by Vicky Jones
“Dorothy, look!” Shona exclaimed. They were standing in the small gift shop at the end of the Gulfport boardwalk. It was packed with handmade shell bracelets, beach toys and souvenirs. In the distance they could hear the waves crashing and children laughing as they played on the white sand only feet away. The smell of frying donuts and cinnamon filled the air.
Dorothy trundled over to find her holding a postcard, with a picture identical to their beach house. “They’re selling them for a nickel. I think we should get one each.” Shona’s eyes were as bright as the mid-morning sun as she spoke.
“I think so too. A little memento of our trip for us to keep forever,” Dorothy replied, fishing into her purse for the coins.
“It’s the best trip I’ve ever been on, Dorothy, I swear it.”
She wrapped the old lady up in a tight hug, then tucked the postcards away safe and sound in her top pocket.
“Me too,” Dorothy replied.
Chapter 6
Shona came downstairs that morning, her first Monday back at work after their vacation, to see a khaki green army-issue lunch box resting on the counter in the kitchen. Curious, she walked up to it, then spotted the note.
Don’t lose this.
Picking up the lunch box, Shona smiled when she noticed one word engraved on the front:
WALT.
“Where you going, Frank?” Lucy asked as she leaned over the side of the bed and picked up the bedside clock. It was just after 9 a.m.
“I need to see my uncle,” Frank mumbled as he pulled his jeans on and fastened his belt. “Don’t you worry ‘bout what I’m doin’. You need to be gettin’ yourself to that bus. You don’t wanna be late for your first day at college.”
“Classes don’t start this morning until ten, so I got time. What time are you opening up the bar later? I thought I could make us a nice dinner before you go.”
“Not sure yet.” Frank slipped his white t-shirt over his head, then leaned down to plant a wet kiss on her lips. “I’ll see you later. Have a good day at college.” Frank slammed the door behind him, and the sound of his boots on the staircase eventually tailed off.
Getting up out of bed, Lucy wrapped the sheet around her shoulders and sauntered over to the window. She’d spent her first night in Riverside staying in a room at the end of the hallway above the bar and since then spent every day with Frank, listening to his stories of how he was going to make the bar thrive. Towards the end of the week, Lucy had completely fallen for Frank and forfeited her dorm room to another student, deciding to bus it into college each day instead.
Pulling back the drapes, Lucy squinted as her eyes adjusted to the morning sunlight. She looked down to see Frank standing with his hands on his hips as Harry reached into his pocket for his wallet. Drifting her eyes across the scene, something else caught her attention. A tall, slender young woman wearing fitted overalls emerged from a side door of the garage and, feeling the heat of the morning sunshine, removed her cap to reveal a mop of short blonde hair. Lifting her face to the sky, she poured a canteen of water over it, wiping off the excess by running a tanned hand over her cheeks.
“Well, that I did not expect,” Lucy whispered.
Quickly, she put on a peach summer dress and headed down the outside steps of the apartment and across to the garage parking lot. “Morning, Harry. Who’s your new mechanic?” she asked, walking up behind Frank and linking arms with him.
“Hi Lucy,” Harry replied. “You mean Shona? Been here the past five months now, one of the best I got.”
“I been in this town a week now and ain’t seen her before.” Lucy tilted her head to try and get a glimpse of Shona who was at that moment unbolting the hood of a Buick.
“That’s ‘cos this ain’t the place for a lady to be seen now, is it? You’ve got your college work to concentrate on with it bein’ your first day today and all, right honey?” Frank chimed in, gripping her around her tiny waist.
“What?” Lucy’s eyes were fixed on the back of the truck. “Oh, yeah,” she replied, her voice trailing off.
Shona dropped the wrench she’d been holding. Cursing her clumsiness, she stood up to find Lucy’s smiling face greeting her.
“Hi,” Lucy said, wiggling free of Frank’s cloying grip and walking over to the far corner of the truck where Shona was standing.
