by Pamela Morsi
“Oh, brother!” Jesse commiserated.
He shrugged. “The two-time loser, I was without question the most pitied and pathetic man in three counties.” He laughed without any bitterness, with what sounded like genuine humor at his own foibles.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said.
“No need to be,” he answered. “I’ve got a great son, who’s the best thing that ever happened to me. And he didn’t have to grow up living day to day with his mother’s capriciousness.”
Jesse nodded, but she wasn’t sure she understood. How did a person recover when they’d been betrayed so badly?
“You sound like you’ve gotten on with your life,” she said.
“Aunt Will’s poultice completely cured me,” he told her with a grin. “Six days living with a stinky poultice and now I’m free of heartache. The words I do will never again cross my lips.”
They reached the front of the line to be greeted by Walter Lou, one of the people Jesse had met in her few minutes at the health food store. The woman was as excited to see her as if she were a long-lost friend.
After a minute of joyous reunion, Piney ordered hot dogs and sodas for the three of them.
“What’ll you have on those?” Walter Lou asked.
Piney stated Aunt Will’s preference and then turned to Jesse. “I think you and I could go for extra onions, huh?”
Jesse laughed. “Extra onions it is,” she agreed.
10
The boys’ basketball game was a nail-biter. Piney was glad that they’d enjoyed their hot dogs during the last quarter of the girls’ game. If he’d tried to eat while Tree had been on the court, heartburn would have been a sure thing.
While his son was tall and steady, with long arms and very sure hands, the center from Calico Rock was beefier and outweighed him considerably. Added to that, Tree was double-teamed virtually every time he had the ball. That left an open man, but the outside shooters weren’t getting the percentage to make up for the punishment he was taking underneath. Piney proudly watched his son stand his ground without losing his cool, a feat not easy for teenagers of any temperament.
They had a chance to win it at the last second when Colby Plum missed a jump shot and the tied game went into overtime. While the crowd was grateful for the second chance, they were exhausted and knew the players must be, as well.
Most everyone was on their feet. Aunt Will stayed seated and Piney tried to maintain his position beside her. That was the courteous thing to do. But sometimes a man simply could not maintain the best manners. Piney jumped up with jack-in-the-box regularity at the crux of every play.
It was the last second of the second overtime when one of the Calico Rock guards threw up a wild shot. It had no chance of going in, but amazingly it bounced off the right side of the rim, up in the air then down to the left side of the rim and then fell through the net. As the final buzzer sounded, the enthusiasm of the crowd deflated. They rarely had a chance to beat this team. Players like Tree didn’t come along every year, or even every decade. They might never come this close again. The disappointment in the building was palpable.
Piney’s gaze scanned the width of the court, easily spotting his son, who was so much taller than the rest. Tree was doing what he was supposed to do. He was congratulating the jubilant winners and consoling the guys on his own team. They had played a great game; they had done everything they could. Yet, somehow it hadn’t worked out for them. Piney knew that his son had considerable experience with that scenario. Not in athletics, of course. From his youngest years, he’d always been the boy that ran the fastest, threw the farthest, jumped the highest. He’d not been skimped in the brains department, either. Tree had taught himself to read before he’d ever darkened the schoolhouse door. He had a quick, curious mind and Piney had always made sure that he had as many opportunities to exercise it as he did his body.
Tree had been so blessed, so lucky in so many ways. But he was not so fortunate in others. While, technically, Shauna had left Piney, it did not go unnoticed by anyone, including Tree, that she’d walked out on her child, as well.
There were extenuating circumstances, of course. And Piney actually gave his ex credit for making the right choice, doing the right thing, when it came to her son. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It couldn’t make Tree any less wounded and disheartened.
Like parents everywhere, Piney wanted to create for his offspring a painless path. But it couldn’t be done.
He watched the face of his stoic son as he spoke respectfully with the coach of the Calico Rock Pirates. The man slapped him on the shoulder in the fashion of male camaraderie before turning away. A half minute later Tree captured his dad’s eye and the two nodded to each other, communicating reassurance. Tree was fine. Piney was fine. It was a basketball game, not the fate of the planet.
He turned to Aunt Will and Jesse. The old woman looked very tired, but she was still smiling at each and every person who took the unexpected opportunity of her presence to question her about carbuncles, loose teeth and barrenness.
The last was a question posed by Twyla Gluck, a well-heeled woman already in her thirties who was married to the county judge.
“Who’s got the newest baby these days?” Aunt Will asked her.
Twyla shrugged helplessly.
Aunt Will turned slightly toward Piney, including him in the question.
“I guess that would be Baby Eli, Kelvy Jay’s little one,” he answered. “You saw him today.”
Aunt Will made a tutting sound. “He’s too old. Who’s next up for birthing?”
“Uh…Lorelei Trace.” Piney lowered his voice to answer. Since Lorelei wasn’t married, nor even seemed to have a man around at all, it might be that it was bad form to publicly mention her unexpected condition.
