“That’s enough. You hear me?” Jim demanded.
Jim was right it was enough—enough to help me disconnect and get down to business. If Pop’s land were half as bad as Jim had insinuated then I should be grateful for the help, and use it wisely. I boldly opened the door, this time intentionally slamming it against the wall, and entered the living room ready for battle. “Is this better?”
“No!” Jima laughed.
“What’s wrong with this?”
“It’s ok if you’re going for a walk down the street in the middle of winter,” she said through her laughter. “You’ll die of heat stroke dressed like that.”
“Maybe a cotton shirt and some old wranglers. Do you have any boots?” Jim asked.
“This is as grungy as it gets,” I said.
“We’ll take you by the house you’re about Jason’s size. Momma will be tickled pink to see you,” Jim said.
“Really? Do you think that’s a good idea? It’s pretty early they might be sleeping.”
“They got up before we did and had breakfast waiting on the table,” Jima said.
I was reluctant to see the sisters. While Jim’s mother might be tickled pink I was sure Aunt Polly would drop dead at the sight of me. Polly hated my mother and in turn saw no good in me. Jim seemed sure that I would be welcomed so off we went, all four of us crammed inside the cab of Jim's truck.
“Where’d you move from?” Jima asked before we exited the driveway.
“Dallas.” I answered.
“What’d ya do there in Dallas?”
“Studied.”
“What’d ya study?”
“Brains.”
“Cool. Why’d you come back?”
“It was time to come back.”
“I heard stuff about your Momma, and about you, but I don’t think either one of y’all’s evil. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Good God almighty Jima!” Jim yelled.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! But, a girl needs to know who her allies are. Am I right Shanna?”
“You are so right Jima. You have no idea how right you are, and might I add that I am ever so grateful to have you on my side. It sounds as though I’ve become quite the legend.”
“Something like that,” Jason said.
“All right that’s it. No more talking,” Jim said.
After we had pulled into the driveway and emptied ourselves from the truck. Jima caught my arm. “You better wait here. We might have a triple casket event on our hands if I don’t pre-announce you.”
“Good thinking,” I said, and walked to the back of the truck. Jason followed Jima, and Jim followed me.
“I know I owe you one hell of an explanation,” Jim said. He was practically cowering. It obviously hurt him worse than it had me.
“You don’t owe me a thing. You lived your life and so did I. But, if it makes you feel better then I’ll take you up on your offer to help.” I wanted to know what had happened to Vicky, and how they ended up together, but now was not the time. It was time to get serious about the farming. I needed to get the land ready as soon as possible. “I’d like to believe that we’ve outgrown games, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, and walked into the house. I could smell his cheap cologne wafting behind him, as I followed. It was musky and made my head spin with a desire to be with him, to look into his eyes and see the same desire for me.
Jima was running down the hall yelling. “Better hurry ricochet rabbit’s ready to bounce.” Jim’s mother was the first to greet me. Without saying a word she cupped my face in her hands and kissed me smack on the lips.
“How blessed we are to have you back home with us,” Pilly said.
“That’s very kind,” I said. “It’s nice to be back.”
“For heaven’s sake, I said I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw it, and here you are.” She hugged me again, and then pushed me towards the hall. “You best get going—Polly’s a coming.”
“What in tarnation is all that racket going on out there? Is that Jim’s voice I hear? Jason, is that you?” Polly loudly asked her questions from another room. “What’s wrong? I know something’s the matter or else you wouldn’t be back home so soon after just leaving. Now, one of y’all needs to answer me. Jason come in here and help me with my walker.”
“I’ll get Momma; you get her clothes, get her outside and I’ll meet y’all in the driveway,” Jason said.
Jim ushered me into Jima’s bedroom, shutting the door behind us. Jima was running in and out of the bedrooms gathering clothes, slamming doors, and talking a mile a minute. She felt inclined to tell me a story about each piece of clothing that was laid out on the bed. The wife-beater was a birthday present to Jason from Aunt Picky. He hated the color so he threw it in the top of his closet with the other rejects. The jeans also belonged to Jason, but were too small since he had a beer gut from all the drinking he did, all the time. She was starting her story about the socks when Aunt Picky poked her head through the open door. Jima bolted out in search of boots as Picky yelled after her.
