by Vicky Jones
“Well, g’morning Shona, five minutes early as usual,” he joked, checking his watch. “How was your evening?
“Hey boss, it was good, thanks. Me and Dorothy watched that new game show,” Shona replied, smiling.
“Now then, I can’t be hearing this. A girl your age should be going out all gussied up to have some fun, not stuck indoors watching TV,” Harry chastised, his bear-like hands resting on his hips. “Say, why don’t you go over to the bar one night with the guys? They think of you as one of their own now, and Jonny… well, you must know by now that boy is head over heels in love with you. He’s as happy as a puppy with two peckers every time he sets his eyes on you, girl.”
Shona blushed as Harry jabbed his elbow into her side and pointed over to another truck that had just pulled into the parking lot.
“Mornin’ Harry,” Jonny yelled, jumping out of the truck. Waving back, Harry turned to tease Shona again, but she had already disappeared into the back of the garage to start work.
“So, Shona, Harry tells me you’re from Tennessee originally?”
Jonny tapped the edge of the Chrysler fender he was sitting on as he tried to make small talk with Shona, who was checking the air pressure in the tires.
“Um. Yeah,” Shona replied, not looking up.
“Oh, that’s so cool. Me, I’m just a country boy, Mississippi born and bred. I ain’t seen none of the other states around, well, not really. Not unless I’m drivin’ through on deliveries. Sometimes I get out to Arkansas, sometimes even over to Alabama. But it’s just there and back, no time for sightseein’…”
Jonny rattled on for over five minutes before he paused and looked down at Shona, who hadn’t responded to any of his open questions.
“Shona, I’ve been meaning to ask you somethin’ these last few weeks…”
Shona pressed down hard on the valve of the tire, letting out a gush of pressurized air. Startled, Jonny almost fell of the fender.
“Oops, sorry Jonny. Kinda lost my grip on that.” Shona smiled.
“It’s OK, no harm done. Anyway, as I was sayin’…”
“Hey Jonny, you OK to drop these parts off to that guy in Birchfield?” Harry called out from the office.
“Sure thing, boss.” Jonny jumped down from the fender and tipped his cap to Shona as he left.
“How’s it going?” Harry asked, wandering over to her.
“Good, I think. Those two over there are all ready, and that one just needs a new headlamp, then it’s good to go,” Shona replied, pointing over to the trucks she’d fixed already that morning.
“Wow, you’re on a roll, girl. Don’t let me slow you down. Crack on.” Harry slapped her on the shoulder and let out a deep booming laugh. “I’ll go call Old Man Spooner and tell him his pride and joy is all ready to collect.”
“OK, Harry, I’ll get started on that headlamp.”
As Shona strode over to her next job of the day, Harry hung his hands on his hips and smiled.
“You know what, girl?” he called over.
“What?” Shona replied.
“I think I may have just found my new secret weapon.”
Secret? Shona thought. That works for me.
Jonny returned from his delivery run to see Shona lying on her back on a set of creepers, changing the oil on a Ford pick-up. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he licked his hand and ran it through his light brown hair.
“Hi Shona, how’s it goin’?” he asked after walking over as casually as he could make it look.
Shona slid out and looked up at him. “Hey Jonny, all good here. How was your morning?”
“Yeah, good too. Um…” He paused and licked his lips. “Say, I was wonderin’ if you’d like to, um… Maybe come over to the bar later… With the rest of the guys, I mean, not just me.” He let out a nervous laugh as Shona looked at him, making it even harder for him to get the sentence out without stumbling over every word. “I mean, they’ve all been askin’ me to ask you to join us. You’re one of us now.” He grinned.
“I doubt everyone feels that way, Jonny,” Shona replied, motioning towards Doug who was staring at them both as he pumped the arm of a trolley jack wedged underneath a truck.
“He still givin’ you the evil eye?” Jonny put his hands on his hips and narrowed his stare back at Doug.
