The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1)

by Moreau, Iza

  Outside, just beyond the barn and stables, was a rectangular open space about half the size of a football field. It used to be my mother’s regulation dressage ring, but I took out all the lettering and fencing a few weeks after I moved back to Pine Oak. I converted the judge’s box into a target shed—a three-sided enclosure six feet high, four feet wide, and about four feet deep. It sheltered a single square bale of cotton that took up almost the entire volume of the shed. And the bale was large enough to accommodate a regulation 80-centimeter bullseye target. Today, though, it was bare save for a three-inch black circle painted about three quarters of the way up the bale—about the height of my chest.

  Four fence posts stood between the barn area and the shed; one at 70 meters from the target, one at 50 meters, one at 40 meters, and the closest at 30 meters—all of the regulation shooting distances. Each was equipped with a clip on one side and a hook on the other. The clips, which I had lined with thick pieces of felt, were strong but soft, designed to grip a bow without scratching the surface. The hooks were for quivers.

  I went directly to the 30-meter line, clipped my bow to the pole and began my stretches. At the top of my game I usually spent ten or fifteen minutes warming up, beginning with 50 jumping jacks and continuing with several exercises designed to stretch most of the muscles in my arms and abdomen. This afternoon, though, I was content just to raise my arms over my head a few times and even then I felt my heart begin to complain. I put on a three-fingered shooting glove and strapped on an arm guard.

  Facing the target, I took the first arrow from the quiver and fitted it onto the string. Pulling the string back with three fingers was surprisingly difficult, even with my lightest bow, and my bow hand began to tremble. That didn’t bother me too much because the first few shots were always the hardest, even when I warmed up properly. Sighting down the arrow, I let the string roll off my fingertips like a wheel rolling off the edge of a cliff, and saw the arrow miss not only the black circle, but the entire cotton bale, burying itself in the tall grass a few feet short of the target. Was I that weak? I aimed much higher with the next arrow, but it flew all the way over the shed. I quickly nocked a third, which buried itself with a thunk in the wooden edge of the shed. Shit. I knew that was going to be a bitch to pull out without bending it. And forget about ever finding the one in the grass behind the shed.

  I clipped the bow back onto the post and swung my arms around in circles a few times. I arched my back, took a deep breath. Try it again. I took up the bow and, steadying my arm as best I could, sent the arrow into the bale, missing the black circle by only a few inches. I took up two more arrows in quick succession and managed to hit the outer edge of the black circle with both.

  “Good shootin!” The voice behind me almost made me jump out of my shoes, and I spun around. I was greeted by the sight of a smiling Ginette Cartwright in white sweater, lime skirt, and matching lime-green shoes.

  “Fuck a duck, Ginette!” I sputtered. “Give me a heart attack!”

  “Sorry, Sue-Ann.” Ginette was walking across the grass toward me. “Ah never saw anybody shoot one of those before. Ah mean, in person.” With her blonde, expensively done-up hair and immaculate clothes, Ginette looked like a runway model lost in the woods.

  “What are you doing here, Ginette?”

  “Well, ah do guess ah’m about the last person you’d expect to see.”

  I could think of one or two, but not many. When I had gone to work at The Courier, I had not been pleased to find that Ginette worked there too. There was some consolation in the fact that she was only a low-paid typist. Later, when Ginette had gotten a promotion to sales and had become the girlfriend of the boss at almost the same time, I connected the two events as I would have a bow and arrow.

  “That’s about right,” I said.

  “Ah’m, you know, jist worried about you.” I tried to express some degree of disbelief but Ginette hurried on. “Cal told me about your bein sick.”

  I burst out: “God damn it! Cal promised not to—”

  “Don’t blame Cal,” said Ginette. “A person’d have to be a bat not to see that somethin’s wrong. You’ve got bags under your eyes and you’ve lost enough weight to make a stew. And look at how your hands are shakin.”

  I stared at my bow hand and shook my head. “I need to sit down,” I said. “Come into the office so I can put this stuff away.”

  “Office?”

  “In the barn.”

  “Ah’ll follow you.”

  “Will you bring my quiver?” I asked. “It’s hanging on the pole there.”

  Without a word, Ginette gathered up the quiverful of arrows and walked beside me into the barn. In the office, I set the bow on the table without unstringing it and sat down heavily in my armchair in front of the desk. I motioned Ginette into a matching chair nearby.

  “The only thing I told Cal,” I began angrily, “is that I haven’t been feeling very well for the last couple of months. Sometimes I get weak and shaky, like you saw outside. Maybe Cal thinks I have cancer or something. But that’s not it. I’m probably just anemic. It’s nothing. I can take care of it.”

  “You’ve been to see a doctor?”

  “I’m thinking about going. Haven’t had the energy.”

  “Not pregnant, are ya?”

  “Not much chance of that.” The bitter words came out before I had time to think. “Anyway, I had my tubes tied when I was twenty. Why I told you that I have no idea.”

  Ginette raised her eyes, but passed over it. “Donny Brasswell hasn’t come back?” Ginette began. “Don’t look at me lahk that. Ah hear stories. Ah even know who he’s been seein. Why’d y’all break up, anyway?”

