I found the coffee and pulled open a drawer to get a spoon. Geeze! Even the silverware was in disarray. I got the coffee going, then fumbled around for flour, shortening and buttermilk. I whisked salt and baking powder into a cup of flour in a bowl, then worked in shortening by hand. As I poured dribs and drabs of buttermilk into the crumbly mix, I closed my eyes and “felt” for the right consistency, like my grandmother had taught me. Her kind, clear voice echoed in my head as I recalled her words; “You can measure things all you want, Valiant, but sometimes you got to go on feeling alone.”
I worked the dough in the bowl until it felt right, then pinched off small handfuls and rounded them in my floury hands. I set them side by side in an old, battered baking tin made slick with a good smear of Crisco. I switched the oven on to preheat, left the biscuits on the counter to rise, and snuck down the hallway to Tom’s room with a bottle of rum.
My hand was on the doorknob when it turned all by itself. The door flew open and Tom stood there, dressed for the day. He eyed me up and down, his eyebrows knitted together.
“What are you up to, Val? Come to wish me good morning?”
“Shhh! You’ll wake them!”
Tom grabbed my arm and pulled me into the room. “I can kiss real quiet-like,” he whispered, then proved it without a shadow of a doubt.
“Enough!” I gasped. “Don’t start something you can’t finish!”
“Who says I can’t finish?”
“Me! Sorry, but the idea of my mother being in the next room is a real libido killer.”
Tom laughed. “So, why did you come to my door with a bottle of booze?”
I glanced at the closet. “No reason.”
Tom looked over at the closet and smiled. “Did you hide my Christmas present in there?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. So no peeking, mister.”
I heard a toilet flush and panicked like a busted teenager. “I gotta get back to making breakfast. Wait in here two minutes before you come out.”
Tom looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What?”
“Just do it.”
Tom laughed. “Okay, Miss Fruitcake.”
The first batch of fatback had begun to sizzle in the old iron skillet when I heard Tom’s voice behind me. His hands rested on my waist.
“Yum, bacon! Have I told you lately that I love you?”
I twisted around and smirked. “Who are you talking to? Me or the bacon?”
Tom grinned and kissed me. “Can’t I love both of you?”
“I’m not into threesomes,” I sneered.
Tom kissed me on the neck. Instantly, I became as nervous as a blow-up doll in a room full of porcupines. “Stop! My mother could come out at any –”
“Mornin’, you two love birds,” Dale said. He rubbed his watery eyes with a handkerchief and settled his coke-bottle lensed glasses back down on his nose.
“Morning, Dale. Coffee?”
“Yes’m! You makin’ your biscuits this morning?” he asked in a hopeful tone.
“Yes. And bacon.”
Dale grinned. “Val, ain’t you the purtiest angel this side of heaven.”
Dale and Tom took seats at the breakfast table. I brought them each a cup of coffee. As I popped the biscuits in the oven, I listened in as Tom tried to make polite conversation.
“Dale, I mean, sir, have you got any more hunting plans on the agenda?”
“Nope. I could go in for a spot of fishin’, though. How about you?”
Tom opened his mouth but my mother’s voice came out.
“Nothing doing,” Mom bellowed. She turned to me. “I smell something burning. You got the oven on, Valiant?”
“Yes. I’m baking bis –”
“Get outta my way!” Mom whizzed by me like a fuzzy, pink blur. She grabbed an oven mitt and yanked open the oven door. “Dang it, Val!” Mom grunted, then fished a meatloaf-shaped block of tin foil out of the smoking oven.
“Why’s your fruitcake in there, Mom?” I asked.
Mom scowled and inspected the foil wrapping. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Valiant.”
“Sorry.” I scowled and placed the pan of biscuits in to bake. I grabbed my coffee from the counter and took a seat at the table next to Tom without pouring Mom a cup.
“Lucille, dear, why is it again we can’t go fishing?” Dale asked, blinking up at her through his thick lenses.
Mom looked up from inspecting her fruitcake and shook her head like we were the most ignorant three people she’d seen since yesterday.
