A cheer went up from the assembled group. Delbert Wallace leaped to his feet and pulled out a chair. “Here, Eudora.” Color was rising up his neck, and it was kind of sweet. “You can sit by me.”
I was a lousy gambler, but I felt responsible for Val’s soul. “Thank you, Delbert.”
Before I got the chance to settle, Val tugged me instead into the chair next to him. “The lady isn’t familiar with poker. She can help me play.”
“I want to play my own hand.”
Val sighed. “Of course you do.” He rolled his neck. “Okay, Carl, deal.” He glared at Carl. “And pay attention to what you’re doing this time.”
How sweet. He was worried about Carl. I knew he was going straight. “That’s nice of you,” I leaned over and whispered.
His stare could have melted lead. “Shut up, Red.”
“Red,” Val whispered in my ear a while later, “Stop trying to throw the game to Carl. You’re not that good.”
Well, of course I wasn’t, but I couldn’t seem to quit winning myself, and with every hand, Carl’s spirits sank lower. “I have to do something,” I hissed.
Val had an absolutely dead-solid poker face, but he let a blazing threat shine through his eyes, just for a second, as he looked at me. “I’ve got it covered,” he said through clenched teeth. “Back off. You’re screwing me up. Just play your hand.”
“Hey, you two,” complained an unpleasant guy named Brad. “There’s a game going on here. Get a room if you can’t leave each other alone.” He snickered, and another player, whose name I hadn’t caught, followed suit.
I did not like those two. They reminded me too much of the fanny-pinching lousy tippers I once served. “Maybe you two should get your own room. You seem mighty cozy.”
Val’s groan was quickly lost in the screech of Brad’s chair on the grungy floor. Brad leaned over the table, palms down, glaring at me. “Watch your mouth, bitch. You’re a stranger here. We have ways of dealing with folks who don’t belong.”
Instantly, I was reminded of the graffiti on Glory’s wall. I stared at him, mentally trying to superimpose him over the figures leaping into the pickup that morning. His hair was the right color, a dark brown. I couldn’t be sure, but I’d still met his type far too often. “Yeah? You don’t happen to have spray paint cans in that penis substitute pickup of yours, do you? Keep it handy for scribbling filth on walls?”
“Red,” Val warned. “Jesus.”
“And what if I do?” Brad was halfway across the table now. “What are you going to do about it? Run tell the crazy bitch?”
Glory was no crazier than half the people I’d met over a convenience store counter. Beats me, though, why I felt the need to defend her. I didn’t like one bit what she had done to Lorena, but this smacked of persecution. I couldn’t hold still for that. “It was you, wasn’t it, spraying graffiti on her building? There are laws against that. Maybe I’ll call the cops.”
His face filled with ugly color, and he lunged across the table. “You have no idea who you’re screwing with.”
“Shit, Red!” Val dragged me out of my chair, shoving me behind him. “Back off, Brad.”
“Hey!” I tried to elbow past Val. “I’m not afraid of him.”
Val wheeled on me, his own face hard with fury. “This is not the time to be an idiot. Go out to the car.”
I glared back, and he swiveled me around. “Now, goddammit. Before you get us both killed.”
I’d let Jelly walk all over me. I’d swallowed a lot of guff from customers for the sake of my job. I was sick and tired of being a doormat.
But I didn’t want Val hurt on my account, and it was clear that he was in this battle and had no plans to leave.
I cast a glance over his shoulder at Brad, who was literally trembling with fury in Carl’s hold. Around us were restless mutters, and I had seen a club erupt into violence before. Male pride and alcohol are a bad mix.
But I did hate giving in to this creep.
“For you.” I spat the words at Val. Looked back at Brad and let my expression tell him what I was trying to have the sense not to say. He was a redneck of a type I truly wished I never had to meet again, an insecure short man who made himself feel bigger by knocking everyone else down. He would have made fun of me in junior high, and he would have been the first to grope at me when I got breasts. And he would have bragged to all and sundry that he’d done a whole lot more.
In that instant, the ugly side of my mad was pushing very hard to break past my good sense.
“Please, Red. I don’t want you hurt.” Val’s tone, in the midst of all the violence simmering in this room, was gentle and earnest.
It broke the back of my fury. So I backed down.
Again.
The taste of it was bitter, though, and if I spared Bigot Brad one more glance, I would not be able to do as Val was asking.
So, with a throat jammed full of humiliation, I turned away and began my walk toward the door.
“I’m not the only one ready to run Glory out of town, you skinny bi—” Brad’s yell was cut off abruptly.
And, I hoped, painfully. But given that I was not the one dealing out the pain, that was cold comfort. As I crossed the filthy floor of the Rough and Ready, that was the closest I’d felt in a long time to the taunting I used to get as the new, gawky misfit, the butt of the joke in more schools than I liked to remember.
When Val caught up to me just outside, I shrugged off his hold. “Carl hasn’t won his trailer payment yet,” I said.
“What?”
“You have to go back in there. I’m not even going to think about how you can be so sure you can make him win.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight. Carl will be fine.”