  “Who said it was your business, Ginette?” I replied loudly, standing up.

  Ginette stood up, too. “Forget it, Sue-Ann,” she said. “Guess ah’ll jist go.” The look on her face was so hurt, so—almost—innocent, that I was suddenly ashamed. More so because I had a sudden memory of seeing that same look once before, when we were teenagers.

  “Sit down, Ginette. Fuck.” I sat back down myself and combed my fingers through what felt like a mess of unruly hair.

  “Nobody wants to be around a sick person,” I complained. “I don’t really blame Donny; I was hell to be around. No reason for you to go, though. Sorry I shouted. How’d you know where I live?”

  “Ah do the payroll,” Ginette said. “And if ah didn’t there’d still be the phone book. Or ah could’ve rustled up Donny and ast him. Maybe even—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “When ah drove up, the front door was open wide as the big blue sky. Ah saw how your place got all trashed up. Called out, but nobody answered. When ah saw that the back door was open too, ah came on out and saw you shootin.” Ginette looked around the room in amazement. “Is this stuff all yours? All these bows and arrows and ah don’t even know whatall?”

  “All mine,” I answered.

  “And those trophies and things?”

  “Yeah. I used to be good.”

  “You looked great to me,” said Ginette sincerely.

  “You must have missed my first three shots,” I said.

  “Maybe ah was lookin at the stables,” Ginette answered. “You have horses, too?”

  “All the horses are gone,” I told her. “Look, you want me to talk you have to give me coffee. Got your cigarettes with you?”

  “In the car.”

  “If you want me to talk you have to give me cigarettes. I’ll make the coffee. Meet me back in the house.”

  In the living room, I hastily swept the debris away from the couch. I picked up an ashtray from the floor and put it on the coffee table, then went into the kitchen and changed filters on the coffeemaker. As I ground some of the beans I got from Clarence, I tried to make sense of what was going on.

  The first thing I had to get straight in my head was the fact that Ginette Cartwright was concerned enough about my health to look up my address, drive who knows how many miles, and
get up the gumption to walk through my front door.

  I mentioned earlier that Ginette and I were never close friends, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the incredibly complicated, subtle, and wrenching emotional roller coaster that we had once ridden together as we grew through our teens. She was the bright shining star of Pine Oak High School, so popular that all the other popular girls looked up to her like little yapping dogs look up to a collie. Gorgeous, yes, but also both hard and original. She took the term “southern belle” and refashioned it to fit her the way an apple fits inside its skin.

  I was more like a dark star, strong but untouchable, unfathomable. I had my own popularity, but it was with the teachers and with those students blessed with brains but not big breasts or, in the case of guys, big balls. I need to make another point here, though, because my star metaphors leave a lot of white still on the page—in my teens I was pretty hot-looking, but not as hot as Ginette. She radiated, I smoldered. Sometimes I would smile at her across the cafeteria or as we passed in the hall, but I hated her. I hated her but wanted to be her so bad it almost killed me.

  When we graduated, she got more fanfare for being invited to go straight to work in the cosmetics counter at the brand-new WalMart than I got for winning a free ride to the University of North Carolina. We never fought, never argued; only smiled and watched and, at least in my case, learned.

  And here’s something you didn’t know. When I came back to Pine Oak, I decided that the only guy worth dating was Cal Dent, who was going through a messy divorce at the time. Three kids were involved, that kind of thing. But my few hints to let me take his mind from his problems didn’t seem to make an impression. Actually, they were more than hints. It took months for me to wise up to the fact that he was secretly seeing Ginette Cartwright. In fact, I assumed that Ginette was responsible for the divorce. What’s worse, I secretly suspected that she was also responsible for Cal giving me the bum’s rush and giving Mark Patterson most of the assignments that had earlier been given to me.

  So I was feeling more than a little confused when Ginette came back in and placed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter near the ashtray. She sat on an arm of the couch where I could see her from the kitchen. “Funny how we’ve never really talked before,” she said. “Specially since we’ve known each other since forever. Haven’t you ever wanted to?”

  “Wanted to what?” I shouted from the kitchen.

  “Jist have a little talk. Ah mean, we see each other at least a couple tahms a week.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I guess. Look, don’t you find this kind of awkward?”

  “Some, ah guess, but ah don’t care. It’s tahm we had it out.”

  I put the coffee in the new filter and turned on the machine while Ginette folded a blanket she picked up from the floor and draped it neatly over the back of the couch.

  I didn’t answer. As the coffee dripped, I tried not to notice Ginette as she got up and started picking up my dad’s books from the floor and placing them back evenly on their shelves. “Ginette, quit that,” I told her.

  When I walked in the room with two full cups and some packets of Splenda, Ginette was sitting on the couch straightening the pile of mail she had gathered up from around her feet.

  “Had what out, Ginette?” I asked testily.

  She stacked the mail carefully in the far corner of the coffee table before she answered. “Damn it, Sue-Ann,” she said. “You’re spose to be the smart one here. For us not to trah to be friends is jist plain stupid. It’s always been stupid!”

