More Than Words Volume 4

by Linda Lael Miller

  I guess I’m a little irritated at Monte for taking over a lot of things, just assuming I want him to do them. Of course, I have not told him not to. There is not a food for saying that you don’t want a person to do something. And I guess I really do want him to be around, only I’m all confused about it.

  Wrapping the warm muffins in a cloth napkin, I grabbed the mug of coffee I had poured for him and stepped out on the porch.

  “Well, good mornin’, beautiful.” Monte was just rounding the front of his pickup.

  My insides got jittery with the word beautiful. Monte has called me that on occasion for the many years that we have known each other, so I do not know why it should now jangle me. I turned and grabbed my wide-brimmed straw hat off the hook, plopping it on my head and saying, “Good mornin’. Radio says it’s gonna be hot. We both better get at it.” I pushed out the screen door.

  Monte is an old school friend of Henry’s and mine. He and I had dated a couple of times in high school before I dated Henry. Then Henry went off to college, and I followed the next year and ended up marrying him. Monte went off to the navy and around the world. He came home, used the G.I. bill to become a geologist and went all around the world again for oil companies. He has been married twice, but he lost both of his wives. That’s how he puts it, but what he means is he got divorced.

  Through the years Henry and Monte stayed in touch. Many a Christmas or Fourth of July, when his family had their reunion, Monte would show up at our door. Five years ago he retired and moved back home permanently, and he and Henry became fast friends again. Since Henry’s death, Monte has done a number of things that take a man’s strength and some knowledge of electronics, such as changing out the well pump when it broke and clearing tree limbs downed in an ice storm.

  In the past six months, though, I suppose that he has all but rented billboard space to say that he would like me to take up with him.

  I went over and handed him his coffee and napkin sack of muffins.

  He looked from me to the food and coffee and back to me, saying, “I came extra early, because I thought I might be in time for a sit-down breakfast.”

  “I ate a while ago, just boiled eggs and a banana.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Letting go of any further conversation on that score, I went on to the toolshed for baskets and my gardening tools. When I came back past Monte, still standing in the driveway but now nibbling on a muffin—he had set the mug of coffee on the hood of his truck—a look of pure confusion passed over his face, as if he wanted to help me but did not know what to do with the food.

  “Mighty good muffins,” he said with his mouth full.

  It is impossible for a woman to be complimented on her cooking and remain unaffected, but I did my best. I said that I was glad he enjoyed them, and headed on through the gate to the garden.

  We—or I, as it is now—have a large vegetable garden and a small orchard of apple and peach trees. I sell a good bit of the produce at a stand down at the bottom of our driveway. Since Henry’s demise, the garden and the produce stand have been my saving grace. Both give me a lot of time for thinking, and vegetables and fruits do not require you to talk to them, although I like to think they enjoy my singing. The whole of gardening is a place I feel at home, always have, and suddenly I find myself at ease with Monte, who has followed me and is standing at the rail fence, eating his muffin.

  “We are gettin’ the best tomatoes this year. Just look at this…” I proudly held up a plump Campbell. “Do you want to take some to your mama?” Not only did I like Monte’s mother, but I knew she truly appreciated my tomatoes.

  “Oh, yeah…I was supposed to ask you for enough for her to make sauce.”

  “Got a’plenty.” Quite quickly I filled several baskets with the prettiest tomatoes—Campbells and Arkansas Travelers, all of them deep red. Why would anyone want one of those varieties of green or orange tomato? I asked this question of Monte as I carried the baskets over to the fence. He wiped his mouth with the napkin and said he didn’t know.

  Then, as I bent over to set the baskets down, he said, “Don’t you ever wear anything besides bib overalls?”

  That question sort of stopped me in my tracks. Slowly, still bent over, I twisted and looked up to see him looking down pointedly at my behind. I straightened.

  “It might be nice to show yourself as a woman,” he added, giving a little grin. “I know I would like to see you in a skirt once in a while.”

