by Pat Spears
“It’s not far. Leave your old truck for now.” Her nose wrinkled, and typically a put-down of her truck would have pissed Jodie off. But she caught the keys Star flipped in her direction and slid behind the wheel.
They roared onto the highway, the radio blaring. Star sat close, her hand on Jodie’s upper thigh, and such was the pity that roadside parking on a public highway was off limits.
The sky ahead was a washpot black, threatening to unleash a downpour. Jodie licked her fingertips and rubbed her stinging eyes, and in spite of the rain that began to pound the canvas top, she drove on at a reckless speed.
Star’s head sunk onto Jodie’s shoulder and she either slept or passed out. Jodie turned up the radio static and drove on through the downpour in search of a place Star had only vaguely described.
The car lurched. The steering wheel jerked from Jodie’s hand; the sound of sand and gravel pounded the undercarriage. She fought to regain control of the speeding car, and ahead through the darkness she made out the bridge railing racing toward them.
She pressed the brake pedal in rapid repetitions. The car fishtailed and struck the bridge railing a glancing blow. It spun and bucked its way back off the bridge onto the muddy shoulder, landing right side up in the water-filled ditch on the opposite side of the highway.
Jodie remembered her head striking something, but it was her right leg, jammed beneath the steering column, that sent wave after wave of excruciating pain all the way into her hip. She put a hand on her leg and felt the stickiness of blood and smelled its coppery scent. She gagged and her vomit was sour, smelling of beer, and she was sure she’d pass out.
Rain pelted her, and water from the overflowing ditch rushed into the car. Star lay crumpled on the floorboard. Jodie struggled to reach her but remained trapped, managing only to grab a hunk of hair and to hold her head above the rising water.
A searing flash of lightening lit the roadside, and Jodie’s scalp tingled, the scent of pine tar exploding in the air.
Thirty
Jodie woke to a set of false teeth smiling at her from a glass container. She attempted to move, but the pain in her right leg was so intense she moaned and dropped back onto the pillow.
“Shug, you ain’t gonna want to try nothing like that.” The slack-mouthed warning came from a woman Jodie took to be the owner of the teeth.
“Where am I? How’d I get here?” Her throat was parched and her focus blurred.
“Deputy brought you here to County. But don’t worry, they take charity cases.” To her question as to how long ago, the old woman answered more or less twelve hours. “You’re here for a stay.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Her right leg was wrapped thigh to calf, and it hurt to as much as wiggle her toes.
“Likely I ain’t supposed to tell you. But I overheard the doctor say a bit more and you’d have woke up peg-legged.”
The old woman went on with bits of something about a ripped leg and enough stitches to make a good-sized quilt. “But other than being scarred, and a real bad limp, I’d say God’s been good to you.”
There was nothing about her situation that made her feel blessed. She pictured the Cowgirls streaking up and down the court and knew there was no place for a gimp in their game.
“That pipestem-sized, stringy-headed blonde gal, who claimed you stole her brand-new car .…” The old woman smacked her lips in what Jodie took to be puzzlement. “Now she claimed she dragged you out of that sinking car just in the nick of time, you up to your chin in filthy ditch water.” The woman paused. “You know, she never said exactly how all that happened.”
“Got run down in a high-speed chase. Shoved off the road into that ditch.” Sweet Jesus, if the old woman didn’t shut her mouth, Jodie felt she’d drop dead here and now.
“Goodness, you don’t say.” She squinted at Jodie, appearing to search for something she might believe. “Just the same, she said I should tell you she won’t be back.”
The door pushed open, and the face of Jodie’s hottest dreams appeared in the space between the door and frame. Though brain-warped on pain killers, Jodie still had enough juice to imagine the Marilyn Monroe body that matched the woman’s perfect face.
“Well, God bless you, Sister Sarah. Ain’t you just the sweetest thing to visit an old, dying woman?” The woman grabbed her teeth and popped them into her mouth with the resolute click of a bullet forced into a chamber.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hansford. I do believe the rosiness has returned to your fair cheeks. I trust this means you’re feeling better.”
