by Pat Spears
“Where’d you get all them pretty black curls?”
“The black is surely from my mama. And, uh, the curls … I’m not all that sure.” She shrugged, “Daddy, I think. That’s if he’s really my daddy.” Jodie felt the back of her neck burn, and she stared at her high-tops.
“Had me one of those daddies. But my hair’s out of a bottle.” She laughed easily.
“I want to join up. Be a Cowgirl … for real, I mean. Don’t wear makeup, but I would if that’s what it takes. Anything to be one of you.” She thought about the skimpy uniforms and swallowed hard.
“You’re a little young, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m seventeen, but easily pass for older.”
“You any good?”
“Yes’m, the best. Around here anyway.” If tooting her own horn was what it took, she’d do that too.
“That right?” That her tone wasn’t mean gave Jodie courage.
“I know you’ve gotta hear that a lot. But I’m not blowing smoke up … ah, hell. I mean, I’m sorry. Guess I’m too nervous to make sense.” Jodie stood like the fool she was.
“What did you say your name is?”
“Jodie. Jodie Taylor.”
“Well, Jodie Taylor, why not take that big foot out of your mouth and let’s go back in the gym. Show me what you’ve got.”
“Yes’m. You bet.” Her throat swelled with all the tears she swallowed. Her world had spun about, and every wrong she’d ever felt got itself righted.
She took to the court, fixed her sight on the rim, and drove hard to her right hand. In the blink of an eye, the lane closed, and she extended straight into the big woman’s armpit. Her thunderous block sent the ball flying out of Jodie’s hand and into the bleachers.
Jodie scraped her injured pride off the floor, and someone tossed her the ball. She walked to center court, gritted her teeth, and again dribbled hard to the basket. When she sensed the big woman’s powerful body coming strong to her right hand, she cross-dribbled to her left and the path to the rim opened, not like the Red Sea, only barely enough. She laid a sweet spin off the board at a perfect angle. The ball dropped through the net, and cheers rang out from other players who’d drifted into the gym. Jodie felt her knees give a bit, but she stayed upright.
The big woman slapped her on the back. “Damn, Jodie Taylor. I do believe you’ve got game.”
Jodie gushed, “Then you’re saying I’m good … good enough?”
The woman sighed, stepped back cradling the ball on her hip bone. “You’re good, kid.” She paused, shifted her weight, and added, “Maybe even good enough. But the odds of you making it … well, that’s a long shot.”
“Yes’m, I get that and I thank you for your time.” Jodie turned to walk away, fearing if she tried to say more, she’d go sissy, embarrass herself further. She felt the pain of every time she’d had to hear “not good enough.”
“Jodie, hold up.”
Jodie turned back.
Lou Palmer reached into her back pocket and handed Jodie a tiny card. “Should you ever get to Dallas, look me up.”
Because there was no one to share her triumph, Jodie sat alone in the Dodge, and from the glow of the dashboard lights, she read over and over the business card clutched in her hand. Someday she’d play for the Cowgirls.
Catawba Florida - June 1956
Fourteen
The mid-day heat had sucked the last of the overnight relief from the tiny bedroom, and Jodie, stripped to her underpants and a white tee, kicked at the limp sheet entangling her long legs. A slow smile formed on her lips as she remembered.
Tonight, she and Clara Lee would graduate from high school, Clara Lee as valedictorian, Jodie distinguished only by her height, second to Alfred, a gangly boy of odd proportions. Her first pair of glaring white pumps, a formidable dare to her clumsiness, teased her from atop the chifforobe. The white cap and too-short gown hung from a door nail.
A timid knock signaled Hazel’s dutiful summons, and she called through the closed door. “Mama says you’re to get your trifling ass out of bed.” Giggling, she whispered, “Her words, not mine.”
“You can tell her I’m not picking peas today.” Jodie had long suspected that Hazel got off on repeating their insults.
“I bet you’re doing that nasty thing.” Hazel whispered.
“And you’d better not bring your hoity-toityness in here. It’s catching, you know.”