“Don’t run, walk!”
“Yes’m Aunt Picky,” Jima said.
Her gaze turned slow and deliberate towards me.
“You’re back?” she asked.
“I am,” I said.
“All right then welcome home.”
“Thank you. It’s good to be home.” She walked off without another word. Jima, waiting in the shadows, came through the door and closed it gently.
“The quiet storm,” Jima said, handing me a pair of boots.
The constant hum of voices became louder, their words were taking shape, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before they fully manifested. My ability to hear Jim and Jima was fading fast. I concentrated on what my breathing would sound like if I could hear it, and watched their mouths move, waiting for a break. I had to whisper to ensure I didn’t yell. Because we were hiding from Polly, a whisper and being hurried seemed fitting. “I’ll get dressed and meet you at the truck. Go ahead and get it started. I’ll jump in the back. I want to ride in the back.” I said. They both nodded and rushed out the door. Jim turned and said something on his way out. I gave him my most ambiguous smile. Learn how to read lips, I told myself.
I quickly changed and gathered my things. The room had been Jim’s when we were kids, and I knew it was an easy window to climb out. I made it to the ground easily. Jim tried to make me sit in the cab with the rest of them, but I looked away and opened the tailgate. What he was saying I would never know. I smiled, waved him, and his silent admonishments away as I steadied myself in the truck bed. When we’d pulled out of the driveway I gathered the pads and pens and began writing—legs crossed with a tablet on each knee, and a pen in each hand. The sun felt warm and welcomed on my face. We drove out of town and down Farm-to-Market road 702 towards Sylvester; a town incorporated in the eighteen nineties. The post office had long since closed causing it to no longer be considered a town; which meant no running water or electricity. It did however have the largest cotton gin, Feed & Seed and Dry Goods store in the county.
I kept my eyes open and mind alert to what was going on around me. I could feel eyes on me, but I didn’t look to see who of the three was watching. I kept on writing. I’d remembered riding down this road with Pop, he would tell me stories about his family coming to Texas on a boat before he was born, and how they’d docked in Galveston and rode north in a horse drawn carriage. Their small group of travelers with meager supplies didn’t stop until they had arrived at government land, in the plains of west Texas, where they could stake their claim.
The row of businesses soon ended and the vast cotton fields began. I assumed I had at least another thirty minutes before we’d arrive at Pop’s farm, but couldn’t be sure when the crew would finish. I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun. Suddenly I was floating above the earth. It felt as if I were thousands of feet in the air, but could see all the people below me with clarity. I saw a family at the
beach. They were eating fried chicken from a picnic basket, and drinking wine from plastic glasses. At their urging, I floated down to join them in a toast. They smiled at me. I felt welcomed. The entire family liked me, and wanted me with them. The men wanted to talk to me about the weather. The women wanted to talk about their hair and fashion styles. I told a joke and everyone laughed. It was warm, breezy, and when I put my feet in the water it sent chills down my back as goose bumps rose on my arms. I was so entranced in my fantasies that I didn’t realize the truck had had come to a stop.
“Teach me how to do that, please! Please teach me! I have to know how to do that,” Jima said, jolting me back to reality.
My hands were limp, and the writing had ceased. I hurried to gather my papers, and didn’t panic or show any fear of what she saw as I completed the task of putting my tools away. Jim opened the tailgate, picked up two rocks, threw them at me and yelled. “Think fast!” I caught one with my right hand—a split second later—I caught the second rock in my left hand.
“I still got it,” I said.
Jima’s jaw dropped. Jason gave me a smirk and walked to the barn.
“She’s ambidextrous,” Jim said. “She can do anything with one hand that she does with the other.”
