And then she did something that nearly made me burst into tears in front of our guests.
She was the last one to arrive. I was filling plates with corn on the cob and barbequed chicken when she came in, looking and smelling like a woman, and I can tell you that it was a relief to see a female in something besides blue jeans and a T-shirt. She had her hair all fluffed out and she wore big gold earrings and tiny sandals, with her toenails painted pink.
She was holding a wooden box in front of her as though it contained something fragile. I assumed it was a cake and held out my hands to take it from her, but I heard Allie whisper, “Oh, Lord,” then Nate’s grandmother said, “Heaven be merciful,” so I put my hands to my side and looked at Jackie. She just shrugged to say that she had no idea what was going on.
Tessa, the kid who usually stayed on the outskirts, ran forward, stopped in front of Dessie, and said, “May I open it? Please? Please?”
I didn’t know what was going on but my curiosity meter just about broke its dial.
When Allie began to grab the plates and glasses on the round iron table, I thought she might throw them on the ground, but Jackie took them from her. Dessie stood there waiting, holding the box until the table was clear, and only then did she set the box down in the center of the table.
Dessie stepped back, smiled at Tessa, and nodded.
After a smile of triumph sent to her mother, Tessa stepped forward and put her hands on the box. The bottom of the box was a flat piece of wood, about a foot square, and the top, a fourteen-inch cube, was set over it.
Jackie came to stand beside me. The box had the word front on it and that word was facing me. I watched with wide eyes as Tessa slowly lifted the wooden cube straight up.
I had, of course, figured out by now that since Dessie was a sculptor, one of her pieces was probably inside. And since she was so famous it was no surprise that people were in awe of her work.
But nothing on earth could have prepared me for what I saw when Tessa lifted up that lid. Before me was a small clay sculpture of the head and shoulders of two women. The younger one was smiling and looking down at something, while the older woman was looking at the younger one, love in her eyes.
They were Pat and her mother, their likenesses and expressions perfectly captured.
If Jackie hadn’t shoved a chair into the back of me, I would have collapsed. No one said a word. I think maybe even the birds held their breaths as I looked at that piece of clay. It was them; it was the two women I had loved more than my own soul.
I reached out to touch it, to feel their warm skin.
“Careful,” Dessie said. “It’s still wet.”
Drawing my hand back, I had to take a few breaths to calm myself. Jackie was standing behind my chair with one hand on my shoulder, her fingers pressing on me, giving me strength.
I managed to recover enough to look up at Dessie. “How…?” I got out of my dry mouth.
She smiled. “Internet. You’re a famous man so you’re all over the Net. I ran off copies of photos of your late wife and mother-in-law and…” She glanced back at the sculpture. “Do you like it?”
My throat was swelling up and I could feel tears behind my eyes. I was going to make a fool of myself!
“He loves it!” Jackie said, sparing me. “He’s mad about it, aren’t you?”
All I could do was nod and swallow repeatedly as I looked at that beautiful piece of art.
“I’d say this calls for champagne,” Jackie said, “and I need everyone’s help in getting it out of the ’frig.”
I was grateful to Jackie for taking all those people away. She got all the guests, about a dozen of them, to follow her into the kitchen, and left me alone with Dessie. Moving a chair beside mine, she sat down, her hands on the table.
“I hope it’s okay,” she said softly. “It was presumptuous of me but Pat’s Mother was one of the best books I ever read. I think I cried from page two to the last page. You made a heroine out of a woman who would otherwise have been forgotten. After I met you, I wanted to give you something to say thanks for what you gave me with that book.”
I couldn’t speak. I knew that if I did, I’d start bawling. Reaching across the table, I took her hand in mine and squeezed. All I could do was nod.
“Good,” she said. “It means everything to me that you like it. But this is just the clay so I can change anything you want to.”
“No!” I choked out. “It’s perfect.”