“Hi,” Shona replied. Sensing Lucy’s presence drawing nearer, she walked around to the front of the truck and leaned over the open engine. Frank watched Lucy for a moment, then turned his attention back to his uncle. Their conversation ended in the usual way, with Harry now ten dollars lighter.
“So what’s wrong with the truck? Looks pretty complicated in there. How do you know what to tighten and what to loosen?” Lucy asked. She edged closer and closer to Shona, whose attention remained fixed on the engine manifold cover, counting every one of its screws as she removed them one by one. As she leaned on a thick black tube, Shona’s greasy hand slipped.
“Shit!” Shona exclaimed, to which Lucy raised an eyebrow.
Feeling a sudden spray of oil flick up at her face, Shona recoiled, catching a droplet near her eye. Another one landed on Lucy.
“Gosh, darn it,” Lucy gasped, looking down to where the droplet had landed just above the thin belt that pulled in her perfectly fitting dress.
“You should stand back a bit,” Shona said as she squinted and wiped away the oil on her cheekbone with the back of her shirt cuff.
“And you should roll your sleeves up. Oil ain’t easy to get out, you know,” Lucy countered, rubbing at the stain.
Shona tried hard to stifle the smile that crept across her face and, taking Lucy’s advice, rolled her sleeves over her wrists.
“My name’s Lucy, by the way. I’m staying just across the street at the moment. Above the bar. There, you see?” Lucy leaned in closer to Shona, encouraging her to follow her pointing finger. Sensing how close Lucy had moved towards her, Shona took a step to the side. “So where are you from, Shona? Who you staying with?”
“You know Mrs. Clark? She owns the truck over there. I came in to get it fixed for her, then Harry said he’d give me a trial here so…” Shona began, looking everywhere but at Lucy’s inquisitive face.
“Wow. I ain’t never come across a girl working on truck engines before. You must be pretty darn good at it.” Lucy twirled a lock of hair around her fingers as she leaned against the truck’s fender. “So, where you from originally?”
The hairs on the back of Shona’s neck prickled as she thought of the same lie she’d told Harry five months ago. Don’t matter what you tell ’em, as long as you tell ’em all the same thing, she thought. They can’t catch you out then. Before she had the chance to answer, Frank called her over after finishing his rant at Harry.
“Well, I’d better run along. It was nice to meet you… Shauna, was it?” Lucy hesitated as she waited for confirmation.
The first word Shona uttered was inaudible until she cleared her throat and tried again. “Shona,” she repeated, swallowing hard as her stomach began to twitch.
“Never heard that one before today,” Lucy giggled, her eyes fixed on Shona, who looked away and gave her full attention to the sprocket she was attempting to wrap her wrench around. “Well… I guess I’ll see you around then… Shona.” Lucy’s smile faded as she received no reply but instead a pull on her elbow from an impatient Frank who led her away back across the street towards the bus stop.
Harry walked over to Shona. “You OK?”
“Yeah. I’m just… just not that good around new people,” she mumbled, taking in several slow deep breaths. “S’why I like to keep myself out back here. Keeps things real simple for me.”
“Well, Lucy seems like a good kid. Poor choice in men, though, even if her new boyfriend is my own kin.” Harry shook his head and smiled. “You should get to know her, Shona. She’s only just got into town so could do with a friend to show her around. She’s a long way from home too.”
Twisting her cap o
ver in her oily hands, Shona watched as Frank left Lucy to wait for her bus to college, then headed back over to his bar. She looked away when she saw Lucy turn her head back.
“Say, you wanna help me on a delivery? It’ll get you out of town for a few hours.”
Shona smiled. She had really begun to like Harry.
Lucy found herself daydreaming as she sat in her classroom. Her thoughts drifted back to Shona and the blue denim overalls that looked so comfortable on her, so natural. They weren’t in the slightest bit feminine, but they fit her slim, toned frame perfectly. Shona intrigued her. Even underneath all the engine oil and grease from Wreckers, she was stunningly beautiful, her baby blonde hair cut short at the back, her long bangs swept at an angle over her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were the color of the Pacific Ocean, something Lucy had long stared at as she was growing up on the West Coast. Her spirit had captured Lucy’s attention, her aura infectious. There was something about Shona that was completely refreshing and new.
