The Flood Girls

by Richard Fifield

  In the third inning, the Methodists were up by twelve. Their husbands were afraid of the bleachers filled with the rough-and-tumble sinners of Quinn, and lined up against the chain-link fence behind the dugout. The husbands were also devout. Rachel ascertained this by studying their outfits. Short-sleeved button-down shirts and ties, a combination that had always made her cringe. Slacks worn without belts, their hair parted so severely, Rachel watched the white flesh redden as the sun emerged. As the air warmed up, so did the Methodists, and they batted through their entire lineup before Diane unleashed another trick from her arsenal. Diane was not a sneaky person, but she had perfected a fake out, pretending to throw the ball to first base, only to tag out the unsuspecting runner who had sprung from second.

  “JESUS WEPT!” Laverna screamed from the dugout as Diane ended the slaughter and the Flood Girls returned to bat for the top of the fourth inning. Klemp had joined Laverna on the bench, as if she expected to be subbed in. The girl was as grim as always, and apparently an agnostic. Red Mabel bolted to her truck and drove over the railroad ties that framed the parking lot, parked right behind the dugout. While the Sinclairs and Tabby inched around the bases, Red Mabel formulated a plan. Klemp sat in the driver’s seat, instructed to play “Hells Bells” by AC/DC over and over, rewinding gleefully, doing her part. Thankfully, Red Mabel had stolen a decent stereo system, and the bass rattled the beer bottles collecting around Martha Man Hands.

  The Methodists protested to Bucky, during the fifth inning, as the song blared for the ninth time. Rachel could hear him shouting over the music, telling the coach to call the police, as he was only in charge of the actual softball field, and Klemp was a minor who had gone rogue.

  The husbands gathered together in a prayer circle, and Laverna took the lord’s name in vain. She also took the lord’s name and combined it with all the permutations of obscure sex acts she could think of. “JESUS CLEVELAND STEAMER! JESUS FELCHING CHRIST!” Rachel was impressed that her mother knew about felching, as it was something she had only heard about from her gay friends in Missoula.

  By the sixth inning, the Methodists were up by fourteen, and the praying grew more fervent, the muttering lost to the blast of AC/DC. The rain returned, and the husbands prayed even harder, as Red Mabel’s white T-shirt soaked through. Red Mabel believed in Jesus as much as she believed in brassieres.

  Shyanne Fitchett left to make the bus for the track meet, and in the last inning, Rachel found herself on deck. Diane transformed a base hit into a double, as the Methodist on first base was captivated by Red Mabel’s breasts.

  “WAIT FOR YOUR PITCH!” Laverna cupped her hands like a megaphone, but Della swung and missed each time. Laverna threw an empty beer can in frustration, nearly striking Ginger, who was used to her coach’s tantrums. Ginger removed her expensive sunglasses and rolled her eyes, wiped away the drop of Bud Light with the tail of her T-shirt. As Rachel left the dugout, Black Mabel’s father and brother shouted the chorus, fists pumping in the air.

  Calmly, Rachel grabbed the bat from Della and marched to the plate. She reminded herself that this was just softball. She had survived much worse. She liked the bat, the weight of it calibrated perfectly. It felt like a weapon. There was no chatter from her team, no words of encouragement. Even Diane was silent.

  Rachel had yet to hit a ball, despite the hours she spent practicing with the Chief. The pitcher perspired heavily, and she wiped the mix of rain and sweat from her face with the front of her shirt.

  The first pitch was a strike. Rachel watched as it flew past. The second was a ball, so far out of the strike zone that it nearly struck Bucky in the throat.

  At that moment, there was a commotion in the outfield, as three white-tailed deer came bolting from the forest, chased by the brown dog. The deer ducked through a curled-up piece of the chain-link fence, galloping into center field.

  The pitcher was not aware of the deer, and threw the ball before Bucky could call a time-out.

  Rachel noticed that the outfield and second base were completely distracted, watching the deer in awe. Perhaps they thought the deer were some sort of miracle, sent to remedy Red Mabel’s immorality.