“How many times I got to tell you? We got plans for today, Dale. Now that the baking’s done, we got to go make our cordial visits to the family.”
“Oh.” Dale said.
I leaned over and whispered in Tom’s ear. “Translation, it’s time to go size up the competition.”
Chapter Twenty-One
TOM CUT THE IGNITION on his SUV in front of the run-down, brown-and-white doublewide trailer that belonged to Uncle Jake and Aunt May. They’d moved into it the year I’d graduated high school, and had done exactly $13.47 worth of maintenance since.
I knew this as a fact, because I’d been with them thirty years ago when they’d bought the trailer as a repo. The $13.47 was for a can of touch-up paint. Uncle Jake had bought it because he wanted to exactly match the turd-brown trim color that had been scratched in the move. He’d been grumbling about that price for almost three decades now, and it had become one of those useless bits of information etched into my memory banks forever.
“We’re here,” Dale said, in a bid to win the title of Mr. Obvious.
The four of us piled out of the 4Runner and waded through knee-high Bahia grass to the semi-rickety wooden steps tacked onto the front of the trailer. The steps had come with the property, and had been a stairway to nowhere in the middle of an empty lot until Uncle Jake had had the trailer placed so they led up to the front door.
Tom helped Mom up the steps while I knocked on the door. My knuckles made contact next to a wooden plaque branded with the grammatically incorrect salutation, “Welcome to the Marxs’s Palace.”
“Welcome to the ‘House of Squalor’ is more like it,” Mom sneered.
“Now Lucille, be nice,” Dale said.
I searched Mom’s face for her usual ‘drop-dead’ evil glare, but it wasn’t there. Her eyes moved back and forth, as if searching for something. I guess my knock wasn’t loud enough. Dale came up beside me and rapped his knuckles hard on the door. A moment later, it cracked ajar. A pair of squinty eyes appeared in the crack, then the door flew wide open.
Aunt May stood there, arms open wide, all three-hundred pounds of her stuffed into a faded blue housedress. She shot Mom a split second of suspicious side eye, then grinned at me and gushed. “Yee haw! Val! I haven’t seen you since the Pope pooped in the woods!”
I’d never gotten that analogy, but it was one of Aunt May’s favorites. “Nice to see you, Aunt May! Don’t you look pretty!”
Aunt May’s plump cheeks blushed. She ran a hand through her silver curls. “Ain’t you sweet!”
“Yep. Married life’s been good for her constitution,” Uncle Jake said as he came up behind her in a wife-beater t-shirt and a pair of dirty khakis held up by black suspenders. It appeared we’d interrupted him in the middle of either taking a nap or lapsing into a coma.
“Now don’t start,” Aunt May scolded him, “or I’ll divorce you faster than a flea hopping on a jack rabbit.”
Like I said, her analogies were pretty weird.
“Well, that’s one promise I know you’re good for,” Uncle Jake said.
Everybody laughed except for Tom.
“Tom doesn’t know the story,” I explained.
Uncle Jakes face lit up. “Don’t he now.” Uncle Jake eyed Tom like fresh meat.
“Y’all come on in!” Aunt May offered with a wave of her hand. We followed her into the trailer and settled ourselves like dust onto an old, worn-out couch and a couple of armchairs, all aimed at a TV b
ig enough to drive an ATV through. Hordes of disappointingly unattractive, beady-eyed relatives stared at us through glass panes inside cheap picture frames arranged haphazardly on cluttered bookshelves and accent tables.
We sat and stared at each other for a moment. Finally, Tom cleared his throat and broke the weird silence. “So, what’s the story?”
“What story?” Aunt May asked.
“About the marriages?” he asked.
Uncle Jake grabbed Tom by the arm. “Well now, son, let me tell you.”
I looked over at Mom. She rolled her eyes.
Uncle Jake settled his body into a chair and his mind into story-telling mode. “Once upon a time, Tom, me and my lovely bride Maysie got married in the Church of Our Free-Will Baptist Assembly Covenant Witnesses. Ain’t that right, Maysie?”
Aunt May nodded her sizeable head, momentarily turning her double chin into a triple.
