Almost Home

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  “Okay, you can shut it off.”

  The engine kept running.

  “Go ahead and shut it off.”

  Still the engine ran.

  “Daisy?” Reed stepped around to the driver’s door and saw her sitting there, staring at the steering wheel with tears rolling down her cheeks. Through the open truck window, he reached across her and shut off the ignition.

  Daisy didn’t move.

  “Let’s go sit for a minute.” He opened the truck door, took her by the hand, and gave her a gentle tug. She climbed out of the truck and let him lead her to a porch swing hanging by long ropes from the sprawling oak she had parked beneath.

  “You prob’ly think I’m a blubberin’ idiot,” she said, swiping at her face with her hand.

  “No, I don’t. But I think there’s somethin’ about this truck I don’t know.”

  Daisy sighed. “It’s just one more thing, you know? Just one more reminder.”

  “Of Charlie?”

  “Of everything. Of every dang thing.”

  “I follow that,” he said, which made her smile.

  “It was so hard there at the end. Charlie was killin’ hisself tryin’ to keep worn-out tractors runnin’. I kept tellin’ him I was scared this ol’ truck was gonna strand me on some lonesome road, and he kept promisin’ to get to it. Seems so silly now, the stuff we worried about—tractors and pickups and a piece o’ land. Dirt. We spent all our time strugglin’ to save dirt. Why couldn’t we see how silly that was?”

  “Got no answer for that one. I’m as sure as I’ve ever been about what matters and what don’t, but I wish like the daylights there’d been another way for me to figure that out.”

  “Me too.”

  “We sound pretty depressin’. Wanna come help me shop for parts and drown our sorrows in motor oil?”

  Daisy smiled up at him. “Sure. I’m a cheap date.”

  “Is this the right one?”

  “That’s it.” Reed took the wrench from Daisy and finished tightening the last bolt on a radiator they had scavenged from a local junkyard. Apparently, some poor fella had just put a new one on his pickup when he got creamed from behind. Luckily for Daisy, the radiator and most of the engine parts Reed needed were spared.

  “Never thought I’d say this about a radiator, but I think it’s beautiful,” Daisy said.

  “Compared to the one I took out, she’s a stunner.”

  “And that thing right there—that’s the carburetor?”

  “Mm-hmm. Why all the curiosity about engine parts?”

  Daisy shrugged. “Just figure I prob’ly need to learn about ’em so I can take care o’ things myself.”

  Reed wiped his hands on a shop towel and watched her studying the engine. “As much as you help me, is it really so hard to let me help you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I ’preciate everything you’re doin’. I really do. It’s just—well, it’s sinkin’ in that I’m by myself now. Took me a year and a half, but I finally got the message. I can’t bawl like a baby every time I get piston snap.”

  “Uh, ma’am, that’s piston slap.”

  Daisy had to laugh at herself. “You oughta be over there with all those beauty queens at the lake instead o’ stuck here with an ol’ widow woman.”

  “Well, A, I’m not stuck; B, Jo-Jo gets on my nerves; and C, what are you, ol’ widow woman—all o’ twenty?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Same as me. We can go to the ol’ folks’ home together. Wanna get a hamburger on the way?”

  They climbed into Reed’s truck and headed for Saxon’s across the river.

  “Hey, what time is it?” Daisy asked.

  Reed checked his watch. “A little after one.”

  “You mind if I turn on the radio?” She turned the knob and carefully adjusted the dial till Reed could hear the unmistakable sound of Delta blues. “This is about the only reminder o’ home I still like,” she said.

  “Well, if that song ain’t appropriate, I don’t know what is,” Reed said as a tune called “Feisty Little Mama” came over the airwaves.

  Now Daisy was laughing. “Yep, that’s me alright. ’Course, you’d prob’ly change the title to ‘Annoyin’ Little Mama.’”

  Reed couldn’t resist taking his eyes off the road for just a second to see her dimpled smile and the summer wind blowing her short hair. One of these days, he would need to do something about that. But for now, they could just enjoy an easy drive to a burger joint in a sunny Alabama town, far from the war that brought them together.

