Transition

by Henry Charles Mishkoff

  “Umm… well…” For a frightening moment, Jillian thinks that Sunshine has forgotten the question, and they’ll be here all night. But then it seems to pop back into her head. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I was just wondering why you had a fire going in June. I mean, it seemed to me that it was pretty warm outside.”

  “Well, that’s an easy one…” G.W. begins, in his slow drawl.

  “Daddy likes fires,” Jillian interrupts, “so he put in a separate thermostat in the den so he can crank up the air conditioning real high and have a fire even in the middle of the summer without freezing out the rest of the house. Now can we hear the story?”

  G.W. grins. “Well, I guess that’s it in a nutshell.” He settles back in the seat. “So, I guess if you don’t have any more questions…”

  Sunshine shakes her head firmly.

  “Okay,” he says. “I guess this story starts when me and Jillian and Jillian’s ma drove east to try to scrounge up some money so I could expand my daddy’s oil business some. We stopped off in Atlanta first, then we drove up the coast to Washington and New York, but I couldn’t get any of them Yankee banker sons-of-bitches to return my calls, much less…”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on.” Jillian holds up her hands in a T for time out. “What are you talking about, Daddy? We never drove to New York. Why would anyone want to drive all the way to New York?”

  G.W. chuckles. “Well, it wasn’t so much a question of wanting to drive to New York. At the time, that was the only way we could afford to get there.”

  “Why don’t I remember any of this?” Jillian asks suspiciously.

  “You were only about… oh, maybe five years old at the time, sweetheart. Anyway, to make a long story short…” – which is becoming increasingly obvious to Jillian that her father has no intention of doing – “…I pretty much got the cold shoulder everywhere I went, and your ma was starting to whine that she wanted to go home. And Jill, you were getting a bit cranky yourself, if you don’t mind my saying so.

  “And everybody told me that there was absolutely no sense in us driving all the way up to Boston, that if I couldn’t get any money out of a down-home good-ole-boy Texas banker, no stuck-up nose-in-the-air Boston banker was gonna give me the time of day. But I figured, what the hell, it’s only a hop and a skip from New York to Boston, and as long as I’ve come this far, I might as well bite the bullet and drive the rest of the way.

  “So that’s what I did. I checked us all into a Holiday Inn somewheres – or maybe not, I don’t know if I coulda even afforded a Holiday Inn back then, it mighta been a Motel Six, or whatever passed for a Motel Six back then, I don’t know. But anyway, I spent the whole day on the phone while Jill and her ma went off to spend what little money I had left at the Bargain Basement or some such foolishness.

  “And somehow, some way, I wrangled an appointment with a fine, young, prim-and-proper, high-society, up-and-coming vice president at Copley National, the snottiest bank in the whole goddamn state. Hell, probably in the whole fucking universe, if you ladies’ll pardon my French. I don’t know how I did it. I guess I just dazzled him with the old Texas charm and plowed him about a mile under in fresh horseshit.”

  “Are you talking about Uncle Stan?” Jillian guesses, sleepily.

  “That’s who it turned out to be, alright,” G.W. replies. “But at the time, he was just J. Stanton Kennedy to me, just another voice on the phone, just another dude who had the money that I needed. As far as I knew, he was nothing but some bright boy from Harvard with an MBA and a three-piece, pin-stripe suit who just happened to hold my financial future in his sweaty little hands.

  “So, anyway… I’m gonna git me another beer,” G.W. says. “Y’all speak up if you want anything.” He walks over to the refrigerator, retrieves and opens another bottle. “Well that’s the last damn Lone Star,” he says in dismay as he sits back down. “Good thing for me you ladies ain’t thirsty.” And with one powerful chug, he downs half the bottle and smacks his lips appreciatively.

  “Where was I,” he says, after a maddening pause. “Let’s see… oh yeah. Well. There we were, trapped in Boston, nothing to do, a whole day to kill. Did I tell you that he wouldn’t see me right away? He probably didn’t have a goddamn thing to do but sit around all day with his thumb up his ass, but he wanted me to think that he was all busy and important-like, so he made me cool my heels for a day.

