“You need to get help. This is harassment, at the very least.”
“Just stay out of it.” Her voice was gravel-rough. “It’s none of your business.”
“I’m trying to help you.” But she didn’t want it; that much was evident.
“Best to steer clear of what you don’t understand. You head on back to town now, hear?” She turned and started walking away. Now obviously wasn’t the time to be asking about Ray.
“What about my lessons?” If I got her to let me keep coming back, I’d find the right moment. But beyond that, I just really, really wanted to see if I could handle a sword. I could almost feel the weight of it in my hand.
Her head was shaking slowly, as if she couldn’t believe my gall, but I could have sworn I saw her lips twitch a little.
A deep sigh. “If you don’t beat all . . . ” At last, her head lifted. “The store closes at six. You be here at seven tomorrow night.”
How she knew I was working for Lorena when folks said she never came to town, I couldn’t guess, but Glory was an infinite mystery to me, and maybe that’s just how things would be.
In the meantime, while I was waiting for my car to be repaired, at least I’d be learning something besides home cooking.
Country food and swordplay. Life preservers, each in its own way.
I stood there, grinning to myself, until she was already almost out of sight. “Thank you,” I yelled at her retreating back, bisected by that silver braid.
She waved at me over her shoulder and kept going.
I hopped back on the bike and, for good measure, rang the bell on the handlebars in salute.
This was nothing like his usual gig, and Val couldn’t figure out why he was still hanging around.
The food, maybe. He’d never had better, and that was saying something. He was no stranger to the high life, however temporary his visits to it. Lorena’s cooking, however, would linger in memory. And he had to admit that he got a kick, weird as it sounded, out of hanging out in the garage with the kid and his grandpa Ray.
For all Val’s extensive, on-the-job training in the way humans ticked, family was the one language he didn’t speak. Oh, he’d watched them from afar, listened to his women talk about their own, yes, but that was as near the inner circle as he came.
Until Jewel. Now he was surrounded by one family, and their workings were . . . weird. But nice. Even the not-speaking grandparents.
Actually, they might be the most fascinating of the lot. Listening to the old man communicate with his grandson as much with a touch to the shoulder as a word or watching how, with a minimum of conversation, looks conveyed whole sentences.
Ray was gruff, but his hands were gentle on the boy, and love was in every sound, as present in a grunt or a nod of the head as in entire speeches given by others. He demanded excellence and hard work, but the kid would never appreciate, as Val did, the bounty he gave back by sheer example.
Boneheaded teenager Jeremy had no idea of the riches handed to him on a daily basis. Best Val could tell from observing Ray and his two sons, the line bred true, decent people producing more decent people, content to make it from one day to the next with no expectation of more.
It gave Val the shudders. He had to get out of here before he forgot what the world was really about. He felt the expanding roll of cash in his pocket and smiled. Then frowned. Simply winning at cards without any sleight of hand shouldn’t have felt this good.
He was getting soft. Too long without a good con . . . he was starting to itch. Sure, he’d sworn to go off the grift, but what did people do with their time when they lived on the straight and narrow? Where was the challenge? The fun?
He couldn’t keep showing up at the Rough and Ready every night to relieve the shitkickers of their currency. Oh, sure, he had run a small con, if you wanted to call it that, by throwing a few games, but that was small-time stuff. A good poker face and a long-range perspective.
He’d always been good at the former.
The latter terrified him. Smacked of planning. Commitment. Thinking of the future, even if it was only a few days.
He liked the high of life on the fly. Adrenaline racing because every turn was a hairpin, every edge razor-thin. Each step a flirtation with disaster. Seducing a good-looking woman in her marital bed. A husband arriving home early.
Oh, yeah. That worked out well last time. Look where it had landed him. Nowheresville.
Another night or two at the Rough and Ready, and he’d have a new grubstake, then he’d part ways with Red and Alex and get back in the game. East Texas had faded in memory, and he could only wonder how he’d lost his mind enough to think he’d ever give up life on the edge.
