by Pat Spears
“No, but he liked talking about it. I think it made him think about someday living respectable.”
“About what happened today—whether he ever says it or not, I know he’s my daddy. I do think he went into that meeting believing he could turn things his way.”
Maggie sighed. “He bargained everything for the chance to be done with that woman. And finish out his last days here on this godforsaken place.”
From the direction of the house, the long blast of an automobile horn sounded, and Buster set out in a stiff trot. Jodie pulled Maggie to her feet, and they hurried back along the trail. Maggie stopped after a ways, bent forward, her hands resting on her knees, and motioned Jodie on.
Reaching the back stoop, Jodie caught sight of Silas’s truck pulling onto the road. Red sat at the kitchen table slurping Rice Krispies. There were two other bowls on the table with spoons placed beside each; a jug of milk and the box of cereal sat in the center of the table.
“Good of you to fix dinner. But we weren’t in that big a hurry,” Maggie quipped as she came into the kitchen, panting like a dying fish.
Milk dribbled down Red’s chin, but he appeared as smug as if he’d grabbed the good life by the tail.
Maggie shot him a look to kill. “You pathetic old fool.” She turned to leave.
Red pushed up from the table and called, “Maggie, hold up. I’ll need a favor.”
“Forget it. I’m not the least bit interested in doing you any favors.”
Red followed her onto the porch, and after a mostly one-sided conversation, Maggie got into her truck and drove away. Red slapped his hand against his leg in what appeared a celebratory shot, and whatever was said between them worked on him like a spring tonic. He scuffed off to bed and slept like a drunken man until time for supper.
Jodie woke after a restless night, dressed, and went into the kitchen to start breakfast. She’d decided to tell Red of her plan to leave over their meal. When he didn’t answer her calls, she went to his door.
Buster, sleeping next to Red’s empty bed, looked up as if he was surprised to see her and not Red. She worried, since man and dog had taken up their old habit of early morning wanderings in the woods behind the house. He would not have gone without the dog. Nor would Buster have left his side if he’d fallen and lay hurt.
In the distance, Jodie heard the deep roar of Silas’s wrecker, and she hurried onto the front porch. Diesel smoke billowed from its stack as Silas drove into the side yard, Maggie and Red following in her truck. Jodie hurried off the steps to the sound of heavy chains slipping along a hoist.
“Morning, Miss Jodie.” Silas dropped two mounted tires onto the ground at the rear of the old Dodge and grabbed two more from the wrecker.
“She’s all yours, Jodie,” Red called as he got out of Maggie’s truck and shuffled toward her. He stopped and leaned on the Dodge, wheezing, as if a single shot of adrenalin had delivered more juice than his weak body could handle.
“Jesus, Red, I thank you. But I’ve got hundreds of miles ahead of me. Got to be in Dallas for tryouts on the twenty-second, and that’s less than a week.
Red showed no surprise at her decision.
Silas squinted up at her from where he squatted next to the Dodge.
“If it’s a long bus ride you favor, or Red working a trade with William, then I’ll go on back to the station.”
“Screw any trade. I’d walk first.”
“Okay, so back off. Trust me to work my magic wrench on this old gal. She’s a bit neglected, but I’ll have her purring like a ruby-red Corvette. First, I got to get her off these blocks and back in high heels. Engine’s solid. She needs hoses replaced, radiator flushed, carburetor cleaned, engine serviced, wiper blades, and whatever else I find to do between now and tomorrow morning.” He pushed a tire onto the wheel mount and reached back for the iron. “When I’m done, this old gal will take you any place you point her.”
“All right, but don’t get my ass stranded someplace between here and Dallas.” She was going for broke, and this time nothing would stop her.
Red waved off Jodie’s help, and with considerable effort, he climbed the porch steps and made his way toward the bedroom.
“He held up good this morning. He’s going to be fine.”
It was just like Maggie to say as much. Silas sat back on his heels, lit up a Lucky and asked, “You gals got something like a secret handshake?”
“Shit, Silas, we’re not the Eastern Star, you know.”
“No, I don’t. And what little I do, I don’t like. But for now, I’ve settled on thinking of you as just plain weird. That way it’s not such a stretch.”
“That’s handy thinking.” She thought her heart would burst and she believed she better understood Maggie’s peculiar love for Red.
