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The Sheriff raised the beer can up to his nose, sniffed it, and said, “If one a you’s not drunk, you git to drive the whole bunch a you outta here. Otherwise, you’re go
“Well now, hey, Sheriff,” said Cha
“Filthy,” said the Sheriff, eyeing the arc of the brown spittle. “And ’at’s another thang. This ain’t your property to spit on.”
“Aw, Sheriff,” said Cha
Before he could utter another word, Daddy, standing right beside Charlotte, said in a strange, low, even, toneless voice, “Cha
“You threatening me? You heard what he said, Sheriff?”
“That’s not a threat, Cha
For an instant—stone silence. Charlotte could see Buddy and Sam staring at their father. This was a moment they would never forget. Maybe this was the moment the mountain code would take hold in their hearts, even now, in the twenty-first century, the same way it had in Daddy’s and his daddy’s and his granddaddy’s and his great-granddaddy’s in the centuries before. Her little brothers would probably glory in this moment, which would define for them without a word of explanation what it meant to be a man. But Charlotte saw something more, and that was what she would never forget. Daddy’s expression was almost blank, utterly cold, unblinking, no longer attached to the variables of reason. His eyes were locked on Cha
Sheriff Pike was saying to Daddy, “Ne’mind all that, Billy.” Then he looked straight at Cha
Trying to salvage one last shred of impudent honor, Cha
Charlotte stood there with her fingers pressing into her cheeks. The moment the intruders disappeared, she bent over and surrendered herself to hopeless sobs that seemed to well up from out of her lungs. Daddy lifted his hands and tried to think of what to do with them and what to say to her, while the Sheriff, Otha Hutt, and Cousin Doogie looked on, paralyzed, in the age-old way, by a woman’s tears. Momma took charge and put her arm around Charlotte’s shoulders and squeezed until Charlotte’s head rested against her own, just the way she had always done when Charlotte was younger, and said to her, ever so lovingly, “You’re my good girl, darling. You’re my dear, sweet good girl, and you know that. It don’t do for you to waste one drop a tears on trash like those boys. You hear me, darling? They’re trash. I’ve known Henrietta Reeves all my life. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and I can tell you one thang. They won’t be bothering you any more.” How eagerly her mother was seizing this chance to treat her once again as a child, a genius-in-embryo in the womb of Momma’s devotion. “You see the look on that boy’s face when your daddy looked him in the eye? Your daddy looked him deep down inside. That boy’s never go
Get fresh. How completely Momma misunderstood! Cha
Laurie came over, and Momma let her take over the consoling for a moment. Laurie embraced Charlotte and whispered that underneath Cha
Miss Pe
“Charlotte,” she said in her deep contralto, “I hope you realize what that was all about.”
Crestfallen: “Oh, I think I do.”
“Do you? Then what was it about? Why did those boys come here?”
“Because—oh, I don’t know, Miss Pe
“Listen to me, Charlotte. They’re resentful—and they’re attracted, intensely attracted. If you don’t see that, I’m disappointed in you. And they went out and got drunk enough to make a spectacle of it. All they got out of that commencement was that one of their classmates is exceptional, one of their classmates is about to fly out of Alleghany County to the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, far above them, and there’s always the type of person who resents that. You remember we read about the German philosopher Nietzsche? He called people like that tarantulas. Their sole satisfaction is bringing down people above them, seeing the mighty fall. You’ll find them everywhere you go, and you’ll have to be able to recognize them for what they are. And these boys”—she shook her head and gave her hand a little dismissive flip—“I’ve taught them, too, and I don’t like saying this, but they’re not even worth the trouble it takes to ignore them.”
“I know,” said Charlotte in a tone that made it obvious that she didn’t.
“Charlotte!” said Miss Pe