  CHAPTER

  twenty-two

  “Dang, it’s fixin’ to come a toad strangler!” On a Sunday afternoon, Daisy came running into Dolly’s house just seconds before a light summer drizzle escalated into a downpour.

  “Here, honey, come in the bathroom and dry off.” Dolly handed her a towel, which Daisy used to dry her sketchbook and blot the mist from her face, arms, and hair—anything her overalls didn’t cover.

  “Come on in here with us,” Dolly said. “Harry’s about to play us some of his music.”

  Daisy followed her into the music room, where Jesse, Anna, and Reed had gathered around Harry, sitting at the old Victrola with a stack of records.

  “Welcome, Daisy!” Harry said. He set a disc onto the turntable, gave the crank a few turns, and set the needle down. “You are just in time to hear Robert Johnson.”

  Daisy sat next to Reed on a loveseat by the front window. Through the crackle of the old disc came the signature guitar riffs of the Mississippi Delta.

  Harry closed his eyes and absorbed himself completely in the music until the last lick. Then he shook his head and said, “I find it incredible that one who grew up in utter destitution and isolation could create such music—and spin such an inventive yarn about the universal crossroads of good and evil.”

  “Actually, Harry, it was a real crossroads,” Daisy explained. “It’s in Clarksdale.”

  “Do you mean people believe it to be literal—that he truly stood at a physical crossroads and sold his soul to Satan himself?”

  “Right there where Highway 61 crosses 49. But now, just ’cause it’s a real place, that don’t take nothin’ away from your universal good and evil idea. I like that a lot.”

  “I should’ve come here years ago.” Harry played them several more of his records—Son House, Muddy Waters, and Bessie Smith. Then he said, “I have a fine idea! Here’s one by Memphis Minnie—I hear it’s a dance favorite in Mississippi, should any of you young people feel inclined to cut a rug.”

  Dolly, who was standing in the doorway, clapped her hands together. “Oh yes! You all have a dance, why don’t you.”

  Harry put another disc on the Victrola, and a bluesy number called “Kissing in the Dark” began to play. “How about it, Jesse and Anna?”

  “No way.” Jesse laughed. “I’d fall all over myself.”

  Reed looked at Daisy, who was tapping her feet to the rhythm. “Wanna show ’em how it’s done?” He stood up and held his hand out to her. Daisy looked too surprised to do anything but follow his lead as they danced a kind of slow jitterbug to Memphis Minnie’s blues.

  Dolly saw Little Mama’s curtains begin to stir, and their subtle dance—just a slight flutter around the windows—made her smile.

  When the record ended, Daisy was laughing. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “That guy from Indianola I told you about. Guess I picked up a few things. Sorry about the clunky leg.”

  “Hey, teach us!” Anna said.

  Jesse shook his head. “Anna, no! I’m a klutz on the dance floor.”

  “Oh, come on!” She stood up, took Jesse by the hand, and pulled him out of his chair.

  “Come on and what?” Evelyn came into the music room.

  “Evelyn, you’re just in time!” Harry shouted. “We are about to get a lesson in Delta dancing. Come here and let’s have a go!”

  “Harry, you have lost your mind,” she said. �
�I feel you have a right to know.”

  “Ha! You cannot dissuade me, Evelyn. We are about to dance!”

  Reed and Daisy taught them all a few steps before Harry started the record again.

  Dolly looked on with a smile as the three couples danced together in Little Mama’s music room: Harry and Evelyn approaching each move with academic determination, counting the beat out loud and correcting each other along the way; Jesse and Anna, laughing and stealing a kiss every time they missed a step; and Reed and Daisy, who seemed unaware of everybody else as he pulled her much closer than before, letting his arms linger around her and his cheek lightly brush against hers, before spinning her away from him now and again.

  There hadn’t been so much life in the old music room for a long time. Suddenly, the sheer curtains blissfully billowed away from the tall windows as if they too wanted to dance. Si would blame it on a breeze, but Dolly knew better. Little Mama’s house was happy this summer afternoon.

  CHAPTER

  twenty-three

  “We gotta talk.”

  Anna had just handed a lake customer his Coke and potato chips when Daisy appeared out of the blue. She seemed agitated, pacing in front of the concession stand.

