by Lynn Pruett
That afternoon I worked out front, bringing drinks, bussing tables, taking payments. I was testing this job to see what gave me pleasure.
Troy Clyde sauntered in and wiped his head. “Blacktop’s so hot it was burning my feet through my boots.” He helped himself to two cold drinks and sighed as if he’d watched a rerun of his life and figured the star of the movie was a sad sack. “I came to tell you that you can beat the tar out of the Jesus brigade. I’ll help you string them up.”
“There are things bigger than a person sometimes. Staying in this business isn’t worth it.”
“Those are quitting words, woman. You better stick them back in your mouth because you are not giving up.” Troy Clyde placed the drinks on the counter. “What will happen to your girls? You going to stick them in the welfare line? I swear, Hattie, your cracks are showing pretty bad.”
I hated him, his little dark-gray eyes, his free-swinging limbs. This was not love. I needed to be gathered up and encouraged, not pommeled for what he took to be my crime: walking away from a killing situation.
“Look, you already got the lights turned down like a damned funeral parlor. There’s people coming up to see you.” He stepped out the door, then came back in. “Hattie Bohannon, you are the best dang woman in all of north Alabama and south Tennessee. If you wasn’t my sister, I would have married you myself.”
A physical jolt traveled the length of my body. “Don’t you leave yet. I am not finished talking to you. I want you to know that I am tired of putting up with your foolish schemes and your damned heartaches.”
Troy Clyde shifted from one foot to the other, his bill cap in his hands. “Hattie, no one admires a business failure.” He slipped outside and roared away in his jeep.
I stared a long time at the salt shaker. Troy Clyde should have married a woman he could talk to, but why? He had me. And did he take care of my needs? No. He rarely listened. He brought me vegetables and game and tribulations. He cared about me in his own way but I gave more. Now I’d run him off. And damn, did I feel glad about it.
That evening I watched the truckers eat. They tucked into the hot food on the white plates with pleasure. I smiled, knowing that this work I did was good. As they came and went I knew, of course, that they could find food somewhere else, or maybe even here, under different management. This was my place but it was not me. Other people were invested more in its success than I was.
Even though it was nearly midnight I called Kenny Ranford, who was awake. He’d had an offer for the franchise from local businessmen who wanted the property for a steak house. He had intended to visit next week and tell me in person. He had not anticipated the community’s resistance to the truck stop and to me. The best thing was to dissolve our franchise agreement and sell. He recommended I take the offer from Steaklords.
“But how can I live in my home and see them down there every day selling steaks?” I asked.
“That is not my problem,” said Kenny Ranford.
Could I plant a fat hedge or build a wall to keep a steak house out of my view? What of the smell of burning meat? The animal lard congealing as it waited on the Inedible Fat man? Would he be so frequent if Gert wasn’t in the kitchen ready to stanch his ardor? I’d probably have to sell my house, too.
GERT GEURIN
The day of the baptism in the Ruby River I had the worst migraine of my life. We were in the midst of hundred-degree August days. The pain started at 2 P.M. and I fought it by sitting in the meat cooler. Miz Bohannon came and cooked up the few orders we had. She was a regular Jacqueline of all trades now that Jessamine was gone.
I had to think of quiet things, like little Miss Ash Lee telling me she had enough money saved up now and she was quitting the harlotry. She felt bad about taking the Reverend’s picture because she had seen the light right before she done it. I do believe she grew a conscience in that moment. She showed off a new black and red dress she was going to wear for Kyle when he came home later in the fall. And she had her hair streaked so now she’s an ashy-blond, and she was getting skinny again, maybe thinking of all those cheerleaders down in Tuscaloosa who are so tiny and baby-voiced. So she was a good calming thought and I did okay for long periods of time. But then it got on near 6:30 P.M, and I had to go and meet the Reverend.
I was befuddled when he asked me to be his rower, knowing what I did about him. I figured he was keeping me from the congregation as best he could. But then I saw the hand of God in this duty and I sighed and said, Yes, Lord, I accept this mission too.