  I said what came to mind, which was “I don’t suppose I care what you would like to see me in.”

  He was clearly surprised by that, and I guess I was a little, too.

  The next instant I was realizing how blue his eyes were and noticing the angry-hurt expression on his face. I could not stand it. I whipped around about hard enough to jerk my head off and stepped over to the rows of zucchini. I thought: I dress for myself. My overalls are tough, comfortable and have plenty of pockets to carry a pocket knife and Kleenex and garden snips—and a few dollars and a lipstick on the occasions when I run uptown for something or happen to go to early church service. Work clothes on women are not at all strange in our rural area. And it isn’t as though I am twenty-five anymore, or even thirty-five. I’m fifty. And I do not look mannish. When was the last time you saw a man wearing a pink, flowered thermal shirt under overalls?

  Monte spoke aloud. He said, “Is it lonely in there, Ellie Perabo?” his voice carrying across to where I crouched at a zucchini plant. I gazed at it as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

  He said, “Henry is as dead as he’ll ever be, Ellie. But you’re alive.”

  I knew not replying was the rudest thing, and I was trying really hard to get words to my tongue, but I could not figure out for the life of me what to say to him. I just crouched there with a zucchini in my hand, having the urge to offer a basketful to him, as silly as that sounds.

  Then Monte turned and walked off.

  For a few seconds I almost called to him. I watched him get the ladder and set it in place, and I kept thinking I was going to call to him and run over there and try to talk to him. But I did not, and he went on up to the roof.

  The moment of opportunity passed, and all the reasons why I could not possibly explain to him took over. The main reason, which I was fairly certain he would not appreciate hearing, was that I had spent a great deal of my marriage struggling to explain myself to Henry. I did not want to make the effort anymore.

  All in all, the best course seemed to be to stay there and pick zucchini, while my mind bounced from what went on with Monte to the fact that the zucchini plants were about done in by squash bugs. Henry and I had never used pesticides. Henry had been devoted to organic farming, had done all manner of study about it and worked himself to pieces with all manner of remedies. For me, it was just easiest and wisest to follow Mother Nature’s ways and seasons. Let a zucchini be what it was, and when the time was over, let it go on.

  THE SIGN NAILED TO the produce stand said Perabo Fruits and Vegetables in fancy, colorful script. I had designed and painted it myself the month after Henry died. The project kept me busy fourteen hours a day for a week. The sign was far more fancy than the old tin produce stand on which it was posted. The stand sat in the shade of a big old elm south of our driveway entry, which is alongside a main state highway leading to the interstate and Little Rock. We even have a long-and-wide sort of lot that the state paved when they resurfaced the highway. Did I mention that Henry had worked for the state road department?

  I have established the habit of opening the stand for a few hours each morning and evening during the highest traffic times. I also put in coffee, cappuccino, packaged snacks and cold drinks, and the news and sale papers. Business has grown with quite a few regulars. Frankly, it is amazing the amount of money I’m making. If Henry had known we could make this good, he would have had me down here every day. I have more than once looked up and said, “I told you so, Henry.”

  When the l
arge old LTD came chugging past, I was sitting on my red-and-white kitchen stool, watching traffic go by out in the bright sun from behind my dark Ray-Bans. The LTD caught my attention not only because it was old but looked new, but because Henry and I had owned one exactly like it years ago. It was a déjà-vu moment. And then I noticed that the car appeared to have engine trouble. It did this sort of chug-chugging as it headed off the road and to the far end of the paved area. It really is such a perfect place for stopping that cars see it and break down with regularity.

  My eye lit on the license plate—Texas tag.

  The car sat there for some moments. Then doors on both sides opened simultaneously. No further movement for a curious minute, and then a young woman got out from the driver’s side and a little girl popped out from the passenger side and went running around to join the woman. Both females wore baggy Tshirts and shorty-shorts and flip-flops. They stood staring at the car, as if watching for it to spontaneously start.

