night as a married man. He had no idea where they were spending the night or even if they were spending it together or if they should spend it together.
Judge Headley stood up and came around his desk.
“You take care of my little girl,” Judge Headley said, holding out his hand to Levi to shake.
“I will, sir. Thank you. I know this is a mess, but we’ll get it all straightened out.”
“That’s what I want to hear. Tamara, you be a good girl. Don’t talk back too much to your new husband.”
“I promise I’ll talk back just enough.” She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, hugged him a long, long time. He was her father, after all, not that Judge Headley knew it. Levi looked for the resemblance and saw it. They were both rich, both attractive, both white.
“I’ll call your momma tomorrow,” Judge Headley said. “You call me as soon as you’re settled.”
“We can do that. Thank you.” Tamara kissed him on the cheek.
“Drive safe, you two. It’s cats and dogs out there.”
“Rain’s good luck on a wedding day,” Tamara said. “Didn’t you know that?”
The judge leaned back and looked pointedly at the rain coming down like God was emptying buckets the size of mountains.
“If you survive the storm, you’ll have all the luck you need,” Judge Headley said.
Tamara and Levi left the office.
It was all done.
Over.
Levi was a married man. That was an unanticipated turn of events. He’d gotten used to the idea of never getting married, but he’d done it now. He’d married a rich white girl and he wished right then he believed in God so he could say, “God help us.” But they were married and the judge was on their side like Tamara had said he would be. All day from the time he woke up to the time he got in his pickup to the moment he saw Tamara standing in the foyer of the judge’s office building in the prettiest lacy white off-the-shoulder dress he’d ever seen, he’d thought something would stop them. Logic. Good sense. A bus plowing into him for his own sake. It seemed like such a crazy idea for them to get married that they wouldn’t blame Mother Nature herself for sending the rain on their madcap parade. But nothing and no one had stopped them.
So here they were.
Married.
“Levi?”
Tamara’s voice broke through his panic. Levi had stopped to lean back against the wall. His hands were on his face and his breaths were short and shallow.
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I got married.”
“Hey, me, too.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.
“I am the village idiot in a city of fools ruled by a mad mayor in the service of a lunatic king.”
“Levi, you married into the Maddox family. You are the mad mayor. Consider it a promotion.”
He lowered his hands from his face, lowered his head to meet her eyes.
“You look beautiful, Rotten.”
She grinned broadly.
“I know I do.”
“That is not what you’re supposed to say when someone pays you a compliment.”
“Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know what I look like? Look at you. You look so handsome I can’t even look at you straight on. I have to catch you out of the corner of my eye or I’ll go blind. It’s like looking at an eclipse. I need special glasses.”
She turned her head left and right, pretending to see him only out of her peripheral vision.
“The village idiot takes a wife.” Levi sighed. “And they were idiots together. The end.”
“Good story.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Ready to go? It’s our wedding night.”
“It’s five thirty-seven,” Levi said, glancing at his watch. “It’s our wedding early evening.”
“We can still go to bed, can’t we?”
“First we’re going to my aunt and uncle’s house so you can meet them.” He took her by the hand and opened his umbrella.
“Do I have to?”
“They’re the only family I have, and it’s bad enough I got married without telling them. They’ll never forgive me if I don’t bring you to see them.”
“But after, can we—”
“Not tonight, Rotten,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
Her face fell and she stopped talking. They headed out in the rain, Levi still holding her hand, but only to keep her under the wide black umbrella with him.
“Where’s your car?” he asked.
“Leave it. We’ll take your truck.”
“Leave your car? It’ll get stolen.”
“I don’t want it anymore.”
“We’re not leaving an expensive car behind to get stolen because you’re bored with it and too spoiled to take care of your own property.”
Tamara put her hands on her hips. Not a good sign. “I’m not bored with it. It’s registered in my name, Levi. And it’s the only one of its kind in the state. People see that car and they remember it. And we’re going to have to hide for a while and that car might as well be a big neon arrow pointing right at me. The cops will probably see it and call Momma and it’ll get back to her. If it’s stolen, fine. Someone who needs it more than I do can have it. Let them have it.”
