Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  The others watched them quietly. “No, I’ve got it,” she said and stepped back with an odd, graceless movement, knocking over a cardboard display of painters’ tape.

  He helped her clean up the display, then followed her outside.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” she said.

  “Happens all the time. Contractors are a clumsy lot.” She had the feeling he was laughing at her, although his expression was neutral, courteous. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

  “There’s a really good barbecue place down on the river.”

  She tried to imagine what she would tell the aunts and Maitland if she didn’t show up for lunch. She imagined Josephine’s pale gray eyes flickering over her, ferreting out her secrets.

  “You can follow me in your car, if you like,” he said. “It’s not too far.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we get there early enough we won’t have to wait for a table.”

  “All right,” she said.

  It was only a short drive, but when she pulled up in the half-filled parking lot, she knew it was a mistake. Someone was bound to see her and report her to the aunts. Someone had probably seen them standing in the street outside the hardware store and was already on the phone to Josephine. Ava imagined phone lines all over Woodburn lit up like warning flares. It amazed her that she had only been here a short time and already she was beginning to care what others thought.

  He was waiting for her under a sign that read Battle Smoove Barbecue Joint, and when she saw him standing there she stopped caring about the phone lines.

  “Order the brisket,” he said as they waited to place their orders.

  It was early, but already the tiny restaurant was crowded with construction workers, lawyers, and clerks. You placed your order at a long counter in the front, then took a number and sat at one of the small tables covered in red-checked tablecloths, waiting for them to call your number.

  “Out or in,” the surly countergirl said.

  “Sorry?” Ava said, fumbling with her wallet.

  The girl sighed and stuck a pencil behind one ear. “You want it to go or here?”

  “Here,” Jake said, handing the girl a twenty.

  “No,” Ava said in embarrassment, but he laughed and said, “You can buy the dessert.”

  They made their way through the crowd to a small table in the far corner. Ava didn’t recognize any faces but she had met so many people at Alice Barron’s barbecue that she couldn’t remember everyone. She saw a table of women near the front who seemed to take note of them as they came in.

  “Why is this place called Battle Smoove?” she said, sitting in the chair he’d pulled out for her.

  “Battle Smoove was a World War II veteran, a pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen who came back and opened a restaurant using his mother’s recipes. When I was a boy we used to ride our bikes out here to eat barbecue.”

  “So you mean there really was a person named Battle Smoove?”

  “There was. He’s dead now. His granddaughter runs the place.”

  He went to the counter to get their sweet teas. His clothes were dusty in the back, as was his dark hair, and Ava remembered that someone, Darlene Haney probably, had told her he was a furniture maker.

  “What do you think?” he said, sliding back into his chair and setting her tea down in front of her. He seemed completely unconcerned about his appearance, as though it were perfectly natural to go around with wood shavings in his hair.

  She sipped her tea, which was strong and sweet. “About what?”

  “About anything.”

  “I think it smells good in here.”

  “Best barbecue in Tennessee,” he said, pulling a straw out of a wrapper. He glanced around the room, nodding at someone he knew.

  “Are you a furniture maker?”

  “I am.” He dropped the straw in his glass. “I have a shop over on Hanover Street. When I dropped out of college, I went out to California for a while and when I came back here, I had to figure out something to do. I’ve always been a carpenter of sorts. I worked summers during high school and college on a construction crew, and I like working with my hands. So I started building furniture in my garage. Chairs and tables, simple stuff like that at first, that I sold at craft shows around the area. And then, over time, more and more people started calling me to do custom pieces, and my business kind of took off from there. Now I have a shop and do most of my sales on the Web, selling to dealers in New York and LA.”

  “So you’re living the dream.”

  He smiled and shrugged, and Ava marveled at the powerful force of attraction, how it could make someone ordinary seem extraordinary. “I guess you could say that.” He crossed his arms and leaned forward against the table. “What about you? What brings you to our fair city?”

  She told him about her job in Chicago and how she and Will had gone to school together, and he had suggested that she come South for the summer to work on her book.

  “Now, I’m just doing a little writing,” she added vaguely, looking around the crowded restaurant.

  “Fiction or nonfiction?”

  “Fiction.”

  “Cool.”

  He didn’t look at her the way others did when she told them she was a writer. A fiction writer. There was no stunned silence, no look of surprised embarrassment.

  “So you’re staying with the Woodburn sisters?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How are the old girls?”

  There was really nothing ordinary about him, she decided. She would have noticed him anywhere, even on a crowded city street, his height, his black hair, the almost Oriental slant of his dark eyes. “They’re fine. Fanny’s a hoot. And Josephine, well, what can I say about Josephine? She’s an interesting character.”

  He laughed. “She is that.” He turned his head and stared out the window and she was struck again by his resemblance to Will. Thinking of Will brought a slight tremor of guilt, a feeling of disloyalty that was swiftly and smoothly cancelled out.