Stelle would lead the songs from the riverbank. “Let Us Gather at the River,” “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore,” “I Will Meet You on the Other Shore.” After the dunkings, the congregation would each receive a candle and they would shift to glory songs, so that after the sunset there would be a big blaze of light and sound that could reach up to the heavens.
If Reverend Peterson came from out on the water, he would be clean when he got to the shallows and could step from the boat unsoiled by red mud. He wanted to look like what he was representing, since this was a spiritual event, not a bodily one, he’d said on the phone.
I set out in my car, driving to the river. My head almost quit throbbing. It goes in remission, this pain, and you think it is over but the smallest thing can start it up again. Reverend Peterson, in a white robe, was on the launch, the boat tied to a post. I got in first and took up the oars. He made a strange gravelly noise as he got situated in the bow and his end of the boat sank as deep as mine. I wondered had I lost some weight.
He did not say a word, just turned and faced the other side of the river. I rowed away from the sun but it glared hard at me. I chewed on my cheeks. I did not want to ruin the baptism. I could see only shimmery water and Reverend Peterson, a white hot fire in the bow of the aluminum boat, my head a magnet for all that light, about to blow a fuse.
HATTIE BOHANNON
I had to get away from the truck stop to think about selling it. There was heat in my blood when I thought of the churchmen owning my place. My impulse was to fight to the last dime, but at what price, my daughters? With less than twenty-four hours to make my decision, I went to the Ruby River and sought Troy Clyde’s raft.
He’d built a seaworthy one this year. In the past he’d chosen young trees that sank with the weight of their sap, but this year the poles were light and dry and strong. I took off my shoes. My dress clung with sweat and I wished to take it off as well, but the sun still burned orange. I hadn’t swum naked since Oakley. I thrust my head into the brown water, lifted it, and swung droplets all over myself.
Tall willows grew from sinister twisted roots. Turtles slid off fallen trees into the water as I poled to the middle of the river. A gentle current ran, rocking the raft like a cradle. I lay down, looked at the pink sky, and closed my eyes, deliciously alone.
I must be practical. Not get lost in thoughts of Oakley and his home place. It wasn’t his home place any longer. His barn was gone, his fields paved with blacktop.
Tension ebbed out of my back as I drifted, the sun’s warm rays on my face. I’d buy a houseboat, float and rock in the evenings, dock at the river-bottom fields in the day, work. The solitude of the plan made me crazy with happiness—just colors and smells and physical work. It’s all I need. It’s all I want. Relief was as big as the deep blue sky.
GERT GEURIN
I never saw it coming. We hit another craft and Reverend Peterson was flung off the bow onto the other boat and took it down under. He came up, two heads came up, then one went down. My eyes were squinted to slivers as the rowboat rocked. My stomach rose and then I seen him thrashing around, grabbing ahold of the other head, shoving it under the water. I had moved my oar over to him, but when I seen him do that I pulled it back to me.
His robes was spread on the surface like spilt paint, and him the center of it, heavy, going down, but he had the other person in a headlock and was taking her or him down too. Then I seen a flash of her face, peering up at the sky from underwater
, wavery and soft—her eyes the look of dreams. It was Miz Bohannon.
There they were, fighting each other in the water. Lord, I prayed, Lord. I could barely keep my eyes open. I rowed closer to the thrashing and gulping. Neither one was doing good. He had her around the waist and was pulling hard at her shoulders, and all she was doing was keeping her head above the water.
I was so weak with the migraine. I could save only one: Miz Bohannon or Reverend Peterson, no time for prayer. When I saw his head come up by itself, his eyes locked onto me like my old husband’s had the night of my biggest sin—it was stare and demand in one look.
I bumped the boat into his head and reached down in the water and searched out Miz Bohannon’s shoulder and wrenched it up. Her arms came next and she nearly tanked the rowboat getting her legs in.
HATTIE BOHANNON
She was roused by the fluttering of huge wings. Shouts came from the frantic white creature as it danced above the water. It was human and it landed on her raft, capsizing it. Arms clawed at her dress as she was spilled into the river.