“Oh … you’re … you’re a sinner, Jodie Taylor. And God punishes the wicked.” Her footsteps sounded her rapid retreat.
Jodie smiled, picturing Hazel’s pudgy cheeks burning with forbidden excitement. She flipped onto her back and stared at the stained ceiling, a canvas of overlapping water marks, her thoughts turning to those she was never completely without—her impending escape with Clara Lee.
By summer’s end they would have earned enough money to buy bus tickets out of Catawba to Dallas, where she believed a spot on the Cowgirls’ basketball team awaited her. There, they were certain to find other girls they’d dare to trust with their secret.
She drew the pillow between her legs and drifted into a dream-filled sleep, only to be jarred awake by the deep-throated roar of Clara Lee’s mama’s big Buick. At first she believed it was part of her dream, for neither she nor Clara Lee ever visited the other. Their love was a secret from everyone.
She hurried to the window and peered out toward the road.
“Holy shit.” The Buick was coming, and coming fast, Clara Lee behind the steering wheel. It could only mean trouble, but of what stripe?
Jodie pulled on yesterday’s jeans, grabbed a cleaner shirt from the bedpost, and scrubbed the night sweaters from her teeth with her finger. She retrieved her high-tops and sweat-stiffened socks from beneath the bed and ran to answer the urgent rattling of the screen door.
Clara Lee stood on the opposite side, her eyes beet red, and she wore yesterday’s wrinkled white blouse, its row of tiny pearl buttons unevenly matched.
“Oh God, Jodie, we have to talk.” Her words were barely audible between deep sobs.
“Okay. But tell me what’s wrong.” Jodie pushed open the door and reached for Clara Lee’s hand, but she stepped back, clutching her slender white throat. Right away, Jodie noticed Clara Lee was back to wearing Stuart’s ring rather than her heart-shaped necklace.
“What’s with that damn ring?”
“Jodie. Don’t you see? None of that matters anymore.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me. Whatever it is, I promise we can fix it.”
“Please, don’t argue. You’re making everything harder.” She turned and walked off the porch, straight to the car, and got behind the steering wheel.
Jodie’s temples pounded and her head felt like it would explode. Still, she followed Clara Lee to the car. Clara Lee ground the gear shift into reverse and spun the rear tires through Miss Mary’s prized daylilies. She pulled forward, and two sets of car tracks divided the huge bed of hybrids into four sections, two smashed flat on the ground. Jodie glanced toward the pea patch, and Miss Mary was hurrying toward the house, Hazel running ahead.
“Shit, you’ve plowed up half the yard.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t worry about that.”
Clara Lee drove the sedan onto the county road, rapidly gaining speed, her reckless driving propelling the car back and forth over the center line.
“First the flowers, and now you’re set on killing us.”
“I can’t talk now.” The car accelerated. The roadside a blur.
“Okay, okay. But you’ve gotta slow down.” Jodie stared ahead, swallowing her anxiety until her belly swelled.
Clara Lee turned onto the narrow logging road that led to their secret place. When she reached the high bluff overlooking the sluggish river, she pulled the car to a quick stop.
Clara Lee turned to Jodie and whispered, “Jodie, Mama knows.” She buried her damp face in the curve of Jodie’s neck.
“Knows? Knows what? That you’ve li
ed about being with me?” While imagining the worst, Jodie sought a lesser threat.
“No,” Clara Lee whimpered. “She knows what we do.” Clara Lee’s terror reverberated against Jodie’s collarbone, her fear contagious.
Still Jodie managed, “Hell, no. She’s bluffing. How could she?”
“No, it’s true. And it’s my fault.”
“How’s it your fault?”
“Mother asked questions about the necklace.”
“What kind of questions?”
“At first I lied. Said it was a gift from Stuart.”
Jodie felt her blood start to boil.
“I thought that would satisfy her. Make her happy.”
“And?”
“I know we promised to never keep anything that could be used against us. But I couldn’t bear to part with your pretty Christmas card. I was sure Mother would never find it.”
The card had accompanied the necklace, and she’d dared to write My Love Forever and sign her name. Jodie felt as though her windpipe had shattered, and she struggled to breathe.
