Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  The alarm was set for one-thirty in the afternoon. Her hand fell limp on the mattress seconds after she set it.

  “No, I don’t have an appointment,” Trisha admitted to the sleekly groomed redhead with efficient eyes. She’d never met anyone before who could be said to have efficient eyes. “I’ve met Mr. Whitaker before; he’ll know who I am. I would appreciate it if you would at least give him my name.”

  Cal Whitaker emerged from his office moments later, oblivious to his secretary’s sniff of disapproval at the obvious break from appointment protocol. “Patricia Lowery! What brings you to lawyer’s row? Nice to see you, sweetheart!”

  Pin-striped, with a brown tie, Cal was a long lanky man who had little claim to good looks and a lot to distinguished ones-mustache, pipe, silver sideburns, Savile Row suits…and a come-on in the brown eyes that Trisha had had the occasion to turn down a long time ago.

  She stood up, receiving his hand and second-thought kiss on the cheek with a cool smile. Cal’s appraisal certainly reaffirmed that the lemon linen dress could distract from the heavy circles beneath her eyes.

  “A social call, I certainly hope?”

  Trisha shook her head, being led into the dark paneled office ahead of him. “I need your professional services.”

  “Well, we can take care of anything, gorgeous.”

  She winced a little when he winked. The chair she settled in was living-room comfortable, and a glass of wine was served-part of the office decor was his bar. A dozen buttons were on his desk. He had turned three shelves of the bookcase into the bar. She felt no curiosity about the others. He was a country-club sort of lawyer who did that sort of job very well.

  “I need a divorce, Cal. From your reputation, perhaps your schedule is full, but since I know you, I thought I’d ask-”

  “I’d have been offended if you hadn’t.” He smiled warmly, received no answering warm smile in return, and set down his glass. From his pocket he drew out a pair of wire-rims, dropped the banter and unearthed a clean legal pad from his desk. “I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble,” he said more formally. “Why don’t you just start by telling me how things stand at the moment.”

  She stared at him woodenly. “There isn’t anything to tell. I just want a divorce.”

  He smiled gently. “So you said. A very rough time for everyone involved, but we do have to start somewhere. Grounds, Patricia? Obviously you’re the one who wants to file.”

  “Yes.” Cal had the practice of a mother who hands out Band-Aids to her toddler. He didn’t really want to hear the same old story of how the hurt came to be any more than she had any intention of telling him, but somehow-ridiculously-it never occurred to her that she would actually have to talk to him. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted it done.

  And as for grounds? Was she supposed to be able to stand up and say that Kern didn’t love her?

  “Patricia?”

  She swallowed the unforgivable urge to cry. “Isn’t there a no-fault divorce law in Michigan? Where both people simply agree-”

  “Yes, of course. If that’s the situation.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “Well, that depends, Patricia. If there are no children-”

  She felt a ridiculous urge to cry. “There are no children.”

  “And if everyone agrees readily on a property settlement-”

  She shook her head. “There won’t be any problem. There’s no property involved. I don’t want alimony or anything else from my…husband.”

  Cal’s pencil touched tip to desk, then eraser. Back and forth. Flip-flop. His eyes regarded her patiently, his lawyer’s mind spinning out the potential state of his client as it affected his fee. Finally he drawled, “We all tend to react rather quickly when our feelings are involved, Patricia. I see a lot of it. It’s the name of the game in divorce. My father was Ralph Lowery’s attorney, did you know that?”

  “Yes.” Julia had told her once, and indirectly it was how she had met Cal before. He was a Grosse Pointe neighbor of sorts.

  “I may not still have call to know the personal circumstances of your husband these days, Patricia, but anyone on our side of town is familiar with the Lowery estate. As a wife you’re entitled to your fair share, if only to ease some of the trauma of the divorce itself. And there’s your future to think of. It’s my job to-”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to be involved, honey. This kind of thing is done directly between lawyer’s offices. You can trust me to take care of your interests, Patricia-”

  She stood up rapidly, a hunted-doe look in her eyes as sudden nausea wrenched in her stomach. “I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that. All I want is to sign a piece of paper, Cal. Can’t you just-”

  “Patricia, have you really talked this over with your husband?”

  “There will be no argument from Kern. But he might try… I don’t want his money. There’s no reason for this to be any more complicated, I just…”

  The tears gushed then, mortifyingly free in front of this man who was undoubtedly used to overemotional women in his office. With practiced patience he had his handkerchief just as ready as the wine. But this wasn’t just any divorce, she wanted to cry out. Don’t you understand how much I love my husband? Don’t you understand that if I thought he really wanted me…

  “Now, now, Patricia. Don’t be embarrassed. We’ll have all this settled before you know it; it’ll hardly take any time at all. We’ll celebrate with a dinner out when it’s all over, when it’s all behind you. We’ll wait to discuss the fee another time. I’ll get everything in the mill; don’t you worry about a thing…”

  It was seven before she could make it back to her apartment, loaded down with two bags of groceries, feeling as if she hadn’t slept in a year. With the food put away, she slipped into the shower, cleansing off the city grit of a warm afternoon. Clad in a loose silk kimono, thigh-length, she wandered barefoot back to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator now full, seeing nothing she really wanted, though a bowl of raspberries seemed-possible. Her stomach was in knots. Her nerves were frayed. The tears kept feeling like they were just behind her eyes, still trying to burst out, and she was more than disgusted with herself that they already had in Cal’s office.

