Strong Heat

by Niobia Bryant

  Chapter 3

  One month later

  Lisha genuinely smiled as she watched her client, Mrs. Anderson, take the final step to reach her. “Excellent,” she said, moving the walker from beside where she stood in the rehabilitation clinic to stand in front of the elderly woman recovering from a hip injury after a fall two months ago.

  Mrs. Anderson begrudgingly smiled. “Thanks to you.”

  Lisha was particularly skilled in dealing with the elderly community. She was well-known for her patience and her ability to decrease the recovery time from their injuries because of her gentle persistence. Her clients went above and beyond for her and in the end it worked out in their favor.

  Lisha made notes on Mrs. Anderson’s progress on her chart. “Once you stopped hating me,” she reminded her with a playful wink.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the older woman said, leaning her weight onto the bars of her walker as one of the physical therapy aides stepped close to her to guide her back to the waiting room where her niece awaited her.

  Lisha checked her watch as she placed her file in the holder on the door of the physical therapist supervising Mrs. Anderson’s treatment plan. She was done for the day and her body was happy. Working in physical therapy meant being on her feet for the majority of the day as she worked to implement the treatment plan put in place by the physical therapist she worked under. Helping patients perform exercises—especially passive range of motion where she took over moving the limbs, giving massages or supervising gait and balance training—she had to have her own stamina.

  She was headed to the employee lounge when she spotted two of her male co-workers looking in her direction from across the room. Her steps faltered before she lifted her hand and purposefully waved at them. They waved back even as they continued to talk.

  Her eyes widened as she thought she read the lips of one of them saying “virgin.”

  The word seemed to reach inside her head like it mocked her as she watched them both laugh. Vir-gin, vir-gin, vir-gin, vir-gin, virrrrrr-giiiiiin.

  Lisha shook her head as she made her way down to the end of the hall where the employee lockers were located. The warmth of her embarrassment flooded her but she forced herself to stiffen her spine and notch up her chin. I don’t have shit to be ashamed of.

  Still, as she opened her locker and removed her handbag, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d read his lips right and just what else they had to say. “I hate men,” she muttered, slamming the locker closed before she swiftly left the room.

  The outpatient clinic where she worked was adjoined to the hospital but had a direct exit onto the streets of downtown Charleston or a well-directed path connecting the building to the main hospital. Lisha headed in that direction, but once she stepped in front of the elevator that would take her to the glass bridge connecting the buildings, she reconsidered her plan to hunt down Byron and . . . and . . . and . . .

  And what, Lisha?

  She stepped back as others pushed forward to climb into the elevator. She couldn’t go and pick a fight where she worked when she wasn’t even sure the man said anything or if she read lips properly—a skill she didn’t know she possessed.

  She could find Byron to question him, insult him or threaten him, but what would that serve? Who would that serve?

  Releasing a heavy breath, she turned and retraced her steps until she walked out of the glass doors of the clinic. The tree-lined street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, was beautiful as the summer sun broke through the branches and cast shadows of the leaves on the brick-paved streets. She took a moment to inhale deeply of the air before crossing the street to the small gated parking lot where her bright red Chevy Nova awaited her.

  She spoke to and waved to the hospital employees she knew as she walked up to the trunk of her car and quickly swapped out the shoes she wore to work in for the shoes she kept in her trunk. Hospitals were infamous for germs—sometimes antibiotic-resistant germs—and Lisha never wanted to track something into her home. Junie thought she was crazy for doing that. Lisha didn’t really care what she thought.

  She climbed inside the coupe and rolled down the driver’s side window, feeling the muscle strain in her arm from a hard day’s work. Pushing her Earth Wind & Fire cassette into the player, she steered the compact out of the parking lot and turned left and then made a right to navigate away from one of the many one-way streets of Charleston.

  Singing along to “Shining Star” she made another right and accelerated forward to the light. She closed her eyes as she stretched her arms and pressed her head toward her shoulders to relieve the tension. Just as she opened her eye she spotted Byron’s black Jeep Wrangler in her rearview mirror pulling up behind her.

  “Well, look at God working,” she said, quickly checking that the traffic light was red before putting the car in park.

  That had to be a sign.

  Lisha grasped the handle to open the door, with her eyes still on Byron in the rearview mirror. In the end she eased her foot from the brake to the accelerator and put her car in drive just as the light turned green.

  He’s spreading my business because I didn’t spread my legs to him. A dry dick and hurt feelings are hard for a man to deal with. He ain’t even worth it.

  As she left him behind and steered onto Highway 17 headed toward home, she enjoyed the feel of the summer air blowing against her face as she drove. She barely took in the beauty of the Carolinas. Her thoughts were on whether she should go back to school for her bachelor’s and then master’s to become a physical therapist. She loved what she did and would truly love being the one to come up with the treatment plans for patients and having assistants and aides reporting to her. She could even see herself one day starting a business centered on physical therapy provided in her patients’ homes.

  But she honestly didn’t know if she wanted to dedicate more years of her life to being back in school. She would have to work and that meant part-time classes. She could be facing another five years or more. That made Lisha frown, but sometimes you had to work hard toward your dreams and not just pray for them.

