Charlaine Harris - Dead in the Family

“When did you get back?” I asked.

“Less than ten minutes ago,” he said. “I knew if I showed myself, they’d just get pumped up again, so I parked on School Street and walked through the back way.”

“Smart,” I said. The lunch crowd was leaving Merlotte’s, and the incident was already on the track to becoming a local legend. Only one or two of the patrons seemed upset; the rest regarded the demonstration as good entertainment. Catfish Hennessy clapped Sam on the shoulder as he went by, and he wasn’t the only one who made an extra effort to show support. I wondered how long the tolerant attitude would last. If the picketers kept it up, a lot of people might decide that coming here simply wasn’t worth the trouble.

I didn’t need to say any of this out loud. It was written on Sam’s face. “Hey,” I said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “They’ll go away. You know what you should do? You should call the pastor of that church. They’re all from Holy Word Tabernacle in Clarice. You should tell him that you want to come talk to the church. Show them you’re a person just like everyone else. I bet that would work.”

Then I realized how stiff his shoulders were. Sam was rigid with anger. “I should not have to tell anyone anything,” he said. “I’m a citizen of this country. My father was in the army. I was in the army. I pay my share of taxes. And I’m not a person like everyone else. I’m a shifter. And they need to just put that on their plates and eat it.” He whirled to go back into his bar.

I flinched, though I knew his anger wasn’t directed at me. As I watched Sam stalk away, I reminded myself that none of this was about me. But I couldn’t help but feel I had a stake in the outcome of this new development. Not only did I work at Merlotte’s, but the woman who’d come in initially had named me as part of the problem.

Furthermore, I still thought approaching the church in person was a good idea. It was reasonable and civil.

Sam wasn’t in a reasonable and civil mood, and I could understand that. I just didn’t know where he was going to put his anger.

A newspaper reporter came in an hour later and interviewed all of us about “the incident,” as he called it. Errol Clayton was a guy in his forties who wrote about half the stories in the little Bon Temps paper. He didn’t own it, but he managed it on a shoestring budget. I had no issue with the paper, but of course lots of folks made fun of it. The Bon Temps Bugle was frequently called the Bon Temps Bungle .

While Errol was waiting for Sam to finish a phone call, I said, “You want a drink, Mr. Clayton?”

“I’d sure appreciate some iced tea, Sookie,” he said. “How’s that brother of yours?”

“He’s doing well.”

“Getting over the death of his wife?”

“I think he’s come to terms with it,” I said, which covered all sorts of ground. “That was a terrible thing.”

“Yes, very bad. And it was right here in this parking lot,” Errol Clayton said, as if I might have forgotten. “And right here, in this parking lot, was where the body of Lafayette Reynold was found.”

“That’s true, too. But of course, none of that was Sam’s fault, or had anything to do with him.”

“Never arrested anyone for Crystal’s death that I recall.”

I reared back to give Errol Clayton a hard stare. “Mr. Clayton, if you’ve come here to make trouble, you can just leave now. We need things to be better, not worse. Sam is a good man. He goes to the Rotary, he puts an ad in the high school yearbook, he sponsors a baseball team at the Boys and Girls Club every spring, and he helps with the Fourth of July fireworks. Plus, he’s a great boss, a veteran, and a tax-paying citizen.”

“Merlotte, you got you a fan club,” Errol Clayton said to Sam, who’d come to stand right behind me.

“I’ve got a friend,” Sam said quietly. “I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends and a good business. I sure would hate to see that ruined.” I heard an apology in his voice, and I felt his hand pat my shoulder. Feeling much better, I slipped away to do my job, leaving Sam to talk to the newspaperman.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to my boss again before I left to go home. I had to stop at the store because I needed a couple of things—Claude had made inroads into my potato chip stash and my cereal, too—and I wasn’t just imagining that the store was full of people who were busy talking about what had happened at lunchtime at Merlotte’s. There was silence every time I came around a corner, but of course that didn’t make any difference to me. I could tell what people were thinking.

Most of them didn’t share the beliefs of the demonstrators. But the mere fact of the incident had set some of the previously indifferent townspeople to thinking about the issue of the two-natured, and about the legislation that proposed to take away some of their rights.

And some of them were all for it.

Jason was on time, and I climbed up into his truck. I’d changed into blue jeans and a pale blue thin T-shirt I’d bought at Old Navy. It said PEACE in golden Gothic letters. I hoped I didn’t look like I was hinting. Jason, in an ever-appropriate New Orleans Saints T-shirt, looked ready for anything.

“Hey, Sook!” He was buzzing with happy anticipation. He’d never been to a Were meeting, of course, and he wasn’t aware of how dangerous they could be. Or maybe he was, and that was why he was so excited.

“Jason, I got to tell you a few things about Were gatherings,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, a bit more soberly.

Aware that I sounded more like his know-it-all older sister instead of his younger sister, I gave him a little lecture. I told Jason that the Weres were touchy, proud, and protocol minded; explained how the Weres could abjure a pack member; emphasized the fact that Basim was a newer pack member who’d been trusted with a position of great responsibility. That he’d betrayed that trust would make the pack even touchier, and they might question Alcide’s judgment in picking Basim as enforcer. He might even be challenged. The pack judgment on Annabelle was impossible to predict. “Something pretty awful may happen to her,” I warned Jason. “We got to suck it up and accept it.”

“You’re saying they might physically punish a woman because she cheated on the packleader with another pack officer?” Jason said. “Sookie, you’re talking to me like I’m not two-natured, too. You think I don’t know all that?”

He was right. That was exactly how I’d been treating him.

I took a deep breath. “I apologize, Jason. I still think about you as my human brother. I don’t always remember that you’re a lot more. In all honesty, I’m scared. I’ve seen them kill people before, like I’ve seen your panthers kill and maim people when they thought that was justice. What scares me is not that you do it, which is bad enough, but that I’ve come to accept it as just. the way you do things if you’re two-natured. When those demonstrators were at the bar today, I was so mad at them for hating Weres and shifters without really knowing anything about them. But now I’m wondering how they’d feel if they actually knew more about how packs work; how Gran would feel if she knew I was willing to watch a woman, or anyone, be beaten and maybe killed for an infraction of some rules I don’t live by.”

Jason was silent for what seemed like a long time. “I think the fact that a few days have passed is a good thing. It’s given Alcide time to cool off. I hope the other pack members have had time to think, too,” he said finally. And I knew that was all we could say about this, and maybe more than I should have said. We fell silent for a short time.