The white robe wrapped around her legs and pulled her under. She felt a great rising in her chest while bodily sinking at the same time, an exhilaration with calm at the edges. Above, a circle of rippling light, amber in color. Weeds ran like ribbons around her feet, soft caresses. A storm of mud to her side, a whirling of clay, a sienna cloud. She fastened her eyes on the amber circle.
Her left breast was seized and twisted. She gulped water as she cried out, fought, kicked against the flailing arms. An underwater face of desperation, Reverend Peterson’s, appeared, long and fishlike. She kicked his stomach, kicked his head, propelled herself to the surface. He clung to her leg. She kicked his head again. Still couldn’t get her foot free. Water filled her mouth. Gagging, twisting, reaching up inches per stroke, slowly working head and shoulders up to the light, taking forever, him dragging.
A strong arm lifted her free of suffocation. Air, sweet air. She cracked the surface with her legs, kicking herself into the rowboat, where Gert Geurin sat, stoic and pale, holding an oar.
He hadn’t come up. She tugged on the heavy robe but Peterson was still submerged. The robe must have snagged something, an old tractor, a twisted tree, barbed wire. She leaned out of the boat and reeled in the white filmy cloth. Peterson bobbed up. She rolled him into the bow and drained water from his mouth. His eyes opened with a flicker of contempt. She closed her own and knelt above him.
His lips were cold and clammy, yet his face had a faint warmth. She blew gently at first, then harder and harder, getting dizzy each time she forced air into his mouth. His arms were outspread, his cold white gown an icy bed she knelt in. She felt like shaking him. Come on. Come on. Breathe. Breathe. In her head, the voice would not hush. Stop, fool, stop, it commanded. A delicious luxury to let him die at your feet. She pressed his chest, blew hard, yet the warmth receded. I am good, she said to the voice, I am good. She became crazed and rhythmical as she forced breath. Take it. Take it. Breathe. Breathe.
Gert vomited over the side of the boat, unbalancing it. The sun sank and darkness fell on the river. Onshore, hundreds of small flames bent to the left, then adjusted themselves upright, but Hattie felt no breeze.
She heard voices around her, she didn’t know how close. Paul Dodd in the sheriff patrol boat, the motor a long time coming.
“I lost him,” she said to Paul, her eyes unseeing in the dark.
“You done what you could,” he said. “Get in the boat. We’ll take care of—” He jerked his head at the white mass of linen.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Leave him to my men.” Paul clasped her arm. “Step up. That’s right, now sit still. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
They put Peterson in the motorboat. Already oxygen snaked into his lungs from a heavy tank.
“He’s ticking,” said a medic.
Paul Dodd expelled a long sigh of relief. “Good news,” he said to Hattie.
“Where’s Gert?” she said.
“She insisted on rowing to the church side to deliver the Reverend’s last words. I believe she will make it,” said Paul Dodd.
The candles on the shore had been tossed into a huge bonfire. It was night now, and the single huge flame was the only living thing she could see. The fire seemed so distant and she so cold. She’d felt death claw at her legs, try to pull her under and smother her in its deceptive white wings. She began to shake. Her teeth chattered.
She was a tiny speck in the inky night. The water black, the sky black. Even the stars had dried out. There was only the large licking flame on shore.
THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY RESURRECTION
The ladies of the church could not shake that sight from their heads: in front of the most glorious sunset, the silhouette of Hattie Bohannon bending over Reverend Peterson, their mouths locked, their movements rhythmical and frenzied. It was a blessing the sun went down when it did. There was no mistaking the passion because, as they witnessed, Reverend Peterson was not yet a brain-damaged man. On the contrary, he looked very much brain-engorged. She’d drug him up, a wet dragonfly, and pressed her mouth to his.
So Hattie Bohannon was a hero in town. Her bravery was cited at the Reverend’s bedside, which showed that forgiveness was indeed God’s way. It seemed to the ladies of the church that it had been the summer of forgiveness. After the prayer service for the return of the Reverend’s speech and sanity, struggling across the gravel in high heels to their cars, they heard Rhuhana Polk Killian say, “I am going to switch membership if we have to forgive one more person.”