  Still wrangling with her thoughts, Lisha finished the rest of the forty-five-minute commute back to Walterboro, but instead of driving to her apartment building, she decided to go and check on her parents. Their three-bedroom brick home was on a corner lot in a small but growing subdivision of the city where a lot of African-Americans were purchasing homes through a government program created to offer loans to low-income families with an interest in home ownership. With every passing year the neighborhood was growing and developing.

  Turning onto the concrete driveway, she parked behind her father’s royal blue Buick Electra that Lisha thought looked almost as long as the house. She entered the house through the side door under the carport that opened directly into the kitchen. The bright yellow and orange wallpaper with silver highlights looked nothing like what she thought her parents would want. But the older Lisha got, and the more their relationship had changed in her adulthood, Lisha was beginning to wonder if she even really knew her parents at all.

  Their dinner of lima beans and ham hocks was still on the stove, but Lisha knew her parents had eaten at exactly six. She grabbed a bowl and scooped white rice into it before topping it with beans and a small piece of meat. It was still warm enough to enjoy without reheating the entire pot.

  She looked out the window over the sink as she got a fork from the orange dish rack and chuckled at the sight of her mother leaning against the back of their shed in the backyard savoring one of her beloved Pall Mall cigarettes. The preacher’s wife had one weakness and she tried to keep that secret from her husband of the last thirty years.

  Continuing out the kitchen and down the narrow hall to her father’s den she found him in his plaid La-Z-Boy recliner, kicked back, watching Hogan’s Heroes on his floor-model television.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she said, leaning against the doorframe.

  Reverend
Charles Rockmon turned his body in his recliner to look over his shoulder at her. His face filled with surprise. “Hi, Alisha,” he said. “We weren’t looking to see you until church Sunday.”

  She came farther into the room and bent down to kiss his cheek, the prickly stubble of his beard lightly scratching her lips. Her father didn’t shave until the night before Sunday service. “I wanted some home-cooked food,” she said, sitting down on the arm of his recliner and forcing him to move over a little to make room for her.

  Rev sucked air between his false teeth. “You cook just as good as your mama,” he said.

  “True,” she agreed. “She raised me up at that stove.”

  “Your husband will thank you for it,” he said, focusing his eyes back on the television.

  “I guess,” she said, feeling her appetite wane a bit.

  “If he’s not thankful for you then you don’t need him,” Rev said, his eyes leveled on her.

  That’s if I ever find him, she thought, not voicing her concerns to her father. She looked down into the bowl as she pushed her food around with her fork.

  “Trust in God,” Rev said.

  Lisha nodded solemnly in agreement.

  “Your mama still behind that shed smoking?” her father asked, his eyes now locked on the antics of the TV show.

  Lisha’s eyes filled with surprise.

  Her father chuckled.

  She wasn’t going to lie for her mama, but she wasn’t going to tell on her either. Lisha didn’t say another word.

  Kael pulled the reins on his bay-colored quarter horse, Sampson, to ease him from a full gallop to a trot as he looked around at the perimeters of his property. For the last two weeks he had spent long work-filled days making sure the fencing was secure so that the cattle he planned to purchase at an auction next month would not be able to roam beyond his property to the wooded acreage beyond.

  Acreage I will own one day.

  But first he had to get the ranch up and running to hopefully make the profits to one day expand it. Kael was cash strapped and using every bit of help from his father and friends that they would offer to get the land and the house ready for him. Every cent and every available moment spent not working his job as a ranch hand was dedicated to his own ranch. He barely had any hours in the night left to sleep but his desire to succeed fueled him when exhaustion tried to win.

  Bringing Sampson to a halt on a slope overlooking a stream, he sat back in his saddle and enjoyed the sight of the sun setting in the distance. He had a million other things he could be doing, but he allowed himself a brief moment to enjoy the serene beauty of the skies beginning to darken to an inky blue with streaks of orange.

  He inhaled deeply of the scent of the Bahia hay mingling with the pine from the towering trees as he enjoyed the last rays of the sun warming his face.

  Life is good.

  Kael shifted the Stetson he wore to keep the sun from burning his face as he worked. His shirt was soaked to his back with sweat—the summer heat was still stifling even as the sun faded—and the contoured muscles of his entire body ached, but he had never felt better than at that moment. Allowing himself one last deep inhale of the country air, he steered his horse around to head back toward the house.

  He rode at a trot across the flat cleared land, now anxious to get back to the house before darkness completely reigned. He was just coming up on the first couple acres of land he’d cleared to graze the cattle, when he spotted his father’s white Chevy C-10 diesel pickup truck parked at the newly installed paddock. He frowned when the driver’s side door opened and his father’s friend Monte began waving frantically.

  Kael picked up the horse’s pace to a gallop, coming around the wooden fencing of the paddock and pulling him to a stop at the door of his father’s truck.

  “Your father’s been hurt,” Monte said, the tobacco packed in his mouth slightly muffling his words before he spat out the brown juice that matched his matted and oily shoulder-length hair. “He fell off the horse back at the house. Looks like he broke his hip.”