  Rachel had completed enough personal inventories to know that she thrived on chaos. She kept her eye on the ball, and swung like the Chief had instructed.

  She made contact with the pitch, weak contact, and the ball rolled slowly past the pitcher and right past the abandoned second base, sending Diane running to third.

  Rachel was amazed she had hit the ball, and forgot to run.

  Laverna screamed at her daughter, and Red Mabel jumped up and down in the dirt, and pointed at first base. Their words were lost in the music, and Rachel only ran after Bucky broke the rules and nudged her from the plate.

  The Methodists collected themselves and threw out Rachel at first. Diane wisely stayed at third.

  Rachel could hear Jake cheering for her. When she walked into the dugout, Laverna and Red Mabel refused to congratulate her, even though she had finally done something softball-like.

  She hit the ball.

  The coach of the Methodists consulted with Bucky, and Laverna put a quick stop to their protestations that the deer were grounds for a delay of game. Not that it mattered. Ronda struck out, and the game was over.

  Gold

  The next night was Sunday, and it was a special occasion. Jake was allowed to sleep over at Rachel’s. He planned on skipping school the next day, which only seemed to fuel the decadence of the occasion. Bert had left for five days of a men’s retreat with the church. Apparently, Jake was not considered a man, not considered at all, really. He took no umbrage at the lack of invitation, thankful he would not have to attend church day care. Rachel had a free Monday, as she had switched with Tish, who needed one of her weekend shifts to go find her husband, who had left town with Black Mabel.

  After a trip to the video store in Ellis, they ate popcorn, drank Shirley Temples, and clutched each other as they watched Kathy Bates in Misery.

  He slept on the couch, happily.

  Rachel made oatmeal in the morning, and they ate it slowly outside on the front porch, so Jake could put off returning home for as long as possible.

  A day of rain revealed a ragged version of a rock garden. The beds followed the entire length of the fence, framed by jagged pieces of shale that Frank had hauled there and sunk into the ground. Each bed was three feet wide, and Rachel told Jake that she assumed this was just more of his bachelor landscaping, a hillbilly Stonehenge covered in snow and then the slog of dead leaves.

  “He always had flowers,” said Jake. “I remember that.”

  They spotted the squirrel, glittery and golden, almost completely covered in the green mush from plants that had been cut back and left to rot. Jake leaped from the porch, and Rachel followed in her flip-flops. She crouched down, brushed away the detritus until it revealed itself: a squirrel statue, ceramic and spray-painted so thickly that the paint had dried in globs and drips. A golden squirrel, like a trophy, some special achievement in small woodland animals.

  Jake went home and changed into what he felt was appropriate gardening clothing—khaki everything, including a beret. Bert had not returned from his retreat, Krystal was asleep with the baby in her arms, so Jake scrawled out a note and left it on the kitchen table.

  Jake and Rachel knelt down in the soggy earth and began to scoop away all the leaves, some so mushy they disintegrated in their hands, almost decomposed into mud.

  Under the cover of leaves, dark soil was studded with tiny green spikes. The green was so pale and new, so unaccustomed to light, that it made Jake slightly sad. He thought of Frank planting these things, hidden from the rest of the trailer court by the privacy fence, his secret garden. Maybe Frank had planted them for Jake’s benefit. Frank didn’t have grass in his yard, but he always had flowers. Jake didn’t know what kind they were, but he remembered the colors.

  “I lived here my senior year,” said Rachel.

  �
��I didn’t know that,” said Jake, as he scooped a handful of sludge and deposited it in a garbage bag.

  “He didn’t have a garden,” she said. “This was where I used to put my lawn chair and suntan.”

  “Careful,” said Jake. “The sun is not friendly to blondes. I’m amazed your skin looks as good as it does.”

  Grayed stalks, cut down as close to the ground as possible, were hard as sticks. They offered more evidence of flowers here, and that Frank had made sure they were ready for winter, and maybe his death.