  The worst of it was that she knew she was waiting for the telephone to ring. Kern would have long since realized she was gone. If there was any chance he still wanted her back, he would have called. Every time she turned around she was imagining him there, just arrived, imagining what he would look like as he walked around her apartment for the first time.

  “Very pretty, Tish, but there isn’t a stick of furniture a man my size could get comfortable in.” With the dish of raspberries in her hand, she surveyed with a different eye her pink-and-gold living room, coming up with the same dissatisfied feeling.

  “But you’ve really done well for yourself. You really made it completely on your own, didn’t you, bright eyes?” And her heart swelled, knowing she had done well, that she was a woman now and not a child, capable of handling her own life. It was no longer as an appendage of Kern that she saw herself.

  She set down the ridiculous dish of raspberries, curled up on the couch and put her head in her hands. “I like the robe, Tish. Silk like your skin…” The memory of their loving by the waterfall twisted inside; she could feel her breasts swell in desire even now, the look in his eyes, the panther grace of the naked man…stop it, she told herself. And stared at the telephone, knowing he was not going to call. She had left him once and he had never come after her. He had said as much. She knew it, in her heart. There had been no words of love, only passion.

  She napped erratically on the couch, and when she woke again at ten-thirty her body was protesting her sporadic eating habits, insisting she find something to sustain it. She fixed a sandwich finally, switched on the news and settled back on the couch.

  The announcer was the newer breed of newscaster, flamboyant in dress, with a persona
l air. He was enthusiastic about a satellite flight, depressed about one of Congress’s latest bills, lurid about a national kidnapping scandal. Trisha only half listened, munching the sandwich as she threaded through the pile of mail that had been at her door.

  “…only a spark. But the weather’s been so dry and hot in the Smokies that that was all it took…”

  She dropped the letter in her hand and bounded up to raise the volume on the TV set.

  “…park service people have their hands full trying to control the rapidly vacating populace in the Smokies, though the fire hasn’t spread that far. Fire officials claim there’ll be no problem, that the blaze won’t get as far east as the national park and for vacationers not to panic. It’s still the biggest blaze they’ve had in over forty years, longtime residents tell us, and in the meantime, Jimmy Barker and his six-year-old son, Robert, are dead…”

  “Now in Tiger town…”

  Frantically Trisha switched to another station, whose newscaster was just as interested in baseball scores, and switched to a third who was still waxing poetic on the satellite success before he enthused over the city’s team.

  The Smokies were only worth a sixty-second spot where local interest might have been spurred in the vacation season. Trisha stood, feeling a frustration like rage building inside when no amount of dial-twisting was going to tell her any more. The two dead, but how many were hurt? And west of the Smokies was Kern’s. If he wasn’t hurt, no one would be able to keep him out of it. And his land, his mountain that he loved so, everything he had worked for…and Julia.

  With her head throbbing, she reached for the telephone, but neither the news stations nor the newspapers had any other information to impart. There was a fire. Two people had died. The blaze wasn’t over yet but it was now considered “in control,” and there was no list of injuries. Perhaps on the internet…

  She tried that, didn’t pick up anything new, so she shut that done and grabbed the phone again to dial long distance. The operator was pleasant, but informed her that many lines were down in that area and those in operation were for emergency use only. Did she have an emergency?

  “No-I-thank you.” She hung up, hugging her arms to her breasts. No, she didn’t have an emergency. In fact, the afternoon had been wretchedly spent severing all ties with the man. They didn’t have a marriage. She no longer even had the right to ask.

  With a disgusted sound in her throat, she reached one last time for the telephone, arranging for a plane ticket to Knoxville and a rental car from there. In five minutes she was pulling things from her closet, scolding herself in a raging inner tirade that wouldn’t quit. Someone would be doing her a kindness to come in and simply put a straightjacket on her. What did she think she was going to do in a fire? Did she have any illusions that there was actually anyone who would allow her within miles of it? And in emergencies too many bystanders always crowded in. The sensible thing to do was wait and see, stay out of the way. And if she did find him-what was she supposed to say? I know I just left you, Kern, I even applied for the divorce papers this afternoon, but…

  But what, Tish, she told herself sarcastically. Yet the clothes kept filling the suitcase and the robe she wore was in a heap on the floor, replaced by a simple pair of light brown pants and gold-yolked shirt, a brown, gold and orange scarf on her hair. She paused in front of the mirror, seeing the mascara wand in her hand as if it were a stranger’s. Getting made up to go to a fire? But the hand kept moving-mascara, blush, lipstick. She was running on instincts and they were stronger than any rational argument she was capable of.

  Fifteen miles away from Kern’s and there was the smell of forest burning. There were no billowing clouds of smoke but an increasingly pervasive haze that made the air difficult to breathe, as if something heavy were trying to force its way into her lungs. She stepped out when she stopped the car for gas. The atmosphere in the cloying heat had a tension to it, a brooding stillness. No birds were singing, no branches rustling in the surrounding woodlands. Fear paralyzed her for a moment as she got back in the rented car again, and then she felt a kind of desperate calm.