  “They used to be quite fond of me,” Jake said.

  “Really?”

  “When I was a boy,” he said mildly.

  The girl at the counter called their number and Jake went to get their food. Ava thought about calling the aunts to tell them she wasn’t going to be there for lunch but she was afraid she might get Josephine and have to explain where she was. And then she was angry with herself because she was a grown woman and she didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.

  She picked up her phone and called Woodburn Hall. Maitland answered and she explained that she had stayed in town for lunch and would be back in a little while.

  “Hell, take your time,” Maitland said. “There’s nobody here but us old folks and we’ll see you when we see you.”

  She hung up and slid the phone back into her purse. Jake set the plates down on the table. “Do you want extra sauce?”

  “No, thanks. Do you need some help?”

  “Nope. I got it.” He returned to the counter and brought back a basket of condiments and several large paper napkins. “How’s Uncle Mait?” he asked.

  “He’s great,” she said. She had ordered the brisket and a side of coleslaw and he’d ordered the pork sandwich with fries and slaw. She was glad now that she hadn’t ordered the sandwich because she could see that it was going to be difficult to eat. “Does he remind you a little bit of Colonel Sanders in a sports coat?”

  He grinned, opening his sandwich and piling his coleslaw on top. “I never really thought about it,” he said.

  They were quiet for a while, turning their attention to their food. From time to time he would turn his head and stare thoughtfully out the window. He’s moody, Darlene had told her. He has a dark side. Ava was comfortable with his long silences. She had always been attracted to men with a touch of melancholy.

/>   “You know the aunts paid for my schooling. I’ve always been grateful to them for that.” He gave her a long, searching look.

  “So you grew up with Will?”

  “No. Not really. We ran in different circles,” he said, and she thought how attractive his smile was, the way it pulled the corner of his mouth up higher on the left side than the right. “Early on, Will went to private school and I went to public. And then when they decided to send him off to boarding school in eighth grade, Fanny showed up one morning at my mother’s place to see if maybe I wanted to go, too. I was a couple of years older than Will and I really didn’t want to go off to school but I’d already gotten in a little trouble with the law, nothing serious, just high-spirited, boys-will-be-boys stuff, and my mother thought it’d be best if I got out of town for a while.”

  Ava chewed slowly. She had the feeling he was trying to convince her of something, to make her see things his way. “Why do you think they did that? Offered to pay for your schooling?”

  He shrugged, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I think Fanny did it out of the goodness of her heart and Josephine—” He was quiet for a moment, as if considering this. “Well, I think Josephine hoped I’d look after Will.”

  “And did you?”

  His eyes flickered over her face, his expression sober, reproachful. “Of course I did.”

  “So whatever happened between you and Will, the falling-out between you two, didn’t come until later? After boarding school?”

  “I see you’ve been listening to the town gossips.”

  “Just Darlene Haney.”

  He groaned and shook his head. “The mouth of the South,” he said.

  “She said it was over a girl.”

  “Is that what she said?” His gaze remained sober, reflective. After a minute he set his sandwich down, carefully wiping the tips of his fingers. “It was more complicated than that. I did something wrong, something disloyal. Something Will and Josephine are never going to forgive me for.” He seemed unwilling to say anything else. He leaned back in his seat, stretching one leg out beside her. “They’re not forgiving people, those Woodburns,” he added, and there was something soft but insistent in his voice.

  All around them was the hum of conversation, the clatter of silverware.

  “You’re a Woodburn,” she said.

  “Not the right kind.”

  She told him then everything she’d learned about the Black Woodburns, including the mystery of Charlie Woodburn’s death. While she talked he sat very still, listening.

  When she’d finished, he raised his glass, drained it, then set it back down. “Why would you want to dredge all that up? It happened more than sixty years ago.”

  She was surprised by his reaction. “Why wouldn’t you? Aren’t you related to Charlie in some way?”

  He shook his head. “That’s what’s wrong with this place,” he said. “Everyone gets so caught up in living in the past, they don’t live in the present.”

  “But you have to admit it’s an interesting story.”

  “Maybe to a fiction writer.”

  Outside the windows the river glistened like a sheet of glass. A boy and an old man stood at the edge of the water, aimlessly casting their lines.

  “Fraser Barron told me there used to be a ghost in his house.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Fraser Barron,” he said softly.

  “Do you believe Woodburn Hall is haunted?”

  He looked at her as if he thought she might be kidding, but when he saw that she wasn’t, he said honestly, “I wasn’t there enough to know. I spent some weekends with the aunts when I came home from boarding school. But usually I stayed with my mother. The girl Will dated in boarding school, though, had a different take on it.”

  “Hadley?”

  He looked at her curiously. “Yes, Hadley. She used to come and stay for weeks at the house visiting Will. She slept downstairs in that front bedroom and she used to say a dark man visited her in the night.”

  Despite the heat, Ava felt a cold chill on the back of her neck. “What did you think of that?”

