Page 76 of The Party Line

Jasper swallowed the pills with a sip of root beer. “There won’t be a next time. This is the first and last. Can we go get ice cream at the Dairy Queen after we eat this?”

“Yes, we surely can,” I said with a nod. “I’ve got a question.”

“About?”

“Why didn’t Aunt Gracie and Mama ever want me to have little friends that were boys?”

“Well ...” He set about putting his burger together.

I could almost see the little wheels churning in his head with some kind of answer about the weather or Sassy.

He shifted his eyes to the right and then to the left. “It’s a bit of a story, and not to be told in a café where there’s other folks. Let’s go see Gracie and Davis after we eat and then come back to the Dairy Queen for ice cream.”

“Whatever you want,” I agreed.

“Well, Iwanteda big old greasy burger, fries, and sweet tea,” he huffed. “Experience is what we get when we didn’t get what we wanted.”

“Who told you that?”

He opened the bag and shook the potato chips out onto his fancy plate. “My granny did, and it’s the gospel truth about this place. I can’t believe that we aren’t ever goin’ to have chicken and dressin’ again.” He sighed and took a bite of his burger.

“I could ask Gina Lou to make it for us at least once a month,” I offered.

“I can live with that, but every two weeks would be better,” he said.

“Consider it done, but you can’t just make a little bit of chicken’ and dressin’, so you might have to eat leftovers for a few days.”

“You’ll get no complaints from me,” he declared. “The burger ain’t bad, but Dairy Queen’s are a dang-sight better and a heck of a lot cheaper.”

I didn’t care about the food. What I couldn’t hardly wait for was the answer to my question. I wasn’t sure why Jasper wanted to tell me about it in the cemetery, but I wasn’t going to even say a word about thewhyor where he wanted to talk.

Jasper sat flat down on the ground and leaned back against Gracie’s gray granite tombstone. He patted the place next to him, and I eased down beside him. “She didn’t like to be hot, so I’m glad she’s resting beneath this shade tree.”

A flash of red flew past us and lit on a low limb.

“I was about to ask God for a sign, and He’s delivered it,” he said. “That bird is telling me that the time has come, and I imagine that Gracie has told God not to let me come to heaven without me doin’ what she told me to do.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, but I liked the idea of Gracie watching over us.

“You know what a cardinal means,” Jasper said, then went on to tell me again. “It means someone that has gone on to eternity is thinkingabout you. Gracie is telling me everything is going to be all right. Her spirit is here among us. You asked me about why Gracie and Sarah never wanted you to have boys as friends. Well, the answer is that Gracie was hurt once very badly, and she never trusted men or boys again. Same with your mother. But you’ve got to understand that Sarah was barely eighteen, and Gracie was only fourteen when she got hurt.”

“But you are a guy, and you were her very best friend,” I argued.

“Me and Davis both were,” he nodded. “I was ready to die when you hauled me to the hospital. Do you have any idea why I got well?”

There he went, changing the subject again. I wasn’t going to get any answers from him today.

“Good medicine, rest, and food.” I watched the cardinal sit there and stare at us with his beady little black eyes.

“No,” he disagreed. “It was because I made a vow to Gracie that I would answer your questions before I died. I want to get this life over with so I can go on to heaven and see my two best friends again, but it was so hard to come out with. You idolized her.”

“I love my mama and Aunt Gracie, so there’s no tarnishing,” I said.

“There isn’t just one secret,” he whispered and looked all around.

“Jasper! This is turning into something out ofDynasty, and boy, did Aunt Gracie like that one.” I nudged him with my shoulder.

“Fine. But you got to understand the past to be able to look forward to the future. Gracie was born November 11, and Davis came along a week later and me at the end, right after Thanksgiving. Granny said there was a big party to welcome Gracie into the world when she was about a month old. People came from miles around to see the new baby girl that would one day run Clarence’s estate.”

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