by Jones, Gwen
Suddenly the air changed. It felt denser, even amid all the humidity, yet it took on a spicy freshness. A slight breeze kicked up. “How far out of town will we be?”
He looked at me, his hair catching the breeze. “Little over five miles, although I prefer to think of it as five miles in.”
I took a deep breath, settling my hands in my lap.
He reached over, taking one. “Hell of a wedding, I know. But I’ll make it up to you, I promise. How are you doing otherwise?”
His hand was warm, his thumb stroking the inside of my palm. “I’m okay.”
“Glad to hear it.” He gave my hand a squeeze then abruptly let go, twisting the wheel into a sharp right. The over-reaching bushes scraped the side of the truck, the dense foliage overhead closing around us like a tunnel. I glanced to my hand, still warm from Andy’s touch and my heart raced, my throat harboring the occasional gulp. Overcome by exploding nature, my senses worked overtime.
A couple hundred more feet and the trail opened up into a large, weedy clearing and a small one story wooden house sorely in need of paint, a long barn with more than a few broken windows, several vehicles of questionable operation, an overgrown garden, and to the left, a dock leading to a wide expanse of lake, tall pines rimming it. A moment later, Jinks barreled out of the shed.
“Jesus, Andy—get in here! I think something’s wrong with Betsy!”
Andy yanked off his jacket. “Just what I wanted to hear.”
“Ever done this before?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve been reading a book.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
We tore from the truck as a lamentable moooo emanated from inside. Andy threw back the door and there was Betsy, on her belly on a bed of hay, her soft-brown head thrashing side to side. The stalled barn was rife with the scents of manure and alfalfa, tempered somewhat by the opened windows and the fecund odor of bovine birth. Andy whipped his tie off and tossed it to me, rolling his sleeves as he hurried toward the stall.
“She can’t push it out!” Jinks said, frantic, a book in his hand. “She’s been like this since you left, yelling and mooing.”
“Damn,” he said, squatting to get a better look. The heifer’s distended belly rippled in a mohair wave, her swollen vulva dripping and contracting. I clamped my hands around the rim of the stall, alternately appalled and fascinated.
“I guess the water’s broken,” Andy said to Uncle Jinks. “Did you see a hoof?”
“Yeah,” he answered, but it was pointing up. And according to this book . . .” He tapped a page, “it’s supposed to be facing down.”
“Like in a diving position,” Andy said. He looked to Jinks, his brow furrowed. “Damn.”
“What?” I said. “What’s that mean?”
Jinks closed the book. “Means someone’s gotta reach inside Betsy here and turn her calf around.”
“What!” I cried. “Call a vet or something!”
Again, Andy’s insular smile. “She might be dead by then. Or her calf.” He pushed a sleeve up over his bicep and loosed a couple buttons of his shirt, his chin jutting toward the shelf across. “Julie, get me that bottle of baby oil over there, please?”
I darted to it, a heel squishing into something I hoped wasn’t what I figured.
He held out his arm. “If you don’t mind, squirt some on me.” When I did, he slathered it up and down his forearm, flexing his hand as the heifer let go with a moooo, just pitiful enough to make us all shiver.
“Holy cats . . .” Jinks groaned, “you’re really gonna stick your arm up there?”
“You have a better idea?” Andy said briskly. He swiveled around and dropped to his knees, his muscled arm slick and gleaming in the late afternoon sun. “Here goes,” he said, and taking a deep breath, he slowly slid his hand into the cow’s vulva. She screamed.
Both Jinks and I jumped back, the heifer’s head thrashing. Andy lay half on his side, his leg arching up to gain traction as he fell in further, the cow’s belly rippling as he attempted to turn the calf around. The beast moaned and mooed, a sheen of sweat breaking out on Andy’s brow, the moisture from the cow’s broken water bag soaking his trousers. A moment later an undulation tore through her belly and Andy yanked the calf out, its body shimmering with mucus and as slick as a greased piglet.
“You did it! Look at him!” Jinks yelped, tossing Andy a towel. “He’s a beauty!”
He tilted his head. “She is. We have another heifer.” He swiped the mucus from her white muzzle and slid her next to her mother, who immediately began to clean her. “But you’re right,” he said happily, beaming with relief. “She is a little beauty!”