  He stood abruptly and collected her empty plate, stacking it on top of his. His voice changed, becoming curt and businesslike.

  “I always assumed it was Will,” he said, and turning, he went to take their plates to the counter.

  After that their conversation settled on less controversial matters. Jake told her about his days out in Santa Cruz and Ava told him about her time in Chicago. The restaurant gradually cleared around them but neither one made the first move to go.

  Jake asked her what her novel was about and she told him, going into great detail about her plans for the book. She was honest with him, too, about the problems she was having getting started. When she was finished he said, “What do you like to read?”

  She told him, running down the list of her favorite books, the ones she had displayed on her desk beside her rarely used computer, the classics she had read in childhood and college, as well as her current favorite contemporary artists: Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, Doris Lessing, and Peter Carey.

  “What novels do you have sitting beside your bed right now, waiting to be read?”

  She told him. “The first is about an eighteenth-century Irish giant who’s paraded on the sideshow circuit in London during the Age of Reason.”

  “And the second one?”

  “It’s about a nineteenth-century Anglican priest transported to Australia for gambling who marries an heiress and on a wager builds and moves a glass church from Sydney to New South Wales.”

  “You seem to enjoy reading historical novels.” He said this as if he was trying to make a point.

  Later, they got around to talking about their childhoods (he had never known his father either, they had that in common), and after a slow beginning, Ava began to tell him about her vagabond childhood. She told him about her mother’s lie regarding her father’s death in the icy Detroit River, and she told him about the letter she’d received from the man purporting to be her father, and as she talked, she became more and more amazed, because she’d never told anyone before, and now here she was confessing it all to a total stranger.

  “Why don’t you call him?” Jake said when she was finished. His hand lay on the table just inches from her own. She could feel a kind of heat emanating from him, a low vibration like pinpricks against her skin.

  “Call whom?” she said vaguely.

  “The man who sent you the letter.” Her expression made him smile. “Well, I can understand if you don’t want to call him, but at least write him. You have his address. Write him and ask him why he never, in twenty-eight years, sent you a birthday card or a Christmas card. It’s an honest question. You deserve an honest answer.”

  When they walked outside the parking lot was nearly empty.

  He walked her to her car. “Do you like horses?” he said.

  “I used to,” she said. “I read Black Beauty when I was eight. And I desperately wanted a pony when I was ten. But I’ve never really been around them.” She was rambling again. Now that they were outside in the bright sunlight, she felt a momentary awkwardness, a feeling of constraint.

  “My mother raises miniature horses.”

  “You mean those tiny ones the size of big dogs?”

  “They’re as smart as dogs, too. They’re house-trained, and they sleep with her at night. When she takes them to the mall they wear little sneakers made especially for miniature horses.”

  She smiled. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m dead serious.” He was quiet for a moment, staring off behind her at the distant river. “Would you like to go with me out to her place?”

  She had a sudden vision of Will’s face, of Josephine’s cold gray eyes, if they should find out. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

  “Not tomorrow. One day next week.”

  Ava watched a flock of starlings careening above a chestnut tree. “I have a lot of work to do.”

/>   “My mother knows all about Charlie Woodburn. You can pump her for information if you like.”

  Looking up into his face, she had a feeling of falling, of the ground opening up beneath her feet.

  “All right,” she said.

  On the drive home, she thought about what Jake had said about her liking historical fiction, his inference that maybe this was something she should try writing. It was astounding to her now, thinking back on their conversation, how much personal information she had shared with him.

  As a child, she had clipped photos from magazines and pasted them into little “books” she made out of construction paper, folded and stapled down the middle. She had written stories to go with the photos, filling the pages with her childish scrawl. She never showed the books to anyone, not even Clotilde, storing them in shoeboxes under her bed, and taking them out from time to time to “read.” It was one way she had found to fill her solitary childhood, but it was more than that; the act of creation gave substance and shape to her life. It made order out of the chaos. Sitting in school day after dreary day, she couldn’t wait to rush home to her little books, her little worlds.

  Later, when she went to college and read Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty for the first time with understanding, she had become more concerned with technique, dissecting the author’s work to see how it had been formed, how the author had used theme, symbolism, meter, all the tools of the trade.

  When she landed her first real job, she told herself it was just temporary. She’d do her real work in the evening, working on her novel, a sloppily sentimental historical romance. And she did, for a while, plodding through endless drafts trying to correct the choppy style, the unrealistic dialogue, the clichéd plotlines. But over time she grew bored with the story. Sitting down in the evenings became a kind of torture, a bleak realization of her talents laid out against the bright shimmering fabric of her dreams. Yet she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t give up so easily. To stop writing completely produced in her a bleak and relentless depression, so she stubbornly persisted, plodding through endless drafts and revisions, telling herself she was learning something each time. She was still working on this rambling seven-hundred-page novel when she met Jacob.