convert me to Catholicism. You want some coffee or a drink?”
    Facing a two-hour drive, I say I’ll take some coffee and sit at her kitchen table and marvel at how easy this feels, as if she has been patiently expecting my call for the last quarter of a century.
    She takes a sack of coffee beans and empties them into a clear plastic container and pushes a button.
    The noise prohibits an immediate response, and I look around her kitchen to keep from staring at her. Though spotless as I had expected, the appliances look ancient, and I remember a sentence from her letter that farming in eastern Arkansas has been very difficult in the past twenty years. In the driveway stands an ‘87 Mustang. There obviously hasn’t been much replacing of big ticket items in the Marr household lately.
    “I know I mentioned my little epiphany the summer I met you,” I say when the grinding stops, “but did I talk about it that much?”
     
    “Night and day,” she teases me, pouring water into her coffee maker.
    “You were such a zealot!”
    “I was?” An agnostic now since Rosa’s death, I find it hard to believe I ever proselytized anyone, especially Angela.
    “With all those hormones flowing,” I ask, already comfortable bantering with her, “how did the subject of religion even come up?”
    “You were such a talker,” she says, smiling, “I was afraid you’d never shut up long enough to ever kiss me.”
    What different memories we have.
    “Sarah went through a period her senior year in high school of being a fundamentalist,” I admit.
    “Maybe it’s in the genes.”
    Angela sits down across from me to wait for the coffee to brew.
    “My boys couldn’t find the inside of a church if they tried,” she says, sounding regretful.
    “And after their grades this semester, I’m worried about them. But they can’t come back here and farm. This place isn’t going to be here.”
    So much for sex. Like a married couple, we substitute in its place talk of children and money.
     
    Angela’s lower lip pooches out just a bit the way it did when she was upset three decades ago.
    “It’s that bad, huh?” I say softly.
    “I’m really sorry.”
    Tears come again to Angela’s eyes. She never knew how to hide anything. Maybe that was why I was attracted to her. In the South women were taught to play games. Angela didn’t know how and was too honest to learn.
    “Dwight didn’t really have anything to keep on living for. The farm has been going broke for years,” she says softly, looking out her kitchen window.
    “And farming was all he ever wanted to do. He loved it.
    There aren’t any jobs here anyway.”
    Behind his back, we made fun of Dwight.
    What a hick! A living teenage country legend.
    4-H Club President. Won ribbons at the State Fair every October for pigs, for God’s sake. Dwight wasn’t cool. I pretended to be shocked when Angela told me after I returned from Peace Corps training that she and Dwight were getting married. I wasn’t. Dwight had been in love with her for years, and finally she had the good sense to realize it. The only
    thing she asked of him was that they live in town. Never a fool, he bought a house in the city limits and commuted every day twenty minutes to his farm.
    “What are you going to do?” I ask, beginning to feel awkward.
    “This isn’t your problem,” Angela apologizes, pouring coffee into two chipped mugs.
    “It’s just that I’ve been dealing with the bank again this week. They keep telling me to rent out my