by Pat Spears
Silas walked toward the truck, wiping his greasy hands on a rag, and he too looked in the direction of the boys, grimacing, she thought.
“With all the damn kickbacks their crooked grandpa gets from local graft, you’d think he’d spring for decent bikes they wouldn’t need to tussle over.”
“Uh, Judge Walker’s?”
“Yep, they’re Clara Lee’s boys.” He didn’t look at her, his words drifting, absorbed in the noises of the street. Jodie turned and hurried toward the truck. Silas followed, and she felt it odd that he seemed to share her sense of relief at not encountering Clara Lee.
He opened the truck door and several books slid from beneath the seat onto the ground. He stooped to gather them, stashing them back behind the seat. He was the one person Jodie knew who read as though a teacher’s threats still rang in his ears.
There was a comfortable familiarity about the smell of the truck: sweat, grease, engine oil, gasoline, cigarettes, peppermint, and Mennen aftershave. Silas slipped the key into the ignition and the engine turned, purring like a well-tuned Cadillac. He looked over at her, a prideful glint in his eyes. He believed repairing broken-down vehicles and befriending those women he referred to as shaky ladies were his special gifts. They drove onto the highway in the direction of Red’s.
“Saw Miss Bell, just now. She didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat.”
“Yeah, that poor old soul can’t remember which car she drove up in, and her sitting in it. But she can recite Shakespeare right on. Remember how she answered our fool questions with quotes from Shakespeare?”
“And how we kids tried stumping her, but never could?”
“Thirty-seven years and no one ever got her goat. And we read a lot more Shakespeare than we would have otherwise. That is, some of us did.” He winked at her.
It was clear neither wanted to talk about Red’s illness. Their laughter went a ways to relieve Jodie’s full-blown case of nerves, and she took a measure of comfort in the thought that perhaps Silas hadn’t changed all that much. Then, he wasn’t Red.
“Wouldn’t you know, Red’s still got that old Dodge he’s so crazy about? Had me go so far as to block it and sell off the tires. Took me the better part of a morning to hack it free of the kudzu.” He paused. “Still can’t figure why he held on to it. Engine is good right on. Figure I could’ve got him a little for it.” He looked over at her as if he sought an answer to a deeper riddle.
Jodie shrugged. It would seem Red found it easier to hang onto old cars and blind dogs than to family. Then, admittedly it was she who’d done the last of the leaving.
“Like I said, Maggie’s done the staying overnight. But your sanctified sister is pitching a damn hissy fit, threatening to pack Red off to her house. And if going without whiskey didn’t kill him, leaving Buster behind would.”
“She’s bluffing, and that’s half-sister, and only maybe.”
“Yeah, I get that you two aren’t exactly the Lennon Sisters. Still, she’s determined. Says it’s her Christian duty and, even stranger, William’s backing her on it.”
He rubbed a hand along his bearded chin and got that same troubled look he used to get when he believed Jodie’s wellbeing was somehow his responsibility. It seemed he still liked all things broken and a bit off balance. How much so, she’d know before leaving again.
“What happened between you and the bus company?”
He sighed, pushed back his cap, laying bare a white strip of forehead.
“What’d you hear from that blabbermouth driver?”
“I’m asking you.”
“The bus company pulled out on the deal struck between them and my uncle before he died.”
“Why was that?”
“Some government bullshit over the bathrooms. Said colored had to get painted over. Just like that. Me having nothing to say about it. You’d think those doors belonged to Uncle Sam.”
“They stopped using your station as a depot because you were too damned cheap to buy a little paint?”
“That’s not what I said. Likely the Kennedy boys just discovered Negroes, but around here they’re no oddity.”
“But needing a public place to pee is?”
“No, I reckon not. Then, it’s not about that. I nailed the door shut, and now we all pee in a pile of old tires back of the station. If we need to take a shit we go down to the new bus stop and use theirs.”
“You’d rather squeeze off your dick in a pile of tires than give up a little Dixie?” Sally had denied Arthur and Bo the use of the Wing’s public bathroom. The two had peed in the alley. Sally was weak, maybe even mean, but the Silas she’d known was neither.