  “What’s the matter?” Anna asked.

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “But you just said we have to talk.”

  “We do. I just don’t know if I can. Any chance you can get away for a minute?”

  “Hey, Evelyn,” Anna called. “Could you relieve me for just a few minutes?”

  “Absolutely!” Evelyn answered from one of the Adirondack chairs on the porch, where she was reading in the shade. “Perhaps I’ll find that trading in Coca-Cola is my true calling in life.”

  “Thanks, Evelyn.” Anna turned over the cash box. “We won’t be long.”

  “Take your time.”

  Daisy led Anna off the porch and down the path to the creek. They stopped beside its shallows, where Anna sat down on a boulder near the bank. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  “I don’t know.” Daisy kept pacing back and forth, now and then shaking her hands out as if she were trying to loosen a cramp.

  “Well, you’re making me dizzy. If you can’t quit that pacing, take off your shoes and let’s at least have a cool wade in the creek.”

  They left their shoes on the bank and stepped into the soothing waters of the Tanyard. Its currents seemed to calm Daisy as she and Anna slowly walked along together.

  “It can’t be all that bad, can it?” Anna finally ventured. “Won’t you give me just a little hint?”

  “You swear, and I mean swear, not to tell a livin’ soul—not even Jesse?”

  Anna frowned. “I tell Jesse everything.”

  “Well, you can’t tell him this.”

  Anna crossed her heart. “Okay. I promise.”

  “It’s Reed.”

  Anna jumped up and down and squealed. “I knew it! I just knew it!”

  “Knew what? There’s no ‘it.’”

  Anna sighed. “Daisy, just tell me.”

  “Well . . . we’ve been spendin’ a lotta time together. But I’m not an idiot. I know we’re just friends and we’re helpin’ each other along. There’s absolutely nothin’ more to it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I ain’t thought in that direction since Charlie died.”

  “I know.”

  “And pretty boys like Reed don’t go for girls like me. They go for beauties like Alyce.”

  “Now stop right there. Have you ever looked in a mirror? You’re every bit as pretty as Alyce without even trying—and hiding in those overalls.”

  “I’m not hidin’!”

  “Are too. Keep talking.”

  Daisy stopped walking and watched the water swirl around her legs. Then she looked up at Anna and said, “Do you remember the very first time Jesse kissed you?”

  Anna smiled at the memory of it. “Of course I do.”

  “You remember that split second right before—when somethin’ changed between you and you could feel it? You knew it was about to happen, but before you had time to think about it, it happened?”

  Anna nodded and smiled.

  “Well, that’s how it was with Reed when we were dancin’—that split second before somethin’ happens, only nothin’ happened.”

  “What if it had? How would you feel about that?”

  “I got no idea.”

  “Don’t you imagine he’s spent enough time with you to know that?”

  “You really think men get that kinda stuff?”

  “Reed would. He’s special, Daisy. As sappy as I am about Jesse, even I can see that.”

  “What am I gonna do?”

  Anna put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Just let it happen, Daisy. And stop telling yourself you don’t deserve it.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty-four

  Reed was glad to have a project to occupy his mind. He had promised Dolly that he would give Si’s old Ford a tune-up, and he was looking forward to staying busy with it all day. As he reached into his toolbox and grabbed a couple of wrenches, he could hear but couldn’t see Anna and Daisy laughing and talking somewhere in the tall rows of pole beans out in the garden. It was nice, the connection between the two of them. Friends like that didn’t come along every day. He of all people knew that.

  He had just popped the hood on the Ford when he got that feeling he used to get right before an ambush. It was like walking into a familiar room where a lamp or a picture had been moved. You could sense that something was off before you figured out what it was. That’s how Reed felt now, standing in Dolly’s yard, which had always seemed so safe. Something was coming. Something was about to happen and it wasn’t good, but he couldn’t gauge what or when.

  Just then he heard a scream from the garden.

  “Daisy!”

  Reed ran toward the scream and got there just in time to see Daisy hit the ground, clutching her bleeding foot as a copperhead slithered away. Reed grabbed a hoe propped at the end of the row and killed the snake. Then he took his knife from his pocket and knelt down by Daisy, who was crying and breathing hard.