“Well, now, my Maysie liked being a bride so much she decided to make a habit of it.”
Uncle Jake winked at Aunt May. Everybody laughed except Tom again.
“I don’t get it,” Tom said.
“Well now, we’re kinda famous here in Jackson County,” Uncle Jake said. “Over the years, we been married and divorced so many times we done filled out our entire punch card here in Florida.”
Tom looked at me like a kid thrust onto the school bus alone for the first time. “What?”
“Here in Florida you can get yourself divorced as many times as you want,” Aunt May explained, saving me the trouble. Besides, it was her story to tell. She smiled at Uncle Jake, revealing her missing bridge work. “I got me at lawyer in Marianna now that I got purty-well trained. He can do me a divorce in two days for $200 flat.”
“That’s the honest truth,” Uncle Jake agreed pleasantly. “That feller even named a special after my Maysie. Ever time somebody asks me about gettin’ them a quickie divorce, I tell ‘em to call him up and ask for the Miss May special.”
“Getting divorced is the easy part,” Aunt May said. “But last time we went to the courthouse to get remarried, they told us that ten was the limit to how many times a body could enter the state of matrimony in the Sunshine State.”
Tom’s mouth fell open. I smiled to myself and watched his now mesmerized face change from horror to fascination back to horror again as Uncle Jake continued his story.
“So now,” Uncle Jake said, and wiggled to the edge of his chair, “my Maysie don’t like to take ‘no’ for no answer, do ya?” He winked at his bride.
She winked back. “Nope. I sure don’t.”
“So once Maysie got the notion we ought to get re-hitched, she done some asking around. That’s when Clara Day at the Piggly Wiggly told her about a drive-thru weddin’ place in Donaldsonville, Georgia. It ain’t but about an hour from here, right, hon?”
“Yep,” Aunt May nodded. “Gettin’ married there’s purty easy. We done been there what? Three times, Jake?”
“I’d say that was about right.” Uncle Jack gave Tom’s arm a friendly backhand. “Clever lady, huh? That’s my Maysie.”
Aunt May beamed with pride and looked around at each of us. Suddenly, her face fell. Her eyes honed back in on me. “Where’s yore momma?”
I looked over at the chair she’d been sitting in. It was empty. “I don’t know.”
“Dad burn it!” Aunt May yelled. She rocked her ample torso to standing and pounded off in the direction of the kitchen, causing the whole trailer to shudder.
Tom, Dale, Uncle Jake and I sat and stared at each other like folks waiting around the ER for bad news.
“Lucille! Where are you?” Aunt May’s voice bellowed out.
“I’m on the toilet!” she called back.
The four of us sighed in relief. Tom searched for something to say to Uncle Jake. “You look fit, sir. Do you work out?”
Uncle Jake laughed, then puffed out the scrawny chest hiding behind his stained t-shirt. “I walk near ’bouts four miles ever morning, young man.”
“That’s impressive for a guy your age,” Tom said.
“Not really,” Uncle Jake said with a grin. “The first two miles I walk purty steady, straight the heck away from here. Them other two miles is me heading back home when I done give up and decided I can’t do no better than this.”
Uncle Jake laughed and looked around the trailer as if surveilling his royal palace. Tom and I both smiled weakly, uncertain if he was joking or not. Aunt May hobbled back into the living room, suspicion still clouding her face. She opened the front door and an old Boston terrier hobbled in. “There you is, Teddy,” she said to the dog.
The pooch wobbled over to Tom. He put a hand down to pet it.
“Careful there. Old Teddy ate my finger, once,” Uncle Jake said. He held up a left hand missing its pinky.
Tom jerked his hand away from the dog.
“Oh my good lawd!” Uncle Jake hollered. He and Dale fell backward laughing.
Tom looked over at me, his eyes pleading for an answer. But I had no advise about how to respond. We both stared at the dog until Uncle Jake wiped tears from his eyes and reached down to pet Teddy himself.
“Well, it wasn’t Teddy’s fault, really,” Uncle Jake explained. “You see, Tom, I sawed my finger off with my band saw. Old Teddy happened to be with me at the time.” Uncle Jake reached down and scratched the dog’s head, then spoke to him in the childish voice of a loving pet owner. “Old Teddy just loves him some table scraps, don’t he?”
