The Pilot is published in Southern Pines, our sophisticated neighbor. I liked to read news of the rich and world traveled who lived there. What was surprising was that The Pilot ever had anything at all about Littleboro. Nothing about Debbie Booth in the obituaries—it was too soon. She’d make the next issue. I hoped her write-up would be all she’d want it to be. In the second section was a photo of some Boy Scouts hanging a rope bridge in the park in Carelock County. I wondered if their bridge was across the “moat” dug by Miss Tempie’s handyman near her property, the moat that almost claimed Malinda last year with its slime and sludge. I hoped somebody had filled the moat in and this rope bridge was across a sparkling little tumbling-over-rocks creek along a wooded trail. I flipped pages as Ida Plum, at my elbow, looked on. Nothing on page 2 or 3 or 4, but on the society page of The Pilot were pictures of Mayor Moss’s luncheon and who all were “feted,” the word that used to give me and Mama Alice hysterics.
