Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  “You can. But if you don’t, Tish, I will. I want you and I’ll wait. But not long. Not anymore.”

  The clipped phrases seemed to emphasize the threat. Threat? It was a promise he was delivering in gentle tones that echoed in the night.

  Trisha was doing her best not to punish the Mercedes on the deplorable little dirt road. Potholes polka-dotted every few feet of the narrow path, and dust sprayed behind them in thin sandy clouds. Oblivious to both the bouncing and the early morning heat, Julia beside her had a hand shading her eyes as she peered out the window. It was not the first time in the past four days that their goal was an antique shop, and Julia by the hour was thriving on every little adventure Trisha had thought up for her.

  “…what I want is one of those big iron kettles,” Julia continued. “You know, the kind they used to hang in the fireplace. I thought I’d put it out on the front steps and plant it with flowers.”

  “We’ve seen a half dozen of them,” Trisha remarked.

  Julia smiled. “They were always asking too much. But today, I just have a feeling…”

  Trisha grinned. Her mother-in-law was dressed in a loose shirt and trousers that were decidedly baggy. The raw silks had been put away. Julia did not want to be “taken” because she was a city slicker, but the overall new image invariably made Trisha chuckle.

  The store they stopped at was more of a shed than any other sort of establishment. The cobwebs clung to the corners and Trisha wondered idly if the wizened old man actually thought there was some saving grace in four inches of dust and dirt. A cloud of it stirred as they stepped inside, their footprints distinctive on the wooden floor.

  “You want something?” The old man rocked, watching their slow intrusion in his store.

  “Probably not,” Julia answered pleasantly.

  Trisha fought the inclination to sneeze. There was barely room to navigate between the shaky wooden shelves packed into the shed, and each was filled with hopeful saleables, none of which had ever known a dust rag.

  “Well, now…” He stood up, suddenly interested, sparing a glance for Trisha’s lovely pink-jeaned frame and lighting on the deliberately worn-looking Julia. “You must have come out this way for something.”

  “Just looking.” Julia fingered a cracked bowl disdainfully, set it up to view from a dusty window, and set it down again. Trisha marveled. It was a full ten minutes before the two even touched on the subject of iron kettles. Finally Julia nudged with her foot a cobwebbed kettle in the corner. “I suppose you’re charging an arm and a leg for that.”

  “Well now…”

  “Never mind. I can see the rust. All the work to clean it up-”

  “From the first settlers that ever came to this area,” the old man said firmly. “Earned its rust, it has.”

  “So you say. How much?”

  “I thought twenty-five,” the old man said cautiously.

  “Oh, well.” Julia turned to Trisha. “Remember the one we saw for twelve in Kentucky? I knew I should have gotten it then. Perhaps next month we could make a trip up…”

  Julia had seen no kettle in Kentucky, Trisha knew well. Yet the fibs flew fast and furious. The huge wrought-iron kettle took on added age, makeshift tragedy in its past, a history involving wagon trains and Indian uprisings. Julia was incredulous at the price, the amount of work it would take to refurbish it, and simply could not believe it was quite what she wanted. It was over forty minutes before Trisha was able to get the kettle in the trunk of the Mercedes, and even then she had to wait while the two finished their bickering at the back door. Julia’s smile was radiant as Trisha started the engine.

  “Eighteen dollars!” She gloated. “An absolute steal! I haven’t had such fun in ages!”

  “I knew you liked antiques,” Trisha commented, “but I always thought it was more the Queen Anne-type treasures-”

  “Oh, no, my dear, it’s the primitives I’ve always treasured. They simply don’t belong in Grosse Pointe. Now, at Kern’s it’s a different story! Way back when I was first married I even liked to refinish the primitives; I like the feel of old wood and history around me.”

  “That from the lady who was ready to turn around after the first look at ‘this wilderness country,’” Trisha murmured teasingly.