Stelle Peterson offered herself as the new minister, in the manner of Lurleen B. Wallace, she liked to point out, who served when her husband was barred by law from running the state government. But that didn’t sit right with the ladies, to have a lady lead them. Lurleen had just been a bust-head anyway. Everyone knew that. Her husband, with a new wife by his side, had later run again and won again, disabled as he was. But Reverend Peterson had lost the ability to speak, and how could they know that Stelle was really telling his message or His message? She might be making up her own thoughts, and that was surely not the way of the Lord.
Reverend Peterson himself continued to haunt them. They tried to revise the image of him and Hattie fused at the lips. They had never seen pornography. A few of the braver ones went so far as to appear suddenly on top of their startled husbands in the privacy of night. Maridoches burned with a wildfire that neither the Gayfer’s fall catalog nor the heavy fall rains dampened. The ladies of the church grew to prefer the rain. It kept the hunters home and the wild game safe.
CONNIE BOHANNON
After Mama and Gert saved Reverend Peterson from drowning, Mama changed. She sold the truck stop to some men from the church. They renovated it to look like a Crimson Tide museum. Everything is red inside: the booths, the bathroom tiles, the chairs, even most of the steaks. There are pictures on the wall of football players. The napkins are red-and-white houndstooth check.
After they bought it, they hired a company that replaces burned-out houses to take everything down to the foundation and walls, just so people wouldn’t be reminded of what it had been. They didn’t save anything of Mama’s. There is nothing that looks Jesus-y either in there, although Gert is the queen of the kitchen, in charge of everything.
I heard that Kyle Childers had some problems with double vision, but that didn’t keep him off the football team. He doesn’t have to see very far anyway. He’s a lineman, and all they do is push other big beefs around and maybe once in a while a football bounces off their heads. Sometimes they catch it and if they are on offense it is a penalty. I’m betting Kyle will be that kind of offensive lineman, clueless. I’m not sure if he can drive or not. It would seem not.
Mama is building a house for us in the woods above the tomato patch. Our front view will be the Ruby River. She wants to watch it flame like fire every night before the sun goes down. I am going to school and so is D
arla. We are both a year back from our classes but that’s okay. I never liked the people in my class. I need a new boyfriend, a real one this time. I know from watching Jessamine that it is better to be able to hold hands in public than to get orgasmic in a shed.
So I get another shot at the prom, and I’ve decided I am going to be prom queen next year. I’m betting I know a hell of a lot more than anybody else at that school. Plus I already have two votes: mine and Darla’s.
JESSAMINE BOHANNON
Darla invited me to Daddy’s ceremony. I hadn’t been home since Mama made me leave. It was strange to ride up the driveway and not see the Bohannon’s sign or the truck stop surrounded by semis lined up like cattle at feeding time. Paul drove and he looked good, in a crisp blue shirt. I laid my hand on his arm. He patted my thigh.
We parked in front of the garage. I could see Mama had set the picnic table with an old cotton tablecloth and our good dishes. Connie was pouring drinks into the green glasses. Darla was rearranging the barn-wood bonfire and ignoring Troy Clyde’s suggestions.
I got out and carried the watermelon I’d carved like a basket and filled with berries and cut fruit.
“Hey, Jessamine,” said Troy Clyde. “Nice fruit.”
Paul joined me. He kept putting his hand on his hip to feel for his missing holster. It was funny to see him out of uniform.
Connie sidled up close and whispered, as she took the watermelon out of my hands, “Do you use his handcuffs, you know, like in private?”
“Shut up, Connie,” I said. “Where’s Mama?”
Troy Clyde came over and shook Paul’s hand. “I’d stay away from the woodpile if I were you,” he said, and gave Paul a significant look.
Paul smiled. “I don’t think anyone’s going to catch me on fire. I’m ninety percent water. By the way, you don’t know anything about night hunting, do you, Troy Clyde?”