Tears of shame blinded me. “If I have to walk away from that . . . creep—” I was nearly growling. “Then you have to go back and make sure Carl winds up with his mortgage money. Or I will.”
“Exactly how do you propose to do that?”
“Give him my winnings.”
“You are insane. Anyway, he won’t accept charity.” But I guess he could see that I was dead serious. He uttered a few choice words and raked his fingers through his hair. He exhaled sharply through his nose, but his shoulders lowered a fraction, telling me I’d won. “Completely freaking insane. Maybe you should just add Carl to your menagerie.” He threw up his hands before settling them on his hips. “All right. On one condition. I give you the keys to Jeremy’s truck, and you get your fanny out of here now and go straight back to the RV. No trips to Glory’s, no lurking in the parking lot. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.” He leaned in so close my eyes nearly crossed. “Are we clear?”
Once again he was reading my mind, and I didn’t like it one bit. That little victory wasn’t much to brag about, but it was all I was going to get, I could tell. “Yes.” He handed me the keys and started to turn, but I touched his forearm. “Thank you.”
He snorted and shook his head.
“He just—” I began.
“I understand.” His look was a mix of exasperation and wry amusement. “At least, as much as a head case like you can be understood.” But his tone was fond.
“Good thing there’s nothing going on between us, huh? You’d have your hands full.”
“There is a God.” His smile was wide and oddly sweet. “Go on home, Red.” He headed back inside, and I was left to watch the space made by his absence.
Which was a whole lot bigger than I’d like.
Queen’s Peak Indian Lookout
Discovered by white men in 1848. Permanent white settlement began in this region in 1858. Its early history is a long story of Indian raids. In memory of pioneer women, who, in the midst of such dangers, daily risked their lives for others, this monument is erected.
COUNTRY FOOD AND SWORDPLAY
The morning after. How come you just about never hear that phrase used in glowing terms?
It’s too bad no one’s inve
nted something like shock therapy to make a person remember—in advance—that whatever notion you have when you light out to have fun of an evening, morning will come. And with it, that cranky old scoundrel named Payback.
It was my own blasted fault, though, that I hadn’t managed to say no to Val when he tried to lure me to the Rough and Ready. So while I wanted to whimper my way through the morning, I sucked it up and just stayed quiet.
But I was still worried about the threat to Glory. After work, I would have to do something about it. I was not buying that notion that she was a murderer. Crabby and eccentric, yes, but no killer, even if she did like to brandish that shotgun around.
Also, I was through dithering over the notion of swordplay. Somehow or another, I made up my mind, I would convince her to teach me a little before I left. Dark Agnes would have cut Bigot Brad’s heart out. I might be no Dark Agnes, but I needed every bit of warrior instinct I could cultivate.
At the café, despite my lack of enthusiasm for being awake, the day went well. No scorched okra, no kitchen burns. The Goddess of Fried Okra, old Mr. Conkwright called me. I came around the counter to hug his neck for that. Take that, you homecoming queens. Take that, Jelly’s bimbo. I even thought Big Lil might approve. I was no Kilgore Rangerette or Miss Texas, but she did respect competence in a woman.
Not that fried okra would ever pass those collagen lips.
Lorena gave me her own vote of confidence as she left the kitchen for a while during the height of the lunch rush and went to sit with a friend. “I know in my heart that you can handle this, Eudora.”
Her faith in me was wonderful. . . if only I shared it. I did exert myself, though, and I was sincerely glad to be able to provide the break for her. That I juggled everything with only minor delays seemed little short of a miracle, but it felt good.
Ray came in for lunch and paused on his way to a booth to stand in the kitchen door. “No part today,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
I nodded a quick thanks and kept chopping.
Once he was seated, Ray hardly took his eyes off her.
And when he wasn’t looking, she was.
This battle of wills between them just had to be fixed. If only I knew how.
Even though I completely understood how much betrayal hurt, my situation with Jelly was different. There was nothing between us, really. Not like these two, with years of history and children and grandchildren. Struggling together and fighting the odds in world where people hardly stay married five years anymore.
There was something very private about the two of them, however, and it held me back from barging into the middle.
But, oh, it hurt me to watch them. To see the sorrow that was a shadow over both. The way she looked at him when she thought nobody saw, like her heart was breaking. How he watched her like she might vanish.
I was glad when lunch was over and he left. That afternoon I passed my hours in the store dusting shelves and was grateful for a decent stream of customers to keep me busy enough not to fall asleep face-first on the counter. Very pregnant Millie came in for milk for her two little ones.
“How are you doing, Eudora?” she asked. Lorena’s influence seemed to trump any plans I had for my name. Most everybody had taken to calling me that.
“Fine, just fine. How about you?”
She pressed one hand to her enormous belly and rubbed circular strokes over it. “I am ready for this baby to show up,” she said. “I’m hot, I’m fat, I can’t sleep for an hour without needing to pee—” Then she laughed.
Laughed.
“It’s Mother Nature’s training for having a newborn.”
One of her two boys skidded to her side then. “Mama, can we have a Popsicle?”
She stroked one hand over his hair. “You’ll use a napkin? Not wind up with it all over the car and your face?”