  Rachel pointed at the grayed stalks. “So you don’t know what these are?”

  “No,” said Jake. “I don’t know flowers. That’s a stereotype.”

  “Sorry,” said Rachel. “I’ve never grown anything in my life. Just hair.”

  “I know somebody who can help,” said Jake. “You have to trust me.”

  “Of course,” said Rachel.

  * * *

  They drove through the nearly flooded streets of Quinn and Jake gave her directions, but Ginger Fitchett’s house was easy to find. It was the nicest house in town. Like Frank, Ginger surrounded her entire property with a privacy fence.

  Jake pushed through the gate first, and sitting in the middle of her own secret garden, Ginger Fitchett was entertaining Diane Savage Connor. They sat at a glass café table, under a giant pink umbrella, drinking tea. Ginger already began the work of preparing her garden for spring, and it was magnificent. Every square inch of yard had been landscaped in exact beds, framed with railroad ties. Ginger’s bushes were enormous, testament to a woman who spent years and years on her yard. A tiny greenhouse nestled in the corner.

  “Hello there,” Ginger said, and stood to greet them. Jake was slightly shocked that Ginger wasn’t asking what Rachel wanted, or even seemed perturbed that Rachel had gained entry to her yard. “Do you want some tea?”

  “Sure,” said Jake. Rachel nodded. They sat down next to Diane, as Ginger entered her gorgeous house, all three stories of it, a giant sunporch, the whole thing painted the color of a sunset. She returned with two more cups of tea. Jake helped himself to sugar cubes, while Rachel craned her neck to take it all in.

  “Diane is seeing her gynecologist,” announced Ginger. She took a sip of her tea, while Diane nibbled at a Lorna Doone.

  “It’s nice to know you’re concerned about your health,” said Rachel, to break the silence.

  “Dating,” said Diane, after she had swallowed her cookie. “Like really seeing him.”

  “Oh,” said Rachel.

  “That’s what we were talking about before you showed up,” said Ginger. “We think he might be the marrying kind.”

  Jake couldn’t stand it any longer. “We need your help,” he said. “Frank had a garden. Neither one of us know what to do with it.”

  “Frank?” Ginger was incredulous. Diane raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” said Rachel. “He kept it a secret, just like you. I don’t think anybody in the trailer court knew what was going on behind that fence.”

  “I did,” said Jake. “He had the flowers for as long as I can remember.”

  “He was a mystery to us all,” Ginger said, and she reached over and patted Rachel’s hand.

  “I want more,” said Rachel.

  “I really didn’t know the man,” said Ginger. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” said Rachel. “I meant more flowers.”

  “Oh,” said Ginger. “I understand. I always want more flowers.” She gestured around her property, already crammed with garden beds and groupings of small trees and shrubs. “Is there a lot of sun in the yard?”

  “Just along that side of the fence,” said Rachel. “The rest is blocked by the trailer house and the trees.”

  “Jake,” said Ginger. “I trust you have a notebook on you.”

  Ginger knew Jake all too well. He removed a small sketchpad from one of his khaki pockets, and a pen from another, and Ginger began to dictate a list. He made sure the sketchpad only opened to the last third of pages, the blank ones—there were secrets to be kept.

  * * *

  On Monday mornings, the Ben Franklin in Ellis was thick with housewives. The garden supplies had been arranged out in the parking lot, in small huts made of clear plastic.

  Jake and Rachel filled the cart with five bags of soil, two trowels, four pairs of gardening gloves, and three flats of flowers, neatly divided like black ice-cube trays. They picked out the healthiest looking Johnny-jump-ups, echinacea daisies, and vines of clematis. Rachel bought two trellises, per Ginger’s instructions.

  “Can I spray-paint them?” Jake was a big fan of spray paint.

  “Of course,” said Rachel.

  They added six cans of gold spray paint to the cart.

  They returned to Quinn, and Jake scooped out the rest of the dead leaves and dragged the trellises out into the driveway to paint.