“If you two are done with that piece of romance, Jodie may want to get that bird’s nest out of the back seat and buff up the hood ornament.” Maggie’s voice was tender, her round cheeks flushed.
Silas hooked the Dodge behind the wrecker, tied down its steering wheel, and hauled it away.
“Guess I’m done here.” Maggie turned toward her truck, stopped, and looked back at Jodie. “Hell, in all this commotion I nearly forgot.” Her face broke into a smile. “I’m to tell you that a Crystal Ann called the station wanting to get up with you.”
“You sure it wasn’t Teddy who called?” Her distrust of hope bubbled up from her gut, but she felt her heart countering with a new rhythm.
“You heard right.” Maggie shook her head and made a small sound of impatience. “Hell, girl, you can always come home with your tail between your legs, and I’ll throw you a party.”
Maggie pulled Jodie to her bosom and held her firmly, as if she intended to imprint the feel of her onto her own skin; her embrace carried the feel of a forever good-bye. The scent of gardenia and the slightest tinge of sweat would forever remind Jodie of Maggie. Had she known how unprepared she was to face the loss of Maggie, she might have reconsidered.
From Red’s room, she heard, “That you, Jodie?”
A wedge of sunlight played across the bedcovers, and he pointed her to the rocker. The closeness of the room squeezed like a warm fist.
“Jodie, your mama … Jewel wanted to go off with them band boys in the worst way. Me, I didn’t want her to and I told her so.” He swallowed hard. “But the truth was, I had nothing to offer the two of you.”
“Was there ever any truth to the two of you planning to run off together?”
“No, there was never such plan as that.”
“When she left me at Aunt Pearl’s, I don’t think she ever meant to come back.”
“About that, I can’t say. But I do know your mama loved you. You were never the reason she left.”
“Why did you? Come for me, I mean.”
“You were innocent—and I never meant a stranger should raise you. You don’t look like her. Too much like me. …” He drifted a bit. “… had that smooth skin the color of fool’s gold, that hair blacker than chimney soot. A pureness with a song that put larks to shame.” His voice held a dreamlike quality, barely audible. “Then, you’ve got gumption neither of us had. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry about all those cards I never sent. I was too ashamed of the way I left.”
“Never missed cards.”
“Red, there’s something else.”
“No, Jodie. I know everything I need to know.” He raised his hand and pointed toward the dresser. “You might want to take those papers with you when you go.” His hand dropped back onto his chest.
She picked up four sheets of paper and a padded folder. Written in his hand were her complete game statistics for four seasons of high school basketball. The folder held her high school diploma. She turned to thank him, but he either slept or pretended. She straightened the tangled covers for the last time, and when she was ready, she pulled the door closed behind her.
She went to bed early, determined to get the sleep she’d need
for a long drive, only to be awakened by the roar of the wrecker on the road. She dressed and went to stand on the porch, listening as Silas dropped the Dodge. Leaving the wrecker at the far end of the lane, he drove the Dodge into the yard. She stepped off the porch and went to meet him.
“Didn’t plan on waking you. But now that you’re up …” He grinned.
He climbed onto the car and sat on its roof, his feet dangling. He pulled a bottle from his back pocket, and after she’d settled next to him, he passed it to her.
He rapped the roof with his knuckles. “You don’t have to worry about getting stranded. This old gal’s solid.”
“I’m not worried. With any luck at all I’ll drive her back in one of those little skimpy uniforms.”
“You just might at that.” He passed the bottle, and after they’d downed nearly half, she asked if he was drunk.
“Not yet. How ‘bout you?”
“About the same.” She moved closer to him.
He reached and gently pulled her down to lie next to him, and they each studied the starlit sky.
“Remember the summer we counted fourteen shooting stars and decided it had to be a world’s record?” He smiled at what she believed was his memory of their shared innocence, the ease of it.
“Yep, and you were so sure, you wrote it up and sent it off to the Grit newspaper.”
“I was naïve enough to think it would result in a miracle and I’d get a free ride to the university.”
He’d gone to the mailbox every day that summer.
“Got little time for stargazing now days. But I think about it. The closest I come is the bits of poetry I read now and again. A lady poet wrote that love is love, and it doesn’t need to make sense. What do you think?”