“I see you haven’t lost any of your ladylike manners.” He sounded confused, and he looked wounded, the way she remembered from when they were kids. He fired up a Lucky Strike and passed it to her. “Bet you’ve even gone to smoking those funny cigarettes.”
“Only when the whiskey can’t cut it.” She meant to let him know she wasn’t the same girl he had believed he wanted.
He studied her, his bafflement giving way to a slow grin—one that likely dismissed her version of herself in favor of what he wanted to believe.
“I’m guessing prospects for women around here haven’t changed for the better.” Waitressing and piecework weren’t exactly certain paths to prosperity, but it was a damn sight better than complete dependence on some abusive man.
“Nothing that has most thinking beyond marrying a mill hand or pulpwooder. Too bad how the things they claim to love and grow to hate can turn out to be the same.” His voice had a hint of sadness, and she wondered if his remark included his wife.
They reached Red’s, and Silas stopped the truck at the lane. He pulled his grease-stained cap off, tapped it against the steering wheel, settled it back into the red indentation on his sweaty forehead.
“You all right, Jodie?” He reached and touched her on the knee, as if he believed part of her coming back meant she’d welcome their taking up where he alone believed they left off.
“Bad case of nerves, that’s all.” She patted his rough hand and guided it away from her knee. Whatever trouble she faced was her own doing, nothing he should decide he needed to fix.
“I’d go in with you, but I’m running late for a family gathering at the in-laws’. Can you make it from here with that little suitcase?” He frowned as if he’d already calculated the cost of staying.
“You bet. I thank you for the lift.”
“If everything goes as planned, Maggie should be along about dark. She went to Tallahassee, swore the trip was too important to put off.” He glanced toward the house and back at her. “After all these years, I just can’t figure her sometimes.”
What he didn’t know about either her or Maggie could fill a book. She stepped away from the truck and waved him on his way, his parting words lost to her over the roar of the engine.
Forty-One
On the county road, a single headlight bounced toward her, and Jodie dragged a foot, bringing the swing to a stop. The palms of her hands tingled, and she wished that she’d left off her last drink.
The shrill chirping of katydids and crickets gave way to the clatter of Maggie’s truck. The engine sputtered to a stop, and Jodie called a greeting into the stillness.
“It’s me all right, shug.” Maggie’s voice was deeper and raspier, more and more like a lifetime smoker, although she’d claimed to have never smoked. She’d sworn that her voice box was smuttier than a stovepipe after years of inhaling Miss Ruth’s closet smoking, while Ruth’s sweet voice remained as clear as a tuning fork.
Jodie swung open the gate, and the night critters took up their chorus as though the squeaking hinges signaled a new beginning. Maggie wrapped her arms around Jodie and held her close, and in that moment she was once again the unwanted child made to feel safe. Maggie stepped back, cocked her head to one side, and gave Jodie a long look.
“Damn if you haven’t nearly gone to skin and bones. But my, you’r
e pretty as ever.” She smiled broadly.
“It’s the poor light. And pretty was never real pretty, now was it? But don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of time to fatten me up.” Maggie still smelled of gardenia talcum and, tonight, of raw onions.
Jodie slipped her arm around Maggie’s waist, and together they walked toward the light streaming through the door. There had been no one who’d called her pretty. Jewel had made it clear that life would have been easier for both had she been small like Ginger and had Ginger’s soft curls and sweetness rather than big as a mule with a head full of bushy hair and what she’d called the disposition of a ground rattler.
“Come on in the kitchen. I got a fresh pot going.”
“Coffee’s good, I’d say.” Maggie wrinkled her nose, pretending shock at Jodie’s whiskey-flavored breath. “But first you’ll need to get that box off the front seat of the truck while I squat and check on Red.”
In the kitchen, Jodie put a match to the burner, and the quick burst of flame singed the hair across her knuckles. She broke a spiny-toothed leaf from the aloe on the windowsill and peeled back the outer skin, rubbing gel on the burn. Facing Maggie with her many regrets was even harder than she’d imagined.
