Free Doing It at the Dixie Dew by Ruth Moose Page A

wasn’t from anything connected with a bed-and-breakfast at all?”
    â€œDon’t think about it,” Scott said. “Scrub that chair, fill that pail, kill that spider—”
    â€œWhat spider?” I lifted my broom high, wished I’d been home to aim it at this Lucas guy, the nerve of him looking in my attic, taking pictures. And if he wasn’t with a bed-and-breakfast directory, who was he?

Chapter Seven
    One of the things I liked best about a small town was church bells on Sunday mornings. I loved the clean silver sound of them. I remembered how I felt hearing them as a child: that God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world in general and Littleboro in particular.
    So, in jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt, hands in my pockets, I walked toward the drugstore for a Raleigh News & Observer . On Sundays I wanted a fat newspaper that would last at least an hour. Overhead, the sky was an innocent blue with only a scant pastureful of cloud lambs and sheep. The April air was still morning wet and smelled of lilacs, dew wet and past their prime.
    At St. Ann of the Oaks services went on as usual with a substitute priest for the day and Miss Tempie torturing the organ. Faint sounds of its agony wafted from behind the pale blue door.
    â€œNo rest for the weary,” Malinda Jones said from the pharmacy window at the drugstore. “Some of us have to work Sundays.” Since I’d been back in Littleboro I’d been too busy picking up the pieces of my current life, and trying to survive, fix up the Dixie Dew, and start a business to really catch up with old friends. And Malinda the same, full-time job plus a baby.
    I tucked the thick Sunday News & Observer under my arm. “I know what you mean. How’s Elvis?”
    â€œFat and sassy.” Malinda poked a pencil in her black hair pulled into a round biscuit of a bun on top of her head. Malinda had been the first black (and female) student body president in high school. Not only pretty, she was also smart and the only girl from the class to get a full scholarship to med school at UNC–Chapel Hill. She ended up getting her degree in pharmacy. I wondered if she’d ever regretted not going on to med school. Had that dream gotten sidetracked into a marriage that didn’t work? Just left with a child and the choice of taking on a fast-track career with some huge conglomerate of a drug company or coming back to Littleboro to live with her mama and have some help raising him? Whatever Malinda’s reasons, they were none of my business.
    â€œHow old is he now?” I asked. Malinda had shown me pictures the first time I was in the drugstore.
    â€œTwenty months,” Malinda said. “And my mama is spoiling him rotten. If she didn’t love to teach, she would have taken leave and kept him this winter. This way she’s only got three months to undo all the good that nursery has done.”
    I laughed. Rosalie Jones was one of the few black teachers in the system, and a good one, too. Margaret Alice had all the respect in the world for her. “That woman deserves a better school system than we got here. She’d be principal or in administration anywhere else,” Mama Alice said.
    â€œAny chance she’ll move up?” I had asked.
    â€œThis school system’s too small,” Margaret Alice said. “One high school. That’s only a few administrative jobs and the coaches get those. They figure a man has to support a family. No matter that women do, too, this school board will never see it that way.”
    â€œTell your mama hey for me,” I told Malinda as I headed toward the register. Rosalie Jones had been my favorite teacher in sixth grade at Littleboro Elementary. She was one reason I majored in elementary education and taught elementary art myself until last year. Until my grandmother’s death had brought me home and the Dixie Dew gave me reason to stay. I’d had