by Pamela Morsi
“Go home.”
“Please forgive me, Tree. I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me. I was wrong to push you. I love you so much. And I’m so, so sorry.”
He stopped. She did, too.
He leaned forward from the waist, cooling down and catching a breath.
He was so much the hottie, with the wide shoulders and the long, muscular arms and legs. The big blue eyes with the thick lashes were gorgeous. And the only thing that saved his face from being pretty was the stubborn masculine jaw. Somehow even the red hair was sexy. Girls everywhere were going to want him.
How could she ever compete with girls everywhere?
Camryn had staked out her claim when they were thirteen. They’d been going together ever since. No other girl in school even tried to get him, because Camryn had made it clear, Tree belonged to her.
That worked fine for here. But college girls would never honor her private property rights. Camryn had to get him off the market before he ever got there.
Tree walked to the car window and leaned down to look inside at her. Even in the dim light of the dashboard, she could see his face was hard, determined. His tone, however, was gentler than his expression.
“I am not mad. I understand. I want to do it, too. But we’ve been over this, a lot of times. I promised my dad. And I’m trying to keep my promise.”
“Your dad doesn’t get it,” she whined. “When he was our age, I bet he was doing it.”
Tree nodded. “That’s why he wants me to wait.”
“I don’t know if I can wait,” Camryn told him.
“I promised that I would.”
“So where does that leave us?” she asked. “Do you want me to go out with other guys? Guys who would do me.”
It was the nuclear option and she didn’t want to use it, but it slipped out.
Tree’s expression hardened.
“You’ll have to look pretty far afield,” he answered. “Every dude in three counties knows that I’d beat him to a bloody pulp for looking sideways at you.”
Somehow his threat reassured her.
Tree reached inside the car and grabbed his gym bag. “Go home, Cammy.”
He took off walking. She followed for a little while. But when another car came over the hill, she decided she had no choice but to go down the road.
12
Jesse had hoped that Aunt Will’s early bedtime might have meant a break from the miserable poultice treatment, but it wasn’t to be so. In the middle of the night the old lady climbed the ladder with a pail of the hot, smelly stuff.
“You should not have let me forget about you, DuJess,” she said.
“I thought maybe it would be okay to skip.”
Aunt Will had shaken her head, solemnly. “It needs to be a poultice a night for six nights straight. If you miss one, you might as well start all over.”
So Jesse had awakened the next morning at dawn with the same stiff, dried stink bomb she was not becoming accustomed to. Her aunt was already puttering about, eager to get an early start on the day.
“We’ve got lots to do today,” she told Jesse. “Can’t waste too much time lingering over breakfast.”
Jesse found no need to linger at all. Aunt Will hadn’t waited for her to gather the eggs. Instead she’d served up heaping bowls of hot cornmeal mush. Even with milk and sugar, Jesse found it grainy and unappetizing.
She was content to make a quick exit from the table in order to tend the cow, the chickens and the hogs. By the time she was finished, Aunt Will was already in the garden hard at work.
“Okay, what are we doing?” Jesse asked.
Aunt Will handed her a bushel basket and pointed toward the next row of plants.
“Get on your gloves, we’re clearing these out,” the old woman answered. “Just pull them right up from the ground and pick off every tomato on them, nothing is too small or too green to go in the basket.”
Gamely, Jesse began where her aunt directed her. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. The plants were as tall as she was and carefully staked up. Once they were released from their moorings, the limbs flopped all over the place. She had to wrap her arms around them to get a good enough grip to rip them from the ground. Then it took what seemed like forever to run her hands down through all the leaves looking for hidden fruit.
The first plant took her about ten minutes. Proudly surveying her victory over vegetation, she glanced over at Aunt Will who was moving forward at a near frantic pace.
“Is there some reason we have to do this in such a hurry?” she called out.
Aunt Will straightened. She put her hands behind her hips and leaned backward to stretch her spine.
“We have to get them in the house today,” she answered. “It’s going to freeze tonight.”
Jesse was surprised to hear that. The sky was gloriously blue and although she had on long sleeves, she would have described the current weather as pleasant.
“Don’t push yourself to work faster than you’re able,” the old woman told her. “We’ve got help coming up the mountain. Before noon I’m thinking.”
Jesse didn’t know what to make of that. Who would be coming up here? And why? Still, as she began her battle with tomato plant two, she hoped her aunt was right.
She was finally beginning to get the hang of it, four plants later, when Lilly June began a loud, excited baying. In another minute, Jesse heard the sound of an approaching car.
“Go tell them we’re up here in the garden, DuJess,” Aunt Will said.
She nodded and removed her gloves as she walked to the garden gate. From that vantage she could see down the hill to where the yellow Jeep with the health food store logo on the side had stopped. Both doors on the vehicle opened. Jesse was surprised to see both Marcy and her daughter, re-Gothed since last night’s basketball game, get out.
As soon as they spotted her, Marcy raised a hand in greeting. Jesse waved back and began walking down to meet them. As she neared, she could see the faces more clearly. Marcy’s jaw was set tight in controlled fury. The daughter somehow looked both sullen and defiant at the same time.