“Could you tell if he’d eaten anything?” Maggie’s words rolled hard into the kitchen ahead of her heavy steps.
“Nothing much, judging from what was left on the plate.” She left out the swarming flies and empty water pitcher.
“I was afraid of that. Hazel was supposed to stay with him, and I swear I don’t see the first sign that she did diddly-squat except scatter about them old records over the Victrola, unless you’ve had time to play music.”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t bother those old records.”
“All those bedclothes piled back there … is that how you found him?” Maggie stood in the doorway, her hands riding her broad hips. Spit collected in the corners of her mouth.
Jodie nodded.
Maggie’s face flushed red. “Damnit, I knew better than to leave that nice-nasty gal in charge. You’d think she’d never seen a man’s pecker.” Maggie flipped her hand to her face and squealed, mocking Hazel.
They laughed and Maggie’s irritation lessened a notch.
“Just how bad is he?”
Jodie watched Maggie’s face grow thoughtful as she took a seat at the table, appearing to choose her words carefully.
“At first, Doc figured him a goner.” She swallowed hard. “He misjudged the healing powers of pure stubbornness.” Her voice stronger, she added, “Hell, I remember a time when Red stumbled onto our front porch, soaked in blood from a knife wound that took a hundred stitches or better to close. A normal man would’ve bled to death.”
Maggie paused, leaving space; her way of asking without asking, Jodie sensed. But she had no answers beyond that of why she came. Maggie nodded ever so slightly. “For now, I believe we can leave off covering the mirrors. You’re here, and he’s bound to rally.”
“He hasn’t spoken a word.”
“Oh, hon, that’s the stroke. He’ll get some of his speech back, but his public speaking days are behind him.” They shared a weak smile.
“Calling me was Silas’s idea, right?” She hoped Maggie would tell her differently.
“If you’re asking, Red’s still got his drawers in a wad. You’ve got to know your way of leaving was hard on him.” Her voice dropped off, and it spoke of pain to others.
“Yes’m,” was all she could say.
“You may want to cut him a little slack. God knows he’s slow to face up to his own wrongs.”
Jodie nodded. Maggie had always been good at reading her mind.
“Now, if you’re done with that, open up that box, and let’s have ourselves a whopping piece of blueberry cheesecake. We need to celebrate your homecoming.”
“Blueberry cheesecake? Where’d it come from?”
“Tallahassee. Got it from a bakery across the street from what was the girls’ college. Ruth took me there to get cheesecake and coffee before I shipped out from Jacksonville with the WAC in ’42. It’s still the best there is this side of Paris, France.”
Maggie spoke of times and places that spanned decades and distances halfway around the globe in the matter-of-fact way Jodie had spoken of trips between the pink trailer and the blue jean factory.
Jodie brought the cheesecake to the table, and while Maggie cut two wedges, she poured coffee. Maggie ate and drank as if the house was on fire, pushing her cup forward for a refill.
“Now days I’m greedier than Patty’s pig. Ruth always said my foul temper would make me a fat corpse.” She leaned back in the chair and patted her belly. “Put on thirty pounds. And, Lord God, just take a look at these babies.” She boosted a heavy breast in each hand and lifted, bounced, and laughed.
“Ah, Maggie, you’re not about to be fat. You’re a big woman who runs best on a full tank.” Jodie wiped a grin away with the back of her hand.
“Hell, fat’s not all. I’m slower than molasses on a cold morning. Most days I wake feeling like a petrified turd. Can’t do half of what I used to. Gone to letting Silas work on my truck, and damned if he hasn’t just about junked it.”
With broad fingers, Maggie twisted the coffee cup in tight circles and stared into the dark liquid as if she sorted through layers of pain. When she lifted her face to Jodie, her rheumy blue eyes held back little on the matter of her and Miss Ruth’s shared lives, their full truth etched on her pained face.
“Maggie … I’ve been trying to figure how to say just how ashamed I am that I never as much as called when Silas told me Miss Ruth had died. You have every right to hold it against me.” She wasn’t sure what good her calling would have served. Here and now, sitting across the table from Maggie, her words felt stiff, forced, unworthy.