“Yes she is,” I said, coming around to stroke a delicate ear. “Maybe you’ve a future in midwifery after all.”
He looked at me, his eyes softening. “Maybe I do.”
All at once I felt a rush of anxiety, or trepidation, or maybe something I’d yet to discern. Whatever it was hung there between us for a moment, before Andy stood and offered me his unsullied hand. I took it, rising to meet him.
“Scared yet?” he said.
If it was a challenge, I was up to it. “Of course not.”
He smiled. “Jinks, let’s go wash up. Mrs. Devine, I’ll meet you outside in a minute.” He squeezed my fingers. “Don’t go away.”
What was I feeling just a moment before: anticipation? It had to be. I was a bride about to have a wedding night, albeit with a groom presently up to his elbow with the effluvia of cow-birthing. I glanced over my shoulder; he tossed me a wink from the sink. A wink from the sink. I laughed to myself, feeling woozy
I opened the barn door, and all at once I was greeted by a flock of scattering, squawking—chickens! “What the hell!” I screeched, momentarily disoriented. I twisted around, only to catch sight of a black and white hellhound tearing toward me, barking to take my head off, his teeth bared. I bolted toward the dock, the chickens hopping and fluttering past me as I leapt onto it. My heel caught between the planks.
“Andy!” I screamed, and fell promptly into the lake.
Chapter Six
* * *
How You Gonna Keep Her Down on the Farm?
DID I MENTION I was deathly afraid of dogs? I didn’t? I was deathly afraid of dogs! When I surfaced, Andy and the hellhound were looking down on me from the dock.
“I see you can swim,” he said.
I kicked away from them. “Get that beast out of here!”
Andy just ruffled the animal’s fur. The black and white dog hunkered down next to him. “You mean Bucky?”
“If that’s the hellhound’s name!” I threw out my arms, treading the warm water, my bare feet (who knew where my $400 shoes went) skimming the lake bottom’s muck. “Damn thing’s out to kill me.”
“He’s not out to kill you. He was herding chickens. Now, come here.” He reached out, guiding me back to the ladder.
“Herding chickens?” I said, water raining off me as I grabbed a rung. Andy’s hand clenched around mine. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“That’s what Border Collies do. They herd things. Wait a little while and he’ll probably be herding you. Not that . . .”
Perhaps it was my stunning appearance that stopped Andy as I climbed from the lake. Or maybe the mask of utter horror that was no doubt on my face. Because when I assessed myself—soaked to the skin, shoes gone, hair collapsed and hanging around my face and shoulders—I’m sure whatever vision of loveliness I previously affected had melted away with my make-up. Then an engine turned over.
“I see she’s met Bucky!” Jinks called from his truck, idling toward the road out.
“Thanks again!” Andy called back, never taking his eyes from me.
I slid my hair back, pins pinging to the dock as the dog suddenly loped off. “So much for your beautiful bride,” I said, smoothing my ruined silk sheath.
His arm slipped around my waist, and he lifted me into his arms. “Let’s go into the house.”
“W
hy?” I said, looping my arm around his neck, my sopping dress turning his shirt translucent. “Do you think I need to change or something?”
“Or something,” he said so smoothly my heart did a little flip.
I could see a tiny muscle in his cheek thumping. I caught his clean, spicy scent—though mixed up with a bit of cow—and felt the hardness of his chest against me. Being this close, I felt a little unnerved, so I looked past his shoulder to the lay of the land. We passed old tires and bottles and crushed Salem packs, barrels of who-knew-what lying against a post-and-rail fence, rusty tools hanging on equally rusty nails on the side of the house. Further out, a picnic table and an ancient barbecue sat near the tree line, a pockmarked and faded bulls-eye nailed to a tree. If this is what he meant about the place needing work, I was starting to get the picture. Even so, I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t up to it, especially after freaking out over a dog.
“Sorry for acting like an idiot,” I said. “But he scared the crap out of me.”
He smiled, shaking his head tightly. “My introduction to Bucky was worse. He likes to sleep on the roof of the barn and he jumped me, knocking me into a pile of manure.”
