Glory scowled. “Be crazy to quit when you got the guts to take those boys on.”
I had guts, Glory said so. Wow.
I was still marveling over the miracle of a compliment from her when she spoke. “Sure you’re all right?”
I nodded, though I’d probably be sore as all get-out. “I just got banged up when I fell off the bike. I only need a little cleaning up. I’m worried about you, though. Those guys already had it in for you and now . . . ”
A bad-tempered shrug. “I can take care of myself. Come back with me. Lorena can fix you up.”
She would, yes, but I needed to be alone right then. Too much had happened for one night. I didn’t want to do any more talking, and though Glory could go hours without a word, Lorena wouldn’t. She’d feel the need to do something about Brad, too.
“Glory, I told you what I heard them say about you.”
“You coming or not, big girl?”
Topic closed, clearly. Fine and dandy. “No. I’m heading—” Home, I started to say. Except it wasn’t. “How long you think she’s going to hide out up there?” How long before I can leave? was the real question.
“Beats me.” A frown. “Best be soon, though. Need my privacy.” The protest seemed to be more for form, though, with no real heat in it. “You can ask her tomorrow. Come on, load up your bike and I’ll drive you.” She walked off, giving me no chance to refuse.
I was sick of being told what to do. “I’ll get myself back.” I sheathed my sword, then righted the bike. Mounted and tested it for a few feet. A squeak said something was rubbing, but maybe I could make it back to the RV. I had to try or go crazy with how everybody had plans for me, how everyone thought they could just order me around. Don’t tell Ray. Get in this pickup. Ask her tomorrow.
Mere weeks ago, life had sucked, and I had been lonely.
But things had sure been a lot simpler.
Slowly I rode the bike back to town, despite the aches and pains that were screaming at me not to be so stubborn.
Glory followed me all the way.
Then hit the gas and took off before I could say thank you.
I did go back, though, dang my hide, the next night. Glory and I worked out first thing when I got there. Only when she had me dripping sweat and about to plop in the dirt did she signal an end to our session by walking off without a word. She didn’t hang around while I stayed and visited with Lorena, but I thought I understood. Lorena was easy with me, and we laughed a lot. Glory wasn’t much for laughing—I’d never seen her really smile except that one time when Alex had told her I needed a keeper—and at the moment, she had a lot on her mind keeping an eye out for trouble.
As for Lorena, I still believed she and Ray should be talking out their problems. I had no idea what it would take to break the stalemate, but however much I thought she should, I also treasured that time with her.
That night we even danced a little. Lorena told me that she’d danced so little in her life that she had to make up for lost time. Now that she wasn’t on her feet all day, they got a little itchy to move, she swore.
So she started with the Lindy, a dance that was big in her salad days, as she called them. It’s a very energetic step, so mostly I was the one to do all the hopping and juking around, but it still lit up her eyes and made her grin. I’d be any kind of fool I needed to be, to make that happen.
Then we sat down so I could do a foot massage for her. I settled on the floor in front of the overstuffed Longhorn chair that had become Lorena’s throne. First I soaked her feet in warm water and washed them with a sweet lavender soap I found in the RV. She always sank a little deeper into her chair as if her bones were rearranging themselves.
“Tell me about your people, Lorena,” I requested, mindful of the graves I had seen at that sweet cemetery.
“My great-grandmother loved to dance,” she said. “She looked a lot like you, Eudora, china-blue eyes and red hair, a tiny thing, not quite five feet.”
“That’s a pretty big difference,” I pointed out. “I could make two of her.”
“Pshaw. You’re a good size, honey. No one’s going to overlook you.”
“I should only wish,” I muttered.
She bent forward to grip my chin. “Being remarkable is a good thing. Count your blessings. No man will be able to treat you like furniture.”
“Stupid rat bastard,” I hissed. But then I recalled how lost he’d looked that morning she left. How he wasn’t eating.