  I have to say that a complete picture of their life came to me—married too young, baby too young, living on hope and expectation, and unseen grace when those ran out.

  The two gave up trying to start the car with looks, and the woman bent inside for quite a long period. Curious, I came up off my stool a moment, as if that would help me see better. At last the young woman came out dragging a purse and another child, reinforcing my theory as to her life.

  The second child looked to be a boy of about three or four. He kicked and screamed in such a way that I had to watch. He definitely did not want to get out of the car. But he was small enough for her to capture both his hands batting at her face and to prop him on her narrow hip. The little girl handed him a toy, apparently a favorite, because he eagerly took hold of it. The woman started toward the produce stand, and the girl raced ahead, alternately skipping and running.

  “Hello,” the child said, coming directly to where I sat.

  “Hello.”

  “Our car broke down…over there. That is our car.” She pointed at the LTD.

  “I see that.”

  We gazed at each other. The way she regarded me made me remember my sunglasses. I slipped them off and smiled at her. She studied me a moment, then her gaze skittered along the shelf of snacks in front of me and on to the vegetables. She was tiny, fine-boned, with dark eyes and a face bright as a new penny. She asked what were those, and those, and those.

  “Peanuts and okra and cucumbers,” I said. Most children these days do not see food before it is in a can or box.

  The young woman came forward through the shade of the big elm. She looked wilted, as would anyone in the growing heat and carrying a little boy, who possessed the most beautiful head of curls made even curlier by sweat. He did not hold on to the young woman and was clearly dead weight.

  As they entered the stand, the boy turned his head to look around. I knew he had caught the scent of all the fruits and vegetables. There are certain people who do that, who are drawn by the scent. He had the face of an angel.

  “Mama, I want a peach,” said the little girl. “I want one of these peaches.”

  “Okay, honey…”

  Just then the little boy about lunged out of her arms, stretching his hand toward the basket of peaches.

  “Oh, dang—Cody, wait! I’ll get you one…here. Roline, sugar, get a couple of dollars out of my purse.” She dropped her bag off her shoulder for the girl, and went over to put the boy on the only chair next to the wall near my counter.

  “Sit on the chair,” she said in a particular fashion, holding the peach away from him until he said something to her. “Good boy.” She handed him the peach and touched his hair with her cheek in a tender gesture that washed all over me.

  Next the girl handed me up a dollar. I waved it away. “Those peaches are at their peak and have to be eaten now. You kids take this basket of ’em.”

  I went over to the cooler, pulled out two bottles of Lipton iced tea and passed one to the young woman and opened the other for myself. While I waited to see if she would start a conversation, I thought of various things I might say. Thankfully she started everything by telling about how her car had begun to act up several miles back, right after they had stopped at a Wendy’s.

  I knew the one she meant. It was a nice place, with picnic tables under trees right off its parking lot. Everyone remarked on it. We chatted about the restaurant for a moment, and then I managed to slip in the question as to whether she was traveling far.

  She had come from the Texas Panhandle and was heading to her sister’s, east of Nashville about fifty miles. From the facts of her traveling alone, just something about her, I suspected that she had parted with her husband, maybe he’d left her, something of that sort. Of course he could have been killed, maybe in the army overseas, but I did not think so.

  Then she said, “The car’s twenty-three years old, but it only has about fifty-thousand miles on it and is about like new.” She rubbed the cold iced tea bottle over her forehead. “The old man who owned it took real good care of it, kept it in his garage all the time.”

  I said that model was really nice, that I’d had one myself. “Did it set up much? Sometimes settin’ up for long periods can get an engine all clogged.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess it did…he’d been sick the past couple of years.” She gazed off at the car for a minute. “Would you know of a garage nearby?”

  “There’s Red Jordan’s up the road about a mile in town. He’s a pretty good mechanic. Won’t cheat you.” I could see, as if her thoughts ran across her forehead like the news ticker on CNN, that she was adding up all the money she did not have.