  “Well, you’re no better, Patricia! Five years of effort to teach you the difference between Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, and you go disappearing into those woods every afternoon and come back looking like some…backwoods child!”

  Trisha grinned mischievously. “Speaking of fashion, darling, when we get home I think I’ll take a picture of you just as you look right now and send it back to Grosse Pointe. Backwoods child, is it?”

  “Idle threat,” Julia said peaceably, regarding Trisha’s pink jeans and black-and-pink, scooped-neck sweater with suddenly narrowed eyes. “It’s a good thing I took you shopping. I can’t understand why Kern didn’t do so to begin with. You could hardly have survived around the countryside in the few things you came with.”

  Trisha was silent, aware that she now had a closetful of purchases pressed on her by Julia. They would be repaid in time, when they were home, although Julia would argue about it. But taking things from Kern, even on a borrowed basis, had a very different cast…

  “It really is very different here than I first thought,” Julia admitted thoughtfully as they pulled up to Kern’s house.

  Trisha stepped out of the car to take out the kettle from the trunk. She understood too well what Julia was feeling, because the emotion was shared. The past days had been nothing like her life here before. She was continually more aware of how much she seemed to have missed five years before; and in trying to arouse Julia’s interests she had been rather unwittingly arousing her own…a mistake, she knew. Once Julia was fully strong again, and in a position to make up her own mind if she could accept a move and be happy here, it was going to be difficult for Trisha to suddenly leave, and it didn’t have to do only with Kern.

  As Trisha stepped inside the cool hallway to the kitchen, she saw Kern sitting at the kitchen table with maps spread out before him. Julia bent to kiss her son on the forehead, smoothing down his hair as if he were a six-year-old with a cowlick, an image Kern presented not at all. “We’ve been having an absolutely wonderful time. Bought a tremendous old kettle. I’m going out in the woods after it cools off this afternoon and get some azaleas, I think, though first I’ll have to deal with that rust…”

  Trisha crouched down to take out from the refrigerator the tuna salad she had made earlier. In short order she had thin-sliced tomatoes to put on top and then added some slices of cheese, setting the tray under the broiler for a few short minutes. After pouring three glasses of lemonade, she reached on tiptoe for napkins from the top of the refrigerator-and turned to find Kern’s slate-gray eyes all over her.

  He could make her conscious as no other man ever had of exactly how her jeans fit, of whether or not her hair needed combing. She knew the sun had added color to her complexion, and there was even an added pound or two from a new appetite encouraged by so much exercise. In spite of herself she was becoming more and more relaxed until her eyes collided unexpectedly with that watchful, waiting look of his. Then she felt like snatching up the car keys and running. “What have you been up to this morning?” she asked calmly.

  “It’s what you two might like to be up to this afternoon that I was thinking about,” Kern responded. “Around two I was hoping to talk you both into a helicopter ride.”

  Trisha frowned, taking the tray from the oven with a hot pad. “You know your mother isn’t fond of flying, Kern.”

  Julia returned from freshening her hands in the bathroom. “An understatement, darling.”

  “Lately there’ve been more helicopters in the area than cars,” Kern said absently. “The highest mountain ranges have been plagued with a tiny insect called a balsam woolly aphid. That bug is capable of destroying the entire adult Fraser fir population, and as yet there’s no solution. Our
one option is to spray out sterile aphids from a helicopter so that they’ll mate with the damaging females. The ‘girls’ have only a short lifespan, so with no offspring their destructive habits are short-lived.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Julia commented. “I’ve heard of farmers spraying from planes…”

  “Helicopters are more suited to the mountains,” Kern explained, “because obviously they can go right down into the affected area.”

  “But you said it was a Smokies problem, Kern. Why do you have to get involved? Why don’t the forest people just handle it? If you have to put your own time and money into something that’s their problem-”

  “Because the park is next to us, Julia, there are some problems that affect Kern’s land, too. It’s not an issue of time or money,” Trisha interrupted.