“Nothing I can’t handle. I’m used to it. A girl can’t work in a place like this without getting a few stares now and again.” Shona grinned and tipped her cap to Doug who shrank down to his creepers without responding.
“Yeah, well, not on my watch.” Jonny began to march over to speak to Doug but just as he did so, Doug let out a cry of sheer agony. The arm of the jack had slipped out of its bracket, dropping the truck down and pinning him to the concrete. Only his legs were now visible underneath it.
“Help me! Oh God, help,” he screamed, the two-ton truck crushing down on his chest and squeezing the life slowly out of him.
Shona ran to Jonny’s side and while he tried to pull Doug out, she yanked the trolley jack handle back into place and began to pump it up and down, raising the truck just enough for Jonny to pull Doug out. Barely conscious, Doug gasped as his squashed lungs reinflated with precious air.
“Th-th-thank you,” Doug croaked up to Jonny as he regained his senses.
“Wasn’t just me, man. Shona was the one who got that truck off you,” Jonny nodded over to an equally out of breath Shona.
After a moment or two, Doug reached out his shaking hand to Shona. “I misjudged you. I’m sorry,” he spluttered, coughing.
“No sweat,” Shona replied. “I get it all the time.”
“Dorothy, I was thinking. Should we take a trip somewhere? I ain’t had a day off work for four months now so I figure Harry owes me some time off. What do you say I ask him tomorrow? It’ll be nice to get out of town for a bit,” Shona began, watching the old lady knitting. It was just after dinner on Friday evening.
“What’s brought this on all of a sudden?” Dorothy asked, looking up.
“Oh, nothing. I was in the diner today and saw in a magazine that there’s this place down in Gulfport. They got these beautiful beach houses down there. We could get a couple of rooms in one of those. Oh Dorothy, you should see them, they’re just perfect. All white weatherboarding, blue-frame windows and their own private boardwalk down to the beach. I got a hankering for some ocean right now,” Shona said, her keen eyes shining. “And I reckon we could both do with the fresh sea air, don’t you?”
Dorothy clacked her needles together and lowered them into her lap. “And how do you suppose we can afford to stay in a place like that?” she said.
Shona sat up in her seat and leaned forward.
“Well now, see, I’ve managed to save a little bit here and there, my tips mostly… and I… Well, I might have already rung the number that was in the ad in the magazine and…” She grinned. “I’ve kinda already booked us a week there. Surprise.”
Eventually, after seven long seconds of contemplation, Dorothy’s pursed lips melted into a huge smile. “Well, alright. When do we leave?”
Chapter 5
Straightening the collar on his best red-and-black plaid shirt, Frank Smith wandered over as casually as he could make it look to a young brown-haired lady staring at the bus station timetable pinned to the wall. She was in her early twenties and wore a yellow summer dress and yellow-and-white ribbon in her hair.
“Well now, g’mornin’, ma’am. May I be of some assistance to ya?” He drawled.
The woman turned around and smiled a smile that almost knocked Frank off his feet.
“Hello sir, do you know what time the next bus to Birchfield is? I need to get to my connection.” She flipped her wavy shoulder-length hair out of her eyes and smiled again.
“Where, might I ask, are you headin’?” Frank leaned his shoulder against the wall.
“Oh, well, I start college in a week, so I need to get to my dorm, get settled in, you know?”
“O
K. The name’s Frank, by the way.”
“I’m Lucy,” the young woman replied, shaking his outstretched hand.
“Glad to meet ya, Lucy. But I’m sorry to say there ain’t another bus to Birchfield for at least another coupla hours. Sorry.” He stood up straight and started to walk away.
“Oh, right. Are you sure? I was told they were every half hour…”
“No, they changed the schedule. Very recently.” Frank stood with his back facing her, a smirk coating his face as his plan started to take shape.
“I see.”
Lucy bit the corner of her bottom lip and looked around her to see what her options were for her wait.