  Kael felt sucker punched as he sharply pressed his booted heel against his horse’s flank and loosened the reins. Sampson took off at full speed and he lowered his upper body closer to the saddle to maintain his balance and not hinder the horse’s stability as his hooves ate up the dirt. He maintained control of the strong beast while still allowing it the freedom to fully stretch out to his max speed.

  “Whoa. Whoa,” he called out rapidly, sitting up in the saddle and tightening the reins as the sight of his house came into view. “Whoa, Sampson, whoa.”

  His eyes searched the grounds as he patted Sampson’s neck to help calm him down as he steered him in a circle. His father’s white Arabian horse, Ghost, was already secured in the double horse trailer they used to transport them from his father’s home.

  The loud rumble of the diesel truck sounded behind him as the muscles of both his and Sampson’s chest heaved from the exertion. “Where is he?” he hollered to Monte.

  “You took off like you was in the Derby before I could tell you the ambulance already took him to County. I stayed behind to find you,” he said, just before another brown stream was released from his mouth like a bullet.

  Kael rushed to dismount and led Sampson into the horse trailer. “Monte, please take the horses back—”

  “Already on it, son,” he said, driving the truck around to hook the trailer to it.

  Kael rushed to his own truck and took off, sending dirt and pebbles flying as he raced across the land and down the unpaved drive lined with trees that shaded the path to the main highway. His heart raced like crazy as he drove up Highway 17 toward Walterboro.

  His father was in his mid-fifties but he was active, strong and could probably easily whip a man twenty years his junior. Still, a hip injury was serious and would most likely require surgery.

  “Shit,” he swore as traffic on the two-lane road came to a stop.

  His patience was short because he was pissed at himself for sitting his ass up on a hill staring at the sunset while his father was being transported to the hospital.

  Pounding his fist on the steering wheel, he leaned over to look to the right of the road before steering his truck alongside the car ahead of him. With half his tires off the road he passed the cars ahead of him and made the right onto the beltline and then a series of lefts to bypass the traffic and head back down the beltline in the opposite direction.

  Kael didn’t slow down until he took the final turns to pull into the parking lot of the Colleton County Hospital. He nabbed the first parking spot and raced inside the entrance to the emergency department. “Logan Strong?” he asked the clerk standing behind the station.

  The petite white woman’s green eyes went from bored to interested as she leaned back to take in all of his six-foot-five frame and broad stature.

  He frowned a little when she licked her lips. “Logan Strong?” he repeated, hating the need to check his annoyance when she was the one being unprofessional.

  But a black in the South in the seventies knew the littlest incident between someone black and someone white could quickly turn volatile—especially between a black man and a white woman. Times had not moved that far beyond the death of Emmett Till twenty years ago or the deaths of civil rights volunteers Herbert Lee and Louis Allen just ten years ago. And would anyone ever forget the murders of Medgar Evers or Martin Luther King, Jr.? The stench of Jim Crow segregation still clung to the air even after nearly a decade of its official end.

  And so Kael took a deep breath and patiently stood there with nothing for her but the same question. “Logan Strong?”

  She finally shifted her eyes to a chart sitting on the edge of the desk. She shook her head. “I don’t see that he was admitted,” she said, her eyes squinting as she read through the list of names again.

  “An ambulance picked him up from my home. He broke his hip,” Kael explained.

  “Let me call dispatch,” she said, picking up the ph
one.

  He felt a whole new level of concern wash over him. His mother died from a heart attack in his teens and his sister, Kelli, lived nearly three hours away with her husband. Logan Strong was Kael’s father, his confidant, his teacher, his advice giver and his friend.

  “Okay, thank you. Hold on,” she said, moving the telephone headset down to press to her chest. “Your father put up such a stink about not wanting to come here. They rerouted him to MUSC.”

  Kael felt relief that his father was located and that he was feisty enough to make demands on his care. He smiled a little. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said kindly, turning to exit the emergency department.

  “Oh, no, sweetie, thank you,” she called behind him.

  Kael hopped into his truck and headed for Charleston. He shaved ten minutes off the forty-five-minute drive and a few minutes after that he was directed upstairs to the surgical unit to await the end of his father’s surgery. Kael started to dig all of the change he could from his pockets to use the pay phone in the waiting room to call his sister, but he decided to wait until the surgery was over.

  He finally settled into one of the uncomfortable puke green chairs pushed against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and spreading his legs wide as his exhaustion settled on his shoulders so heavily that he doubted he could raise his arms. He let his head drift down until his square chin almost sat on his chest. His eyelids closed as if tiny weights pulled them down. His breathing became slow and even.

  “Mr. Strong . . . Mr. Strong.”

  Kael’s body jerked as he was startled awake. He looked around wildly as he wiped the slight bit of drool from the corner of his mouth. Everyone in the waiting room stared openly at him. He didn’t even know when he fell asleep.

  “Your father is out of surgery and post-op.”

  Kael turned his head to look up at the tall white man standing over him, still in his surgical scrubs. He rose to his feet.