  “Trisha, I wasn’t attacking you,” Julia chided primly. “For heaven’s sake, it was just an idle comment! I swear you’re getting as batty about this land as Kern is…”

  Trisha drew in her breath, suddenly hearing herself as Julia seemed to. Kern had a fist propped under his chin, eyes glinting perfectly devilish amusement at her for taking on his cause. She stood up and cleared away the plates, turning away from him.

  “Anyway, Kern, as far as going up in this helicopter, no. I never could handle air travel in any form. It was one of the reasons Trisha had to drive me here. But we haven’t planned anything beyond a bridge game down at the camp late this afternoon, Trisha. There isn’t any reason why you couldn’t go with Kern.”

  “The outing was for you, darling,” Trisha pointed out quickly. “I’ve lived here before. I know what the area looks like.”

  “I really don’t want to play bridge anyway. Not today. I want to fool with my kettle.”

  “Then I’ll help you…”

  There was a little silence, in which she could almost hear the echo of her own voice protesting too much. She did not want to go anywhere with Kern. She knew it and he knew it, but to this point she had the excuse of keeping a careful and continual eye on Julia’s health. The lady whose darting eyes surveyed both of them now denied that need, a fresh bloom of color in her cheeks, the shine of rest and renewed health in her eyes… Trisha turned from them both and heard Kern’s chair scrape back as he rose.

  She bent to set the tray in the dishwasher, and when she stood back up Kern was there. His wrists rested loosely on her shoulders, pinning her at arm’s length. His shoulders were wide enough to effectively block out Julia, kitchen, everything but Kern in front of her. One finger reached up to lazily smooth the hair from her cheek. “Trisha just wants to make sure you’re happy, Mother. That’s all Tish is interested in. You’ll have to convince her you wouldn’t feel deserted if she left you for a couple of hours.”

  The teasing tone was boyish; the look in his eyes was strictly a man’s. There was seduction in his eyes, and when she stooped down below his arms to escape from him, there was Julia again. Keeping the lady happy was how she justified being here.

  “I would not feel deserted for a couple of hours.” Julia almost snorted. “You’d think I was some sort of invalid!”

  Trisha sighed and gave her mother-in-law a smile. “Well, then-of course I’ll go,” she managed to say finally, before turning back to Kern in defeat.

  Matthew Redding landed on an open stretch of land near Kern’s camp. A thin, well-weathered man in his forties, he wore coveralls and a smile that didn’t know how to quit. “Mr. Lowery, you didn’t mention we were taking a passenger!”

  So much for Kern’s plans for ever taking Julia. “I’m Trisha, Matt,” she said, extending her hand. “Let’s keep it on informal terms.”

  “And we sure will do that, honey. We’re going to be on close terms real quick. The old bird’s set up for two-three in a pinch. And a pinch is what I call first-name terms!”

  Laughing, Trisha vaulted up into the bubblelike cubicle, eyeing the control panel with an amateur’s enthusiastic interest. Kern folded in on her right as Matt settled in at the controls, the pilot turning to her with an impish grin. “You really don’t mind it cozy?”

  “No problem. I love these things!”

  “No nerves about flying in one of them?”

  “No.” Trisha shook her head exuberantly. “I’ve clocked in a few hours in a little single-engine Cessna, but never a copter. I’m really curious to know the difference.”

  “You what?”

  It was a delight to shock those all-knowing gray eyes for once. Kern’s arm stretched across the back of the seat to make more room for all of them, also making it all but impossible for her to settle anywhere comfortably but in the curve of his shoulder. Which she did, facing Matt. Her annoyance at being roped into the venture had all but disappeared. “It was nothing, really. Instead of a vacation last year, I spent the money on a few flying lessons. Didn’t get enough for a pilot’s license by any means, just got a taste-or should I say a tease? I’ve always wanted to fly,” she admitted wistfully.

