by Kristin Gore
“H-O-R,” she clarified, feeling her face flush.
Bo grinned and put his hands up in surrender.
“Do you coach lesser players?” he asked.
“Anytime,” Jiminy answered, surprised at her confidence.
“I’m gonna come find you when I finish this,” Bo said, motioning to the vast expanse of unmown lawn around him. “If I live that long.”
Jiminy smiled, happy to realize she still could.
Inside, Lyn had been watching them through the window for the past ten minutes, thinking about when they’d first met as children. She doubted either one of them remembered it.
Jiminy had been only six years old, dropped off by her quarreling parents for an impromptu visit. She was a silent, reserved child, and she’d quickly become Lyn’s little shadow, sitting for hours on the stool in the corner of the kitchen, shyly watching her every move. Lyn had gone about her business as usual, but every once in a while she’d stuck out her tongue without warning and waggled it around, causing Jiminy to erupt into paroxysms of giggles. Just as suddenly, Lyn would resume her poker face and reabsorb herself in her task. Jiminy would giggle a little longer to herself, then wait patiently for the next show.
That was also the trip that Jiminy had taken to drinking buttermilk. Lyn had never known a child to actually enjoy the taste. She watched Jiminy first sip some by accident, assuming it was regular milk. Lyn had waited for her grimace, but the girl simply cocked her head in surprise and took a longer sip. Not realizing that she wasn’t supposed to like it, she’d started drinking it regularly.
Lyn had been watching little Jiminy pour herself another tall glass of buttermilk, and wondering if there’d be enough left for the biscuits she was supposed to make, when an unfamiliar car turned down the long gravel lane. The sight of a strange vehicle made Lyn anxious, and she reflexively reached for the big butcher knife, not entirely sure what she planned to do with it. Lyn was relieved when she recognized her late husband’s niece climbing out of the car. She watched her unstrap a toddler from the backseat—a toddler whom Lyn had previously only heard jabbering and squealing in the background of a phone conversation. A toddler who turned out to look very much like her beloved Edward: the same eyes, those same steady features. The kind of face you wanted to drink up to calm yourself down. Lyn loved Bo as soon as she saw him, even from that distance; even through a window that needed cleaning.
She had hurried out the kitchen door, wondering whether Willa would mind this unexpected visit, considering she wasn’t particularly partial to children or interruptions. But to Lyn’s relief, Willa had looked up from the science labs she’d been grading on the porch and calmly introduced herself to Edward’s niece and her toddler. And then Jiminy had appeared, glass of buttermilk in hand.
“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing her little finger at him.
“His name is Bo, Jiminy,” Willa said.
Edward’s niece had flashed a look Lyn’s way, which Lyn ignored. Yes, the girl was named Jiminy. No, Lyn didn’t want to talk about it.
“Oh,” Jiminy said. “Would he like some buttermilk?”
And she had sat down beside Bo on the grass in the sun. She tried to teach him patty-cake. Bo laughed and grabbed at her fingers and made her shriek. Lyn hadn’t known how to feel, watching them. She’d looked to Willa to break them up, or let them play. But Willa had returned to grading her papers, forfeiting her prerogative to pass judgment.
Edward’s niece hadn’t stayed long—not at Willa’s farm, not even in Fayeville. She’d already decided that her destiny lay elsewhere, and no amount of disappointment could sway her from its pursuit. No amount of responsibility, either. She simply shrugged it off, the way happiness had shrugged her.
Bo, on the other hand, had remained right there in Fayeville from then on, passed around from relative to relative, looked after by the group of them. His mother and grandmother had kept “Waters” as their last name, instead of giving any credence to the men who had dipped into and out of their lives, so Bo blended right in with the family. But he and Jiminy had never crossed paths again. Jiminy had traveled from her home in southern Illinois to visit Willa a few more times, but Lyn hadn’t had charge of Bo during those visits. And then Jiminy had stopped coming altogether once she’d become preoccupied with trying to be an adult.