  “And I sure didn’t want your ma hitting up them stores anymore. Hell, I would’ve had to sell the damn car and hitchhike back to Texas the way she was spending my money. So I says to her, I says, ‘Barbara Anne? Why don’t you and me and little Jill here take us a ride out in the country? I hear there’s some right pretty scenery around here.’ I knew that would get her…” – G.W. lowers his voice conspiratorially – “…sly dog that I am, ‘cause of the way she’d been ooing and ahing all the way cross the country about how everywhere in the whole U.S. of A. was prettier ‘n Texas.

  “So there we was, one bright, sunny September day – or maybe it was October. Yeah,” he nods thoughtfully, “it was early October, I do believe, now that I think about it. And it was a Wednesday, I think it was, although I wouldn’t want to swear to it. Heat spell, they said, must’ve been all of eighty degrees.” He laughs. “That was all they talked about, eighty degrees in October, you’da thought it was a sign of the second coming. Eighty degrees.” He shakes his head, still disbelieving after all these years.

  “So anyway, Jill,” he continues, “that’s how come your ma and you and me all ended up stuffed inside the big, black Caddy I was driving back then. I don’t know if you remember it or not, Jill – the one with the horns on the front? And I ain’t talking about no car horns, ladies, I mean them big ole Texas longhorns, stuck right there on the hood in front of God and everybody. And we just lit out in no particular direction, just getting out of the city was all I cared about.

  “So here it was getting on, oh, maybe three in the afternoon…”

  Transition

  Book 2: Conflict

  Part 6:

  The Flashback

  2.6.1: Pierce's Bridge

  “G.W., honey, please stop soon and get me something to drink, will you, sweetheart? I’m parched.”

  “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “And Jill has to go to the bathroom. Please, darlin’, next time you see a place to stop…”

  “Barbara Anne, I said I would stop next chance I got, now didn’t I?” G.W. tried his best to prevent the testiness from creeping into his voice. “Just keep your pants on, ladies, I’m sure we’ll come to something in just a minute or two. Hell, this ain’t Texas.”

  Ironically, G.W. had, just an hour ago, been complaining about the impossibility of getting away from civilization. It seemed that every promisingly desolate side road he turned down led to a town or a shopping center in just a minute or two. But now that he was actively seeking a place to stop and rest, the countryside seemed to have turned into a deserted wilderness.

  How come you can never find a Denny’s when you need one? he mused. And didn’t they have even one single Stuckey’s in this part of the world?

  Although he hadn’t mentioned it out loud, G.W. was concerned about something other than his wife’s thirst and his daughter’s bladder: The needle on the temperature gauge was creeping perilously close to the red line. As if in divine retribution for his belittling of this New England version of a fall heat wave, his car was actually in danger of overheating.

  If I can give it a rest real soon and then top off the water tank, he thought, I can make it back to Boston okay. And then I can have it looked at and fixed up while I’m at the bank tomorrow. But if I don’t find someplace to stop real quick, I’m gonna have to shut down the air conditioner, for starters – and that’s not going to play so well with this crowd.

  “Not one goddamn country music station,” G.W. said absently, mostly to himself, but loud enough for Barbara Anne to hear. She shot him a sharp gla
nce that he knew meant Don’t Use That Kind of Language in Front of the Child. “Sorry,” he said instinctively, “but don’t you think it’s kinda strange that they don’t even have one god… one country music station on the whole fuh… on the whole radio?”

  The radio had precipitated a minor skirmish earlier in the day. Barbara Anne had wanted to listen to classical music, while G.W. had maintained that he’d rather even listen to the news (which he disliked) than Music Like That (which he loathed). They had compromised on a “light” rock ‘n roll station; although neither of them was especially fond of rock, it was something that they both could tolerate. And so the radio war had settled into an uneasy truce.

  Although G.W. was too preoccupied to appreciate it, the scenery through which they were meandering was exactly what he had been seeking all day. Sweet, gently rolling hills, heavily wooded with the graceful and dignified hardwoods that were so rare in north Texas. The stony soil casually littered with a multicolored visual feast of fallen leaves. The landscape punctuated with flowing fields of billowing grass. And all of it lined with typical, picturesque, knee-high New England stone walls.