Aunt Will, of course, never worried much about gossip, whether it was the perpetrators or the victims under discussion.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Aunt Will said. “She’s going to need some help.” She turned back to the woman at hand. “Now, Twyla, you call Lorelei tomorrow. You tell her that you’re going be there for her when her little one comes. Have her to let you know as soon as she goes into labor. I want you holding her hand when that baby comes into the world.”
“What? I hardly know the girl.”
“That don’t matter,” Aunt Will said. “When a woman’s facing an uphill climb, she’s as grateful for the hand of a stranger as a friend.”
“Uh, I…uh…” Twyla stammered.
“With no man to spell her, she’ll be needing ever hand held out in her direction. When she’s resting or sleeping, I want that baby in your arms. Hold him tight up against your bosom as if you were fixing to feed him yourself. Bury your face in the crook of his neck, put your nose right atop his head. Get the scent of him all up inside you. Spend every minute you can with him for the first month. By then, Lorelei will be good enough on her own. And you’ll have primed the pump full up. ’Course, your man going to have to do his part, as well. You tell him not to be wasting nothing on them magazines they got down at the convenience store.”
Twyla Gluck turned red as a beet.
Piney desperately choked a laugh into a cough. Jesse looked as if she was ready to dive beneath the bleachers.
“You been married ten years, Twyla, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You do what I tell you and, I’m not saying for sure, but more than likely this time next year, there’ll be a baby in your arms.”
“Th-thank you, Aunt Will. I’ve got to…uh…bye.”
Twyla scurried off as if she’d been scalded.
Piney was biting his lip to keep from laughing. It was inappropriate, but he couldn’t get past the hilarity integral to the image of Righteous Roy Gluck, the county judge, buying porn mags at the Gas & Go.
Aunt Will looked over at her astonished niece.
“If you don’t close your mouth, DuJess, a bug’s gonna fly in it.”
The crowd had thinned en
ough that they easily made their way out of the building and across the parking lot. Aunt Will held her head high as if all was well. But she was leaning on him heavily. She wouldn’t have made it if she’d had to rely on her stick. When they reached the truck, he lifted her up into her seat. She made no complaint.
As he shut the door, he turned to Jesse.
“Why don’t you get in on the driver’s side, that way you can be the one to scoot across.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Or maybe I should have you ride in the back,” he said, teasing. “I hate to get that poultice stink in my upholstery.”
She looked up at him sharply and when she saw he was teasing she gave him a pretty good elbow jab to the solar plexus.
He opened the door for her and she climbed up into the seat, offering Piney an unintentional up-close view of her butt. It was, he noted, a very nicely rounded butt. She was pretty trim, overall, but the butt was an eyeful. He wouldn’t mind pressing up against that.
Piney deliberately pushed the thought away. Instead he climbed in beside her and focused upon her unmistakable scent that brought back such memories for him. Such terrible memories. At first he hadn’t believed that Shauna had left. She was gone to do shopping, or maybe to visit a friend. Her old car must have broken down. He’d assured her parents that she wouldn’t have left again. Not after all that had happened. Not after how far they had come. They were the ones to call him a week later with the news.
He had ached so much inside that it had made him vomit. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t work. He couldn’t even take care of his son. Aunt Will had saved him. He knew that as certainly as he knew anything about his life. She came down the mountain to save him. And she’d brought that awful smelling poultice with her.
Piney drove down the highway in as much traffic as was ever seen on a backwoods county road. Aunt Will asked a few questions about the players on the team. She’d been up on the mountain for a while now, so she just didn’t know the teenagers as well as she did their parents.
When he turned off the asphalt to the narrow lane, Piney had to slow down considerably. Ruts and rocks competed with waist-high weeds as road hazards. Many of the distant homesteads like Onery Cabin had long been abandoned for sites nearer the paved highway. Those who continued to live “far back” were responsible for the care of their own connections to asphalt. These “approaches,” as they were called, were expensive to maintain and the higher and more distant, the more costly. Clearly, no money had been spent on this rugged wagon track in decades. Even with his truck’s four-wheel drive and high center, he couldn’t push his speed past fifteen miles an hour along the narrow, twisty, winding, poor excuse for a road.
“I think she’s asleep,” Jesse whispered beside him.
“I don’t think we need to worry about whispering,” Piney told her. “If driving through this obstacle course doesn’t wake her, nothing will. I can see why you can’t get your car up here. We should probably rent a grader to see if we can get this in better shape.”
Jesse shrugged. “Oh, it’s fine. I don’t mind leaving my car at the store.”
Piney tried to imagine getting the area’s big boxy EMS vehicle up this trail. They’d have a heck of a time getting to Aunt Will if they needed to. Then again, how would they ever know that they needed to? She had no phone to call for help.
He didn’t say that to Jesse, however. Aunt Will had made it plain that she wasn’t taking her niece into her confidence. If that was the way it was going to be, Piney was going to have to figure things out by himself.
The approach terminated abruptly down the slope from the cabin. With only a sliver of moon and heavy clouds, the night was very dark. He left the headlights on and retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment to give a bit of illumination for the path.
Aunt Will’s old dog howled excitedly, but appeared in no hurry to make her way in their direction. The old cow had come in from grazing on her own and was complaining mightily about being ignored.