But here she was now, walking into the kitchen, all grown. Lyn handed her a glass of buttermilk that she’d absentmindedly poured as she’d reminisced. Jiminy looked understandably confused. Realizing what she’d done, Lyn almost snatched the glass back, but Jiminy was already raising it to her lips.
“Thanks,” she said quizzically, taking a sip.
Just as she had when she was a child, she drank with her eyes wide open. And she still didn’t wince at the sourness.
Two hours later, as Lyn sat folding pillowcases by the window, she watched Bo cross the freshly mown lawn to the house. She heard him let himself in the front door, cross the entryway, and knock on Jiminy’s door. Lyn stayed in the kitchen, quiet and still.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she heard Bo say.
“I’m glad you did,” Jiminy answered, so light and free.
“Have you recovered from your allergy attack?”
“Nearly.”
“Well, I got revenge for you,” Bo assured. “That grass won’t be bothering anyone for a while.”
“Thanks, I owe you one. Are you taking off now?”
“I was gonna go see a superstore about a HORSE. Wanna come?”
“Definitely,” Jiminy replied.
Lyn heard them make their way to the door, where they must have run into an unsuspecting Willa.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” she heard Willa exclaim, her voice mildly alarmed.
“Everything’s fine,” Jiminy replied. “I’m headed into town with Bo.”
“Oh,” Willa answered.
And Lyn knew the exact O her mouth was making.
“Do you need anything?” Jiminy asked.
“I don’t know,” Willa replied uncertainly. “I don’t suppose so.”
“Okay, see you later then!” Jiminy replied sunnily.
Then the door closed, and Lyn heard Willa sigh deeply.
“Shit,” Willa said, thinking she was saying it to herself.
In the other room, Lyn closed her eyes and slowly shook her head.
A few weeks later, Willa sat anxiously by the kitchen window, shuffling Jiminy’s stack of Polaroids and peering out into the darkness every few minutes. Willa had been surprised that Jiminy just left her photos around for anyone to look at, for anyone to judge. She flipped through them again, quickly enough that she created a moving picture of her granddaughter’s last few weeks—a cascading waterfall of captured moments.
There was Bo holding a basketball at HushMart, and Bo pointing to a diagram of the human heart with a mock-serious expression, and Bo lying on his back in the field behind the barn. There were a lot of Bo. There were a few of Willa, too—looking up from her crossword with a questioning expression, coming in the door with an armful of azaleas, sitting in her porch chair smiling. And there was Lyn baking biscuits, and carrying a stack of towels, and gazing out the kitchen window. But mainly the Polaroids were of Bo. Willa looked up from them and out into the night again, willing headlights to appear.
She hadn’t waited up for someone to come home since her daughter was a teenager, and she felt out of practice. And a little ridiculous. First of all, waiting for her daughter hadn’t ever kept her out of trouble, nor had it forged the meaningful, long-term relationship Willa had always assumed she’d enjoy with her offspring. Secondly, and more to the present point, her granddaughter was twenty-five and therefore didn’t have a curfew. But she was a young, uncertain twenty-five, spending time in a place she didn’t understand, and Willa felt apprehensive. Jiminy and Bo had been thick as thieves lately, but they generally called it a night at a decent hour. It was now nearly eleven. What could they be doin
g?
She dialed Lyn, who answered the phone sounding surprised.
“Lyn, it’s Willa. Have you heard from Bo?”
“No, ma’am. What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
Willa felt guilty for introducing that note of panic into Lyn’s night. But at least she wouldn’t be the only one worrying now.
“Nothing, it’s just Jiminy’s not back yet and it’s getting late. You don’t know where they went?”
“Bo’s staying at his friend’s this summer, not with me. And he’s grown now, so I don’t ask too many questions.”
Willa knew this was a reasonable position, but still, it angered her.
Lyn waited for Willa to say something more. She could feel the tension on the line; could sense that she was being blamed for Jiminy’s whereabouts. And though she liked that odd little girl just fine, there was only one Jiminy she’d ever wanted to be responsible for, and that Jiminy had been taken from her. She didn’t have the energy for another, even if she was Willa’s granddaughter.
