by Pamela Morsi
“What does it mean in French?”
“It means Jess two,” she answered. “When you was born, they’s still folks around here, including me, that remembered the first Jesse. So we just called you Jess two.”
Jess two? What they meant was deux Jess. Deliberately she hid a smile. Ozarkers were proud people. They knew they often appeared odd to outsiders and had a fairly good attitude about the ribbing they took from the rest of the world. But Jesse always tried hard not to be among those who enjoyed a laugh at their expense.
The old woman reached a gnarled hand across the table and clasped her niece’s own. “It’s good to have you back on the mountain.”
An hour later, exhausted from a day that seemed to go on forever, Jesse laid her head down on a narrow bed up in the cabin loft. The lumpy mattress that Aunt Will described as a “shakedown” was stuffed with rags that tended to bunch up uncomfortably. Jesse smoothed it, turned it over, wadded it this way and that, but never really got completely comfortable. The stark accommodations, however, were not the only reason she couldn’t sleep.
Worn out emotionally, physically, even spiritually, she wanted—needed—to rest. But the minute she lay down, her memory went into high gear.
Greg had loved her. He’d said he loved her. He’d made every move to prove he loved her. He had wanted to marry her. And she had every reason to believe they would be together. Being Greg’s wife had eclipsed all other hopes, dreams and aspirations she’d had. They would live where it was best for Greg to live. She would work when, and if, Greg thought it good for her to work. Their friends would be people that Greg enjoyed. And her ambition would be that Greg succeeded. How had it come to that? How had she let herself be so absorbed? She had bet everything on marriage to Greg. And she’d lost.
He was with Sarah now. And Jesse was left with no future, no ambitions, no hopes, no dreams, no home, no job. She was alone, hiding in an attic loft in the depths of the Arkansas Ozarks.
She buried her face in the lumpy mattress tick to try to mask the sobs that kept escaping her throat.
She curled her body into a fetal position to try to ease the ache in her heart. Her whole body shuddered from the effort to keep her private pain all to herself.
She didn’t hear Aunt Will coming up that rickety ladder. But startled as she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Aunt Will?”
“It’s all right, sweet DuJess,” the old woman soothed. “Just let it all out, let the hardness fly out from you.”
“I didn’t mean…” Jesse’s sob choked off further apologies. She couldn’t stop crying. And it was more than crying, it was a full body wailing that she couldn’t seem to stop.
“That’s it. Let all that bitterness loose from inside you. Let it all go, DuJess.”
The body-racking sobs continued for several minutes as the old woman soothed her. “I know you’re sorrowing for that man and it’s a shame on this earth that you’d shed a tear for him.”
As the torrent of tears began to subside into hiccups and sniffles, Aunt Will urged Jesse sideways and then sat down on the floor beside her. It was not until then that Jesse noticed the foul-smelling bucket the old woman had carried up the ladder.
“Wh-wh-what is that?”
“I brought you a cure,” Aunt Will said. “I’m going to put a poultice on your chest.”
“I’m not s-sick, I’m just…sad,” Jesse managed to get out.
“I know, I know, darling. You’ve got the lovelorn solitaries, plain and simple. Trust me, DuJess,” Aunt Will said. “I know a lot about mending broken hearts.”
The old woman opened the buttons of Jesse’s pajama top as if she were still a little girl. She spread a layer of hot, sticky, slimy paste on her chest. The stink of the stuff was awful.
Jesse yelped. “What is this?”
“It’s a lovesick poultice,” Aunt Will answered as she covered it with a piece of damp gauze. “And I guarantee a surefire cure.”
3
Erwin Frederick Baxley, Jr., known as Piney to his friends, sat crosswise in the darkness of the porch swing. He’d propped his feet up on the far armrest, which resulted in almost a complete lack of motion. It made his presence in the shadow of the mountain undetectable.
His father used to do exactly the same thing—waiting on this same porch in this same swing, probably with the exact same worries. The difference, of course, was that his dad would have been having a smoke and the glow of his cigarette would have shown even in the darkest overhang of the porch.