“Aw, child, burying my Ruth was the easy part. It’s been the living afterward that’s nearly killed me.” Maggie shook her head as if in disbelief.
“Miss Ruth was an angel.” Jodie hated the triteness that seemed to spring blood-blisters on her useless tongue. She’d once thought of Ginger Sutton that way, and she’d known nothing of angels and even less about loving a woman.
“Angel? She was no damn angel. Lord, whenever that woman took a notion, she could be meaner than a two-headed snake on a July tar road.”
“I just meant … she was an angel to me. Silas, too.”
“That she was. She loved you kids the way she would’ve loved her own.” Maggie paused, her chest rising and falling with her grief. “Would you believe I still make coffee for two? And I’m ashamed that I go weeks without refilling her hummingbird feeders. I break my back trying, but I don’t have her way with roses.” Her voice was thin, watery.
“She had a special knack all right.” Jodie knew something of the aloneness of which Maggie spoke.
“Hell, child, you know me. I’ve spit in the face of meanness my whole life, but how was I to ass-whip God?” She drained the cup and poured another, adding a generous shot of whiskey. “Death’s a heartless bitch. She steals the future you thought you’d earned.”
The house fell silent, enfolding each in the finality of their loss. The only sound was Buster gnawing at fleas, and when their silence had grown unbearable, Jodie leaped to her feet. Chasing a palmetto bug the size of a hot dog bun across the kitchen floor, she crushed it under the toe of her shoe, then picked up the roach by a quivering leg and threw it outdoors.
“Damn, girl. You got a future in the bug killing business,” Maggie said with a straight face.
“Heard the pay’s pitiful. And if the chemicals don’t kill you, the steel-toed boots cripple your feet.” Maybe she’d tell Maggie about the roach palace and the welcome home game she’d invented.
Maggie brushed cheesecake crumbs from her natural shelf, leaned back in the chair, her arms tightly wrapped across her breasts, and a wicked smile reshaped her sadness.
“When those undertaker boys took her away, I couldn’t bear being alone in our
little house. So, I sat in my truck till Silas came. We kept right on sitting until I felt I could face the truth, and he drove me to the funeral home. Dick Dawkins tried turning me away in favor of getting in touch with her nearest kin. Claimed the law was on his side. Like the law or that little shit had a side. Through my wrangling with Dawkins, Silas never uttered a word. Then all of a sudden, he grabbed that fat boy by the collar, hauled him into the back room, and flipped him butthole-upward onto a gurney. And in the calmest of voices, he threatened to pump him full of embalming fluid and hand me a lighted cigarette. Needless to say, mister go-by-the-book got busy making arrangements, right down to roses or gladiolas.”
Their laughter pushed their pain into the deeper cavities of their bellies where it would reside, making the moment bearable. Maggie pushed up from the table and Jodie followed her to the truck.
“Give me another one of those big hugs I’ve been missing.”
Jodie wanted to believe that setting wrongs right between her and Maggie was possible. But her part in the terrible wrong done Mr. Samuel would need to wait for a moment of greater courage.
Forty-Two
The morning Jodie picked to clean away years of accumulated filth, the radio announcer promised a temperature in the mid-nineties with humidity that could grow mildew on hens’ teeth. Still, she stripped the beds and dragged lumpy cotton mattresses into the yard, laying them to sun on a makeshift scaffold fashioned from sawhorses and scrap lumber. She mopped heart of pine floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap, polished every stick of furniture, and scrubbed green growth from the bathtub and sink until her knuckles bled. Starting up the wringer washing machine, she sorted and washed faded curtains, bed linen, tablecloths and throw rugs—every rag in the place that could stand up to a hard bleaching—and burned what couldn’t.
When the bed linens had dried in the sun, she propped Red on fresh pillows covered in pillowslips bleached white, scented with lemon juice, and smooth-ironed. He listened to the play-by-play of a Dodgers game on the radio through her changing of the bed. She commented on the national pennant race to help cover the awkwardness that had stayed between them like a bad case of mumps.