As much as Levi hated to leave a perfectly good car behind, he had to admit she made a point. A baby blue Triumph Spitfire wasn’t something you saw every day. His blue ’72 Ford F-100 was one of a million on the roads. Nothing special about it at all.
“You really think your mother’s going to send a search party after us?”
“I think my mother would send the whole army if she could.”
Tamara didn’t smile when she said it.
So they left the car.
Levi loved his truck, but as soon as Tamara was in it, sitting all prim and proper in her white dress on the striped gray seats, he felt a little ashamed of it. She’d traded in a sports car for this? He ought to have cleaned it up a little more. Tamara didn’t seem to mind it, though. Most girls didn’t when he stopped and thought about how many pairs of panties he’d hung from that rearview mirror.
But Tamara wasn’t a girl he picked up in a bar and never saw again the next day. Tamara was his wife, and he did not anticipate her having any desire to spend her wedding night in a truck bed. Not that he was going to fuck her anytime soon. Seventeen years old? A virgin to boot? He’d rather fuck a hornet’s nest. At least only the one part of him would get stung.
“So...” Levi said, casually as he could. “Where we staying tonight? And tomorrow night? And all the nights thereafter? Hotel?” he asked. “Motel? Rent a cabin in the woods? Riverboat? Steamship? Buy plane tickets and keep flying?”
“I know somewhere we can go to save money,” Tamara said. “In case things take longer than Judge Headley says they will.”
“Judge Headley. He is your father. You gonna call him Judge Headley all your life?”
“I don’t know how to think of him as my father. You ever going to call Granddaddy your father?”
“George Maddox is dead. Judge Headley’s still alive. You could tell him.”
“And ruin his life? He’s married, you know. He was married when Momma got pregnant with me.”
“He doesn’t seem like the sort of man who’d cheat on his wife. Even drunk.”
“I don’t think you can judge a man after knowing him an hour. I don’t think you can judge a man after knowing him sixteen years.”
Levi glanced over at Tamara, felt a pang of sympathy for her.
“Your granddaddy sure gave us the shock of our lives, didn’t he?” Levi asked.
Tamara looked at him, startled.
“You know, because he’s my father,” Levi said, surprised by her surprise. “You think you know someone...”
“I thought I knew Granddaddy. And Momma. I wish I didn’t know them.”
“You really hate her, don’t
you?”
Tamara turned her face to the falling rain.
“You don’t even know the half of it.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Tamara’s head resting against the window. Levi focused on driving, dodging rain-choked potholes and Kentucky drivers who acted like they’d never seen water before. The slap-slap of the windshield wipers lulled him into deep thought. He hadn’t meant to hurt her by telling her to back off the wedding-night talk. He didn’t want to tell her he already regretted marrying her. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. He did want her and two nights ago he’d have pushed her over a bourbon barrel and fucked her blind had she let him. But two nights ago they weren’t married and he hadn’t been thinking with his brain.
The simple fact of the matter that Levi could not deny was that he knew as soon as he touched her he couldn’t walk from this...this whatever it was. This marriage. This scheme of Tamara’s. He was adrift on a river, no boat, no paddle, and he could not see what was ahead. Tamara was supposed to be the one with the wedding-night jitters, not him.
“Is this it?” Tamara asked as he turned down the long gravel drive to Andre and Gloria’s house.
“It is.” He paused a moment. “Andre and Gloria are black. You should know that if you don’t already.”
“I assumed so. I hope they like me.”
It was a sweet thing to say and Levi smiled at it.
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t like you, and I still married you.”
Tamara gave him the meanest look he’d ever seen on a pretty girl’s face.
“Be polite. Say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘yes, sir.’ Compliment Gloria’s cooking. Don’t ask Andre about the scar on his arm. He got it in the war. And whatever you do, don’t swear or use the Lord’s name in vain. Gloria’s very religious. She doesn’t like it. Washed my mouth out with soap more times than I can count.”
“I don’t swear. You swear.”
“I don’t swear around Aunt Glory. You don’t, either.”
“I do know how to behave in polite company. It’ll be nice to be in it again.”
“You’re as rotten as ever, Rotten.”