“What? What’s that?” Jima asked.
“I’m both handed. Most people are either right handed or left handed, but I’m both handed,” I explained.
“Teach me to be both handed,” Jima begged.
“I’m pretty sure you have to be born that way,” I said.
“Pretty sure ain’t for certain though is it?” Jima countered.
I jumped out of the truck bed, and turned to face the land. To the left I saw piles of used lumber laying atop thick layers of tree limbs and brush. In the far back corner was a garbage dump. From where I stood, an eighth of a mile away, it appeared to be about five feet tall and covered a good thirty acres. There were garbage bags of all shapes and sizes, and the smell coming from that direction was stronger than a cow’s afterbirth sitting in the midday sun. To the right was a wide variety of people’s toss outs, from truck bodies and car parts to old mops and kitchen appliances. The only thing I didn’t see was land not even a patch of dirt or weeds. I had no understanding of the foreign emotion that ran through me as I surveyed Pop’s most prized possession. His land was ruined, and I was to blame for it’s demise. “It smells like a fucking pig farm,” I said, and headed to the barn. “Give me a second alone. I need to think.”
I slammed the side barn door behind me causing it to fall off its rotted hinges. I was pissed. Everything had gone sour from the beginning. First, that damned Ceely Masters show, the dust storm, Jim, Jima, Vicky, the awful timing of the crew, and now this. I wandered around the barn in a rage bumping into tarp-covered mounds of furniture taken from Pop and Albee’s house. I took a tarp off the dining room table, took another off the butcher block and that’s when I saw my old VW sitting on cinder blocks. After a quick walk around, I found all that remained of her was the shell. The engine had been removed along with all four tires. My thoughts were swimming around unattached to any solution. I couldn’t brush off the guilt. I was disappointed in myself. I fully understood my fault in this mess, but I couldn’t understand why people dumped their shit here. I owned what I had done and would make amends, but the town, the people, needed to take their share of the blame. My Pop would have turned heaven and earth over for any of those people, yet they allowed his property to become the county dump? I’d seen Pop put money he could have used for his own pleasure in the church collection plate every Sunday morning, and they couldn’t spare a dime to hire someone to haul away the junk? Since they obviously didn’t want to get their own hands dirty. I hated that town almost as much as I hated myself. I had spent ten years sitting around eating. If I had to be on the run I needed to be sharp mentally, as well as physically. The land was still there, I was still there and together we would succeed. Fuck Sunny, fuck those country hicks, and fuck the jerks that wish me nothing but harm. I had myself, and that was all I needed.
“A couple of weeks after you left an eighteen wheeler dropped it off at their house,” Jim said, as he made his way around the rubble.
“What did the truck driver tell them?”
“Nothing. He opened the truck, backed the car out, put it in the driveway and left. Didn’t say a word.”
“Did you put it in here?”
“It was in their garage until Albee died. I took it and put in here with the rest of their stuff. Your Pop had taken the engine out and scattered it all over the garage. I guess he thought at least it was something he could fix. The tires were rotted out so I burned them.”
“Did you put the fence around the graves?”
“Uh huh. I found it in here when I brought the car over.”
“It looks good. I’m surprised no one has tried to steal the car.”
“No one ever paid any mind.”
“No one’s going to steal from the devil’s spawn. They’re way too afraid of retribution. That’s why they didn’t take down the fence.”
“You can’t control what people think, Shanna.”
“Especially not these ignorant motherfuckers.”
Jim turned my head to face him gently with his hand. “Listen. You can’t control what people are thinking, but you can control your reaction to their thoughts. Don’t play into their games—ignore them.” He kissed me gently, not a kiss of passion, a slow, lingering comforting kiss. When he pulled away I was startled at my oblivion. It was frustrating; I couldn’t dare let myself react upon emotion. I’m just a little overwhelmed, I assured myself. Jim kept staring at me as if he wanted a response to something. I had no response to give. I looked to the side and then up, anywhere but at him.
