Carolina Crimes. Karen Pullen
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regulars at John’s Pub & Grill stopped by the bar for a witch hunt, though if John asked them they’d deny it and say they came for a celebration. But he knew it was a witch hunt, even though his patrons downed drinks and spread smiles and slapped each other’s backs like the time three years ago when the town’s high school football team beat the boys from the big city.
Breaking a sweat as he filled glasses from behind the bar, John knew he ought to feel grateful for the boost in revenue; spring business typically dragged. Instead of allowing his customers’ mood to buoy him, instead of soaking in the smell of draft beer and used dollar bills, he concentrated on maintaining his mask of benign indifference, on playing his role of aloof bartender. His jaw ached from clenching.
“So what do you think about the arson?” Nattie asked for the third time, still poking at him, trying to get the perfect opening quote for her article in the South Wake Herald, the local newspaper, which came out every Tuesday afternoon and consisted of exactly one section—usually eight pages, but on special occasions up to twelve. “What alerted you to the fire?” She pushed an incompliant curl behind her ear with a stubby finger. Everything about Nattie seemed stubby today—her double chin, her pale powdered nose, her muffin-top belly insufficiently contained by her skirt’s elastic waistband. “It’s my understanding the fire began at about 3:30 a.m.,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s miraculous Darrel wasn’t hurt?”
John stifled a groan. Nattie’s questions mirrored those repeated by everyone in the pub—“When did the fire start?” “How did you notice it?” “Who do you think started it?” Even the town’s one police detective dropped by John’s Pub & Grill, asking John more of the same questions, before ordering a diet coke and hunkering in a back corner. The detective was getting an earful, liquor loosening tongues as the townsfolk mined each other for information to determine who set the fire while pretending to celebrate the demolition of The Pleasure Chest. No one knew anything helpful, or if they did they kept it quiet. But somehow, they all knew it was arson and they all knew John had been the one to call in the fire.
Even though John’s customers claimed to disapprove of Darrel’s carnal merchandise, quite a few had shopped there. But admitting their patronage would ignite their own social lives and livelihoods. The Pleasure Chest was like a Venus fly trap. In a town where so much depended on image, no one could afford to be caught inside Darrel’s store, even as so many found it irresistible.
The Pleasure Chest had opened half a year ago, causing immediate uproar throughout the community, and not just because Darrel was the first man of color to open a business in the downtown strip. A sex shop in the historic downtown? How could the board of commissioners allow it to happen? And the store’s merchandise—was it even legal to sell?
It was, and the commissioners scrambled to add language to zoning ordinances effectively banning any further such blights inside town borders. But Darrel’s shop, grandfathered in, remained open despite the clamor.
“Did you see anything?” Nattie asked. Again.
“I’m charging you for every one of those you order.” John jabbed his finger at the half drunk rum and coke, one of a steady stream she’d been gulping since she arrived. Nattie had been working the room, returning sporadically to John for more drinks and questions, but she’d finally settled herself at the bar and seemed to have turned her focus on John, her grand finale to the interviews, he supposed.
“Don’t tell me you’re sad Darrel’s shop went up in flames,” Nattie said.
“It’s the third time you’ve asked me the same questions in as many hours,” he said. And the first time she’d been in the pub since they’d broken off their relationship several months ago. John had given Natalie her nickname, for the way she constantly buzzed around people, not quite irritating enough for bug repellent, too springy to be swatted. But that was back when he hadn’t wanted to squash her like the pest she was. Back when he’d known no better than to assume Nattie’s loving was the best he’d get. Before he’d met Darrel.
“You want a different question?” Nattie asked. John shook his head, but she pressed on. “Because I’m not stopping until I have something to print.”
“I’ll give you something to print,” said Miss CeeCee, pushing her saggy-skinned elbow against Nattie, two drinks over her usual order and no lipstick left to smudge the rims of her Bloody Marys. “You can quote me: the blight is burned to cinders! Peace downtown is restored.”
Miss CeeCee was right, John supposed. With Darrel’s shop gone, downtown would again be virtually indistinguishable from any other old small-town downtown in North Carolina, dotted with quiet brick storefronts selling the same quaint souvenirs and necessary wares, cars parallel parked on the gray, cracking pavement.
Miss CeeCee, head of the women’s club and leader of historical preservation initiatives, had a past crammed full of contention, way back to her bra-burning days. She was always rallying against something. When Darrel’s store opened, she organized a letter-writing campaign to the state legislators and newspaper. But John had seen her sneak into Darrel’s store at least twice, furtively emerging with new bulges in her handbag.
“Do you think it can be salvaged?” Nattie asked Miss CeeCee. “The building, not the business.”
“Why would anyone want to?” Miss CeeCee waved her age-spotted fingers so close to Nattie’s face the reporter leaned back. “Didn’t match the rest of the storefronts, and just look at it now.”
John glanced out his big front window, across Main Street to the soot-stained cinderblocks of the squat building. A hole in the roof gaped as wide as the storefront’s bay window—now shattered, revealing a blackened interior that used to be filled with intriguing merchandise. John, like Darrel and a few other downtown shop owners, lived in the same building as his business. Except John’s living quarters were above his pub, and Darrel’s, a room behind his store.
“We’re finally free of that pustule!” Miss CeeCee said. “The eyesore building is now utterly impossible to save.”
“With Christ, anything is possible,” Pastor Clyde said, rearranging his lanky body on a stool on Nattie’s other side. His gangly limbs elongated in the striped shirt and black slacks, Pastor Clyde reminded John of a heron—awkward curves and unexpected bends.
Pastor Clyde had entered the pub earlier with a “Hallelujah!” that echoed off the aged brick walls. His church was within view just up the street, the white steeple scraping the boundless blue sky. After The Pleasure Chest opened, Pastor Clyde frequented John’s pub, scouting for souls drifting into temptation. He’d even organized picketers on Sunday afternoons to march in front of the store. A protest without teeth, since the downtown stores all closed on Sundays.
“Christ,” Miss CeeCee said. “Christ wouldn’t be interested in resurrecting that store. He’d have it burn in hell, along with its owner.”
John shook his head, but only Nattie noticed the gesture. Her eyes sparked—she’d found what she sought, a weakness to probe.
“Any comments, John?” she asked, too sweetly.
John hadn’t been the focus of Nattie’s professional buzzing before, and he didn’t like it now, but he knew any response would only fuel her interrogation. That was Nattie. If she smelled the slightest hint of scandal, she seized it and twisted. And when she published her article, she made sure the controversy mushroomed into such an uproar the entire town couldn’t talk about anything else for another week, until the next edition.
Pastor Clyde clasped his hands and looked up, as if seeing beyond the plaster ceiling to heaven’s gates. “I pray a wholesome store is built upon a solid rock in its place.”
John knew Pastor Clyde’s picketers. Most carried sins more damning than any they protested. But their sins—theft, physical abuse, substance addiction—were more easily hidden than Darrel’s wares. What Pastor Clyde claimed to be wicked indulgences invented by the devil himself, Darrel displayed before all the town. But John didn’t understand how sexual stimulants were immoral, especially