He was only alive when he was dancing with disaster, daring fate and human nature.
And, nearly always, snagging the win. It was the juice that kept him going, the reason to get up every day. He was different from these people, that’s all. Maybe they had something going here, something warm and . . . comfortable.
But Valentine Bonham didn’t do comfortable. Some people—most people—needed safety, but not him.
The road was calling him. A few more days, at most, to rest up and take it easy, enjoy being someone he wasn’t. To play grease monkey and hang with Ray, to watch for Red’s next mishap and ogle those endless legs, and to teach Alex what he could to protect her.
Then life, his life, would begin again.
Sally had swapped me the use of her bicycle for a paint job like mine on her toenails. Each time I’d seen her, she’d cast greedy glances at those golden stars on a turquoise background, however ratty they’d become.
So I’d decided we’d have a pedicure party in the RV. Alex had deigned to participate, though it meant skipping an evening with Jeremy. Jeremy’s mom begged off, but Millie said she hadn’t seen her feet in forever, and she’d like to pretty up before the baby came.
The best part, though, was that Lorena planned to attend, mostly just to watch, she said, but I was of a mind to convince her to dabble just a bit.
What I wouldn’t have given for a proper wax bath. I was determined to improvise one and, to that end, I asked Val to help me with supplies, since the café and store took up most of my hours.
I had candle wax melting in an old crock pot I found in the Employees Only storeroom, iced tea and sodas chilling and bottles of nail polish lined up in a neat row on the microscopic counter. Val had done his best, though he never stopped grumbling. Not all the bottles were new, but I was not about to ask who he charmed them out of. Pickings were pretty slim in Jewel, though he did manage a bottle of startling green in a shade not present in nature. Otherwise, I was limited to your basic red and pink and coral.
I had an ace up my sleeve, however. Sequins I’d unearthed from my trunk, courtesy of a holiday scrunchie intended for my hair. A little bit of time spent picking at threads and, voila! Instant sparkle.
“Am I going to be an elephant like Millie?” Alex asked as she emerged from our tiny bathroom, face blotchy with nerves.
“Of course not,” I answered, though what I knew of pregnancy would fit on the head of the last sequin I transferred to a saucer. It was what she needed to hear. Though she was getting noticeably bigger by the day.
“How do you know?” Alex was nothing if not skeptical when it came to me, but I saw the plea in her.
So I did my best. “Millie’s husband Leo is enormous, plus she’s had two other children.”
“So?” She pretended not to care, but she took another nibble at her already ragged nails.
I wanted to grab her hands and say Stop that!, but I resisted. “Pret—um, Nicky is thinner and not so tall. You’re delicate. Also, it seems to me that it’s sort of like blowing up a balloon. The second time, it would expand easier than the first.”
She nibbled again, staring in the vicinity of the faded red apples on our curtains. “Whatever.” With a lift of the shoulder, she slid past me and walked all four paces to the door.
&nb
sp; What she still didn’t get, though, is that she could aggravate me but she couldn’t fool me. Whether or not I deserved the title as Goddess of Fried Okra, hard knocks had made me the Empress of Nonchalance. The Grand Master of Ignore Them Before They Ignore You. No one changed schools as often as I did without learning that defense eventually. I cared too much, of course, but I knew how to cover it up.
“Stars or cherries?” I asked her.
She turned in mid-gnaw. “What?”
“Come here. Sit down. You can be my first customer.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’m not asking for any. Tonight is a party,” I said to her as I eased her onto the bench and tested the wax again before slipping her right foot into it.
“Ouch!”
I’d already tested the temperature, so I knew she was just being cranky. “Give it a second. It’ll feel like heaven in no time.”
She was all tensed and furious, her fingers curled around the edge of the cushion in preparation for launching herself off, when a knock sounded at the door.
