“I’m not a sneak,” said Clara Markham, “nor am I an imbecile. Simmons Wood will be my biggest deal of the year, Mr. Squires. I wouldn’t risk blowing the whole enchilada for a few extra bucks.”
He believed her. He’d seen the town; it was a miracle she hadn’t starved to death.
“A local investor, you said.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be kind enough to tell me the name.”
“I’m afraid I can’t, Mister Squires.”
“But you’re confident they’ve got some resources.”
“They do,” said Clara Markham, thinking: Last I heard.
Shiner’s mother overslept. The road machines woke her.
Hurriedly she squeezed into the bridal gown, snatched her parasol and sailed out the door. By the time she reached the intersection of Sebring Street and the highway, it was too late. The Department of Transportation was ready to pave the Road-Stain Jesus.
Shiner’s mother shrieked and hopped about like a costumed circus monkey. She spat in the face of the crew foreman and used her parasol to stab ineffectively at the driver of the steamroller. Ultimately she flung herself facedown upon the holy splotch and refused to budge for the machines.
“Pave me, too, you godless bastards!” she cried. “Let me be one with my Savior!”
The crew foreman wiped off his cheek and signaled for his men to halt work. He telephoned the sheriffs office and said: “There’s a crazy witch in a wedding dress out here humping the road. What do I do?”
Two deputies arrived, followed later by a television truck.
Shiner’s mother was kissing the pavement, on the place she imagined to be Jesus’ forehead. “Don’t you worry, Son of God,” she kept saying. “I’m right here. I’m not goin’ nowheres!” Her devotion to the stain was remarkable, considering its downwind proximity to a flattened opossum.
A vanload of worried-looking pilgrims arrived, but the deputies ordered them to stay out of the right-of-way. Shiner’s mother raised her head and said: “That’s the collection box on top of the cooler. Help yourselves to a Sprite!”
By now traffic was blocked in both directions. The crew foreman, who was from Tampa and unfamiliar with the local lore, asked the deputies if there was a mental institution in town.
“Naw, but we’re overdue,” said one of them.
They each grabbed an arm and hoisted Shiner’s mother off the highway. “He’s watching! He sees you!” she screamed.
The deputies deposited her in the cage of a patrol car and chased the curious tourists away. Before continuing with the paving job, the crew foreman and his men assembled in a loose semicircle at the center line. They were trying to figure out what the lunatic biddy was ranting about.
Bending over the stain, the foreman said, “If that’s Jesus Christ, I’m Long Dong Silver.”
“Hell, it’s fuckin’ brake fluid,” declared one of his men, a mechanic.
“Oil,” asserted another.
Then the driver of the steamroller said: “”From here it kinda looks like a woman. If you close one eye, a naked woman on a camel.”
That was it for the foreman. “Back to work,” he snapped.
The TV crew stayed for the paving. They got an excellent close-up of the Road-Stain Jesus disappearing beneath a rolling black crust of hot asphalt. The scene was deftly crosscut with a shot of a young pilgrim sniffling into a Kleenex as if grieving. In reality she was merely trying to stave off dead-opossum fumes.
The story ran on the noon news out of Orlando. It opened with videotape of Shiner’s mother, tenderly smooching the sacred smudge. Joan anxiously phoned Roddy at work. “There’s TV people in town. What if they hear about the turtle shrine?”
“Pretend we don’t know him,” Roddy said.
“But he’s my brother.”
“Fine. Then you do the interviews.”
Shiner’s mother was booked for disturbing the peace and after three hours was released without bail. Immediately she took a cab to the intersection of Sebring and the highway. The asphalt had hardened, dry to the touch; Shiner’s mother wasn’t even positive where the stain had been. She observed that somebody had stolen her collection box and most of the cold sodas. She was officially out of business.
She made her way to Demencio’s house and set her empty cooler in the shade of an oak tree, away from Sinclair’s crowd. Trish noticed her sitting there and brought a lemonade.