  As they dried, he returned to the garden beds, and Jake and Rachel knelt along the fence line, clearing spots for the clematis, shaking out the contents of the heavy bags of soil, stirring it in with the old dirt.

  They finished planting the daisies just as the sun went down.

  Jake asked for permission to have dinner at Rachel’s house. Krystal noted all of the black earth that stained Jake’s knees and shirt, and seemed pleased. He was dirty, like any other normal twelve-year-old boy. Jake nearly ran into his bedroom to change clothes.

  Rachel made beans and rice and homemade tortillas, while Jake fussed over the gold spray paint on his hands.

  After dinner, Jake insisted on doing the dishes. They could hear the thunder, and then the rain drummed on the roof of the trailer.

  “I have an idea,” said Jake. “But I need to go home first.” He dried his hands carefully on a dish towel as the thunder boomed again.

  “What if they don’t let you come back?”

  “I’m sneaking in. Do you have a ladder?”

  Rachel and Jake stood in the pouring rain, as she propped Bucky’s stepladder against the wooden fence. He climbed over and snuck in the back door. He raced back to Rachel’s house through the rain, as it had turned into a deluge, the sound roaring on the metal roof.

  “Get your boom box,” he demanded as he stood in her living room, dripping. “And some scarves.”

  She followed his commands, and he plugged the stereo into the living room outlet. The scarves she offered up were gauzy and purple. He switched on the lamp he had given her, and draped the scarves over the shade.

  “Turn off the rest of the lights,” he demanded, and as she walked to the kitchen, Jake put a cassette tape in the boom box and hit the rewind button. The living room was cast about with their shadows, the light in the room as deep purple as the sky outside.

  “Now what?”

  “Close your eyes,” he said. He pushed play. “Open them! Dance party!”

  Rachel stared at him, until the strings kicked in.

  “It’s wonderful!”

  “It’s Madonna!”

  Jake framed his face with his hands, stood perfectly still. He waited for a moment, and then twirled those hands above his head and stopped again in midpose. “Vogue” blasted throughout the house, the volume shaking the objects on Rachel’s brick altar.

  When the music played, Jake forgot he was a twelve-year-old boy who lived in a trailer house. This was the sound of supermodels. He always thought that he resembled Linda Evangelista anyway, although he was much, much shorter.

  The light from the lamps shone on the gold paint that remained on his hands as they twirled glamorously, so fast that they seemed to be on fire.

  “Pose!” He pointed at her, and she marched forward, gave a few ­run­way stomps, and stopped, looking behind her, as if she had dropped something. This was Naomi Campbell’s over-the-shoulder smolder. Rachel knew her supermodels, and that made Jake love her even more.

  And they danced, as the trailer shook with the storm and their choreography.

  The Flood Girls versus the Boyce
Beauty Stop

  Laverna loved night games, how the bats would swoop down from the sky at the balls, and how the dark made Red Mabel even more frightening to the other team. Laverna knew this game would not be marred by fisticuffs or catcalling. Tonight they were playing the Boyce Beauty Stop, her favorite team in the league.

  The Boyce Beauty Stop was a team of bitter divorcées known for the quality of their permanents, and for having the only tanning beds in the county. They hated men and all that they stood for. Only their children came to the games, until they grew up and went to college, or got married and became bitter divorcées themselves.

  These women were Laverna’s kindred spirits, and she did not mind the hour and a half it took to get there. Boyce Falls was surrounded by rivers, and it was a beautiful drive.

  Laverna rode with the infield in Diane’s Suburban. Thirty miles outside of Quinn, Tabby announced that this would be her last season.

  “The thing is,” she said, and then stopped herself. “I don’t want to say it in front of Della.”

  “Go ahead,” said Della. “After last week’s game, nothing could shock me.”

  “I’m leaving Dwayne. And I don’t want to hear an ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “You won’t,” said Della. “I could only make it work for six months. I have no idea how you made it last as long as you did.”

  “There’s something else,” said Tabby, turning to Laverna. “I’m moving.”