Jesse assumed that Aunt Will had asked them to come up to the cabin to help with the garden. They did not look happy to be there. Surely, her aunt understood that people had their own schedules and priorities. She decided that the best thing to do was smooth it over immediately.
“It’s so kind of you to come up here,” Jesse gushed. “I know that Aunt Will really appreciates it so very much. She’s up in the garden.”
“I’ve only got time for a quick hello,” Marcy said. “I have to get back to the store. I put a Be Back in a Half Hour sign on the door, but I can’t ask people to wait longer than that. We didn’t come to see Aunt Will. We came to see you.”
“Me?”
Marcy didn’t answer the question. She simply turned and nodded sternly to her daughter. “Go ahead, Camryn.”
The girl was blushing vividly, but she held her chin up high.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “I stole your keys from our kitchen and took your car out last night for a joy ride.”
Jesse was surprised. “A joy ride? Are you okay? Did you wreck it?”
“No, of course not,” she answered crisply. “I didn’t put so much as a scratch on it. I used up some gas, which I can pay you for. But I borrowed it without permission and I’m sorry.”
The tone of the last words didn’t sound a bit remorseful, but Jesse accepted the admission of guilt with a shrug.
“It probably needed to be driven,” she said. “No harm, no foul.”
Her words weren’t that well received by Camryn’s mother. “She snuck out the bedroom window in the middle of the night and went gallivanting around the countryside with her boyfriend.”
Marcy’s words made the youthful transgression sound like a seriously heinous crime. Jesse wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Well, I…uh…thank you for telling me. And I…uh, I’m glad nobody was hurt.”
<
br /> If that statement mollified anyone, it wasn’t immediately evident.
“Come up and say hi to Aunt Will.”
They walked up the slope toward the garden. Jesse looked up to see her aunt was now waiting for them at the gate. She was eyeing them, unsmiling. In her hand she held some kind of green plant. The root ball was exposed and the healthy leaves were partially obscured by the remnants of dead blossoms.
When they neared the gate, she stepped out of it and went directly to Marcy, embracing her.
“Thank you for coming up to see me,” she said. “I know it’s a challenge to steal even a minute from your business.”
Marcy seemed primed for apologizing for the infrequency of her visits, but Aunt Will didn’t give her a chance. Instead she held out to her the plant covered in dead flowers.
“I knew you’d want this.”
“Mock orange!” Marcy said.
Aunt Will nodded. “It come up volunteer at the edge of my garden last spring. I kept my eye on it all summer, but now it’s dormant enough to take from the ground.”
The woman seemed delighted.
Aunt Will grabbed a rag that was hanging on the fence and held the greenery while Marcy lovingly wrapped the roots. Then they began walking back down the slope. Jesse followed. They stopped at the bathtub trough and Marcy dipped the rag into the water.
“I’ll put it in a pot for the winter,” Marcy said. “And I know the perfect place to plant it next spring.”
“Fine, that’s real fine, Marcy,” Aunt Will said. “But I want you to take the dead heads and a passel of leaves and render them to an oil.”
“Mock orange oil?”
“No need to salve it on your skin or nothing like that. But pour some in little saucers and keep it close to you in every room. In the store, as well.”
“All right,” Marcy said.
“Raising the young ones is hard. And the closer they get to grown, the harder it is. Children are a blessing, but they do try your patience.”
“Mock orange will give me more patience?”
“It’ll help,” Aunt Will said. “And a bit of time off will, too. Jesse and I are fixing to put up piccalilli. I’ve been wanting to teach our Cammy about canning. No time like the present. Best leave the girl with me for a few days.”
Camryn looked ready to protest, but her mother beat her to it.
“She’s too much for you to manage, Aunt Will.”
“I wouldn’t think about even trying to manage her,” Aunt Will assured Marcy. “DuJess and I are in need of another pair of hands and the girl’s got a free pair. Are you willing to help me, Cammy?”
Aunt Will’s gaze was straight and direct to the point of intimidating.
“Uh…sure,” she answered. “I…I didn’t bring nothing. I don’t have any clothes or anything.”
Aunt Will waved away that objection. “You’re about the same size as DuJess. She’s got plenty for you to borrow.”
Jesse wasn’t so sure about that. But since no one offered any further objections, she didn’t, either.
Within ten minutes, Marcy, her mock orange shrub and an admonition to cull her tomato plants tonight, was in the Jeep and headed back down the approach.
Jesse, Camryn and Aunt Will were in the garden again, hard at work. Camryn was more skilled at the labor than Jesse, but Aunt Will was a lot faster than either of them.
The sun was high overhead when Aunt Will suggested Jesse should fix them some “dinner,” the old woman’s term for the noon meal. She was at once grateful for the chance to get out of the backbreaking effort and concerned that Aunt Will should be the one to take the lighter task.
“Well, if you girls are a-hankering for me to fry up some of that mush I made for breakfast…”
She let the idea hang out there. Jesse glanced over at Camryn who stuck her tongue out in an imitation of gagging.
“I’ll fix us something,” Jesse agreed.
