Read Online Just Wanna Testify by Pearl Cleage - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Pearl Cleage
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Savannah was about four hours and then just a short hop across the causeway to Tybee Island, Georgia’s best-kept beach secret. An island too small to support the rampant overdevelopment that had already destroyed so many coastal communities, Tybee had great restaurants, amazing white sand beaches, friendly full-time residents, and enough local traditions to keep the mix lively, perhaps the best known of which was the annual Beach Queen Pageant, a veritable who’s who of the island’s eccentrics and the best party of the year.
When Abbie first saw Blue’s beach house, nestled behind a giant sand dune, the view it offered of the Atlantic literally took her breath away. She spent hours just sitting on the back deck at dawn or watching the sunset from the tiny widow’s walk that was reachable only by crawling out the window. Getting up there always made her feel like a kid shinnying up a backyard tree to sneak in after curfew.
She spent hours exploring the island, jogging on the beach, searching the horizon with Blue’s big binoculars for the first glimpse of the giant freighters, pulling into Savannah Harbor with their mysterious loads of cargo containers stacked high against the bright blue sky. She watched the tiny shrimp boats chugging out before dawn and delighted in the porpoises leaping and splashing solely for their own pleasure, but maybe for hers, too, Abbie thought.
She was a great believer in the sacred interconnectedness of all things in the complex, never-ending circle of birth, life, death, spirit. That’s why the whole idea of vampires was hard for her to accept. They were the antithesis of everything she believed. The
undead
? That meant the circle stopped with them, and so did the possibility of continuous regeneration. No idea of God she embraced could account for the presence of such beings, but there they were, roaming around her own West End neighborhood, with nothing to keep them in check but Blue.
She wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to ask Louie Baptiste if he’d known any beautiful vampires back before the water chased them out, like it did almost everything he held dear. She shivered again, realizing as she turned into the almost empty parking lot at Sweet Abbie’s that she hadn’t asked Blue if she should tell Peachy what was going on. Probably not, she decided, spotting Louie’s perfectly restored 1967 Cadillac DeVille in the spot reserved for Chef Baptiste. The spot marked for Peachy Nolan was empty.
Abbie glanced at her watch as she pulled into the space next to Peachy’s. It was a little after two and the place was closed until dinner started at five. She knew Peachy would be back from wherever he was shortly, so she switched off the motor and walked around to the back kitchen entrance. A young man in a white T-shirt and a big white apron, its strings double wrapped around his slender midsection, was standing several feet away from the door smoking a cigarette. When he saw Abbie, he dropped it to the ground and smashed the butt out with his heel. She recognized one of Peachy’s part-time dishwashers, Johnny Asbury, a third-generation islander, strugglingthrough his last year of high school to please his mother before he went to work on the family shrimp boat. Shrimping was the only job he’d ever wanted to do and everybody smoked on a shrimp boat.
“Sorry, Miss Abbie,” he said, looking sheepish. “You know I’m trying to quit.”
“The only way to quit is to quit,” Abbie said. “Chef around?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s just starting things up for dinner.”
“Thanks,” she said, giving him a motherly smile as she ducked inside. “You keep trying, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, wondering if he had time to sneak one more before he had to get back to work.
The kitchen in Sweet Abbie’s was a large, spotlessly clean room with high ceilings and enough gleaming state-of-the-art cooking equipment to make Martha Stewart green with envy. Peachy had invested
When Abbie first saw Blue’s beach house, nestled behind a giant sand dune, the view it offered of the Atlantic literally took her breath away. She spent hours just sitting on the back deck at dawn or watching the sunset from the tiny widow’s walk that was reachable only by crawling out the window. Getting up there always made her feel like a kid shinnying up a backyard tree to sneak in after curfew.
She spent hours exploring the island, jogging on the beach, searching the horizon with Blue’s big binoculars for the first glimpse of the giant freighters, pulling into Savannah Harbor with their mysterious loads of cargo containers stacked high against the bright blue sky. She watched the tiny shrimp boats chugging out before dawn and delighted in the porpoises leaping and splashing solely for their own pleasure, but maybe for hers, too, Abbie thought.
She was a great believer in the sacred interconnectedness of all things in the complex, never-ending circle of birth, life, death, spirit. That’s why the whole idea of vampires was hard for her to accept. They were the antithesis of everything she believed. The
undead
? That meant the circle stopped with them, and so did the possibility of continuous regeneration. No idea of God she embraced could account for the presence of such beings, but there they were, roaming around her own West End neighborhood, with nothing to keep them in check but Blue.
She wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to ask Louie Baptiste if he’d known any beautiful vampires back before the water chased them out, like it did almost everything he held dear. She shivered again, realizing as she turned into the almost empty parking lot at Sweet Abbie’s that she hadn’t asked Blue if she should tell Peachy what was going on. Probably not, she decided, spotting Louie’s perfectly restored 1967 Cadillac DeVille in the spot reserved for Chef Baptiste. The spot marked for Peachy Nolan was empty.
Abbie glanced at her watch as she pulled into the space next to Peachy’s. It was a little after two and the place was closed until dinner started at five. She knew Peachy would be back from wherever he was shortly, so she switched off the motor and walked around to the back kitchen entrance. A young man in a white T-shirt and a big white apron, its strings double wrapped around his slender midsection, was standing several feet away from the door smoking a cigarette. When he saw Abbie, he dropped it to the ground and smashed the butt out with his heel. She recognized one of Peachy’s part-time dishwashers, Johnny Asbury, a third-generation islander, strugglingthrough his last year of high school to please his mother before he went to work on the family shrimp boat. Shrimping was the only job he’d ever wanted to do and everybody smoked on a shrimp boat.
“Sorry, Miss Abbie,” he said, looking sheepish. “You know I’m trying to quit.”
“The only way to quit is to quit,” Abbie said. “Chef around?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s just starting things up for dinner.”
“Thanks,” she said, giving him a motherly smile as she ducked inside. “You keep trying, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, wondering if he had time to sneak one more before he had to get back to work.
The kitchen in Sweet Abbie’s was a large, spotlessly clean room with high ceilings and enough gleaming state-of-the-art cooking equipment to make Martha Stewart green with envy. Peachy had invested
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