“Good grief!” I said when I saw the track of an overhead door. “Did you do that?”
“I did that,” he said. “When Pop turned eighty, I put it in. It’s not automatic, but it’s easy to pull. He could barely get those side doors open any more.”
“You were good to them.” I said. He walked around to the other side of the barn and raised the overhead door allowing the sun to flood inside. I went outside and looked at the chaotic mess before me. “Well, where do we start?”
“I’ll take Jason and Jima down to the Feed & Seed. I figure Bradley’s got a truck or backhoe on the lot we can use.”
Bradley, the son of Bert and Betty Garner and husband of Helen, was being groomed to take over (when his father finally retired) the family’s retail business in Sylvester. The Parts and Repairs Retail Warehouse carried a wide variety of car and farm equipment parts, and rented heavy equipment and haulers.
“We can burn the brush and garbage, we’ll have to tow the cars and scrap the metal.” Jim dug his boot down into a pile of brush and leaves until it hit hard dirt then bent down and scowled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The ground is hard. There’s at least a weeks worth of plowing, this soil’s going to take a few turnings to get her ready. I’m not sure if we can get a tractor this late in the game. I’ll have to bring mine down here.”
I put on my work gloves and started piling junk, working for a good hour before Jim, Jason, and Jima came roaring down the road in Jim’s Ford dually pulling a trailer with a backhoe riding on top. We worked together for eight hours and were able to clear five acres of junk into two manageable piles. One was for burning, the other for the dump. We lit the fire and then started back to the barn where it was a bit cooler, we all needed a break. We had been at it since seven that morning. The sun was relentless, and not even the slightest breeze came around to cool us off.
“That’s a good start. Don’t you think?” I asked, using my best optimistic tone.
“Sure,” Jason mocked. “Only another few hundred acres to go. We should be able to finish that before supper!”
“Then we can go out for ice cream!” Jima chimed in.
“But not before we get our hair did
!” Jason continued as he and Jima pushed each other around.
“You two take your comedy act on the road. Run over to the barn and open the overhead door, and get some oil for the backhoe,” Jim said. Jason and Jima raced to the barn still laughing.
“It doesn’t take much to amuse them,” I said.
“Don’t let it bother you. They wouldn’t tease you if they didn’t like you. I’ll help them with the oil,” he patted my butt, and ran to the barn.
I was uncomfortable with his ease. I had let this reunion with him progress too fast. Had this been a normal situation I could fall right back into life with him without complaints or concerns, but this was very far from a normal situation. I couldn’t lead him on just to leave again. The problem was that I needed Jim. I would have never been able to accomplish what we did today on my own. When we kissed it felt as if I’d left one day, came back the next and Jim was kissing me hello. As good as all those emotions seemed I knew it could not last. We left with Jim’s truck bed filled with the garbage that couldn't be burned.
“Do you want to stop and get a burger?” Jim asked.
“No,” I said. I was ravenous, but I wanted to shower and put on comfy clothes before eating. I was not anxious to spend a tension filled evening with Jim. This had been the longest, and most emotional day I could remember. I wanted nothing more than for it to end. I was tired, sore and wanted to go to bed alone.
6.
The session began before I could take a bite of my sandwich. I grabbed my bag and pulled out the notebooks and pens—found the place where the previous session in the bed of Jim’s truck had ended—pushed my sandwich to the side—set the timer on my watch, and then started writing. My body was physically exhausted, and my mind overwhelmed. This was the third session in less than twenty-four hours. I closed my eyes and allowed my body to relax as I wrote.
The session lasted an hour and thirteen minutes and left me with a face and shirt that was drenched with tears. I was still heaving as if I had been bawling, yet I had no memory of crying or any of the words I had written. I closed the books, cleaned my face, put on a dry shirt and ate my sandwich. Still hungry, I plunged into the refrigerated leftovers until I couldn’t swallow another bite and then washed that down with two beers. Twenty minutes later I was fast asleep.
Patient: Crew (The Crew Book 1) Page 6