“Please say you don’t hate me.”
Regaining her breath, she forced her words. “No, I could … never hate you.” Didn’t they have every right to hold onto scraps of paper that had passed between them? “But we’ve got to know what she means to do next.”
“She said that if I ever again as much as speak to you, she’ll tell my father everything. Oh, Jodie, I’d die if he knew.”
Her father was a damn bank clerk. What made him so special? Then, he wasn’t their immediate problem. Jodie sat apart from Clara Lee. Clear thinking was hard with her so close.
Clara Lee watched her. “What are you thinking?”
“That she won’t tell. And that we’re okay. But we’ve got to leave Catawba. We’ll drive to Panama City, get the first bus out. From now on she’ll be watching our every move. If we don’t go now, we’ll never get away.”
“But Mama says we’re an abomination. And our leaving won’t change that. I’m so afraid.” She looked beyond Jodie as though God hovered nearby.
“You’ve got to forget all that Bible bullshit.” It was unfair that she’d dealt God into the mix, like some ace in the hole.
“But Mother said .…”
“Stop and think. God’s got a shitload of troubles. Starving kids in Africa. Lepers. Hurricanes. Famines. North Korea. He doesn’t give a rat’s puny ass about two … homosexuals in Catawba, Florida.” She used the word they’d only recently learned from the school’s main dictionary.
Clara Lee blinked hard, as though she’d heard something she could accept. Maybe she favored homosexual over abomination.
Still, she asked, “But how can you be so sure?”
“I don’t know. I just am.” It was somewhat more settling to know a smart word.
“Holy shit. Wait a damn minute.” All of a sudden the word wadded in Jodie’s craw like yesterday’s oatmeal, and she remembered the dictionary’s directive to see mental illness. In her way of thinking, being called crazy was a far more immediate threat than God’s abomination. But who had the legal say in questions of homosexuals?
“What? You’re confusing me.”
“If we’re fruitcakes? And we stay here? Sheriff Walker can lock us away in Chattahoochee. He’s the one we’ve got to stay in front of.” She meant to scare Clara Lee into leaving before she could argue the finer points of such a plan.
Clara Lee gasped. “He’d never do such a thing.”
“Maybe you’ve got a bargaining chip with Walker Junior’s old man, but I sure as hell don’t.”
She pulled Clara Lee into her arms, intending a Wonder Woman kiss that would erase both their fears. Instead, their front teeth banged, and Clara Lee recoiled.
“But what about my valedictory speech? I’ve work so hard.”
“Damn, Clara Lee. It’s a twenty-minute speech to a bunch of half-wits. What I’m talking about is the rest of our lives.”
“Jodie, I can’t go with you. I promised Mother I’d get engaged. Marry Stuart, if it comes to that.” She pressed her palms to her face and sobbed.
Caught between her mother’s anger and her own failure of will, Clara Lee had surrendered. Jodie held her breath against her anguish and realized she was once again alone. She threw herself against the car door and ran from the sound of Clara Lee calling her name.
Reaching the main road, Jodie lay hidden in the underbrush and watched as the big Buick passed and disappeared into the blinding sunlight. She was certain Clara Lee’s mother would find a way to spare her daughter’s sterling reputation, but her own transgressions would give Miss Mary the leverage she sought, that which would surely force Red to choose. She wouldn’t stay and suffer his choice.
Fifteen
Jodie walked the blistering asphalt, trying to imagine her next move without Clara Lee. She failed to notice the approaching car until the driver slowed and pulled to a stop next to her. Roy Dale Pitts leaned through the open window of an ancient Hudson Commodore, but Jodie walked on.
“Whoa down there, gal. Where ’bouts you headed in this heat?” He propped a sunburned arm on the metal window frame, then drew back, swearing.
“Where I’m going’s not one bit your business, now is it?” Jodie kept walking and he followed.
“All right, Miss High and Mighty Jodie Taylor. No skin off my nose if you die of a heat stroke. Then, that’d be a pity since I’m going right by Mr. Red’s.” He grinned like the fool she remembered from junior high.