“More rotten than ever,” she said. Levi believed it.
He eased the truck up the drive, watching Tamara out of the corner of his eye. He’d been prepared to despise Tamara if she put one toe out of line around his aunt and uncle, if she treated them like anything less than they were, which were the best people in his life and about the only real family he had left. Now he repented of those cold thoughts. Tamara was a seventeen-year-old girl married to a thirty-year-old man. She was swimming in deep waters and the last thing he should do was tie a millstone around her ankle. He parked in front of the house, helped her out of the truck, opened the umbrella and took her inside without knocking.
Andre and Gloria weren’t in the living room. He heard voices from the kitchen. Tamara clung to his hand with a viselike grip, and he almost teased her to lay off if she wanted him to use that hand on her later. Then he remembered he wasn’t using that hand on her later. Although he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. But he did want to. Goddammit, why did he do these things to himself?
They stepped into the kitchen and came up short in surprise.
Levi found Andre in the kitchen, and Gloria, too. But they weren’t alone.
“Heard you had a busy day, son,” Andre said.
“Mr. Shelby,” said one of the two police officers standing in the kitchen, guns strapped prominently to their sides. “You’re going to need to come with us.”
Levi sighed.
Apparently Virginia Maddox had indeed gotten a headache today.
14
“Levi!” His aunt Gloria rasped his name like a curse of her own. “What on earth have you done?”
“I got married,” Levi said. He looked at the cops. “Married by Judge Headley, district court judge. Call him if you don’t believe me,” Levi said.
“You can’t arrest him.” Tamara hadn’t let go of Levi’s hand, but she took a step forward before he could pull her back. “He’s my husband. We’re married.”
“That’s not for me to decide,” the officer said. He was tall and broad with a military-looking buzz cut and the officer next to him could have been his twin. “I have to bring him in. Let’s go.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Levi said. “Except outside to discuss this.”
Levi wasn’t about to let Andre and Gloria get caught in this mess.
“Tamara, you stay with Gloria. Officers.”
Before they could escort him out, Levi pushed open the back door. The cops had parked right behind the house in the one spot Levi couldn’t see the car from the drive. Did they really think he’d have run for it, leaving Andre and Gloria alone to account for him?
The rain had stopped finally, but the earth was soft with water under his feet. He leaned back against the porch.
“You gentlemen have a warrant for my arrest?” Levi asked.
“This isn’t about that,” Officer #1 said. His tag said J. Miller and the other officer’s tag read J. Spears. Levi made a note of the names in case things got very ugly. “You gotta come with us, though.”
“For what reason, might I ask?”
“You might ask. We might not answer,” Spears said. “Come on.”
“I’m not going with you unless you have a warrant for my arrest. If you don’t, go get one. If you do, show it to me.”
“That girl’s mother seems to think you kidnapped her. That’s something we need to talk about.”
“I know my rights. You can’t bring me in without arresting me. Are you arresting me? Did you see me commit a crime?”
“You married an underage girl.”
“Legally married. She’s seventeen, and if our marriage is illegal, then go arrest Judge Daniel Headley, too.”
Levi heard the back porch screen door open and shut and Officer Miller looked up.
“You all right, son?” Andre asked from the porch. He stood tall and proud with his hands behind his back like a soldier at attention.
“I’m fine. I stopped by to let you meet my new wife. These officers are delaying the honeymoon,” Levi said.
“Maybe all of us should go down to the station and talk this out,” Andre said. “You and me and your new bride and a lawyer. Miss Tamara says she knows lots of lawyers. Lots and lots and lots of lawyers.”
“I’m not leaving with them until they arrest me for a crime,” Levi said.
“If you don’t come with us to the station, you could come with us to the hospital.” Officer Spears took a step forward.
“What’s at the hospital?” Levi asked. “Other than good-looking nurses.”
Officer Spears grinned. It was the opposite of a pretty sight.
“The morgue.”
Levi saw the punch coming but didn’t have time to block it or deflect it. He took it right to the face. Red light exploded behind his eyes and everything hurt, even the parts the cop hadn’t hit. He inhaled and tasted blood in the back of his mouth.
The second punch came on the heels of the first and got him in