Earnestly, he shook his white-blond hair, and his little brother followed suit. “We promise.”
“All right, go ahead.” As they charged for the freezer case, she grinned at me. “They’ll be a disaster within five minutes. Bet on it.”
Her cheer amazed me, and I told her so.
“When you have little kids, you either learn to chill out about what’s not important or go crazy. I had all these notions with my first about exactly how things would be.” She shook her head. “The big lesson in having children is just how little in life you can really control.”
“Did your mother teach you that?”
“I’m not sure my mother has ever accepted that there are things she can’t control. If you haven’t noticed, there are few times when she chooses to bend on an issue.”
She’s your mother and practically a saint, I started to say to her, all worked up in Lorena’s defense.
But then I saw the fondness of Millie’s smile, and it confused me. To me, Lorena was everything perfect and right. Lorena’s strength, her firm convictions, they made me feel safe. I didn’t want to examine her for flaws.
Okay, so she was the woman who hadn’t spoken to her husband in six months—but that was his fault. And if she seemed determined to make me into more than I thought I could be, well, no one in my life had ever believed in me that way. I wanted to be wrong.
So when the little boys raced back, already tearing the paper from their frozen treats, I managed not to really answer Millie. Not that I thought she was being a traitor to her mother, exactly. More that she didn’t understand the luxury she had.
Lorena would love her children to her dying breath, would fight for them. She would never leave them lost and floundering.
I grabbed a bunch of napkins, helped her get the kids in the car without too many drips, and returned to clean up the mess, all the while aware of a little kernel of resentment for all that had graced Millie’s life, and how lucky she was to be able to make fun of it.
The old bicycle Jeremy’s sister Sally loaned me was creaking as I strained to make it up the hill after work. Glory’s was just over the top of this rise, I thought.
Yes, she’d thrown me out. No, I wasn’t in the slow class on what Get out! meant.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Glory was in danger, even if she’d brought it on herself. I also wanted to know—though I had no idea how I would ever ask—what she had been thinking when she got between Ray and Lorena.
Their situation was not my business, I knew that, but sometimes people can’t see what they’re doing to themselves. Jewel was not my home, and these people were not my family, but for the first time since Becky Marie, I had gotten involved. I cared. I still was set on finding Sister, but there was nothing I could do about my journey until my car was fixed. I intended to hit the gas the second I had wheels again, but the more time I spent with Lorena, the more I wanted to find a way to make things right there first.
Suddenly, there was Guns ‘n’ Glory ahead. It was hard to believe that only days had passed since I’d first laid eyes on the portable building with its windows wired like an eighth-grader’s teeth. So much had happened since.
I lifted my feet off the pedals. Dragged them in the dirt. Thought about rolling right back down that hill.
Nope. No guts, no glory, excuse the pun. I dismounted from the bike and began to walk it toward the fence, only too aware of the ever-present shotgun. The two dogs with whom I had an uneasy truce. “Glory?” I called out. “Geri? Freki?” Big dogs with big teeth.
“Glory!” I shouted louder, though I didn’t kid myself that my voice would carry all the way to the dome. I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Here, Freki. Come take a bite.”
At last, a furious barking, growing louder by the second. I retreated from the fence as they came tearing around the corner, mad-dog slobbering again. “Nice dogs. Remember me, guys? I left the cat at home this time. Good doggies.” I mentally kicked my tail for not bringing treats. “Where’s Glory? Where’s your mommy?”
“I’ve been called a bitch before, but it wasn’t literal, big girl.” And there she was, shotgun in
hand. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t look happy to see me.
I wasn’t sure how thrilled I was, for that matter. I had no way to know if she’d even answer my questions about her and Ray. Best not to come right out with them, though, before I scoped things out. “I want you to teach me.” I jutted my chin. It wasn’t the main reason I’d made the trek, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to learn.
“What?” Her brow was beetled, yet I realized anew that Glory was indeed not so ancient as I’d thought. Even attractive, damn Ray’s hide.
Eye on the prize, Pea. “Swordplay.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“For the competition in June?”
Everything in me slammed on the brakes. Where would I be in June? “No, I just—I want to learn.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to be strong. I guess I want—”
“Guessing won’t get it. You got to know, big girl. Know inside yourself that you’re strong. It’s the only weapon that matters, and no one can teach that to you.” She looked me over. “Besides, you got no meat on you. Couldn’t even pick up my sword and swing it, bet you money.”
I stared at her, stung by the easy dismissal. I thought she would be happy I was here, that I was taking her swords seriously.
She stared back, and I lost heart. “Forget it.” I turned and stalked toward Sally’s old bike, ready to ride away, to leave this mean old woman behind.
Then I remembered my other purpose for coming. Even if she was mean, she deserved warning. I whirled back to face her. “I think you’re in danger, Glory. I don’t know if it’s those guys who wrote that stuff on your wall.”
“I can handle the little pissants.”
“But why would they—”
“Big girl,” she exhaled in a gust. “You ask too many questions.”
“You need to take this seriously. I heard these guys at the Rough and Ready talking about driving you out.”
Her eyes went to slits. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 17