“Eww. I’d say my intro was at least cleaner.”
“And certainly less smelly.” He leaned in and sniffed my neck. “Much less.”
A shiver shot up my spine. “You don’t smell so bad yourself.”
“Eau de heifer.” He set me down on a slate path at the foot of the house’s screened-in front porch. “Wait right here while I get your bags. Won’t be a minute.”
This gave me a chance to assess my new home. From what I could see it looked sturdy enough, one and a half wooden stories of weathered cedar-shakes, most definitely a handyman’s special. I leaned over and gave my dress a good squeeze, a puddle collecting at my feet, then climbed the three creaky steps and yanked the door to the screened porch.
I stepped inside to a rusty-springed porch slider, buckets of bottles, a third-hand wrought-iron patio set, and an old refrigerator, desiccated leaves and pine needles strewn across the scuffed, planked floor. Poison ivy grew through a crack amid crushed cigarette butts, and a mop handle was tilted in the corner beside a holey pair of Topsiders. I looked up to see crab traps, fishing nets, and dozens of dried bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters. I pushed aside what looked like basil and pulled open another perforated screen door, revealing the unlocked door to the inside.
The curtains, or what served as such, were closed, and I paused, letting my eyes adjust to the musty interior. After a minute I could make out a stone fireplace about twelve feet away, slats of flattened wood stacked into its hearth. I turned to my left, my feet sticking to the greasy carpet as I went to the window and slid back the ancient curtains. Almost instantly I coughed to split a lung, a miasma of dust and filth shooting straight up my nose, a billion motes poofing into the stream of sunlight. Instinctively I flailed my arms, gagging and coughing, doubling over with a sneeze. When I straightened up, the bright light treated me to floor-to-ceiling boxes, old furniture topped with papers and magazines, buckets of bottles and cans, and so much of what could only be called crap. Jesus, I thought, stepping back, is this what I signed up for?
All at once something went snap! under my foot, my heel sinking through the floorboard. I yanked it out and I spun around, heading toward the door and running face-to-face into something furry and most definitely—
“DEAD!” I screeched, punching aside the hanging carcass of a groundhog or raccoon or whatever the hell it was, which I had no interest in clarifying. I kicked open the door, hobbling off the porch and right into Andy.
“Julie!” he yelped, dropping my bags. “Don’t tell me you went inside!”
I scrambled past him and down the steps. “If you think I’m spending even one night in that filthy freakhouse—” I slapped a spiderweb from my arm. “Dammit, Andy, I’d rather sleep in the barn with Betsy!”
“Hey.” He jumped off the porch, holding me by the shoulders. “I know the place is a mess, but I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.”
“Is that’s why you got married? You need a housekeeper?”
He eyed me wryly. “Because a housekeeper who’ll get half of everything I own will be so much cheaper.”
I shook myself, feeling skeevy, wanting to jump in the lake again. I shrugged him off. “Look, I’m not trying to be a diva, but there’s a dead possum in there!”
“Raccoon,” he corrected me. “Rocky, to be exact.”
“It’s got a name?”
“It’s a long story. You’d have to know my father.”
“Not interested.” Though in fact, I was. “Andy, be reasonable! Do you really expect me to sleep in—”
His look was such a grasp of the obvious I blushed right down to my toenails.
Right then we reached the part in our tender marriage where obvious morphed very quickly into awkward. He grabbed my bags from the porch and beckoned me to follow. “Come on. And stay on the slate path. I want to show you something.”
I followed him around the house to the side, past a bramble of flowering vines and the overarching branches of a few deciduous trees, to another screened-in porch which looked out to the woods a dozen yards away. However, this one was newly planked, with nary a hole in the screening, and it sported a freshly-painted wooden table and two chairs and a couple of hanging pots of very pretty, and pretty-smelling, flowers.
“Well, well,” I said, truly charmed. “It’s certainly an improvement.”
Andy looked down, his brow furrowed. “Don’t move.” He nudged open the screen door, hauling my bags to whatever was on the other side of the door opposite. A moment later he was at my side, lifting me up.
