“Are you drinking, Rhoda? Is that what all this is about? Little Malcolm has an ear infection. I have to take him to the doctor in the morning and I had an appointment to get a permanent but I guess I’ll have to cancel that. Where are you? Where are you calling me from?” My father took the phone away from her. His voice came over the wires. “Sister, now you just settle down. Whatever’s going on can be fixed. Just tell me where you are, honey. I’ll come and get you tonight. You just stay put. Tell me where you are.”

“I’m in a hotel in Alexandria, Louisiana, Daddy. My maid killed herself. Oh, Daddy, it was so terrible. Everything happens to me. I can’t do anything right.” I began to cry again, terrible tears of rage and fear and incomprehension. “Don’t worry about anything, Sister,” my father’s voice crooned to me. “I’ll be there in a few hours. Give me the number where you are. I’ll be there to get you.”

“Hurry up,” I answered. “Hurry up, Daddy. Please come and get me. I want to go home. I want to go home and see my babies.”

So my father chartered an airplane and flew down to Alexandria in the middle of the night and collected me. A man was hired to drive the car home and Jim Phillips was left to take care of Klane’s children and I flew home in a twin-engine Beechcraft with my daddy.

“Don’t worry about anything, Sweet Sister,” he kept saying. “Your momma’s got the boys and everything will be all right. That’s all behind you now. They’ve got this new program at the stockbroker’s that I want you to take. It meets on Tuesday nights and you can learn all about how to invest in the markets. Dudley and I want you in the business with us. You just stop thinking about all that mess down there in Alexandria. Just try to sleep. Everything’s okay. It’s going to be fine.” He put his hand on my arm and patted me. He leaned up into the cockpit and looked at the pilot’s map. He took dominion everywhere. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

Coda