I still couldn’t get over how they were wasting love that others would kill for. I kept searching for a way to convince her to let me tell him where she was. To make her see the insanity of letting time slip away when she could be spending it with him.
But the woman brought new meaning to the word stubborn. Meanwhile, haranguing her would only mess up the time I had with her, and I was lapping that up like cream. “How about a cup of tea?” I asked, rising.
“Tea would be good.”
I focused on the steps she’d taught me for brewing a proper cup. Warm the pot first. Sprinkle in leaves. Pour water gently so as not to bruise them.
I stared out the window over the sink and spotted Glory pacing in the growing darkness like she was on sentry duty. She was making herself an outcast in her own home—not that Bigot Brad and his threats weren’t something to consider.
“Why do people hate Glory?” I asked Lorena. “There has to be more than just an affair with Ray to it. It’s not just that they dislike her personality, either. The graffiti called her a murderer.”
Lorena was silent, her head bowed so that I could see the fragile line of her nape. Her spine reminded me of a strand of pearls, which brought to mind the mystery of Glory’s necklace, so out of tune with the rest of her getup.
Idly I wondered if Lorena’s scalp ever hurt from how she scraped back her hair. After I rubbed her feet, I thought I’d offer to brush it. Surely that’d feel good, too.
“People around here do think she killed someone.”
Whoa. “Did she?”
“Not . . . well, it’s complicated.”
“How?”
She glanced outside then back. “Glory had a childhood friend, Molly Cannon, who was the only person who was able to get past that hard shell after Glory came back to Jewel. Things happened while she was in the service that she won’t talk about, but I can tell you that they only made her more troubled and fierce.” Lorena stared off into the distance for a bit, then stirred herself to continue. “Molly had emphysema and toward the end, she was suffering tremendously. She begged Glory to help her end it.”
I gasped.
Lorena’s gaze whipped to me, but all I could do was wave her to go on.
Because I could not breathe. My skin was prickling.
“No one knows for sure,” she went on, “but everyone believes Glory did it. She’s never discussed it with anyone, but heaven knows how much she must have suffered over it. Now she wears Molly’s pearls like a hair shirt.”
Those pearls, so incongruous with the combat boots.
I could hardly focus. My mind was a cyclone hurling debris, gale force winds all riled up to maim and destroy, Lorena’s words ripping right into me.
Because Sister had asked the same thing of me.
Begged me.
“I was one of those condemning her at the time,” Lorena said sorrowfully, “But now I realize how much strength it took to perform what was an act of mercy.”
Strength I didn’t have. I’d said no—not only no but hell, no. Yelled at her for giving up. Went on a rampage of finding new treatments, each one more bizarre than the last. I ignored that she was a skeleton, getting worse every day, long past the strength to fight.
If you loved me enough, she’d accused. It’s because I love you, I’d shrieked. And worse. If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.
Like Sister hadn’t given up her whole life since sixteen—hard, miserable years of keeping me safe—out of love. And the one time . . . the only time she really needed me . . .
“Some folks around here talked about calling in the authorities. Ray stopped them.”
Ray. And in doing so, fertilized the fields of gossip. Made an affair later seem fated and cast Glory even more the villain. I owed him, she’d said.
Oh, Glory. You stacked the deck against yourself. You knew they’d believe the worst of you. I saw a different Glory then and understood a little better her isolation. The crust she’d formed around herself to deal with being despised. Feared because she’d done something few people could face.
So had she decided that since she was already a pariah, being seen as an adulteress was no big deal? There was so much I wanted to ask her, the only person who would understand. If she had it to do over, would she? Were her regrets any more raw than mine?
But first I’d have to tell her what I’d done, and I was in no way ready for that, nor could I admit it to Lorena. If Lorena despised me for my choice, I would not be able to bear it.
“Is the tea ready yet?” Lorena asked, as if we’d only been talking about the weather.
Chilled to my marrow, I grabbed the pot in both hands. My palms were turning bright red, but my chest was redder, full of blood gushing out of old wounds I wished I couldn’t feel. Barely, I got the pot to the trivet in time, then finally, with trembling fingers, I managed to give Lorena her cup of tea.