She heard Willa suck her breath in between her teeth. It sounded chilly and impersonal, the whistle of an ill wind. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and controlled.
“Bo’s not into any bad news now, is he?”
There was none of the loose warmth that Willa’s vowels normally slid around in—they seemed mired in something cold and congealed.
Lyn took a moment to reply. Was Bo into any bad news? Of his own accord? More than the everyday bad news he had to swallow and shoulder and wade through and wear down? Nothing more than that. No, Bo wasn’t into any bad news. Not the kind Willa was intimating. Lyn kept her calm.
“No, ma’am, he sure isn’t. He’s studying for the imp-cats, you know.”
“The MCATs,” Willa corrected testily.
Willa knew Lyn knew all about the MCATs. Knew she wasn’t actually correcting her, but merely pointing out the slight speech impediment that crept into Lyn’s pronunciations when she got agitated. Which was rare—Lyn was usually too disengaged to get at all riled, so her speech stayed steady. Willa felt cruel for having caused the distress, and petty for mocking its consequences.
“Yes, ma’am. Imp-cats. M . . . CATs,” Lyn said.
“I just didn’t expect them to spend so much time together,” Willa continued.
She was trying to explain, but was only making it worse.
“Mmm-huh” was the reply.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Will we be seeing you Thursday?”
“Mmm-huh.”
Willa walked herself around the kitchen to try and straighten herself out. She’d offended Lyn, she knew, and she’d confused herself even further. What could she do to make it up? Maybe a yellowcake. Lyn always loved yellowcake.
She’d just cracked an egg and shaken away the unpleasant memory of cracking a fertilized one years ago—oh, the unwelcome surprise of embryonic development when all you wanted was breakfast—when she saw the headlights turn into the drive.
Jiminy felt like a better version of herself around Bo. She was less shy, less nervous, more curious, more lively. She hoped he’d been enjoying himself, too, and that she was more than just a mildly entertaining diversion from dry medical texts. But they hadn’t discussed how they felt. They hadn’t had physical contact besides friendly shoulder squeezes and high fives on the makeshift basketball court. Which was appropriate, Jiminy knew, at least where Fayeville was concerned. Anything more than a friendship would be frowned upon—even still, even today. Even so, Jiminy had let herself imagine a romance, and recognized that anticipating the disapproval it would engender actually made it that much more tempting to her. She was annoyed at herself for this—for harboring impure motivations. She believed she should want something solely for the thing itself, not because it was surprising or controversial. Because she was falling short, she felt as tainted as the town, and this shielded her from delusions of moral superiority.
Jiminy wasn’t thinking about any of this at the moment, however. She couldn’t think of anything besides what she’d just experienced. In fact, she wasn’t positive she’d ever be able to think about anything else again.
At her cajoling, Bo had taken her to visit the crazy old great-uncle who’d talked of his aunt Lyn’s past when no one else would. Bo’s Uncle Fred lived on a hilltop two counties over, forty minutes away, and he’d proven as loquacious as advertised.
“If it isn’t Mr. Bojangles!” he exclaimed as they pulled up to his sprawling, chaotic abode.
There was a house amid the clutter, but you had to look hard for it. A tree was growing through Fred’s front porch, and a couch and coffee table sat in the yard. There was an inside-out feeling to the whole place, as if it had been scooped up by a tornado, churned around, and spat back out in no particular order. Plants, animals, and furniture spilled all over one another. It was almost a caricature of a backwoods eccentric’s lair.
“And who’ve ya brung?” Fred bellowed. “Who’ve ya brung with ya, Mr. Bojangles?”
“Hey, Uncle Fred. This is my friend Jiminy,” Bo answered.
Fred had rushed toward them, surprisingly fast for a man so frail and gnarled, and peered intently at Jiminy’s face.
“There’s only one Jiminy,” he said finally. “You must be someone else.”
Jiminy had been holding her breath without realizing it. She exhaled then, keeping her gaze steady. Fred’s eyes were rheumy but bright.