I could feel her smiling at me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the sculpture. I’d seen Pat smile just like that when she was reading my manuscripts. And I’d seen her mother secretly look at her husband and daughter with that face full of love. Had she ever looked at me like that? I wondered.
But I knew the answer. Yes, she had, I thought, and I squeezed Dessie’s hand tighter.
“Here they come,” she said, “so pull yourself together.”
I smiled at that, wiped my eyes, sniffed a couple of times, then watched Dessie slip the top back over the sculpture. “Why don’t you come to lunch at my house on Sunday and let’s talk about casting it in bronze?”
I nodded, feeling better, but not yet secure enough to talk.
“You,” she said quietly. “Alone. One o’clock?”
Turning, I looked at her and saw that this was more than just an invitation to a meal. She was telling me that if I was interested, she was. Yeah, I thought, I was, so I nodded, we smiled at each other, and stayed separate for the rest of the evening.
But our physical separation didn’t fool Jackie. Approximately three and a half seconds after the last guest left, she informed me that my behavior toward Dessie had been “indecent.”
“And what does someone of your generation know about decency?” I shot at her. “You run around in shirts the size of my socks, with your belly button exposed, and you think you know about decency?”
To my extreme annoyance, Jackie gave me a cold little smile and walked out of the room.
I didn’t see her again until the next morning, and I expected her to be slamming pots and pans around in the kitchen in a jealous fit. Why were women so jealous? I wondered.
But Jackie wasn’t in the kitchen. Worse, there was no breakfast in the kitchen. I had to search that oversize house for twenty minutes before I found her. She was on the front porch and she was packing camera equipment into a big, padded backpack. She had on high-topped, thick-soled shoes that looked like they weighed twelve pounds each.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s Saturday and I’m taking the day off. It’s a gorgeous day and I’m going to photograph flowers.”
I didn’t want to spend the day alone in that cavernous house. I’d had six years alone and a few weeks of being around people, and now I couldn’t seem to bear solitude. “I’ll go with you,” I said.
Jackie gave a snort of derision and looked me up and down. I had on an old T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts—my sleeping attire. And, okay, I’d put on a few pounds in the last years, but I knew there was muscle under there.
“I’m going to be climbing,” she said, as though that excluded me. “And, besides, you don’t have the proper shoes or even something to carry water in.”
She had me there. I’d never been much of a hiking-climbing person. Climb all day, look at some fabulous view for ten minutes, climb down. I’d rather stay home and look at a book. “Wasn’t there a store next to Wal-Mart called mountain something?”
“Yes,” Jackie said, slipping her arms into her backpack. “But I’m sure the store doesn’t open until nine, it’s seven now and I’m ready to go.” With a little smile, she turned toward the steps.
I gave a great sigh. “Okay, I’ll call Dessie and see what she’s doing.”
Jackie stopped and turned back, looking as though she wanted to murder me. “Get dressed,” she said through clamped-shut teeth. “Blue jeans, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt.”
I gave her a mock salute a
nd went up the stairs.
The sports store didn’t open until ten, but by the time I’d eaten enough breakfast to fortify me for the strenuous day ahead, and we’d stopped in the big Barnes and Noble where I’d picked up $156 of books I needed, the sporting goods store was open. By that time, Jackie’s temper was a little frayed. She’d explained about light levels and the position of the sun three times, all to let me know that she was missing the best daylight, so I think she took delight in outfitting me with enough gear to attempt Mount Everest.
Oh, well, I thought, as I handed the clerk my credit card, Tessa and I could probably set up the tent in the backyard and have some fun with it. At least I wouldn’t have to slither to get into it.
One day last week Tessa told me she and her mother had been to a big antiques warehouse just off the interstate and she’d seen some fencing for sale. It took me three whole minutes to figure out what she was really telling me, and after I did, we jumped in my new 4 x 4 and went to the warehouse. We came back with enough Victorian fencing, complete with a fancy gate, to surround her secret house and keep Nate and his bushwhacker from destroying it.