Once she sipped it with a pleased sigh and settled into the cushions for Act Two, I kept my face averted, focused on the oil I poured into my palm and began to minister to this woman I adored, praying my misery wouldn’t communicate through my touch.
All the while, I wondered about the woman outside. Why had Fate put Glory in my path, after all—not to teach me strength but to shame me? To show me where I went wrong?
Oh, Sister, talk to me, please. I need a sign. Will you ever forgive me?
But Sister stayed silent, and my skin felt tight enough to burst, all the acid boiling and ready to escape if I couldn’t find a way to shove it back, push it down, lock it away before it spilled over and hurt someone.
“What is it, Eudora?” The concern in Lorena’s voice made me want to weep. To scream and scream until—
Desperate to escape my thoughts, I leaped right over the edge into crazy. Jerked to my feet, threw myself into a dance of the demented. Cast my head back, let my hair fly, begged the music to take me over, to free me. I spun off into the center of the room, whirling like a dervish, like some crazy mystic transported by the voices in his head. I thought about Agnes and Sonja cavorting with Conan on the outer skin of this shell. I needed the tornado inside me to latch onto their fierceness and suck it right down into me, so I’d be bold and fearless and nothing would bother me. I would hack my way through the jungle of doubt, unearth the temple where all the answers were buried. I’d stride across the clearing and God help anyone who tried to stop me—
“Eudora!” Lorena’s voice, raised in alarm. She stopped me in mid-spin, her eyes huge and frightened.
Glory charged through the doorway, ready to take me apart.
“Eudora.” Softer now, the way you’d speak to a deranged intruder, hoping to calm him before he shoots. “Honey,” Lorena said, all gentleness. “Come sit down. Let me make you some tea.”
I shuddered in her grasp. “That’s my job,” I said dully.
“Not right now. Sit here.” She led me like a tall child and sat me in her chair. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
I sprang up like a jack in the box. “No!” I shook my head, looked around and came to myself at last. One long exhale, then, “I’m all right.”
She and Glory traded glances. Glory shrugged and melted back into the outdoors.
Lorena studied me. “There’s been a sorrow in you from the first day, child. Can you speak of it?”
Could I? I’d never told a soul. I could not imagine ever doing so. My sense of urgency clawed back. “How much longer are you planning to stay up here?”
Her eyes were too wise. “How long would it take me to convince you not to go?”
“Lorena, you know I . . . ” I was so weary, so very much did not want to argue with her again over whether my journey was a fool’s errand.
“I do.” She patted my hand. “We won’t tussle over that again. But that’s not the only reason I’m here. I’m worried about Glory.”
That brought my head up. “Why?”
“She’s in pain. She’s all alone, and that’s my fault. I’m making progress with her, slow but coming along.” A small smile curved her lips. “She wouldn’t like knowing it.”
“Amen to that.”
“She needs to be brought into the fold, then people like Brad will leave her be.”
Brought into the fold. I pictured Glory one of a flock of soft, woolly lambs, and that notion pushed at my crazy cloud. Put flight to some of my misery. Glory was more like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, to my way of thinking. I found a smile. “You sure don’t lack ambition.”
“You can help me. You’ve already proven yourself to the townsfolk, and Glory trusts you. Between us, we could make people accept her.”
Glory? Trust . . . me? I goggled at the notion. Lorena would think better of it if she knew all the ways I had failed Sister. She thought I was someone I was not, however much I wished she were right. I would have to tell her everything when the time came for me to leave—then she wouldn’t be asking me to stay. She’d be happy to see the back of me.
But I could not tell her yet, I just couldn’t.
Shaky as I felt, I was nowhere near ready for Lorena to hate me.
Indian Emily’s Grave
Here lies Indian Emily, an Apache girl whose love for a young officer induced her to give warning of an Indian attack. Mistaken for an enemy, she was shot by a sentry, but saved the garrison from massacre.