For a task like this one, smoking might be welcome. Piney had never taken up the habit. But he would admit to picking up other behaviors. Like his father, Piney found himself grouchy, cranky, frustrated. Being a parent of a teenager had to be the toughest, most thankless job on the planet. How many times could a guy quote to himself, “This too will pass!” before he started taking hostages or throwing himself from a bridge trestle?
Piney wasn’t that close to the edge, but he was annoyed. Very annoyed. When it came to fatherhood, he’d always felt himself to be a day late and a dollar short. Early on, he’d blamed it on his youth. He was barely nineteen when his son was born. He’d never paid any attention to babies, until he had one of his own. And even then, he’d expected his wife to do most of the parenting. Women, he’d thought, were, by nature, more attuned to their offspring.
Piney sighed heavily. Maybe some women were. But Shauna knew even less about kids than he did. And she’d been a lot less motivated to care for one. Evidence of that fact being that Piney was all alone waiting up for his teenager. And he’d been all alone for most of his son’s life.
The night air suddenly quieted. Piney couldn’t hear a footfall, but it was as if the chirping crickets held their collective breath. There was no sound in the woods or the clearing. He waited, unmoving. In only a couple of minutes a shadow approached the porch. It was the very tall and lanky shadow of Erwin Baxley, III. As a toddler, he’d been called Little Piney, but by the time he’d grown to six foot six and become the star center for the school’s basketball team, both friends and family redubbed him “the Big Tree.” But despite having almost a half foot of height advantage on his father, Tree was just seventeen and Piney still the undisputed man of the house.
He watched as his son silently removed his boots. Piney waited until, in his stocking feet, Tree tiptoed across the porch. The teenager slowly opened the screen door, limiting any squeak or creak.
“Out kind of late, aren’t you?”
Piney’s matter-of-fact comment from the darkness elicited a startled jerk and a vivid curse.
“Dad!” he said, breathlessly. “I…uh…I didn’t see you sitting there.”
“I guess not.”
Tree looked guiltily at the boots he carried. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, implying that he was not sneaking in, but only concerned with his father’s rest.
Piney didn’t buy that, of course, but he would no more call his son a liar than he would any other man on the mountain. Basic respect didn’t allow that.
“I left my watch next to the bed,” he told his son. “But it feels pretty late out here. Particularly since it’s a school night.”
“It’s the weekend,” Tree countered.
Piney was not willing to be drawn into a discussion of whether Sunday was technically still weekend or night before school. Instead he asked, “Where’ve you been?”
“I…uh…was out with some of the kids. I guess we lost track of time.”
Piney hesitated. He was never sure when to let things go and when to come down on Tree like a ton of bricks. But he sensed that his son’s current situation was so tenuous, that bricks could be a real danger.
He swung his feet around to the floor and patted the seat beside him on the swing. Tree obediently came over to sit beside him, but he faced straight ahead, never looking his father in the eye.
“You need to get home on time,” he said evenly. “You’re still growing and you ne
ed your rest. You can’t learn in school if you can’t stay awake. And I can imagine Coach Poule would not be happy to have you breaking training.”
“I’m sorry,” Tree answered. “I just lost track of the time. If you want to ground me or punish me or tell Coach and have him bench me, that’s your right.”
Piney glanced at his son’s profile. His jaw was firm and his chin slightly raised. His first thought was that Tree had his mother’s stubbornness. Then he had to admit to himself that he was easily just as stubborn and without that temperament, he’d have never gotten this far. Mulishness was a necessary trait for an Ozarker. And “global village” or not, his son was going to need a fair amount of obstinacy to get by in the world.
“I don’t intend to talk to anyone about it but you,” he said. “I’ve said my piece. You’ve said it was a mistake. Mistakes are something a man doesn’t make a habit of.”
Tree’s shoulders relaxed. “No, Dad. It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Piney said. “And with any luck, Camryn will be better at sneaking in than you are and nothing more will be said.”