“It’s open,” I called out and turned, still gripping Alex’s leg.
“Quartermaster Bonham checking in, General.”
But I didn’t need to hear the voice to know it was Val. Alex’s expression was plenty. He had an effect on her unlike anyone else, even Jeremy. With Jeremy, she alternated between lovesick and flirty.
With Val, she simply . . . glowed. “Hey,” she greeted him. “Hitler here is boiling my foot in hot wax.”
“Tough break, kid.” He winked at me. “But better you than me.”
She smiled at him eagerly. “You could stay, you know.”
His eyebrows winged skyward. “Let Red write bad words on my toenails? I don’t think so.”
Alex’s giggle delighted Val as much as it did me. He lingered, though I wasn’t sure why.
“So,” he said to me, “The colors work out okay?”
Given that Val was a) a guy, b) had spent hours that afternoon on what he clearly deemed a fool’s errand, and c) refused to let me pay him for the supplies, he was a total hero. “They’re great. Thank you.”
He was jingling change in his pocket, odd for a man who was normally so self-possessed.
“You okay?”
He shrugged. “Absolutely.” A pause, then he looked at me. “Can I, uh, see you outside for a second?”
I glanced at Alex’s foot. “Could it wait a few minutes? I can’t leave just now.”
“I don’t need you,” Alex pointed out, but I could only imagine the mess she’d make of Lorena’s trailer if I didn’t oversee the removal of the paraffin.
“I guess—” Before Val could finish, we heard Sally’s excited voice and Millie’s softer one just outside the door.
Val shook his head. “Never mind. No big.”
“You’re welcome to stay.”
Horror bloomed in his features. “A trailer full of women doing weird things to their feet. A really attractive offer, Red, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”
“What did you need to discuss?”
“Later.”
Sally opened the door, and he was gone like greased lightning.
“Eudora, I’ve decided I want cherries on mine, and Millie is trying to decide between hearts and lightning bolts—”
Sally’s chatter dislodged my wondering about Val, and when I saw Lorena bringing up the rear, delight erased whatever traces were left.
Confederate Texas Poet
Mollie E. Moore
(1844-1909)
During the Civil War, wrote poems Texans memorized, cut out of newspapers, sent their boys on the battlefront: About the deaths of heroes, Texans’ units, Confederate victories and such topics. She also did social work and nursing at Camp Ford, Tyler.
She was a lively, spirited girl who went horseback riding with a pistol strapped to her side.
After war, became nationally known poet, novelist, columnist. Married a newspaper editor. Led New Orleans society 20 years.
Near this marker site, at old Mooresville (now Proctor) often visited her brother’s family.
DARK AGNES IN TRAINING
“So explain to me what this has to do with sword fighting,” I gasped at the end of my one thousandth pushup. Okay, only thirty, but it felt like way more.
“You need biceps, and your deltoids are pathetic,” Glory said. “Face it, Eudora. You are a wimp.”
That got me hopping. I rose to my feet and glared down at her. “I have had a long day, slave-driver. Anyway, I don’t have all that much time left in Jewel, and we need to get to the main program. I know how to do pushups.”
“Couldn’t prove it by me. Drop and give me twenty more.”
“You should have been a drill instructor,” I muttered.
“I was.”
My head jerked up at that. “For real? You were in the army?”
Her upper lip curled. “No, Eudora. The real military. The Marines.”
Whoa. I worked with a former Marine once. He was one bad dude. Dark Agnes would have been a Marine, I was positive. “How long were you in? Did you ever see action?”
“Twenty, girl. Or I’ll add to it.”
I propped my fists at my waist and opened my mouth to argue.
“Twenty-five.”
“It’s just a stupid contest, fans play-fighting.” Not that I was competing, anyway.
She arched one brow. “I assure you it is not. Not while I’m in charge.”
Oh, boy. The Wicked Witch of the West would be running the show.
“Thirty. Or do you not want to learn about swords?”