KNIGHT IN JOHN DEERE GREEN
Before I left, I asked if I could bring Alex the next night. She and I had barely spoken outside work because I was gone so much, and I was worried about her. I couldn’t continue my journey without knowing she was okay.
The idea wasn’t without risk, though. Alex might tell Jeremy where his grandmother was, so the choice had to be Lorena’s. I wasn’t surprised that she said yes. Lorena, like her sister, had no shortage of grit.
Turned out that having Alex at the dome was a blessing. She couldn’t stop giggling over the dancing, but when we finished, she cheered. She provided a much-needed spark of youth and a distraction for all of us. Even Glory came inside for the night, though she still stood by the door.
As I watched Alex learn the Lindy, I now understood Glory’s on-the-outside-looking-in expression. Alex didn’t worry about the future and seemed able to easily forget her past, while I was neck-deep in mortality, as were Lorena and Glory. We lacked the illusion that life grants pretty endings.
Alex, however, was a first-quarter moon growing ever brighter. I, for one, wanted to keep her that way, full of the clueless optimism you only possess at sixteen.
“Come here.” She held out a hand and drew me into the dance. Lose the gloom, she mouthed to me, her back to Lorena, her forehead in a frown.
A wake-up call that Alex was young but not innocent. More a woman than I was, since she’d embraced a state I’d dodged for a long time.
For one glimmering instant, I pictured myself, belly rounded with child, then another breathless second when I thought I could feel the weight of that child in my arms. The sheer, outrageous joy of the notion knocked me right out of my misery.
So I joined in the dance, and when Lorena tired, Alex and I kept moving.
Afterward, I painted suns on Alex’s big toenails to parallel Lorena’s evening stars.
“One winter, my mother was housebound with three small children and snowdrifts to the tops of the trees,” Lorena told us when we were settled in at her feet. I squirted oil into my palm and began to massage her left foot, kneading the sole and sliding my thumb over the arch. My touch was the only way Lorena would let me say what she meant to me. I�
�d tried, but words embarrassed her.
She sighed deeply, and for a moment, all we could hear was the cicadas outdoors. Glory had joined us, for a change, seated next to Lorena. Alex removed one of Glory’s shoes, and Glory stiffened. At a sharp glance from Lorena, she frowned but complied.
Alex mimicked me, soaking Glory’s feet first.
I nodded to urge Lorena on with the story. “Where was your father?”
“He was snowbound in town. It took him three days to get back to her, and even then, he had to borrow a horse to do it. We lived on a country road, and no one around those parts had ever heard of a snowplow.” She chuckled. “Now that I’m grown, I can just imagine how Mother felt—did I mention we all had the measles?”
“Holy cow.”
“Oh, I don’t think she believed those cows were one bit holy. Spawns of Satan was more like it, since she had to shovel her way to the barn twice a day to milk them, then shovel her way back because the high winds kept blowing the snow into new drifts, obliterating her path. The well froze up, so she had to melt snow to have water, and the telephone lines were down, so she had no idea where Daddy was.”
She paused to groan as I worked over the bony knobs of her toes. “Oh, child, you will make my eyes roll back into my head.” She cast me a fond smile. “But don’t you dare stop.”
I smiled back. “I won’t. So what were you all doing during this time?”
Her eyes shone bright with mischief. “Complaining nonstop about not being allowed to go out and play in the snow. Can you imagine it? Ungrateful wretches, children can be. Would have served us right if she’d thrown us out in the snow, fevers, sensitive eyes and all.”
“You have to be patient with your kids.” Alex was frowning. “You should try hard to understand them.”
I started to defend Lorena, but Lorena beat me to answering. “That’s true,” she said calmly. “A good mother is strong for her family and puts her children’s needs before her own. That’s what my mother did then and so many other times, though she likely wanted to wring our necks.”
“But she didn’t,” Alex insisted, and I wondered if this didn’t have to do with her family, not Lorena’s.
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 23