He helped the old woman down from the truck. “Lean on me, Aunt Will, the grade is pretty steep.”
She chuckled lightly. “It’s a point of wisdom to know that life is always going to feel like an uphill grade, even now when you’re on the downhill slope.”
He smiled. “Don’t tell me that, Aunt Will,” he said to her, feigning despair. “The only thing that gets most folks through one year to the next is imagining things could get better.”
“It’s best to live in the here and now, Piney,” she told him. “And wring all the happiness you can find out of what you have.”
He picked his way up to the cabin, getting Aunt Will home without incident. Jesse was following right behind them, sticking close to the circle of light.
Once they were in the cabin within the glow of the one hanging electric bulb, Piney knew he was free to leave. But nonetheless, he hesitated.
“Why don’t you help Aunt Will get to bed,” he suggested to Jesse. “It’s been a very long day for her. And I’ll milk the cow.”
She nodded agreement and the old woman didn’t even argue.
He easily found the bucket and the big old Guernsey was standing at the edge of the porch. She was bawling loudly enough that he felt sorry for her. She looked too old to still be fresh, but he knew that if anyone could get the golden years out of a milch cow, it was Aunt Will.
In the circle of flashlight glow he headed toward the barn and the old cow nearly knocked him down rushing ahead to get into place.
Piney hadn’t milked in years, but it wasn’t a skill that his hands would forget. It took only a couple of minutes for the animal to sigh in relief, but she had little more than a half bucket to give. He figured at her age, that much was a miracle.
He left her secured for the night and headed back toward the cabin. Jesse stood on the porch in the shaft of light streaming from the door. She had the same lean body type as Aunt Will, sturdy and rawboned. In fact, Piney thought the old lady might have looked a lot like Jesse back in the day, though the seductiveness of those curves were hard to imagine on the old lady. And, if memory served him right, those big dark eyes were no match to Aunt Will’s true blue.
He handed her the pail and she set it inside.
“Let me walk you to your truck,” she said.
As soon as they stepped on to the porch, Aunt Will’s old hound dog was on her feet.
“It’s okay, Lilly June,” Jesse told the dog. “Don’t bother yourself.”
Piney smiled. She talked to the animal just like an Ozarker would. She was so attractive and well-spoken that she was easily pegged as an outsider. But hearing her give the dog directions somehow made her seem more familiar.
A thick deck of clouds obscured what little moonlight was in the sky and kept the stars hidden from view. Walking closely together, they followed the path illuminated for them by the flashlight.
“You really don’t need to walk me down to the truck,” he told her. “If you do, then I’ll feel obligated to walk you back to the cabin.”
“How about halfway,” she suggested as they wandered down the slope. “I want a chance to apologize and I didn’t want Aunt Will to hear it.”
“Apologize for what?”
“For sort of latching onto your evening,” she said. “Inviting ourselves to stay at your house all afternoon and then insisting you take us to the game and drive us home. More than I think you usually do for your patients.”
“No problem,” Piney assured her with a shrug. “I can’t say no to Aunt Will. It’s no secret that she’s pretty special to the folks on this mountain.”
Jesse nodded. “I don’t know whether to be amazed or embarrassed about the way people hang on her words.”
“There’s nothing embarrassing about helping people.”
She didn’t immediately respond. Piney imagined she was thinking how ignorant and backwoods they all were. At least she hadn’t suggested laughing as an appropriate response to the co
mmunity’s reverence for Aunt Will.
“Aunt Will has helped a lot of people over the years with her yarb treatments and words of advice.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jesse said.
“But there’s even more than that,” he said. “People around here do, kind of deep down, suspect that there’s more to Aunt Will than her cures. More to her life than the rest of ours.”
“It’s probably because she’s older than everyone else,” Jesse suggested. “It’s human to associate age with wisdom.”
“I don’t think that accounts for Aunt Will,” Piney told her. “It’s said that from the time she was a little girl, she had some kind of direct communication with God. A lot of people believe she can see inside them, that she knows what they’re thinking and feeling.”
Jesse was eyeing him skeptically.
“Supposedly she can draw people to her,” he said. “With her own force of will she urges people into her presence.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” he asked. “Yes, on some level it is. But she’s a very empathetic person and a natural student of human nature. Both of those things would sort of set her up to appear a bit more omniscient than the rest of us.”
“But wouldn’t people’s logical, practical mind talk them out of something like that.”
“I’m sure most of the time it does,” Piney agreed. “But over the years things happen and every coincidence suddenly looms large as a bigger thing. I mean look at this week. More and more, those of us on the mountain start thinking that Aunt Will needs somebody up here at the cabin with her. We’re all trying to think up some rational, practical solution, and then out of the blue the long-lost niece suddenly shows up.”
“I haven’t been long lost,” Jesse corrected him quickly. “I’ve…well, I’ve been busy.”
“I’m not judging,” Piney assured her. “And I’m not suggesting that you were drawn here by supernatural powers. But I do think that if someone has a tendency to believe such things, your arrival adds more verification that everything they’ve ever heard is absolutely true.”