Tessa and I also bought some of those poured concrete statues of various creatures—two rabbits, four frogs, one dragon, two painted geese, fourteen ladybug stepping-stones (they were on sale) and a little boy fishing. Jackie hadn’t looked too pleased when she saw them, but all she said was, “What? No gnomes?” Tessa and I’d laughed because we’d spent thirty minutes debating whether or not to get gnomes. But, in the end, I was able to persuade Tessa against them.
Anyway, by the time Jackie and I had run all the errands and purchased all my hiking gear, it was after eleven o’clock. When Jackie saw me look at my watch, she said, “I swear by all that’s holy that if you so much as mention lunch, I’ll make you sorry you were born.”
I was curious to know what she thought of doing, but I decided not to ask. In my backpack I had several packages of those high energy bars and a few pounds of those nut and seed mixtures, so I could make do. Grinning to show I was a good sport, I said, “I’m ready to go.”
Jackie turned away without a word, but I think I heard her say, “There is a God.”
We got into the truck and she gave me directions. I wanted to ask how she’d planned to get to the trailhead if I hadn’t come with her, but she didn’t look in the mood to answer questions.
She had me drive down one country lane after another until we came to a dirt track that had weeds growing down the middle. The road didn’t look as though it had been used in years. “I take it you didn’t find this on a map,” I said. She’d lost her look of anger and was looking at the beautiful countryside around her.
“No,” she said. “It’s just something I knew.”
That again, I thought, and part of me wished we hadn’t come. But I was glad I was with her, as I didn’t want her wandering around alone. I wasn’t so much afraid of what might happen to her as I was afraid of what she might see. A fallen-down cabin maybe? A place where a woman had been buried alive?
I pulled the truck into a clearing, but when Jackie started to get out, I caught her arm. “This isn’t the place where…You know.”
“Where a woman talked to the devil?” she asked, smiling at me, and I smiled back, relieved to see that she was no longer angry at me. “No,” she said. “I’m not sure, but my intuition tells me that that place is on the other side of Cole Creek.”
Again she started to get out, but I held her arm. “Look, if you’ve made a mistake and we do see an old cabin…”
“I’ll turn around and run so fast even the devil won’t be able to catch me.”
“Promise?” I asked, serious.
“Hope to die.”
“Not the answer I wanted,” I said, and we laughed as we got out of the truck.
Two hours later I was cursing my stupid idea of going with her. What had I been afraid of back at the house? Loneliness? Time to sit down in the quiet and read a book? Maybe sit in my giant bathtub, drink a beer, and read? Take a nap on the sofa? Were those the things I’d not wanted to do?
I followed Jackie up the mountain on a trail so narrow my little toes were hanging over the edge. Every step was a test of balance as I tripped over sticks, rocks, holes hidden by moss, slick plants, anthills, and black mud that Jackie called “boggy places.” My feet hurt, my back ached and I was wet. Even though the sun was high and hot overhead, it didn’t reach the floor of the forest, so everything dripped. And things fell on our heads: yellow things, white things, millions of green things. And every spider in the state had played leapfrog across that trail so invisible, sticky strands of web were constantly hitting me in the face. And when, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get all of them off, I began to feel that I was a fly being readied for dinner.
“Isn’t this the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life?” Jackie said, turning toward me, walking backward on the treacherous trail.
I pulled six long, sticky strands off my tongue. I would have kept my mouth shut while walking, but the air was so full of water that I had to take two breaths to get any oxygen. “Yeah, beautiful,” I said, swatting at some bug. I was discovering species that had never been seen by another human being.
Ten minutes later Jackie went into some kind of ecstasy because she saw these big pink flowers that she said were orchids and she wanted to photograph them. I started to collapse on a log, but she yelled at me to stop. Seems she wanted to inspect the area for—and I quote—“water moccasins, copperheads, or rattlers.”