Of course I’d read about this, dreamed of what it would be like when it happened to me, if it actually did. Richard would have thought it terribly anachronistic, something an uber-urban hipster would hardly entertain. But when neo-Victorian Andy carried me over the threshold, I knew it had to mean something more than when he hefted me across a weedy and tetanus-inducing yard. Because it was all so terribly romantic, setting me down in a wooden chair in a gorgeously sunny—and apparently clean—little bedroom, replete with quilted brass bed, fireplace, upholstered settee, crocheted curtains, and a dozen other accouterments specifically designed to make me ooh and aah and swoon with anticipation—which I just about did when he kneeled before me.
“Do you know your foot is bleeding?” he said.
“What?” I said, twisting it.
“I noticed it when you stepped on the porch.” He turned it to the side for a look. “Hardly anything at all, just a scrape, but it’s seeping.” He pointed past me. “Bathroom’s right there. You’ll find all kinds of stuff in the medicine chest.” He stood. “I’ll let you get cleaned up, and I ought to do the same.” Then he left, closing the door.
I stared at the door, too numb to move. Or maybe just a bit affronted.
My Neanderthal of a husband hadn’t swept me off my feet—he’d been protecting his newly-fixed floors. I hopped to the bathroom on one foot, as God forbid I should track bloody footprints across his precious planking or his idiotically quaint throw rugs. I hauled my foot up on his impossibly cute pedestal sink and rinsed the crap out of it, figuring I must have scraped it when my heel busted through the floorboard on the other side of this schizophrenic hovel. I rubbed some Neosporin into it, as who knew what else lurked behind these walls, maybe even an Amazonian monkey virus. Next to me was an equally quaint 1930s-style toilet, and opposite, the de rigueur clawfoot tub, with its accompanying wide-mouth shower and curtain ring. I shrugged out of my trash-worthy wedding dress and used them all.
Forty-five leisurely minutes later I was fumbling through my suitcase, my hair turbaned in a ridiculously plush towel. I hit upon a peignoir I had picked up just the day before on a whim, its champagne silk slipping through my fingers. It was out-and-out the sexiest thing I had ever contemplated wearing, as Richard was never one for a
tease, always preferring to cut to the chase. But with Andy . . . with Andy . . . I sighed, flipping past it, and pulled out a more appropriate cotton sundress.
Apparently this marriage would really be no more than a business arrangement. Aside from that making for a less interesting story, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He made it clear from the onset. Obviously, I’d read more than he intended (and I should have expected) into his matrimonial kiss, those fleeting hand squeezes and his carrying me over the threshold. Not to mention the alpha maleness the man poured forth like a fire hose. Practically speaking, this whole adventure was a rebound relationship anyway, and everyone knew they never lasted. Still, as I pulled the dress over my lacy bra and panties, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed I’d never get to flaunt them.
Not that any of this should have mattered. Because the whole point of being there was to get a story anyway. And to accomplish it, there was one thing I could never let him see or I was sunk: a small plastic pouch which I really needed to find a place to stash. I scanned not only for a hidey-hole, but for a spot where I could privately access it on a regular basis. The logical choice was the bathroom; but where?
I went back to assess: a window, sink, toilet, tub, medicine cabinet, a short chest of drawers for linens. No closet. White wainscoted walls and ceiling, planked floor and molding. I jiggled them all; nothing was loose. I sat on the toilet to think, pulling open the chest of two drawers. Towels and facecloths on top, sheets on the bottom. I figured the towel drawer would be opened mostly every day, but the sheets, no more than once a week. I pulled out the bottom drawer; it slid easily and noiselessly. I knelt in front of it and pulled it completely out. Between the drawer and the bottom of the chest there was about two inches of space. I dropped the plastic pouch to the flat bottom, sliding the drawer in and out a couple of times. It slid smoothly. Until I found a better place, my little hiding spot at the bottom of the chest would have to do.
I pulled the towel from my head and, shaking my wet hair, grabbed my lipstick. No, I thought dropping it back into my cosmetics case, ignoring my mascara and perfume as well. Andy Devine’s new wife was strictly utilitarian, no adornments necessary. So, as I left for the porch, sans make-up and expectations, I prepared myself for the passionless. But as soon as I stepped outside, something more feral took over.