The woman’s schooled enunciation was precise, and her accent meant she wasn’t from Selma, maybe not even the South. She wore a dark rose-colored, two-piece suit with a sheer white blouse ruffled at her pale throat, her posture erect and balanced on open-toed pumps. She was a stark contrast to the haggard, dull-eyed women who’d come into the Wing, and her appearance on the floor of the jean factory would stop the machines from spinning. Operators would stand idle, mouths gaped wide, as they stared at everything beautiful in a woman they were never born to become. Everything about her spoke of birth and life-long privilege.
The woman looked over at Jodie, a slight smile on her full, red mouth. Embarrassed at being caught staring, Jodie turned her gaze away. An odd hint of detection had passed between them: one both dangerous and forbidden. Yet overriding her fear was Crystal Ann’s claim that somehow they could know each other. During the brief conversation that ensued between the old woman and the visitor, Jodie savored the woman’s every word, holding each in her mind, committing them to memory.
At the sound of the door opening and closing, the sharp clipping of heels as the visitor made her retreat down the hallway, Jodie felt a sense of loss she could neither explain nor deny.
Jodie woke suddenly, and she couldn’t be sure how long she’d slept. The door opened back forcefully, and Ted stepped into the room. The old woman smiled and turned away.
Teddy winked and Jodie got a much-needed jolt of amusement at the notion that the old woman likely meant to give her and her sweetheart suitable privacy. Teddy drew the curtain closed, stared, and turned a bit pale. She gripped Jodie’s shoulder in her strong hand, leaned, and smacked her on the cheek.
“Damn, girl. You look like warmed-over death.” Teddy frowned and drew back the top sheet, getting a look at Jodie’s heavily bandaged leg.
“What do you think?”
“That at least it’s still attached.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“Aren’t you just a shitload of cheerfulness?” Jodie tried deflecting, but Teddy’s honesty was too much to overcome.
“Maxine sends her love. Along with decent pajamas, toothbrush, paste, comb—you know, the stuff of a stay.” She set a brown bag on the bedside table. “They said how long?”
“No, unless I’m to believe her.” Jodie nodded toward the old woman. “I haven’t seen a doctor.”
“I’ll buttonhole a nurse on my way out.”
“God, Teddy, this isn’t the stay I’m worried about. Am I going to jail?”
“Cop kept saying how lucky you were the railing wasn’t concrete.” She paused. “Damn, girl, I can’t believe you decided to go back to the Hide and Seek on the night both kids were down with the shits. And then you leave with that crazy broad? You need something steady. That bitch changes lovers like me and you change our socks.”
“Never came to that.”
“Then you are lucky.”
“Yeah, well forget about her. Am I going to get charged?”
“Too much bother, I’m guessing. Considering nobody got hurt but the drunk driver.”
“Love me a lazy cop. And that heap of a car?” She worried she was responsible for removing it, and the repairs.
“Far as I know, that shit’s totaled and right where you parked it.” Teddy snorted. “I’ll get the shop boy to haul it to the salvage yard.”
“Thanks. Guess I am lucky. But my leg’s a damn mess.” Jodie shoved her knuckles
in her mouth, fought back tears.
“Yeah, well, someday I’ll show you my motorcycle scars.” Teddy leaned and whispered, “And don’t you dare start up with some kind of self-pity bullshit. You’ll heal in time for the trials.”
Jodie searched Teddy’s eyes for the slightest indication that she believed what she’d said. She read a world of improbable hype.
Mrs. Hansford checked out the following week, and there had been no more visits from Sister Sarah. Jodie’s stay stretched into a third week, during which time her leg healed well enough for her to master the use of crutches. She limped out of the hospital with Maxine, who drove her home with her. She stayed with Maxine and her two kids her first week out of the hospital. The bill put her into debt to Teddy for two hundred dollars. The entire ordeal left the coffee can empty and her with a noticeable limp the doctor claimed—with luck, and her staying off her feet for a few months—would lessen but likely never completely disappear.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she developed a nasty habit of nipping a little all along, straight through the day and late into the night. She was learning that pain coupled with self-pity were two of the main ingredients for the kind of blues Jewel had sung.