By the time she told me it was safe for me to sit down, I was thinking kind thoughts about my cousin Noble. If he’d wanted pictures of orchids (which I couldn’t imagine but that’s neither here nor there) he would have driven back here in one of those four-wheel drive John Deere Gators, ecology be damned, and the noise of the diesel engine would have made any self-respecting snake run away in fear.
But I was with Jackie so we “respected” all flora and fauna, including deadly poisonous vipers.
She spread out a big shiny piece of plastic on the ground and told me to stay far away from her while she worked. I didn’t protest her attitude, but I did take off my heavy pack—so what if she was carrying the camera equipment and all I had was those little packages of food and some water, it was still heavy—and lay down. I was too tired to even sit up.
I would have fallen asleep, but the tree over my head started dropping yellow and green missiles on me. “Tulip tree,” Jackie said, glancing up from her camera.
I got out some food and drink, then turned over on my side and watched her for a while. She’d set her camera on a heavy tripod and was taking pictures from every possible angle. Plus, she spent a lot of time manicuring the area around the flowers, removing microscopic bits of debris so her flowers could be seen easily. She put another shiny sheet down, then lay on it as she shot the flowers looking up.
After a while I got used to being pelted by foliage, and I turned on my back and began to doze.
I awoke when someone poured a bucket of icy water on me. Or so it seemed.
“Let’s go!” Jackie shouted.
She had on a long yellow poncho that covered her big backpack, making her look like a hunchback, and she was shoving the gear I’d taken out into my pack. “Put this on,” she said as she tossed a blue poncho at me.
The thing was still in its package so I used my teeth to tear it open.
“Don’t use your—Oh, never mind,” Jackie said as she grabbed the empty plastic package I’d dropped on the ground. I put the poncho on over my head, then Jackie disappeared under it to put my pack on my back. The resulting situation was too much for me to resist. Sticking my head inside the poncho, I looked down at her. Rain was pelting all around us. “Jackie, darling,” I said, “if all you wanted was to get inside my clothes, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
I expected her to laugh, but instead, she pulled the waist strap so tight I yelped in pain. “Save it
for Dessie,” she said, then got out from under the poncho.
I assumed we’d hightail it back through the mud and webs to the truck, but Jackie yelled, “Follow me,” and we went the other way. Sure enough, about a hundred yards down the trail was a huge out-cropping of rock that formed a floor and a roof. The ceiling was black from a thousand campfires so we clearly weren’t the first to use the place as a shelter.
Once we were inside, we removed our ponchos and packs and sat there looking at the rain. It didn’t look as though it intended to let up, and I thought with dread about walking back in that deluge to my nice, warm truck. Again I asked myself why I’d not wanted to stay home.
But I wasn’t going to let Jackie know of my discomfort so I didn’t complain. “How’s your equipment? Anything get wet?”
“No,” she said, putting her pack on the rock floor. “It’s fine. At the first drops I felt—”
She put her hand to her head.
“What is it?”
“Pain,” she whispered. “I suddenly—”
If I hadn’t shot out my arm to catch her, her head would have hit the rock. But I caught her and pulled her to me. “Jackie, Jackie,” I said, my hand on her cheek as I pulled her head onto my lap. I didn’t like the look of her; her skin had gone very pale and it felt cold and clammy to my touch.
Hypothermia, I thought. What was it that you did to help the victims? Something warm and high energy had to be put inside them.
Moving Jackie to the driest part under the overhang, I put my pack under her head. There was dry firewood stacked in a corner, no doubt there through some unwritten camper’s law that said you must replace what you took. Thanks to Uncle Clyde’s many warnings, I always carried a book of matches, so in minutes I had a fire going. I was glad Jackie had made me buy a couple of tin cups. I heated bottled water in one, and when it was hot, I used a stick to lift it and pour the hot water into the cool cup.
When I took the water to Jackie, she was sitting up, ghostly pale, but at least she no longer looked as though she was going to die. I handed her the cool-handled cup of hot water, and while she sipped it, I got a protein bar out of my pack, opened it, broke off a piece, and put it in her mouth.
Wild Orchids Page 18