Attorney Odom slammed her laptop shut. “Mrs. Banks,” she said, “the policy began at midnight, which means that if anyone is going to strike a match, it will be tonight.” She looked at the clock. It was ten past four. “A court order will take until morning. The sheriff cannot watch the house without cause. I can have a deputy drive by every two hours. That is all.” I stood up. I took Mama by the hand. And I said, “Counselor, I drive a rig. Give me one hour and a telephone.”
I made seven calls from her office. To Big Earl, who hauls steel out of Bessemer. To Marisol, who drives for the produce company. To three men from the breakfast club at the truck stop on Interstate 20. To the dispatcher at my own freight line, who put me on speaker with the yard. I said the same thing each time: My mother is in danger. They want to burn her house tonight. I need your trucks on 8th Avenue by seven. Not one of them asked why. Each said, “What time?”
At a quarter to seven the street began to hum. A refrigerated eighteen wheeler turned the corner with its lights blazing, then another, and another. Eight tractor trailers in all, white and red and blue, rolling slowly down the narrow lane of old brick houses and parking nose to tail along the curb in front of the home of Mama. Their running lights painted the whole block orange. Neighbors came out onto porches in their house shoes. An old man across the street took off his cap.
A mother who has sung in the choir for fifty years finds that eight trucks will gladly stand guard at her door.
Big Earl climbed down from his cab, six feet five, with a beard like a cloud, and took off his hat to Mama. “Miss Loretta,” he said, “we heard you needed some company.” Mama, who had been holding her pocketbook on her lap in my truck for an hour, looked at the line of rigs and the rows of lights and began to laugh, the first real laugh I had heard from her in a month. She said, “Is this a parade?” Earl said, “Yes, Miss Loretta, it is.” And someone started singing. I will not say who. It was a deep, uneven bass.
We sat on the porch until midnight, in lawn chairs the neighbors brought, with thermoses of coffee and a plate of sandwiches that Mr. Willis carried over from the church. Truckers keep a certain kind of watch. They watch the mirrors, the shadows, the way the street breathes. At ten past two in the morning, a battered Chevrolet came slowly down 8th Avenue with its lights off, saw the trucks, and braked. A man got out of the passenger side with a red plastic can in each hand. He took one look at eight lit up rigs and twelve silent men with flashlights, and he froze.
“Evening, Leon,” I said. I did not stand. I only raised the lamp in my hand. He looked from me to the line of trucks to the neighbors, who had gathered on their lawns in their robes. He set the cans down on the sidewalk, very slowly, as if they might bite him. Behind him, in the driver seat of the Chevrolet, my sister Denise put her head on the wheel. Deputy Lee, who had been sitting two blocks away in his cruiser on the instructions of Attorney Odom, turned on his blue lights and drove up the street with the siren low.
Leon was arrested for possession of an accelerant with intent, trespass, and conspiracy. Denise, who did not run, sat on the curb in her coat and wept into her hands. When the deputy offered her a tissue, she took it and said, “Cheryl, I am so sorry. I wanted to stop it. I could not.” I sat down beside her. I said nothing for a long time. At last I said, “Denise. You changed the locks on our mother.” She nodded. I said, “And tonight you stood on the wrong side of the street.” She said, “I know.” I took her hand. It was ice cold.
The notary who had stamped the deed, a church member named Lyle Frost, was arrested on Friday. He folded at the first question. The quitclaim was voided, and the insurance policy cancelled, and the investigators found, in the pocket of Leon, a second policy on the house next door, belonging to a ninety year old widow. We had saved two houses. Leon pleaded guilty to attempted arson and received nine years. Denise testified against him and received probation and mandatory counseling. Mama attended every hearing in her church hat, and never said a hard word.
The truckers came back on Sunday. All eight rigs parked in the church lot, and the drivers, in clean shirts, sat in the back pews of New Hope Baptist with their caps in their laps. Reverend Pierce preached from the book of Nehemiah, about men who rebuilt the wall with a sword in one hand and a tool in the other. After the service, Mama took the arm of Big Earl and walked him to the fellowship hall and fed him three plates of fried chicken. He said it was the best he had ever had, and meant it.
I took a local route in the spring. Mama has her little house, with a new lock, an old brass key, and the porch light that burns all night. On the first Saturday of every month the trucks come by, one at a time, and blow their horns twice as they pass. Mama sits on the porch in her good dress and waves. The neighbors call it the parade. And in the third pew of New Hope Baptist, Denise has begun to sit beside our mother again, sharing a hymnal, singing in a quiet, shaky voice, just a half step behind.