  She asked if it was okay for the kids to sit there out of the heat a minute while she made a phone call. I said of course it was. She pulled a cell phone from her purse, told the girl—Roline—to watch after her brother, and walked out to the edge of the shade of the elm.

  I divided my attention between the woman as she walked around with the phone at her ear and the little girl, who chattered away, while the little boy sat there and kept on eating peaches and lifting his face and hand for the girl to wipe off the juice. He enjoyed the peaches—they were the white-flesh variety, none better—but he did not like the juice. She tried mopping him up with napkins from the dispenser, but these would hardly do. I passed her a wad of paper towels. Then I found a package of Wet Ones and gave her the whole pack.

  “Peaches are really good with all that juice, but I usually eat one bendin’ over the yard or the sink,” I said. Seeing the boy take another peach from the basket, his third, I cautioned, “You might want to limit those peaches, now, or he’s liable to get a tummy ache.”

  “Oh!” Her sweet little face looked stricken.

  “It’s okay…three is fine,” I said quickly, “but maybe you should move the basket over there.”

  She did this instantly.

  I gazed at his little face, at the sweat-dampened hair that curled tenderly around his soft ear. He had beautiful long eyelashes. His gaze focused hard and fast on the peach he ate.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  It was Monte, coming through the rear door, bending slightly so as not to hit his head. Our eyes met before either of us had time to think. I saw the softness in his, and knew it was okay between us.

  “Hey,” I said, and in so many words explained. “Their car has broken down. They’re from out in Texas and headin’ over to Tennessee.”

  “Uh-huh. I saw the car from up at the house…thought they might be broke down.” He walked over to the cooler to take out a Coke, snatching a handful of peanuts in the shell from the basket.

  The girl told him, “My name is Roline. That’s our car broke down.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Roline.”

  “I am not a Miss.”

  “Oh, what, you married, then?”

  “Nooo.” She smiled up at him in a flirty manner that came natural to little girls. Even though he had never had any of his own, kids just seem drawn to Monte,
probably because he’s a big part kid himself.

  “Hey, son,” he said to the boy, who did not look up from his peach.

  “He’s my brother, Cody. He won’t talk to you.”

  “Uh-huh.” Monte came over to stand by the counter and crack open peanuts, eating them one at a time. The little girl watched him, craning her neck upward—Monte is a tall man—and asked what “those” were. He cracked a peanut for her. We both watched the young woman out in the shade of the elm, saw her smack her cell phone closed and stand there a moment, her shoulders rigid.

  Just then little Cody started pitching a hissy fit. He had finished his peach and wanted another. His sister blocked him from the basket, while at the same time attempting to locate the toy that she had dropped on the ground. His mother was pulled out of her despair and hurried over.

  “No!” she said firmly. “Cody, stop.” She restrained him, and then he sort of went stiff. “Gosh, you sure are sticky, Cody.”

  “The peaches, Mama…” The girl gave him the toy—a modernized version of the old Magna Doodle—and he clutched it to him. “I had to take them away because he was eating too many…he was just eatin’ and—”

  “Roline, get my purse, please.” The mother hefted the little one to her skinny hip.

  “Did you get Daddy, Mama? Is Daddy comin’?” asked the girl, handing up the bulky purse.

  “No, sugar. Daddy’s too far away to get over here.” She looked at me. “I’m goin’ to go see if the car will start. Maybe after sittin’ there, it will.”

  I said, “That’s a good idea. You know, sometimes cars do that.” I felt compelled to believe this for her. Besides, stranger things have happened.

  Monte and I followed along after them over to the car, as if we had been asked.

  The young woman put the children inside, then slipped behind the steering wheel and turned the key. Things looked hopeful for a second; the engine actually almost turned over. Then it died.

  The young woman tried again, and again, grinding the starter, until I finally could stand it no longer and put a hand on her shoulder.