“I must be,” she agreed.
And then the three of them had sat in Fred’s outdoor living room, surrounded by strutting peacocks, and talked for hours.
Now, as the car rolled slowly homeward, Jiminy’s head was stuffed with more of a story than she knew what to do with. She felt it pressing against the back of her eyes and welling up in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her.
“You okay?” Bo asked.
Jiminy considered. What a question, given what they now knew. How could she be, really? How could anyone? She could still hear Fred’s words echoing in her head.
“They hunted ’em,” he’d said. “They hunted Jiminy and Edward and they got ’em. Ran Edward’s car off the road and drug ’em out and shot ’em. Threw ’em in the river, burned their car. Don’t know who exactly—thing is, it coulda been any of ’em. It coulda been all of ’em. That’s the way things were.”
Listening to Fred, Jiminy had cried long, stringy tears and felt herself unraveling.
“But why?” she’d asked.
Fred picked some mites off a peacock chick while he let the question hang. It took a full minute of silence before Jiminy had understood its significance and regretted her question. There was no attaching rationality to such a thing. Darkness knew no bounds.
As they were saying their goodbyes a little later, Fred had offered Jiminy a handkerchief.
“She shone too bright is why,” he said, before ducking back into his falling-down, inside-out home.
Jiminy pondered this now, twisting Fred’s handkerchief between her fingers. She didn’t realize that she was shaking.
“J?” Bo asked, lightly touching her arm. “You okay?”
She pulled herself together.
“As okay as possible,” she replied.
Bo nodded, looking older than he ever had. He turned off the road into Willa’s long driveway, careful to slow down for the gravel.
“You need any more company?” he asked quietly, as he pulled up to the house.
Through the window that looked like it needed cleaning, Jiminy could see her grandmother in the kitchen and was struck by how powerfully she resembled her mother.
“I’ll be all right,” she replied, as she climbed from the car.
She was already out before it occurred to her how selfish her shock had made her. Bo had more reason to be upset, after all. She bent her knees and leaned into the open window.
“Oh God, what about you?” she asked, her voice full of concern.
Bo smiled a smile that seemed more a part of
the frown genre.
“I’m okay,” he said.
Jiminy was unconvinced.
“Really, I’m okay,” Bo repeated, making an effort to sound more reassuring. “I’m good.”
Jiminy sighed. Whatever their emotional state, she agreed that he was. Which was saying something, in this world.
Willa wiped some flour off her arm and tried to compose her face into a mellow arrangement, away from its mask of worry.
“Hi,” Jiminy said, as she walked into the kitchen.
“Oh, hello,” Willa replied pleasantly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to make a yellowcake. It’s Lyn’s favorite.”
Jiminy nodded, but Willa felt like her granddaughter was staring right through her, out somewhere behind her body, beyond these walls.
After a long moment, Jiminy focused her saucer eyes back on her grandmother’s.
“Tell me about Edward and Jiminy,” she commanded.
Willa felt a tightening in her chest, and reached behind her for the counter edge to sink against.
Jiminy was waiting for Lyn when she pulled into the drive Thursday morning. Waiting outside, sitting on the stump of the oak tree that a storm had taken down two summers ago. Willa had planned to get it removed before observing that it made a convenient chair. For shucking corn or snapping beans or just letting the breeze soothe some of your day, Lyn thought, as she climbed slowly out of her car. Not for someone looking to bother her before she’d had her coffee.
“Get any worms?” Lyn asked, as Jiminy jumped up and moved toward her.
Jiminy looked confused. Lyn didn’t feel like explaining her early bird joke, even when Jiminy began looking behind her and nervously dusting off the seat of her jeans.
“Did you talk to Bo?” Jiminy asked.
Was that what this was about? Lyn wondered. She didn’t think it had gotten to that stage yet with these two, though it was surely headed there, if someone didn’t intervene. Whether Lyn or anyone else liked it, she could see it hovering, waiting to be.
“Not about anything special,” Lyn answered.
“Well, can I talk to you?” Jiminy asked.