She didn’t like that he’d slurred her surname; too much of a claim of peas from the same pod. She remembered him: dull as a butter knife, known to be a self-made loser, a sure-fired bust at all things requiring steady doses of brains and sweat. He’d dropped out of school the year she’d passed to senior high. Then, it didn’t take much schooling to be Roy Dale Pitts.
“Last chance. I got way better things to do than worry about your sassy ass.” He raced the engine, his foot riding the brake, playing her.
“You can forget the ride. But I’ll take water if you got any.”
“Nope, but I got a real cold beer.” He gave her a cunning look.
It was five long miles to Red’s, and on top of hot and thirsty, she felt so rotten that she set aside knowing better. Let him think what he would. She got into his car and gulped what turned out to be lukewarm beer.
When they reached the lane he slowed the car, looked over, and winked. “What you say to me and you taking a little ride? Finish off them beers. Have us a little homemade fun.”
She shrugged, and he couldn’t know it wasn’t his promise of a good time that made up her mind, but rather the sight of Miss Mary and Hazel stooped, rows of unpicked peas stretched before them. She wouldn’t open herself up for more misery, not now, not after losing Clara Lee.
He drove them to Scott’s Ferry Landing, twelve miles west of Catawba, and they sat on a downed bay magnolia beneath the shade of a water oak. Behind them, dark clouds were building toward an afternoon thunderstorm, and the air was stifling.
She sat in silence while he lied about one stupid boy stunt after another, and they finished off the remaining beers. He seemed to figure his beer had earned him the right to meddle, because he asked what had her hot-footing it along the county road when he happened along.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m headed to Dallas.” The beer had loosened her tongue, but no amount of beer could cause her to say why she travelled alone.
“Dallas? You’re messing with me, right? What’s Dallas got that here don’t?”
“Less of here and more of there.”
Roy Dale couldn’t have pointed out Dallas on a map of the United States, but his eyes lit up like Times Square, which she knew was not in Texas but New York City.
A flash of lightening, followed by a sudden downpour, forced them back into the car where water dripped around the dash and onto the floorboard. Mosquitoes swarmed against the roof, and Roy Dale bragged that he’d burn
ed his last mosquito coil while screwing Bonnie White.
“Hear she’d give it up for a Tootsie Roll. Must have cost you an even dozen.”
He laughed as if he thought she meant to slur Bonnie.
Jodie stared through the fogged window and felt an odd kinship in the way he deflected her insult. Roy Dale had clearly had his own lessons in dodging sticks and stones.
“Shit, girl, let’s me and you go. Nothing here to hold me. My mama’s the only family who’d notice.”
“Roy Dale, they likely don’t grub earthworms in Texas. What other line of work you got, besides that and stocking shelves at the A&P?”
“Don’t, but I’ll figure something out. You’ll see.”
The river’s cypress-stained waters had turned from the color of day old sweet tea to a dull green. The last of the hurried fishermen slid their boats into the beds of idling pickups and hastened to tie down bundles of fishing poles before making wild dashes. The boat landing was steep and slicker than boiled okra when wet. Roy Dale had wisely parked on the river’s bluff.
Jodie stared at the rain pelting the river like tiny silver bullets, twisting her thoughts, and what she said next surprised her as much as it did him.
“Okay, by damn. I’ll do it.”
“You mean it?”
“Said so, didn’t I? But you’ve got to know I wouldn’t be caught dead with you on the road if I wasn’t desperate for a ride out of here.”
In the moments that followed, it took all the grit she could muster not to back out. But she’d always been more stubborn than smart. Roy Dale cocked his head, as though he was making sure in his own mind what she meant to place off limits. Whatever he thought, he kept between his ears.
“Gal, we’re as good as gone.” He started the engine and they headed back in the direction of town.
He stopped at his folks’ place first and threw a handful of clothes onto the back seat. When they reached Red’s, she directed Roy Dale to stop short of the lane, calculating that Miss Mary and Hazel would be sitting in the kitchen shelling the peas they’d picked. Neither had planned to go to her graduation.