His son turned, a shocked expression on his face.
“I never said…” he began.
“Tree,” Piney cautioned, “I am not so old that I’ve forgotten what makes a guy lose track of time.”
In the barest sliver of moonlight, Piney could see the bright color in his son’s cheeks. Tree was not the kind of kid who could hide a blush. With a thick stock of curly red hair and the milk-white skin that went with it, even the smallest hint of embarrassment was broadcast to anyone in sight.
“We weren’t doing anything,” he said defensively.
Piney knew that father and son probably had a different take on the definition of “anything.” Their relationship had always been, by necessity, unusually open and honest. Still he hesitated, not sure how to reply. The last thing he wanted was to erect barriers between the two of them or to encourage secrecy. In truth, he just wanted to go in and go to bed and pretend that nothing was going on. But he also knew how easily and irrevocably a teen romance could become a life-changing trajectory. He had to give it a shot. Why else would a man learn from experience if not to pass it on to his son?
“Do you remember when you wished that we could eat pizza every day?”
The young man beside him gave a huff of incredulity from the back of his throat. “Dad, I was like nine or something,” Tree pointed out.
“That’s right,” Piney said. “You were way too young to understand that just because you might want something didn’t mean that it was good for you.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
Piney didn’t want to discuss Tree’s love life any more than his son did.
“Appetite for food is not all that different from appetite for sex. A child is born hungry and will eat anything and everything. His parents have to teach him what has value and builds his bones and muscles or he’ll just settle for empty calories that rot his teeth.”
Tree sighed heavily.
“What your body wants is not always good for your life. Puberty, along with sexual desire, shows up a lot earlier than the capacity to think long term and support a family.”
“I know all that, Dad.”
“Of course you do, but sometimes when a guy is in the arms of a pretty girl, a girl like Camryn, it might be easy to forget.”
“Jeez!” Tree complained putting his head into his hands.
“You have to keep your eyes on the prize,” Piney continued. “You want to go to college, have some choices. That won’t happen if you get tied down while you’re still in high school.”
“I know, I know,” Tree said.
“All the things you’re feeling, all the things you’re wanting, that’s all really, really normal. I don’t blame you for that. You have to be strong to resist. Tree, it’s so important that you resist.”
“I am! I’m probably the only guy in school that is.”
Piney shook his head. “There’s always lots of big talkers, don’t pay any attention to that.”
“Look, I told you. We’re fooling around a little, but we’re not doing it. And besides, even if we were, I know all about using protection. Why can’t you be like the other dads and just give me a box of condoms and tell me to be safe?”
“If condoms were all it took to keep you safe,” Piney told him, “they’d be stacked to the ceiling in this house.”
4
The sun was beating down on the roof of Onery Cabin, heating up the sleeping loft to toasty comfort. Jesse thought she might happily have lain in bed all day, except for the smelly plaster on her chest. The sticky heat of the night before had dried into thick hard crust that pulled at her skin and was beginning to itch. Determinedly she closed her eyes to ignore it and return to the escape of dreamland. But it didn’t work. She was wide-awake and she had to get the awful thing off of her.
Jesse climbed down the ladder and tiptoed into the bedroom, hoping not to wake Aunt Will. The older woman was long gone, her bed made up and her room as neat as a pin. Jesse walked through it to the tiny bathroom at the far end. She pulled off her pajama top and stared at the greenish-black rectangular poultice that covered her body from collarbone to waist. She was thinking to wash it off, but quickly deduced that it might be better just to peel it away from her skin. She worked at one corner until she finally got it loose. Slowly, painfully, she pulled it down and out. Beneath the plaster it was red and it pulled uncomfortably with every inch. She got it detached all the way to her left breast, but her nipple was just not letting it go.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” she complained. “Crazy old lady! Ow-ow-ow!”
“Do you need help?”
Jesse glanced up to see Aunt Will, dressed in overalls and garden shoes.
“I thought you were out working,” Jesse said.
