Nancy Bartholomew: Stand By Your Man

Vernell Spivey had done his best to come home. I stepped into the room and looked around some more. Vienna sausage cans filled the trash can, along with an empty bottle of hot sauce and an empty saltine cracker box. It was obvious that Vernell lived alone in his palace, in one solitary room, grieving his roots. No wonder Bess King had seemed like such a miracle. She was a home girl, just like I had been, just like Vernell's mama and her mama before her.

I walked over to the rocker and sat down, reaching over to pick up the heavy family Bible. The underlined words on the page blurred as my eyes filled up with tears. Vernell had been highlighting his favorite passages, reading them over and over. My curiosity overwhelmed me and I wiped the tears away and began to read.

"The righteousness of the upright saves them, but the treacherous are taken captive by their schemes… Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but whoever pursues evil will die." I flipped through the pages of Proverbs, reading the passages Vernell had carefully underlined in yellow. "Misfortune pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous. The good leave an inheritance to their children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous." Then the last passage, underlined twice, read "Some pretend to be rich, yet have nothing; others pretend to be poor yet have great wealth. Wealth is a ransom for a person's life but the poor get no threats."

Poor Vernell. If it were possible, he seemed to be changing his ways, or at least considering it. A piece of paper fluttered out of the Bible as I turned the pages, falling into my lap. It was scrap paper, and on it Vernell had written "The Satellite Kingdom," then scratched that out. "The Mobile Home Kingdom," and scratched that out. This was followed by a series of names: "Vernell's Palace of the Future," "Millennium World," "Divine Accommodations," and "Seek and Ye Shall Find It All World," all scratched out. Finally Vernell had arrived at something that worked for him. "The Promised Land Kingdom of Earthly Transportation and Accommodation."

I shook my head and looked away. What scheme had Vernell concocted now? I looked across the room at the bed and saw a piece of wood sticking out from underneath the dust ruffle.

When I pulled the dust ruffle aside and looked, I found Vernell's master plan. It was a balsa wood model, carefully constructed and delicately laid out, a two-foot-by-two-foot square. Vernell's "Promised Land Kingdom." There, in miniature, was his plan to take over Greensboro's transportation and accommodation needs. An entire village of mobile homes, satellite dishes, and used cars that would sit on a huge plot of land just beyond the water park on South Holden Road.

I picked up the miniature mobile homes and saw crosses carefully engraved on the rear panels of the trailers. Each used car bore a tiny cross. Each satellite dish was carefully painted in black, with an image of Jesus, stretching out his hands to better receive the signal.

"Oh, Vernell," I sighed. "What have you done now?"

I had to admit, Greensboro had nothing like it. One-stop shopping for those of us living paycheck to paycheck. The used car lot was huge, bigger than any I'd ever seen. I'd heard tell of used car superstores in Atlanta, but Greensboro had nothing of this magnitude. And Vernell had plans to more than double his mobile home inventory. How had he intended to pull it all off?

Nosmo King. That's why Vernell had been talking to Nosmo. So what stopped him? What had changed his mind? I looked back at the Bible. "Wealth is a ransom for a person's life, but the poor get no threats." What was that all about?

"Okay," I whispered, "let's get to the bottom of all this."

I turned out Vernell's bedroom light and left the room, closing the door behind me. It was time to find Pauline Conrad and make her talk to me. I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven thirty. In three more hours I had to be back at the Golden Stallion, ready to face down three men and one angry teenager.

I walked back through the darkened house, mulling it all over. Vernell always seemed to have money, but the piles of bills on his desk seemed to say otherwise. The fact that he'd put together another outrageous business scheme didn't surprise me at all. Vernell always had something up his sleeve. But going to illegal ends to get the money, now that surprised me. What would make him do a thing like that? And what would make him decide against it?

I walked into the kitchen, headed for the back door and stopped as I was walking by the wall phone. I could hear Tony Carlucci's voice in my head. "He's got someone who cares about him. He's got Bess."

I looked at the pad of numbers Vernell kept beside the phone, mounted on a tacky little floral pad that had to be a Jolene leftover. Bess King's number was sitting right there.

"Why not?" I murmured. "Maybe two heads would be better than one."

I dialed the number and waited. After three rings I heard her voice, tired but not sleepy.

"Hello?" she said.

"Bess, it's Maggie. Listen, you want to help me get Vernell out of this mess?"

"What do you mean?" She sounded suspicious.

"I'm about half out of my mind trying to figure out what all's going on here. Maybe, since you've been with him lately, you can puzzle out some of the pieces that I can't figure. Maybe we'll get to this quicker if we both work on it."

She was thinking about it. She was quiet for a minute and then strong. "All right, let's do it."

I made it from Vernell's house to hers in fifteen minutes. She was waiting at the foot of the driveway, dressed in black jeans and a black leather jacket, a female version of Tony Carlucci.

"I'm thinking we should drop in on Pauline Conrad," I said. "I'm thinking seeing you might shake her up a little."

Bess smiled softly and looked out the window. "Now that's a conversation I might enjoy having. The widow and the girlfriend, together at last."

"Precisely," I said. "What do you know about the Promised Land?"

Bess looked startled, glanced at me then away. She knew everything.

"The Promised Land? Why, I guess I know no more than the next person," she said, but her voice cracked.

"Look," I said, speeding up and flying down the back road into town, "if you're with me on this, you've gotta be honest, no matter what you think Vernell would want you to do. I'm his ex-wife, Bess, not his enemy. I don't want him back, I just want him out of jail."

Bess sat with that for a minute, thinking and mulling it over.

"You know, I've been jealous of you a long time, Maggie. Vernell just can't seem to turn loose of trying to do it right for you." Her voice had a bitter edge to it. "He's got you up on some pedestal, just like he does his mother. You're the saint, the one who can never do any wrong, and he's your bad boy."

I started to say something and stopped. Let her say her piece.

"He's spent most of his life trying to fit in and be successful. He's been so busy impressing others, he's forgotten about living right. He wants everybody to think he's Mr. Greensboro, and to do that, he created a castle and married a trophy wife, and built up a mountain of debt."

She turned in her seat and I could feel her staring at me. "You didn't even know that, did you?"

"Bess, Vernell's money was of no consequence to me. All I wanted was for Sheila to be able to go to college. When her Uncle Jimmy died, I figured she was set on the half of the Mobile Home Kingdom he left her. I let Vernell do his thing and I tried to stay out of it, until he made it to where I had to become involved."

Bess sighed. "Vernell's been fighting the banks and just about everybody else trying to stay afloat long enough to make the businesses pay off. He was fighting a hostile takeover by VanScoy Mobile Homes on account of they smelled blood and were looking to clean him out. The Promised Land is Vernell's only hope."