“Say, I hope you don’t mind me askin’, but did you say you were startin’ college?” Frank asked, confused.
Lucy laughed, then lowered her eyes. “I know. My friends all graduated this year but I,” she paused, “took a little bit longer to get there. Creative mind, you see. It wanders sometimes. Took me a while to finish high school, but I made it in the end.” She smiled and looked up at Frank who smiled back. “So, here I am, finally making my parents proud.”
Frank noticed a slight bitterness in her last words. He folded his arms and sidled up next to her. “Well, if you’ve got no better plans for the next two hours, will you allow me to buy you a drink? That is, of course, if you’re old enough to…”
“Don’t worry, I’m twenty-one,” she replied, putting his fears to rest. “Where?”
“I got a little bar in town. Chasers it’s called. About five minutes’ walk from here. I can help you with your bags if you like?”
“I should stay and wait really…” Lucy replied, looking around for any sign of the bus to Birchfield.
“Well, alright then. But it’s one o’clock in the afternoon right now and that sun ain’t gon’ get any cooler in the next two hours. C’mon, just one drink?” Frank’s charm was oozing out of him, bleeding into her resolve.
“Maybe I could use a glass of sweet tea. It is getting mighty hot out here.”
Grinning, Frank swept back over to her and picked up the larger of her canvas bags while she swung her purse and smaller travel bag over her shoulder.
“So where are you from?” he asked.
“Monterey.”
“Oh man, the first thing I’m gonna do when we get to Gulfport is jump straight into that ocean. Did you see the pictures, Dorothy? It’s as clear as a… Well, I ain’t seen nothing as clear as that water.”
Shona could hardly contain her glee as she and Dorothy drove down the highway out of Riverside on the first day of their summer vacation together.
“Yeah, maybe a bit of that sea air will do my old bones good too,” Dorothy replied, laughing at Shona’s gusto and looking forward to the next two hundred miles in the presence of the young lady who’d turned her world completely upside down in the most wonderful way imaginable.
It was already six o’clock by the time Lucy remembered to check her watch.
“Oh Lord in heaven, look at the time. Frank, I’ve missed my bus…” She put down her third glass of tea onto the chipped mahogany bar top and reached down for her bags. “What time’s the next one?”
“Well now, I think that’s the only bus runnin’ today. There won’t be another one until tomorrow now.” Frank raised his eyebrows, trying hard to sound concerned.
“You’re kidding! What am I gonna do now?” Lucy mumbled into the air.
“You could always stay here tonight,” Frank began, stopped in his tracks by a confused look from Lucy. “Oh, no, please don’t misunderstand my intentions. It’s a bar, there are lots of rooms for rent upstairs. I won’t charge seein’ as though it’s my fault you missed your bus.” Frank, sensing Lucy’s growing feeling of uncertainty, began pointing people out in the bar. “That’s Trish over there, by the restrooms. The one with the curly red hair. She’s been here for years. And over by the jukebox, the old guy with the white hair, well that’s Norm. He used to run this place before I took over five years ago when I turned twenny-one. My grandpappy left this place to me in his will and I swore I’d do the best job I could to make it the best bar in Mississippi.”
Lucy scanned the tired-looking décor and chipped or torn furnishings. “Well, I guess I could stay for a bit, maybe the night? Then I can catch the first bus over to Birchfield in the morning.”
Frank couldn’t help the broad smile that spread across his handsome face.
“Well now, what’s say we have a proper drink to celebrate then? Bourbon?”
Lucy giggled, then watched as Frank climbed around the bar and poured a double measure into two shot glasses.
The beach house was perfect. Whitewashed weatherboards glistened in the late afternoon sunshine, the window frames as blue as the ocean itself. Waves were crashing only yards away from a veranda that wove its way all around the perimeter of the house. There was a short boardwalk, which led down to the white sandy beach below, and there wasn’t a soul to be spotted as far as the eye could see. It really was the most perfect place Shona had ever seen.