“A good woman once told me as much. If she’s not altogether right, then she’s real close.” Tears ran along her temples, and she didn’t feel to hide them.
“The woman I talked to yesterday? Crystal Ann, I think she said.” He didn’t look at her, and while his question was awkward, it was all right that he asked. They’d both need practice at honesty.
“Yeah. In Mobile. Think I’ll start there. But first I’ll make a quick stop at Mr. Samuel’s place. Settle one last thing before heading out.”
“Can’t hurt.”
He climbed down from the rooftop and pulled her to her feet. They held each other for all the right reasons, and then he let go.
She understood that he wished they could go back to the way he’d believed things were. But Jodie Taylor was right where she lived and breathed, and welcomed her tomorrows.
At dawn, after only a few more hours of sleep, Jodie took her suitcase in hand and stopped at Red’s door. She listened to the sound of his steady breathing, and Buster raised his head, blinked, and resettled. She was content, believing that Red and Buster were to live out the remainder of their days together in this place.
On the passenger seat of the Dodge, Silas had left ten twenties stuffed into an envelope, along with a brief note that wished her a good life. On the dash, he’d placed a fistful of wildflowers.
Turning west, Jodie glanced back at the old house, awash in the radiant colors of the new day, and somewhere Jewel Taylor was smiling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pat Spears’s debut novel, Dream Chaser, was released in August 2014 by Twisted Road Publications. She has been nominated for a United States Artist Grant, and her short stories have appeared in numerous journals, including the North American Review, Appalachian Heritage, Seven Hills Review, and anthologies titled Law and Disorder from Main Street Rag, Bridges and Borders from Jane’s Stories Press and Saints and Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival 2012. Her short story “Stranger At My Door” received honorable mention in the 2013 Lorian Hemingway Short Story competition and “Whelping” was a finalist for the Rash Award and appears in the 2014 issue of Broad River Review.
Pat is a sixth generation Floridian who lives in Tallahassee, Florida. For more about Pat and her work, visit her website: www.patspears.com, or find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pfspears
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my first readers for their astute insights and invaluable feedback on the manuscript: Sally Bellerose, Tricia Booker, Margie Craig, Connie May Fowler, Darlyn Finch Kuhn, Gale Massey, Donna Meredith, Lorin Oberweger, Amanda Silva, and Vickie Weaver. Each of you embraced the novel’s protagonist, Jodie Taylor, and her sometimes dark, but always hopeful journey to self-discovery, thus encouraging me to tell her story from the heart.
A deeply felt thank you to Connie May Fowler, author and teacher extraordinaire, and to a special community of fellow writers for their gracious and enthusiastic support: Alex Dunlop, Karen K Becker, Debra Exum, Victor Hess, Bonnie Omer Johnson, Nancy Levine, John Macilroy, Diane Marshall, Rosemary Porto, Sheila Stuewe and Emily Webber.
Thanks to Dorothy Allison for her gift of friendship and encouragement over the long years it has taken to breathe life into this novel and a special thank you to Joan Leggitt, for her unyielding faith in this story and my ability to tell it honestly.
Praise for Dream Chaser by Pat Spears
“Fine, damn fine. And at times simply stunning!” - Dorothy Allison, author of National Book Award finalist Bastard Out of Carolina
“An extraordinarily well written and original novel, “Dream Chaser” clearly documents author Pat Spears as a talented and imaginative wordsmith. With its deftly crafted characters and a riveting storyline from beginning to end, “Dream Chaser” is highly recommended.” – Midwest Book Review
“Spears’ ability to endear us to such flawed characters speaks to a rare, gifted view of humanity.” – Tricia Booker, My Left Hook
“… a real accomplishment … [Dream Chaser] is a powerful and beautiful book.” - Sean Carswell, author of Madhouse Fog
“Spears has a remarkable gift of taking the kind of rundown man we’d shake our heads over … and painting his humanity with such tenderness we want to rush up to the next down-on-his-luck stranger we see and offer a hug and assistance.” – Southern Literary Review
“… readers will cheer Jesse’s misguided efforts to salvage his life and win over his children. Pat Spears has created a realistic and hopeful story of a father’s love and a family’s hard-won salvation. Dream Chaser is a novel to relish and ponder, and the characters will stick with a reader long after the final pages.” - Tallahassee Democrat