  “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “You can laugh if you wanna, but ah’ve admired you since we were in the tenth grade, maybe even the sixth. Didn’t ya know?”

  “You admire me?” I asked, astonished.

  “Raht,” said Ginette.

  “I thought you despised me.”

  “Ah don’t, though.”

  “But you were the queen of Pine Oak High. You hung out with the best crowd and went to all the parties while I was stuck in the mud like some old dinosaur bone. Even now, look at us. You’re still the best looking woman in the county and you’re seeing one of the only decent guys I know. I look like a scarecrow and the closest thing I have to a boyfriend is a cat.”

  “Maybe we both see things backwards,” Ginette ventured. “Ah lahked those parties and all the attention, sure ah did. But what ah really wanted was to be involved in things. You were always busy workin on the yearbook or the newspaper. You were on the bowling team. And you were learnin things while ah was only goin to class.” She took up one of the cups and blew into it. “Then you went off to college—outta state no less—and later we all knew you were workin on a big newspaper. And then we heard you were in the Middle East. Heck, we ran some stories about you in The Courier. Ah typed em up mahself.”

  “I think that’s where I got sick,” I said. Yet I still had a lingering suspicion that Ginette’s visit wasn’t all she said it was. “Listen, are you sure Cal didn’t send you over here?” I asked. “Or that bastard Donny?”

  “Darn it, Sue-Ann. Nobody told me to do nothin. Ah’m worried about you and it’s that simple. Why’re you so aggravatin?”

  “Sorry. You were Miss Sawdust, weren’t you?”

  “That was half a lahf ago and don’t go tellin me that you’d lahk to trade places cause ah’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “I can’t believe you knew I was on the bowling team,” I said.

  “Ah’m sure there’s lots of things ah know that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Did you ever think of going to college?”

  “Been there and done that,” answered Ginette.

  “Sorry, Ginette, I didn’t know.”

  “Two years at JCCC and another at FSU before ah quit. Ah was twenty five and ah’d just got divorced from Jimmy Jepperson. When we split the property ah came out with a little bundle a cash and thought ah’d use it to make somethin outta mahself. Didn’t have the grades to go raht into a four-year college.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Same ole same ole,” she replied. “Started seein one a mah professors and got pregnant. Ended up miscarryin, and after that ah just kinda stopped goin to class. Me and the guy broke up after a few months. Ah traveled around some, then came back here. Kinda soured me on school. Learned some office management, though, and enough accountin to get by most places.”

  “So you never had any kids?” I asked.

  “Nope. Not yet. Ah’m still thinkin about it, though.”

  “With Cal?”

  “Mebbe yes, mebbe no. But lahk you said, he’s not the worst guy in this wild world. Listen, Sue-Ann, ah know you were puttin moves on Cal when you got back to town. It didn’t bother me none—you didn’t have any way of knowin we were together.”

  “But when I found out, it made me try harder,” I said.

  Ginette gave me a cold stare, kind of the way she used to look at me in high school. She took up the pack of cigarettes and lit one. “Bring it on,” she said. “But Cal is as high as ah can go. You’re better than this little hole of a place. You’ve even got rid of your accent. Ah mean, listen to me talk; ah sound lahk Melanie Wilkes.”

  “That’s what four semesters of broadcast journalism will do.” I took the pack from Ginette and lit one for myself. I hadn’t had a cigarette in months and the first inhalation sent my head spinning.

  “Ah don’t mean to pry, Sue-Ann, but what made you come back here?”

  “Lots of things,” I replied. “Lots and lots of things.” I drew deeply on my cigarette. “First, it was the war. Being in the Middle East for six months is like being in the lower reaches of hell. Bullets popping, smoke everywhere. People dead in the street. Nobody safe. And the way women are treated over there is a crime worse than the war. I couldn’t stay neutral, and not being neutral is the kiss of death for a journalist. We—the press, I mean—had our own little haven with razor wire and private security men, but we still went out. I didn’t see a
tenth of the things I might have seen but it was plenty. Don’t tell Major Paul, but I just didn’t know why we were over there at all, I mean, except to keep the black gold pumping. I ended up sleeping with a coworker over there I didn’t even like. Then a couple of soldiers. Maybe more than a couple. Damn, Ginette, I don’t even remember most of their names! I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, surprised at my own emotion. It was something I had never revealed to anyone before.

  “Listen, Ginette,” I said. “You want to get high?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first tahm,” Ginette replied. “Wouldn’t be the second neither. And you can call me Gina if you want.”

  I rummaged in my purse for my stash. “I didn’t know people called you Gina.”

  “They don’t,” Ginette said.

  I folded a pinch of weed into a paper and rolled it with unsteady hands. “You’re kind of weird, you know that? Gina?”

  Ginette broke into a smile that revealed white, even teeth, and reached over for the box. “Here, let me do that; you’ll spill it all over creation.” With a perfectly manicured hand she picked a speck of marijuana from my knee and put it in her mouth. Then she finished rolling the joint with a dexterity that surprised me, licked the edge softly, and held it up as if it were a wineglass. “To your health,” she said, then lit it with her lighter and took a hit.