Chapter 7
“Hi Shona,” Lucy greeted after wandering into the diner that Thursday afternoon. It was late September and it had become a regular thing now to see Shona in there with a few other guys from the garage, including Jonny.
“Hi. How was college today?”
“Real good. I’m a bit of a slow starter when it comes to books and writing and stuff, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.” She twirled a lock of hair around her fingers as the guys around the table elbowed each other. Just then one of the younger guys, Tom, cleared his throat and began speaking.
“Um… Miss Lucy? I was just wondering if I could buy you a soda. That’s if you’d care to stay with us for a bit?”
Lucy looked at Tom, his large blue eyes hopeful, then at the other guys and then finally at Shona who shrugged.
“Well, thank you Tom, that would be swell. If nobody else minds me crashing the party? Shona?”
“I don’t mind,” she replied, budging up to let Lucy sit down after nods from the other guys to do so.
It took less than twenty minutes for Lucy to completely win over the group of mechanics she’d been sharing stories with. Each man gazed at her longingly with every word she spoke.
“So, I was saying to Shona the other day, we should do something fun on the weekend. Why don’t we go down to the river for a swim on Saturday? It’s so hot at the moment, it’ll be so nice to cool off in that water.” She looked at the faces around the table. Each man, apart from Jonny and Shona, declined, with them having families. Jonny’s eyes lit up.
“Well, I guess that means it’s us three chickens,” he grinned, looking between Shona and Lucy.
“What do you say, Shona? You wanna come?"
“Sure, why not,” Shona replied, to huge grins from Jonny and Lucy.
“So when I was twelve years old, just after my daddy passed, I started to work for Harry. Oh, not doin’ much, just runnin’ around fetchin’ him the right screwdrivers and wrenches and stuff. As soon as I was tall enough to reach inside the engines, he had me workin’ on them. That man taught me everythin’ I know and I’m grateful for that. Treated me like his own son, he did. Well, the son he and Marcie were never able to have, that is.”
Jonny, staring into the distance, leaned against a tree stump at the edge of the water as he and Lucy traded stories one after the other. All along the bank, as far as he could see, there were cattails in the water and huge cypress trees looming large over their heads, following the curve of the river.
Only one story was left to be heard.
“So Shona, tell me about home. You got a ma and pa back in Tennessee?” Lucy began, chewing on the end of a blade of grass.
“Um. Well, I don’t really like to talk about that. It’s complicated, you know.” Shona stood up and brushed her pants clean of the grit from the riverbank.
Jonny jumped up and grabbed three flat pebbles from the edge of the riverbank. “Say, I’ll bet I can skip a stone better than either one of you two. You up for the challenge?”
Smiling, the two women each took a stone from Jonny.
“You’re about to lose that bet, Jonny boy,” Lucy grinned.
“Well, we’ll just see about that,” Shona chimed in, walking up to the edge of the water.
Shona’s stone flew through the air, bouncing on the surface of the water at least seven times before sinking.
Laughing, Jonny and Lucy both held their hands in the air, conceding defeat.
Chapter 8
Christmas of 1956 was fast approaching and Lucy had already made plans for how she was spending it. Unfortunately for Frank, they didn’t include him.
“Honey, of course I’d want you to come back with me, but I still need to tell them about you. I ain’t found the right moment yet and the last thing I want is for them to think you’re distracting me from my studies. I promise I’ll tell them when I get back. And I’ll only be away for a week or so, just ‘til after New Year’s. You’ll be so busy here over the holidays, you’ll hardly even notice I’m gone.”
Lucy had spent the last twenty minutes pleading her case to Frank who sat in his armchair, staring up at the bus ticket to Monterey that had been placed partly behind a photo frame on the mantelpiece. The only sound from him was the drumming of his fingers on the armrest.
“How can you leave me now? Did you not see the flyer on the church notice board? The last of the men are comin’ home from Korea over the next few weeks. You know how long I’ve waited to see him return and now you’re sayin’ you won’t be here for it?” Frank said, his voice eerily calm.