Thirty-One
Week six and Jodie was back on the job as a new hire. The steady pain in her leg slowed her production pace to one that got her regular hard looks from the super and little extra in her pay envelope. After meager expenses and paying down her debt to Teddy, there was nothing to deposit in the coffee can. The odds of her putting aside enough money before trials grew slimmer with each passing day.
Still, most Saturdays, when Ted wasn’t repairing some woman’s car in Maxine’s back yard, Teddy was badgering Jodie into shooting baskets, her enticement Maxine’s fine home cooking following workouts.
Jodie and Bitsy emerged from the plant into a welcome Saturday morning, blinking against its brightness like two blind armadillos. As they made their bone-weary ways to their vehicles, Jodie spotted a late model green Oldsmobile. The driver slowed the car, appeared to fix her attention on her and Bitsy, and then sped away.
“Reckon how it is that rich bitch strayed from her side of the tracks?” Bitsy lit her last cigarette. “Don’t figure her kind’s looking to get on the graveyard shift.” Bitsy puffed a cloud of smoke into the frosty air.
“What do you know about someone like her?” Jodie grinned.
“Her?” Bitsy snorted smoke. “What I know is, the uppity bitch’s old man preaches at that big-ass church downtown. And Bess says she’s too proud to mix with the ladies of the congregation. On account of she went to one of them fancy Yankee schools just for rich girls. They may’ve taught her how to talk pretty and which fork to use, but I figure she don’t look no different from any other woman flat of her back with her legs spread.”
“Why do you say shit like that?” Alarmed by her unchecked outburst, Jodie walked on.
Bitsy called to her, “Now, I’m just asking. Wouldn’t such a school be the absolute pits?” Bitsy shook her skinny ass like a mare in heat.
“Maybe, but don’t you sometimes think about doing better?” Some days it was hard to remember if she’d ever believed in her chance at playing ball with the Cowgirls.
“Girl, you’re crazy. My mama jerked my dumb ass out of sixth grade and stuck me in the cotton fields. This shitty job’s a sweet deal compared to chopping cotton in July. Hell, I got plenty of picking scars.” She held out her hands for Jodie to see.
“Yeah, but I’m thinking about enrolling at that new junior college. Pay for my wild-eyed fantasy with wishful thinking. What you think?” Jodie ached for better, an ache so real she felt her breathing had shut down.
“Go on with your damn foolishness. I got hungry kids waiting for breakfast. See you back here Monday for more of the same.” Bitsy’s bitterness was the kind that destroyed dreams. She hung out the car window and waved, the cigarette dangling between her tar-stained fingers.
Jodie headed the truck in the direction of the A&P, intending to restock her fridge and maybe cook herself a decent meal. Patting down her hip pocket for her wallet, she walked into the store. It smelled of rotting bananas and cabbages. She wanted the shopping ordeal over and to get home to collapse into bed.
At the meat counter, she ordered a pound each of ground chuck and sliced bacon, then caved to the overpriced pork chops, ordering two. The distracted butcher pushed her three brown packages across the counter and called an earnest greeting to an approaching shopper. Her order in hand, Jodie turned to leave.
“Good morning, sir. It is indeed a fine day. And good morning to you, miss.”
At the silky-smooth sound of her voice, Jodie stood fixed to the floor, her words stuck in her throat, and she stared.
The preacher’s wife stared back, then turned abruptly and hurried toward the door. Jodie watched as she rushed from the store, got into a green Oldsmobile Ninety-eight, and sped away.
The butcher muttered, “Strange, mighty strange, that pretty one.” His tone was not one of ridicule, but of mystery. He sighed and returned to slicing prime cuts from the hindquarter of a perfectly marbled beef.
Jodie cut her shopping short, and after stashing her few bags, she swung the truck onto the street and headed downtown.
The billboard in front of the large brick church read James R. Curtis, Minister. If her instinct was right, Mrs. James R. Curtis was hiding behind a respectable marriage. Clara Lee may have married Stuart Walker Junior, but Jodie believed the girl who’d moaned under her touch was the true Clara Lee. She pulled the bottle from beneath the seat, took a generous pull on the whiskey, its fire burning its familiar way through her, and pointed the truck toward the pink trailer.