She managed to call them down to eat in about fifteen minutes for hearty sandwiches, with two kinds of pickles and some cold greens. Not exactly a ladies’ luncheon social, but all three of them managed to eat every bite.
When it was time to head back to work, Aunt Will made her way to her porch rocker, propping her feet up on Lilly June’s back.
“I’m going to take my nap,” she said. “You two see if you can’t finish up there without me.”
The two less competent workers glanced uncertainly at each other before heading back to the garden.
“I suspect you weren’t thinking you’d have to do this much work on your day off,” Jesse said to Camryn.
The girl gave her a skeptical glance that was somehow made more effective by the abundance of mascara and eyeliner.
“Day off?”
“You’re not in school.”
“Because I’m grounded,” Camryn told her.
Jesse stopped in her tracks. “You’re grounded? Grounded from school?”
Camryn nodded and shrugged.
Jesse deliberately chose not to say anything, but apparently her disapproval was evident in her face.
“It’s okay, really,” Camryn told her. “I took my GED when I was fifteen. I just go to high school now to have fun.”
Jesse had never heard of anything like that in her life and she said so.
“My girlfriends and I got really sick of school,” Camryn explained. “Somebody found out we could take the GED test at fifteen. So, as a lark, we got a ride into Batesville and took the test. We didn’t even tell our folks. I was the only one who passed. My mom said fine, I could stay home and help with the store. So all day, every day I was stuck waiting on old people looking for herbs to treat their warts and kidney stones.”
She sighed and shook her head, as if recalling the experience were unpleasant. “I decided it was better to be in high school with my friends.”
Camryn opened the garden gate and politely held it for Jesse.
“Mom says that as long as I keep my grades up and don’t get into trouble, I can go. But every time any little thing happens, she makes me stay home. She hangs my GED certificate back on the wall and reminds me that ‘good enough is good enough.’”
“Good enough?”
“It’s something Mom says. Around here we call a GED the Good Enough Diploma.”
Jesse had her own opinion, but she kept it to herself. The world here was different than the place she came from. Their lives and expectations here were not her own. As a teacher, her preferences would always be for more education rather than less. But she was sure that voicing those prejudices to relatives she hardly knew would not be the best idea.
The two began working together in rows side by side. As the afternoon progressed, Jesse felt as if she was getting the hang of it. She was able to move in swifter, less clumsy motions. It was tiring, but as the tomatoes piled up in the baskets, she could see that they were going to be able to get it all done.
Camryn was working just as hard. Jesse did notice that she stopped several times and looked at her phone. At one point when they were side by side in a row, she heard the girl mutter a very frustrated, “Damn!”
“There’s no cell service up here,” Jesse told her.
“Are you sure? Nowhere up here?”
“I haven’t been able to get any.”
Camryn rolled her eyes. “I need to text my boyfriend. I bet he’s sick with worry about where I am.”
Jesse managed not to roll her eyes, but she did smile. “I don’t know if this is consolation, but in my experience not many teenage boys get sick with worry over a girl’s whereabouts, unless he’s thinking she might be with another boy.”
The young girl’s brow furrowed with worry. “I did say something kind of mean like that last night.”
“On your ‘joy ride’?”
“Yeah, not so much joy, I guess. We had a fight.”
“It happens,” Jesse said, which was about as much consolation as she could muster.
Camryn nodded thou
ghtfully. “Yeah, everybody can get mad,” she agreed. “Especially me, but even my boyfriend. And everybody says Tree’s the most easygoing guy in high school.”
“Tree? Doc Piney’s son? He’s your boyfriend?”
“Uh-huh,” she answered. “We’ve been going together since eighth grade.”
“Since eighth grade? Impressive,” Jesse said. “I’m a middle school teacher and most of the eighth grade romances that I see never even make it through freshman year.”
“Yeah, most kids are just playing at being in love at that age,” she said, her tone worldly wise. “For me and Tree, it was the real thing from the very first.”
“That’s nice,” Jesse answered, wondering if the girl really felt the confidence that she voiced. How could she know what was real and what was not? Jesse was ten years older and had been totally wrong about the feelings that Greg had for her.
They both continued working, but a minute later, Camryn voiced a question.
“So if you’re a teacher, why aren’t you at school?”
“I got laid off.”
“Wow, tough break,” Camryn replied, with the uncomplicated response of one who’d encountered plenty of people who’d lost jobs. “What did you teach?”
“Earth science.”
Camyn’s thinly plucked brows rose in surprise. “Really? Rocks and stuff? You like that?”
“Yeah, I do. I like it a lot.”
She turned back to her tomatoes. “Whatever.”
Jesse thought the conversation was over but a minute later, Camryn had another comment.
“I guess if it was about earthquakes and volcanoes, that wouldn’t be too bad.”
Jesse nodded. “That’s the high glamour aspect, for sure. But the more ordinary, everyday geology has a much bigger impact on humans and the lives we live. And I find that pretty exciting.”
“Like if we didn’t have rocks, we couldn’t have rock houses and rock ledges and…and rocks in our heads,” Camryn said.
Jesse laughed. “Not exactly.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “Do you know why we’re here in this garden pulling up these tomato plants?”
“Uh…because Aunt Will asked us to.”