  “Good,” Kern murmured next to her ear. “You can finish your lessons here and take over the copter. Then I can send this old reprobate back to Detroit where he belongs.”

  “This is yours?”

  Kern nodded, motioning impatiently to his wrist, as if to say that the temporary impairment had forced him into hiring the pilot in the interim. The noise of the whirling propellers promptly deafened all other sounds. They were off the ground in a moment, heading directly over the treetops. Matthew handled the controls as if the bird were a well-loved toy that thrived on being played with, his turns sharply angled and his ups and downs deliberate. Trisha found herself laughing at the sudden roller-coaster sensations in her stomach, and Matt’s grin was sheer showing off.

  But it was not a sightseeing trip they were on, regardless of what Kern had said, and it didn’t take long for Trisha to realize it. It was a swift pace to one spot, a hover, and then a repeat of the same. The men attempted no verbal communication over the rhythmical whirr of the helicopter blades.

  Once they were off Kern’s land, Trisha lost track of landmarks, and distances were deceivingly different by air than by road. The day was cloudy, the sun occasionally casting a lemony haze on stretches of forest as they passed. From the miles of lush green forest there was suddenly a narrow patch of barrenness illuminated by sunlight, where a few stalky pine trunks were bleakly standing. There the earth was grayish rather than the rich brown that would have been natural. Ash. Trisha felt a lurch of horror at the fire’s devastation, but already they were moving on.

  More of the lush fairy-tale green appeared, and the crystal of a stream one could see winding for miles. The splash of a waterfall was half hidden in trees, and just beyond was a heath, thick with flowers-purple-white, then the flame of azalea; perhaps a hundred acres of rhododendron alone. And then the barrenness again-a long ragged oblong patch this time. The fire had been a season ago, she was told, and now green was trying to make its way through the odd-colored soil in erratic patterns of new life.

  “You want to see what happened ten days ago?” Matt shouted to Kern. “It’s down to your right.”

  Unconsciously she pressed closer to Kern to see. She felt his hand smoothing back her hair and raised stricken eyes to his. This had been their land, once. Kern’s eyes met hers, inducing an unconscious tremor that pulsed through her body. His hand stopped its stroking and his fingers rested at the nape of her neck as they both looked out where Matt was hovering.

  The bleak scene below was not large, a tribute to how rapidly the forest rangers reacted to a fire. Thousands of acres that might have been affected were not. Still, all Trisha could think of was a match being set on Kern’s land and what the land meant to him.

  Matt headed back. “Fraser firs sure lookin’ better on your side of the ridge than on the Smokies side,” he called over her to Kern.

  “Too soon to tell. The agriculture people will be here next week. We’ll see what they say,” Kern answered.

  “T
here hasn’t been a fire for over a week.”

  “Yes, but it’s too damned dry.”

  “When are you going to take your turn at the controls, Trisha?” Matt turned to her with a teasing grin.

  “As long as you’ve got crash helmets to put on…”

  When they landed, Trisha wandered off to the Jeep to wait while the men talked for a few more minutes. The whirring sound of the propellers was still in her ears, and she felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and disquiet from the ride. It was not easy to forget what she’d seen.

  Kern finally strode from behind her, patting her fanny as if to tell her to get a move on and get in. She moved so quickly to get into the Jeep that he laughed at her. “Well, bright eyes. Bringing up secrets from the deep, are we? Looking for a pilot’s job in the mountains?”

  “Certainly,” she quipped back as he started the engine. “Barring a minor matter of a license and experience, of course.”

  “Of course. Once upon a time I piloted a single-engine Cessna myself, but the license doesn’t extend to copters, and it seems I just haven’t found the time to go after it. But-fires, this aphid thing in the Fraser firs, marauding bears and wild boars, a missing camper on occasion-it occurred to me last winter that a copter’s a fast way of keeping control-”

  “And a most intriguing little toy,” Trisha suggested innocently. “As Julia would say, the only difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.”