For two straight Saturdays following her chance encounter with Sarah Curtis, Jodie went to the A&P, buying groceries she didn’t need. Finally, rather than continuing to leave the store disappointed, she stopped going, except when she actually needed to restock the fridge. But she still went on Saturdays, even though it meant the store was more crowded.
Jodie made a quick stop at a well-known filling station to purchase gas and a fifth of the cheaper, label-free bootleg whiskey sold there. Reaching the dirt road, she glanced into the rearview mirror and swore. She waited next to the mailbox, but the green Oldsmobile she believed she’d seen following was no longer there. Her growing obsession with Sarah Curtis, an untouchable, was downright stupid.
Thirty-Two
A week’s worth of pressed jeans and flannel shirts hung in the bedroom closet. An overflowing sink of dirty dishes had been washed, dried, and put away, garbage burned in the drum out back, and a pot of ham hocks and lima beans simmered on the stove. Jodie’s restored sense of order had earned her a long Saturday afternoon nap.
She dropped onto the couch, a glass of cold milk and a stack of two-day-old donuts within reach. But before finishing either, she drifted into a restful sleep, only to be startled awake by the sound of an approaching vehicle.
She swung her sock feet onto the chilly floor and eliminated a visit from Teddy. Bobby had a tag football game, and she knew Ted straddled his machine out of sight of Maxine’s mother, who sat with Maxine in the section of the grandstands meant for family. The old woman despised Ted, thinking him crude—beneath her daughter and unfit to be around her grandchildren. She’d threatened to file for custody in her latest attempt at cutting Teddy out of the lives of Maxine and her kids.
The timid knock on the door most likely belonged to the Jehovah’s Witness who called herself a disciple. She was a tight-lipped woman of few words, and Jodie had decided her silence came with all that she knew but left unsaid. Jodie took her doomsday pamphlets and pressed dimes into her outstretched hand for no better reason than the woman’s blind allegiance to duty. At the second light tap, Jodie slipped on her work shoes, crossed the room, and opened the door.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, it’s you!” Jodie blushed so, she was sure she smelled her own scorched hair.
“I’m sorry to
have startled you. I’m intruding.” Mrs. Curtis turned away, hurrying back toward the idling car.
Jodie called, “No, Sarah, wait. You just got here.” At the sound of her voice calling Sarah’s name, Jodie’s stomach lurched, and it was as though she actually knew her.
Sarah Curtis turned back. Her shallow breath pushed through her parted red lips, her reticence betrayed, igniting in Jodie a sense of her own vulnerability, and she struggled to regain some semblance of control.
“Unless you’ve come to invite me to church, you’re welcome.”
“No, I’d never do that. Invite you to church, I mean.” Sarah’s lip quivered.
“Then why are you here?” Jodie ran her fingers through her cropped hair. Every fiber of her body warned against her willingness to become this woman’s ticket to the wild side, if that was what she wanted from her.
“I hoped you might take a drive. With me, that is.” Her voice shook and she clutched a slender hand to her throat. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band.
Jodie turned the fire off from under the beans, pulled the door closed behind her, and got into the car. They drove an unfamiliar back road into the next county, and Jodie gave little thought as to where they might be going. She’d stopped caring the moment she saw Sarah at the hospital.
“How’d you find me?” Maybe she knew already.
“Forgive me, but I followed you home from work one day last week.”
“Just so you know, I kept going back to the store for a time.”
“Yes, I know. I saw you there from across the street.”
They turned off the highway onto a dirt road that ended at a green metal gate. Jodie took the key from Sarah’s hand, got out of the car, and unlocked the gate, careful to secure the lock behind them. The fence enclosed a collection of six cabins arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, a larger building at its open end. Beyond these cabins, they ascended an incline into a heavily wooded stretch of a narrow lane. She stopped the car in front of an isolated cabin that stood beneath a canopy of naked trees.