“Y’all hungry?” Aunt May asked. “I could fix us some lunch.”
Uncle Jake looked up from petting Teddy. “Hey, Maysie, you got any more a them finger samwiches?”
The comment sent him, Dale and Aunt May into hysterics. As they laughed like a pack of wild hyena hillbillies, to my surprise, Tom joined right in.
Mom emerged from the bathroom. “You all laughing at me?”
The chuckles sputtered to silence.
“No, Mom,” I said. “I was planning on taking you and Dale to lunch.”
“Nonsense!” Aunt May replied. “Not when I got a big ol’ package of baloney and a fresh loaf of Wonder bread.”
“WHERE’S THAT SON A yours, Freddy?” Mom asked, her mouth full of ham, mayonnaise and white bread. Aunt May had fixed my mother’s sandwich first, probably to keep her mouth shut and her nose out of her kitchen.
“He’s a fruitcake, you know,” Mom leaned in and whispered to Tom. Aunt May delivered my sandwich along with a dirty look for my mother.
“What did you say?” Aunt May asked Mom.
“Got your fruitcake ready for the competition?” Mom replied.
“Yes. I sure do,” she answered and stuck her nose in the air. “And I got it put away for safekeeping.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom asked.
“Anybody who goes looking for it is gonna find herself on a wild goose chase,” Aunt May said, and slapped a sandwich in front of Dale.
Uncle Jake eyed the sandwich. “You know, I was raised on wild goose chases, myself,” he joked.
Really? I would have guessed Wild Turkey.
“Val, do you have your fruitcake ready?” Aunt May asked.
“I did, but I had to start over on account of the new rules.”
“What new rules?” she asked, and put a sandwich in front of Tom.
“You’re not allowed to bring one from home that can’t be verified.”
“What? Who told you that?”
Aunt May and I locked eyes, then turned and gave my mother a double dose of the evil eye.
“Where’s my sammich?” Uncle Jake complained. “I’m starving, woman!” He got up and fetched a cardboard Advent calendar, popped open a compartment and ate the candy inside.
Aunt May slapped a sandwich in front of him. “You and that sweet tooth of yours! You gonna catch yourself sugar dibeetees.”
Tom leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Are they Jewish?”
“No,” I whispered back. “He’s just in
it for the candy.”
“GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, Val. Looks like you found yourself a fine feller, there,” Aunt May said. She’d grabbed my forearm and pulled me aside as Mom, Tom and Dale made their way down the rickety porch steps into the knee-deep grass surrounding the trailer.
“Thanks, Aunt May.” I gave her a hug.
“Now, I got two words of advice for you,” she said, and put on her mother-knows-best expression.
“What’s that, Aunt May?”
“The first is to always keep yore man guessing, honey. Like I do with Jake. Once a man knows he’s got you for good, he has a tendency to lose interest.”
“Oh.” I pondered that thought for a moment. “And the second?”
Aunt May’s eyes crinkled down to slits. “Don’t trust your mama as far as you can tote her.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
WITH BELLIES FULL OF baloney and white bread, we rode through the rural countryside on our way to my other aunt’s place. Mom and Dale had passed out a few minutes into trip and were snoring like a pair of contented piglets. Either the gentle jogging of Tom’s SUV had lulled them to sleep, or they were experiencing the onset of a sugar coma brought on by Aunt May’s tooth-ache inspiring sweet tea.
As we passed the Rural Church of Lower Appalachian Apostle Witnesses, Tom shook his head. “Geeze. I think we’ve passed more churches than houses on this road. What’s up with that?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t exactly the city of brotherly love,” I sneered. “Around here, wherever two or more are gathered in His name, there is grudge, not love.”
“That’s pretty cynical even for you, Val Fremden,” Tom said.
I shrugged, then looked in the backseat to make sure Lucille was still asleep. She snuffled and turned her face to the window. “It’s the truth, Tom,” I said in a low voice. “You saw how my mom was with Aunt May. No love loss there.”
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