  Each mile increased her determination to find him. She braked once, backed up to where she could see between two crevices in the cliffs; in the far distance was smoke, the beginnings of a ravaged forest. People, like brown-uniformed ants, were walking around bare tree trunks, and even from where she had stopped there was the sickeningly sweet smell of new ash. The sun blazed cruelly down on that glimpse of hillside, showing off stark, pitiful destruction.

  She drove on, the rock face too high for several miles on both sides to see anything. That desperate calm had suddenly clotted inside her. The instinct to reach Kern, see him, know he was all right, was like a monumental force that surpassed any other emotion.

  About five miles from Kern’s, a brown-uniformed ranger guarded a makeshift roadblock. Sweat was pouring from his brow as he marched the few steps to lean on her windshield. “We’re diverting traffic to another route, miss. I’m afraid there’s been some road damage up ahead, trees and rocks down. If you just turn around and head south about two miles, we’ve mapped out an alternative route-”

  She interrupted him. “My husband is Kern Lowery.” Suddenly her throat was so dry she could hardly get the words out. “Our home is just ahead a few miles. If you by any chance…if you know…”

  Compassion touched the dark brown eyes of the officer when the question faltered on her lips. “Sure, ma’am. Last I knew he was fine. Known Kern for a few years, I have. Fire tickled his northern slope, I hear, but it jumped on by him for the most part. You must have been away?”

  “Yes. Can I get through? I have to get through! I could walk from here-”

  “It’s just not safe, ma’am.” He shook his head sympathetically. “And there’ll be road crews that don’t need a car in the way, neither. It’s not like you’d be likely to find your husband home, ma’am. Everybody around here has been helpin’ as they could. The damage-” He shook his head sadly. “Well, we help each other around here. We always have. People been workin’ around the clock for some thirty, forty, hours now-”

  “Is it finally out? I saw some smoke a while back-”

  “Smoldering mostly. There’s a few places still blazing, but the flames finally tuckered out.”

  “There must be camps set up. Coffee and food for the men working-”

  He nodded. “All over the place. Down the road a mile is one-”

  “I can get to that then?”

  The ranger adjusted his hat to scratch his balding head, squinting in that direction. “I don’t rightly know. Jeeps have been getting through, of course, four-wheeled-drive vehicles-”

  “I can get through,” Trisha said firmly and restarted her car.

  Chapter Nine

  Stumbling a little awkwardly on the rocky path, Trisha crested the rise and stopped. The camp was chaos: three makeshift tents with army-cot beds, kerosene burners where huge coffee pots steamed in the middle of the sun, a pair of Red Cross Jeeps. There was one long picnic table where some twenty people or so were eating, and another table where two men were standing making sandwiches, their fingers like fan blades in ceaseless motion. Each face had the same story to tell: physical and mental exhaustion. Soot-stained foreheads, ripped clothes, a mixture of uniforms and regular locals, a few with bandages in one place or another that gleamed white against the general grime of everyone’s person. Trisha let out her breath when she was certain Kern was not among them. For another full sixty seconds she stood surveying the scene, unnoticed, and then she strode forward and rolled up her sleeves.

  At dusk a new shift of women came. Trisha barely noticed. The why, when or how of people coming and going was long irrelevant by then. There was always a reason. Hunger, rest, transportation, first aid. Very little talking went on because no one had that kind of energy, and after six hours Trisha knew she looked no different than anyone else-vacant-eyed, exhausted, dirt-smudged, harassed by mosquitoes. It didn�
��t matter. It was two hours after that before the workers were assured the siege was over. The fire was well and truly out and it was just a question now of hauling in the people involved. Trisha was refilling a heavy pot of coffee with both hands when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She whirled, “Kern” on her lips before she even saw who it was.

  “Sorry, not Kern,” Rhea said with a wry tone that was not without compassion. “He’ll be here in an hour or two from now, I should think. Do you know I’ve been working next to you for over half an hour without even recognizing you?”

  Trisha smiled ruefully in greeting, wiping a damp strand of hair from her forehead. “There’s hardly been time to worry about looks,” she admitted. “He’s all right?”

  Rhea, setting out cups in front of her so that Trisha could pour, looked at her curiously. “Well, you’ve probably seen him since I have. I caught two minutes of him this morning when he got a spot of breakfast here. Said hello to him and had my head bitten off-not that we’re not all tired. But he wasn’t talking to anybody, like he was fighting his own personal war.”

  Trisha frowned. It didn’t sound like Kern, who was always cool in a crisis. And obviously from her comments Rhea was unaware she had left, so it was all the more awkward to try and talk. “I don’t know the last time you saw Julia,” she said, probing carefully.

  Rhea laughed. “She is something, isn’t she? So determined not to leave, you could have heard her in California yesterday afternoon. But the Carolina coast’s only a couple of hours’ drive, and that professor from the camp looked like more than a good Joe. A full week on the ocean and everything will be back to normal around here, Kern had said.”