“There ain’t been a bus for two weeks now, Frank. The next one’s not due until after the New Year and I’ll be back by then, OK?” Lucy replied.
Frank’s hand clenched around the armrest. “It’s our busiest time of year, Lucy. I need you here with me. We already talked about this. A few shifts behind the bar, maybe a bit of dancin’, just to bring the guys in. You promised you’d think about it.” Frank stared up at her.
“I have, and I will. Just as soon as I get back, I’m all yours. OK? I’ll go to college in the daytime and work in the bar at night.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.” Lucy kneeled down in front of him and kissed his cheek. “Now, I better go pack. I’ll go straight to the bus station after my last day on Friday. Don’t worry, Frank. When I get back, I’ll do whatever you want me to do to make this place the best bar in all of Mississippi.”
“Merry Christmas, Dorothy!” Shona cheered as she appeared at the old lady’s door on Christmas morning holding a breakfast tray.
“Now then, what’s all this?” Dorothy sat herself up in bed.
“Well, I ain’t no cook but I can fry an egg or two. And we deserve a treat. Breakfast in bed.” Shona reached over to the plate piled high with toast and grabbed a slice. “Merry Christmas,” she spluttered after taking a huge bite.
“Merry Christmas, Shona,” Dorothy replied, sipping her coffee. “You want your present now?”
Shona stopped chewing. “You got me something?” Her blue eyes widened.
“Of course. Everyone should get a present on Christmas day.” She looked at Shona who suddenly looked downcast. “You feel bad ‘cos you didn’t get me anything, don’t you?” she asked. Shona nodded. “Don’t you feel bad. I’ve been on my own for more than ten Christmases now. You being here and sharing this one with me is the best present I could ask for.”
“Really?”
“Really. Now, reach under my bed, will ya, feel for a little box.” Dorothy winked.
Shona obeyed, found the box and plonked it on the bed. It had a little red bow tied around the handle.
“Go on, open it,” Dorothy prompted.
Shona pulled at the ribbon, then lifted up the little catch on the lid. Inside was a small set of screwdrivers and two wrenches of different sizes. All the tools had a thick strip of brown leather wrapped around them and looked very familiar.
“I asked Jonny to help me. H
e was happy to oblige, bless his heart. They are the same type Harry uses, apparently. The best you can get.”
Seeing Shona stare at them with her mouth open, not saying a word, Dorothy wrinkled her brow. “You like ‘em?”
Shona looked up at the old lady with tears in her eyes. “Dorothy, I love them. They’re perfect. Thank you so much.” She reached over the bed to hug Dorothy, almost knocking the cups over on the breakfast tray.
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s go get things prepared for dinner. I got a turkey the size of Texas downstairs.”
Chapter 9
Perched on the edge of a bench, the same spot he’d waited each time, Frank frowned as he checked his wristwatch again, then fixed his eyes back on the distance ahead of him. It was early January and had just gone ten o’clock that Wednesday morning.
“Military time, my ass,” he cursed under his breath, his lips pinching the edge of a cigarette. Seconds later, about twenty yards away from him, a group of women, some old some young, emerged from the diner across the street. Heading over to the bus stop, they broke into squeals of excitement at the sight of the long-awaited army bus finally appearing on the horizon.
Grinning, Frank felt his heart thump. He stubbed his cigarette out on the armrest of the bench and jumped up, straightening his perfectly pressed checked shirt as he did so and tucking it into the waistband of his best pair of Levis. He took out a comb from his leather jacket and ran it through his oiled black hair. Striding over, he smiled at the happy chirps from the children in the crowd.
“Mom, is Pa really coming home? Like really this time?” one little girl said to her equally excited mother.
“Yes, honey, he ain’t goin’ off anywhere else this time. He’s comin’ home specially to spend your birthday with you and he can’t wait to give you his present.” She squeezed the hand of her nine-year-old daughter. Frank felt himself smile again, the anticipation for his own reunion fizzing within him.