  “Daisy, listen to me. You’re gonna be fine, okay?” He turned to Anna. “Quick, go call Dr. Sesser.”

  Anna didn’t move. She was staring at the knife in his hand.

  “Anna! I’m not gonna hurt her. Please get the doctor!”

  She backed away from them and ran to the house as fast as she could.

  Reed took off his T-shirt and used the knife to cut a wide strip off of it. He tied a tourniquet a few inches above the bite on Daisy’s ankle, which was already turning red and swelling.

  “Daisy, I need you to slow down. Breathe with me.” Reed locked eyes with her, guiding her to slow her breathing down. “In . . . then out . . . In . . . then out. That’s it. Good, Daisy.”

  “It—it feels like—like fire,” she said, struggling to control her breath.

  “I know. I need to get the venom out. I’m gonna make a little cut. It’ll only hurt for a second. You ready?”

  Daisy nodded. She cried out as he cut a slit between the fang marks on her skin, put his mouth over the wound, and sucked the venom out of her ankle, spitting it onto the ground over and over. When he thought he had gotten as much as he could, he wiped his mouth with the T-shirt, then cut off more strips of cloth and bandaged the cut. Daisy tried to sit up but fainted from pain and fright.

  He picked her up and started for the house. Anna met him on his porch and held the door open as he carried Daisy into his room and laid her on the bed, propping her up on pillows.

  “Doctor’s on his way,” she said, staring at the seeping bandage on Daisy’s foot.

  Dolly came running into Reed’s room. She began to cry at the sight of Daisy lying there, snow-white and still, with red smears on the white makeshift dressing Reed had made.

  “What should we do? How can we help her?” Dolly was clearly distr
aught.

  “Keep her still and quiet so her heart doesn’t race and speed up her blood flow,” Reed said. “We need to prop her up with pillows to keep her heart above the bite. She’ll prob’ly start to have chills before the doctor gets here, so go ahead and get her into some dry clothes—those are sweaty from bein’ in the garden. I’ll step out and let you and Anna take care of her.”

  “I’ll get her some of my things,” Anna said. Reed quickly grabbed a shirt for himself and followed Anna out of his room. Before he disappeared into Dolly’s bathroom, Anna took him by the hand and said, “I’m sorry.” Then she ran upstairs.

  Reed shut the door, sat down on the edge of the tub, and put his head in his hands. The sight and smell of blood had brought it all back—wounded buddies he couldn’t reach, still more he could barely keep alive. Fire and smoke and death all around. He wanted to scream. Or curl up on the floor and sob like a baby. But now Daisy was the one with a fight on her hands, and she needed his help. So he did what he had done during battle after battle—prayed a silent prayer for strength, took some deep breaths, and soldiered on.

  Reed’s bedroom door was closed by the time he collected himself, so he walked through the house to the kitchen but found no one there. He went into the backyard and circled around to the small porch off his room, where he saw Dolly, Si, Anna, and Evelyn standing together, waiting to hear from the doctor.

  “Reed, honey, come here and sit down,” Dolly said.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “C’mon, we’ll all sit with you.” Dolly motioned for him to sit next to her on the bed, along with Evelyn and Si, while Anna took the rocker.

  “Any word?” Reed asked.

  “No, honey,” Dolly said.

  All three women looked like they had been crying—Anna most of all. They all sat in silence, anxiously waiting for news.

  At last Reed said, “Here he comes.”

  “How do you know, honey?” But before he could explain to Dolly how acute his hearing had become in combat, the doctor opened the door and stepped onto the porch.

  “What you think, Doc?” Si asked.

  “I think she’s mighty lucky she was with an Army medic, or she wouldn’t be with us for long,” the doctor answered. “From the look of the bite, that was a full-grown snake with a lot of venom. But I think Reed stopped it before it went to her heart or her brain. The next two hours will tell. If she looks like she’s going into shock or starts having hallucinations, we’ll need to get her to a hospital. If not, then she’s in for some pain and swelling and maybe some tissue damage around the bite. She’ll probably be nauseated when she wakes up.”