  How quaint, Barbara Anne had said, more than once. How pretty. We sure don’t have anything like this in Texas.

  And G.W., longing for the wide-open spaces of home even as he tried to appreciate the scenery, had bitten his tongue and swallowed hard in the name of domestic tranquility.

  By Texas standards, the weather was exceptionally pleasant for this time of year: clear and dry, temperature perhaps in the low 80’s. A refreshing breeze circulated the air, providing intermittent gusts that caused the peeling sycamores and slender birches to shiver and relinquish ethereal, feathery flights of autumn leaves.

  Why the Cadillac was acting up was a mystery to G.W. Compared to the summer temperatures it regularly tolerated in Dallas without complaint, this New England weather was positively arctic. Must be a leaky radiator hose, he thought. But it’s a slow leak, and it’ll be okay if I can only stop real soon and let it rest and give it some water…

  “Welcome to Pierce’s Bridge,” Barbara Anne said. It took G.W. a few seconds to realize that she was reading a road sign. “I think there’s a town up ahead,” she added with some relief, and she leaned forward, as if getting closer to the windshield might help her to spot the first signs of civilization.

  “Hope so,” he said.

  “What’s that down there, G.W.? I can’t quite make it out.”

  As they rounded a curve at the top of a rise, Barbara Anne had spotted a small structure nestled in the valley below. A general store, perhaps? Or maybe what passed for a 7-11 in this part of the world?

  “It doesn’t look like much of anything from here,” she added, sounding like she was trying not to get her hopes up. “I think maybe it’s a barn or something.”

  “Naw, it must be some kind of store,” G.W. said, trying to will it into existence. “Nobody’d build a barn so close to the road. Not even a crazy Yankee.”

  “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “I know, honey,” Barbara Anne said consolingly, with an accusing look at G.W. that he caught out of the corner of his eye. “Daddy’s gonna stop for you real soon, aren’t you, Daddy?”

  “I sure do hope so,” G.W. said. He stole a glance at the temperature gauge, where the needle continued its slow-motion crawl to the red line. “Believe me, I’m doing the best I can.”

  From a distance of maybe a hundred yards, the building at the bottom of the hill looked none too promising. It appeared to be a wooden structure that might have once been painted bright red, many years ago, but had long since weathered into a dull reddish-brown. As they approached, it was impossible to tell if the building was in use or even inhabited. No visible markings or signage betrayed its function. There were no vehicles in the small gravel parking area that separated it from the road by maybe twenty feet.

  This sure doesn’t look very promising, G.W. thought. But what he said, cheerfully, was: “Well, ladies, let’s take us a look-see and figure out what we got here!”

  But it wasn’t until they slowed down and crunched onto the gravel that they were able to tell what purpose the building served, and then they sighed with relief. They sat in the car, staring through windows that were rolled all the way up against the New England heat. And what they saw was a fruit and vegetable stand. Which appeared to be copiously stocked.

  The stand consisted of a back wall, two sides, and a high, sloping roof that overhung the structure by several yards, clearly to provide protection from the elements. A long, wide counter, which extended nearly the entire width of the structure, was cluttered with wicker baskets overflowing with luscious-looking produce: apples and pears, carrots and cucumbers, peaches and plums, potatoes and tomatoes.

  Hanging from the roof by two thin ropes, a freshly painted sign proclaimed NATURE’S BOUNTY in an ornate, hand-lettered script. “Nature’s Bounty,” G.W. read, half to himself. Seems appropriate, he thought.

  Strangely, although Nature’s Bounty was well stocked, there didn’t seem to be anyone behind the counter. But since the counter was fronted solidly with wooden slats, someone seated on a low chair behind the counter might not be visible from their angle.

  But although there appeared to be no one behind the counter, Nature’s Bounty was not entirely unoccupied.

