Julia 03 - Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B. Ross Read Free Book Online

the other, picking up bottles for the deposit. He kept a smile on his face, though, just as friendly as he could be while he was robbing you blind.
    “His poor mother,” I said. “It’s a good thing she’s dead and gone, and not having to witness what Dixon’s up to now. But I’ll tell you one thing, he’d better not mess with me while I’m busy with this wedding.”
    Thinking about that possibility put me on edge, especially when I saw Little Lloyd press his hand against his stomach, which occasionally got queasy on him. He was a nervous child. I patted his arm, and glanced out the window half-expecting to see that little pest tiptoeing from one boxwood to the other.
    “He better not try stealing anything ’round here,” Lillian said, brandishing the heavy iron pan that she cooked corn-bread in. “He gonna meet this arn skillet, if he do.”
    Then Little Lloyd said, “Mama, I’m supposed to go to a meeting at the church this afternoon.”
    “Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t think you ought to go anywhere today. I don’t want to take the chance of you running into Dixon Hightower. Let’s wait till they get him back in jail.”
    “He wouldn’t hurt you, Little Lloyd,” I said, entirely agreeing with his mother but not wanting to give him nightmares. “All he’d do is sneak up on you and scare you half to death. Then he’d pick your pocket clean as a whistle.”
    After a while Little Lloyd looked from one to the other of us. “Mama? I don’t think I can miss that meeting. Miz Ledbetter’ll be mad as thunder at me.”
    “Emma Sue Ledbetter!” I said. “What kind of meeting is she having?”
    “She wants to start a young people’s group. She came to our Sunday school class last week and said she wanted everybody between nine and twelve years old to show up today and not be late. She meant it, too.” He rubbed his stomach.
    I heaved a sigh that would’ve blown out a candle. “Wouldn’t you know, she’s at it again. I declare, I don’t know why the pastor didn’t take her with him.” I stopped, because I knew why he’d left his wife at home while he led a church group on a tour of the Holy Land. The both of them poor-mouthed around for months, making sure every member knew that his salary couldn’t cover two airline tickets. They wanted the deacons to give him a bonus or raise his salary or, barring that, they would’ve accepted a love-offering for her expenses. But the pastor already had every member, except me, pledged up to the hilt to pay for that Family Life Center he was so determined to build. The man could get blood out of a turnip, so there were a number of fairly anemic-looking people in the congregation who weren’t at all interested in providing an expense-paid vacation for his wife. Even if it was an educational trip and they planned to get rebaptized in the river Jordan.
    “Not that I’m against a young people’s group, youunderstand,” I said to Little Lloyd. “I think it’s a good idea. But Emma Sue Ledbetter is known to have spells of do-good activities which she can’t seem to help. I remember the time her heart was burdened about the babies in the nursery on Sunday mornings because they needed grandmotherly attention. She went around badgering every white-headed woman in the congregation to sign up for nursery duty. As if, by the time you’re sixty, you’d be thrilled at the opportunity to change diapers again.”
    I propped my chin on my hand, remembering the havoc she’d created with that proposal. “The pastor was gone then, too, at General Assembly, I think. You wouldn’t believe the hornets’ nest he came back to, because Presbyterian women, and men, too, for that matter, don’t like both the pastor and his wife getting calls from the Lord. It’s confusing, to say the least.”
    I stopped then, because I’m not one to criticize either the pastor or his wife in the presence of young children. Even when one or both needed it.
    “Don’t worry