“I was, but I was thinking you were up and might be needing some breakfast.”
“You don’t need to wait on me, Aunt Will,” Jesse said. “This thing seems to be stuck. Ow-ow-ow.”
The old woman nodded. “Poultice is bad to stick to a gal’s teats. Lots of women only want them in the space between, but for most that’s not a big enough dose.”
“Is there an easier way to get this off?”
“Sure,” Aunt Will answered. She stepped forward and brushed Jesse’s hands away. She slipped her fingers underneath the plaster and with one rough jerk ripped the entire poultice from Jesse’s flesh.
She let out an ear-piercing scream.
Aunt Will seemed neither startled nor surprised.
“Best just to get the pain over with as quick as you can,” she said. “See, you’re feeling better already.”
Jesse didn’t feel better. Her entire chest was stinging in angry protest.
Aunt Will handed her a jar of brown goop from a nearby shelf. “Put this on your nipples twice a day for the next week or two. They’ll give you a world of misery if they chafe.”
Jesse unscrewed the lid and smelled the contents. It wasn’t perfume, but at least it was better than the horrid poultice.
“I’ll bake up some biscuits,” Aunt Will said. “When you get washed up and some clothes on, come on in to breakfast.”
The little room had only a sink and a toilet. Jesse could only assume that the bathtub was the one sitting out in the chicken yard. Gamely she drew a sink full of tepid water and used a bar of what seemed like industrial strength soap to give herself a sponge bath. Afterward she put the goop on her nipples. It made them look less red and feel less tender, but she was loath to put on her pretty peach lace bra. She was sure the goop would leave a terrible greasy stain. Sexy lingerie had become one of her secret cravings. She would spend every spare cent on beautiful, elegant, risqué bras and panties. Then she’d model it for herself in the mirror, imagining Greg’s face when he saw her. Imagining herself showing up in his office wearing nothing else. One look would move him to wild, spontaneous on-top-of-the-desk coupling, obli
terating forever the boring, conservative schoolteacher persona that he knew her to have.
“He’s never going to see it now,” she reminded herself and almost angrily jerked on the peach bra over the globs of greasy goop. “He’s never going to see that person, and you’re never going to be that person.”
She picked out her worst clothes, a baggy sweatshirt and old jeans, and pulled her hair up into a hasty ponytail. Style free and makeup-less, she was sure she looked as bad as the poultice had smelled.
In the main room, Aunt Will was at the stove. Jesse stepped up beside her.
“Can I help?”
“Do you know how to fix red eye gravy?”
“Uh…no,” Jesse answered. “I don’t usually eat gravy. Lots of empty calories.”
“Hmmph,” Aunt Will answered. “That’s why you’re looking so skinny. You’ll need to fatten up some for the winter.”
Jesse smiled at the old woman. “I’m not a bear.”
“Well, let’s hope not,” Aunt Will replied, “since I am sharing lodging with you.”
Breakfast was filling and incredibly tasty. Jesse was sure that she had never eaten such light and flaky biscuits in her life.
“Better give that last one to me,” Aunt Will said.
“Of course,” Jesse answered, passing the bread toward her.
“I’m just doing this for your own good,” Aunt Will said, chuckling. “Taking the last biscuit will make a gal an old maid. I’m too old to worry about it, but in your current state of mind, you’re probably better not to take the risk.”
“Who knew all I needed to keep men away was a biscuit,” Jesse said. “May I have jam with that?”
After cleaning up the kitchen Jesse made herself available for chores. There were apparently a million things that had to be done, none of which Jesse actually knew how to do. Aunt Will assigned her to chicken duty. Quite honestly she was a little afraid of the birds, especially the mean old rooster who threatened her repeatedly. But as directed, Jesse scattered the feed to keep the birds occupied while she gathered the eggs. There was a henhouse, but Aunt Will had allowed more than a few of them to roost “natural”—which widened the egg search to every tree, box, overturned barrel and hay mow. Twice Jesse thought she had them all, only to be told that there should be more to be found.