  Seated in front of the counter on a tall, wooden stool, a small girl of perhaps two or three, sporting a mop of blazing red hair, sat swinging her legs rhythmically, staring back into the car with enormous, expressionless round eyes.

  At least, the shoulder-length hair made the child appear to be female. But after some of the male hairdos they had seen in Boston – shocking and degenerate by Texas standards –G.W. wasn’t prepared to say that he was certain of the child’s gender. She (if that’s what it was) was dressed in grubby denim overalls, and nothing else. No shirt. No footwear. Her overalls were held up by a solitary shoulder strap; the other strap hung limply, unclasped. Her face was streaked with dirt; she appeared to be healthy, but unkempt. An urchin. A street urchin, in other surroundings – here, a vegetable nymph, perhaps. The keeper of the produce.

  For thirty seconds or so, they gawked at each other: the Kendals of Texas staring out the windows of their sleek (but ailing) black Cadillac, the redheaded child of New England swinging her feet, staring back with wide-eyed innocence and no visible emotion.

  “Surely they didn’t leave her out here all alone?” Barbara Anne asked to no one in particular. “Why, she’s just a baby! What kind of people would do something like that?”

  As if in answer, a head popped up from behind the counter, only its hair and eyes visible peering over a basket of cucumbers. Bright red hair, parted in the middle. A blue bandanna, knotted in the back, for a headband. Not a child, a young adult. Eyes darting from side to side, appraising the situation, checking out the idling Cadillac and its occupants. Then the head disappeared behind the counter just as quickly as it had appeared.

  “What the…” G.W., mystified, didn’t quite trust his eyes. “Did you see that?”

  Barbara Anne nodded slowly, puzzled. “What’s going on, G.W.?”

  A second later, the head popped up from behind the counter again, and this time its owner stood up with it. A smiling young woman of perhaps twenty, with waist-long red hair. Slim, but not especially tall. Her face, while thin, bore what were unmistakably the same features as those that appeared on the pudgy visage of the waif on the stool. The child’s mother, without a doubt.

  She was buttoning up what appeared to have once been a man’s dress shirt. The sleeves had crudely been cut off mid-bicep, and the fabric had suffered the further indignity of being tie-dyed a light blue, marked irregularly with ragged darker-blue circular patterns. It was clear that she had been at least partially undressed behind the counter, and was unhurriedly correcting the situation. She buttoned the shirt from the bottom up, and stopped halfway, leaving a considerable amount of cleavage expose
d.

  “Oh, my,” Barbara Anne clucked in amazement and disapprobation. “Will you look at that?”

  I am, G.W. thought. I certainly am looking at that tasty morsel. And I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look – say, licking distance. But, of course, he said nothing. The young woman smiled broadly and waved at them enthusiastically, although G.W. knew that she probably couldn’t see them very well through the windows, which were darkly tinted to deflect the Texas heat.

  “I don’t think we should stop here, G.W.,” Barbara Anne said, tentatively. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

  “But Mommy, I have to go!”

  “Jill has to go to the bathroom, sweetheart,” G.W. echoed, hoping that he sounded reasonable, rather than patronizing. “And besides,” he said as vaguely as possible, so as not to cause undue alarm, “I think the car could use a breather.”

  Suddenly, another figure rose from behind the counter, springing up next to the young woman like a jack-in-the-box. Although this figure’s dark hair was nearly as long as his companion’s, a bushy walrus mustache clearly identified him as male. Like the woman, who appeared to be about the same age, his hair was parted in the middle and secured with a bandanna. Sporting a T-shirt that featured the familiar tie-dyed pattern, he hugged his companion briefly but meaningfully. Then he too began to wave at the car.

  “Oh, my,” said Barbara Anne, as she was struck by a jolt of insight. “Oh, my,” she repeated, “They’ve been…” She glanced at Jillian and lowered her voice. “They’ve been fooling around behind the counter, G.W., I’ll bet that’s what they’ve been doing.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, my.”

  “Well,” said G.W., momentarily speechless as he fantasized about what he would like to do with the cheerful young woman behind the counter. And then again: “Well.”

  “And with their little girl right there, G.W., can you believe it? How irresponsible.”