Shona walked over to Dorothy who was sitting on the veranda staring into the distance watching the ebb and flow of the waves.
“You know, you’re the first person I’ve been on a vacation with since my husband passed,” Dorothy said. She passed Shona a wallet-sized photograph. “I had a copy made of the picture that’s hanging up on my kitchen wall. You remember the one?”
“Yeah, I see it every time we sit down to dinner. He was a pretty handsome guy,” Shona replied, sitting down next to the old lady. She smiled at the picture of a much younger Dorothy standing next to her husband, their arms linked and eyes radiant with adoration for each other. Careful not to bend the crisp edges of the photograph, Shona handed it back to Dorothy.
“Sure was. He didn’t seem to mind that I was quite a few years older than him when we met. Walter and I were married only a year before the American Expeditionary Force took him away to France just after Christmas, 1917. He managed to survive. Just about. Came back with shrapnel stuck in his leg and his lungs full of gas but I had him home and that’s all I cared about. That’s him there, a couple of years after he got back. He wanted to wait until he got his Victory Medal first before we had that done.” Dorothy pointed down at the picture.
“You must have been so proud of him. It looks like a real special medal,” Shona remarked.
Dorothy smiled. “It was. Those boys had to wait a while for it but eventually everyone got theirs in ’21. After that we started our life together properly. We wanted to start a family but after the amount of time Walt had spent exposed to all that mustard gas, he just wasn’t able to… Well, we tried but it never happened for us.”
Shona saw the tears prick the corners of the old lady’s wrinkly eyes, but before she could say anything to comfort her, Dorothy took a deep breath.
“Then, after spending the most wonderful years of my life making a home here with Walt, it all blew up over there in Europe again, didn’t it? One day he got a call from the Department of War. They’d found his service record and requested his help with the strategy plans for Omaha. They promised him he wouldn’t be doing no more fighting, not now he was in his late forties. Couldn’t have even if he wanted to, not with his leg the way it was. Said he’d be kept at a safe distance from all of that.” She paused again, her handkerchief screwed up in her fist. “He agreed to go over to Normandy in ’44 with the navy and he never came back. Telegram said his ship had been blown completely out of the water. Well, you only get so much luck in your life. After a while, it runs out.” Her eyes glazed over as she stared down at the thin gold band on her finger.
A few moments of silence fell between them.
“I’m so sorry, Dorothy. So you’ve been on your own at the house since?”
“Yep, but I’m like you. I prefer the quiet. I talk to him sometimes, only inside the house though. If I do that in the street, they’ll be locking me up.” She chuckled.
“I would�
��ve liked to have met him,” Shona said.
“He would’ve liked you. You got that same glint in your eye, that same thirst for seeing the big wide world. Maybe that’s why you travel around as much as you do.” Dorothy lingered her gaze on Shona for a moment before smiling.
“I wouldn’t really call it traveling,” Shona whispered.
“What would you call it?”
“Running.”
There was a long pause.
“Running from what?” she asked.
“Something happened… Back in Louisiana. Something bad.”
Seeing her struggle, Dorothy laid a hand on Shona’s knee. “It’s OK. Just take you time. You don’t have to tell me, but it might help to confide in someone. You can trust me, I swear.”
Another age passed before Shona was finally able to swallow the lump in her throat. She squeezed the pink pebble on the pendant that hung around her neck.
“It’s my fault my momma died.”
Dorothy listened in silence to every word of Shona’s story. Clearly the events of that night seven years ago still haunted her, but it certainly wasn’t the time for Dorothy to begin passing judgment on her.
“What about your father?” Dorothy asked.
“He’ll be hunting me down after what happened that night.”
Dorothy put her arm around Shona and pulled her body into her own. “After what you’ve just told me, I think we’d better keep you safe from that ever happening. Thank you for telling me, Shona.”
“That’s OK,” Shona replied, sniffing. “Thank you for telling me about Walter.”
“You’re welcome.”