“Glory, I won’t be here—”
“Goodbye, Eudora.” She executed a very formal about-face and walked toward her dome.
My mad was fixing to run away with me. The urge to stomp my foot was just about unbearable.
But oh, how I hated to be a quitter. “Wait.” She kept going. “Glory, wait, I’m sorry.” No pause, and I remembered our face-off once before. “Please.” If there is one thing that will stick in your craw more than saying please to a bully, I do not know what it would be.
“You don’t understand,” I continued. “I don’t have much time. I have a journey to complete.” She paused without turning around, and I swallowed hard. “I’ll do the pushups back in Jewel, I promise. I just don’t want to waste precious time here when I could be learning from you.”
“What kind of journey?” she asked, facing me at last.
I hesitated. This woman had no respect for me already. My quest was private, and I didn’t really want to share it with her.
“Fine.” She began to pivot.
“To find my sister,” I blurted.
“What happened to her?”
I stared at the ground, trying to find a good answer, one that would make sense to someone like Glory. Except there was no one like Glory.
Just spit it out, hon. Who’s she to call you crazy?
Big Lil had a point. I lifted my head and just said it. “She died, but I know she’s out there somewhere. She believed in reincarnation, and it makes some sense, don’t you think?” I wasn’t really waiting for her to answer but just raced on. “I mean, how else do you explain that sense of familiarity you get with some people or some places except that you’ve been there before, just in a different body? And anyway, I don’t care if you believe me because I am going to find her, I just want to be strong when I do, someone to reckon with like Dark Agnes or even . . . you.”
When I finally ran out of steam, she didn’t move, just watched me for what seemed like forever. I was the mouse caught in the cobra’s gaze, and I couldn’t look away even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like what she had to say.
But what did I have to lose, anyway? She’d already fired me from the lessons.
What Glory did, though, was the very last thing I would have expected.
She smiled. Glory, smiling. “I do believe I like you, Eudora.”
What?? “But�
��” Aren’t you going to make fun of me? Make me feel stupid?
“We’ll settle on ten more pushups now, but you have to swear to do at least fifty tomorrow and add ten each day, if not more.”
“But—”
“Now, Eudora. Or there will be no swords in your future.” But the way she said it was oddly gentle.
My head was spinning, but I dropped to the ground and gave her ten.
“Take a rest. There’s water inside. You have five minutes.”
Somehow I survived that first lesson, including the session after the break where she taught me some footwork I was to practice. It was a further consolation that Glory also relented and sent Sword Woman home with me to finish.
It was more than a little disturbing to discover that at the end of one of the tales of Dark Agnes, she screamed and launched herself into a man’s arms. Still, I chose to focus on the words of her companion: And now you have naught to fear—and naught to be ashamed of. You have done as well against this horror as any woman or any man could do. And if, in the end, it comes to this, there is no shame for you to act as a woman, Dark Agnes, for you are quite a woman, indeed.
Quite a woman. I tried to keep that in mind the next morning when I was so sore I thought I would have to crawl to the café. As the day wore on, the urge to whimper faded, less due, however, to my inner strength than to consuming enough ibuprofen to fell a horse.
Still, I showed up for my second lesson—high marks for me, I chose to think—and I got to actually hold a sword in my hand, even if it was wooden.
Lord have mercy, though. I cannot begin to understand how knights managed in full suits of armor. After an hour, I was about to fall flat on my face. Uncle, I wanted to say to Glory. I give.
But she was standing in front of me with a smirk on her face, just waiting for me to cave in.
I needed a breather bad, plus that smirk stirred up my mad like a stick poked in a hornet’s nest. I lost whatever caution I’d had. “How could you have an affair with Ray?”
A mix of emotions raced over her features. “My relationship to Ray is none of your business.”
“Lorena is.” I closed the distance between us. “You hurt her. She’s practically a saint. How could you?”
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 18