A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

  Some of my favorite things in the home on Elm Drive were the cobalt blue glasses stored in the white living-room shelves. Miss Claudia had told me her late husband, Wade, had given her the antique glasses as a wedding gift. After a good dusting, I always loved standing back and watching the sun seep inside the swirls of blue and teal.

  As I inched the dust rag inside each glass, I found myself humming along with Miss Claudia to the steady rhythm. Then, as clear as the pictures Miss Claudia made with her instant Polaroid, I remembered where I had heard the song. I remembered the flowers, the preacher, and the sweet one-two-three rhythm of that old-timey piano just like it was yesterday. But Aunt Stella had been gone ten years now.

  When I looked inside that frilly gray casket and saw my aunt’s face all sticky-looking, I started to cry. From the time I was just a little thing, I knew she was the one person who really loved me. Mama quickly reached across the flowers on top of the casket and squeezed my elbow. Her eyes pierced me as if to say, “If I can stand my own sister’s death, then I expect the same out of you.”

  Mama didn’t like for me to cry. Said it made me look weak, and people would feel sorry for me. I just hope that after Bozo shows up with his shotgun and blows me away in front of this safe haven, Mama won’t expect Cher not to cry.

  What about Cher? If I go, who’ll end up with her? Mama?

  I felt the blood drain from my face and neck. The very idea of that cold woman taking thirteen years of my training and turning Cher into an empty shell made me want to throw up. I tipped to the right and caught myself on the edge of the grand piano top. Before I realized it, the blue cobalt glass blasted into pieces on the hardwood floor.

  Bozo’s shotgun blast won’t sound much louder, I thought. Paralyzed, I stood looking at the scattered pieces. The chips of glass looked like hundreds of expensive blue stones ready to be mined.

  With the shrill crack of glass, Miss Claudia stopped playing and turned towards me. I had my hands up in the air like something gone wild. My mouth flew open, but nothing came out. Tears puddled in my eyes.

  “Don’t you cry, girl. You want this woman to think you’re weak?” I heard Mama yell in my mind.

  Miss Claudia picked up her cane and approached the rubble. She put her hand on my shoulder. I still couldn’t look at her. My hand shielded the side of my face as though I expected a strike from her blue-veined hand. Mouth still open, all I could manage was some sort of half-human moan.

  This is it for sure. I’ll never be able to work off how much this thing cost.

  “It was an accident is all. No reason to let your nerves get keyed up.” Her bony fingers squeezed my shoulder tighter.

  I could only turn my head away from her. “I’m so…so…sorry. And these the glasses your husband…” Some sort of matter seemed to gather in my throat. Looking down, I saw an escaped tear mark a spot on her hardwood floor.

  “People make mistakes every day. You know what my husband Wade used to tell folks down at the store? He’d tell ’em, if you’re not making one mistake a day, then I question if you’re really working.”

  If I’d had a tail, it would’ve been tucked between my legs. Instead, I tucked my head. When I turned to face her, I let myself fall into those hazel eyes. I dropped the invisible shield and bit my lip to keep from squalling. Soon I felt her bony fingers again, pulling me into her bosom.

  “All this fuss over some blue glass. Oh, I can get Patricia to get me another one. It’s just a thing, sugar, not a human being.”

  Her hand patted my back while I clung to her soft, silky shoulder. I would not cry. I couldn’t cry now and stain her pretty silk blouse with my weak tears. Without the release of a single tear, I erupted. “I’m gonna get killed. Cher won’t even be able to cry, and they’ll all be telling you what trash I was.”

  She pulled me back to examine my face. Her raised eyebrows and gaped mouth seemed to question if I had been struck by one of Richard’s nerve attacks. Instead of calling for a straitjacket like she probably should have, she and her cane led me to the kitchen table.

  “Now, you need a Coca-Cola to help settle your stomach?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, knowing full well I had to tell it all now. But instead of dread, I felt protected. For a moment she didn’t say anything. She just sat there with her hands folded, looking down at her lace tablecloth. I was relieved when the air conditioner kicked on and provided background noise. The humming sounded soothing.

  “Now what in the world was all that about? And just drop that old pride, Erma Lee. It’s me you’re talking to.”

  Her soft hazel eyes did me in again. Before I knew it, I was telling all the ugly, tattered holes that were missing from the puzzle. The holes I’m sure she had figured out, but gave me the dignity of acting like she didn’t know.

  When I began to describe the drunken attacks, the last night before I left Cross City, and what I knew about Bozo coming to town, I somehow felt silly. Nobody said anything about him wanting to kill me. Like always, I assumed the worst. Maybe because if I prepared myself for the worst, the truth never seemed so awful. I expected her to tell me I was making a mountain out of some little molehill, or some other silly expression that older people like to use.

  She wiped her hand across the tablecloth as if she was scattering invisible after-dinner crumbs. “You can’t play around with men like him. You think he’d be so crazy to come here?” Before I could say anything, she verbalized my deepest fear. “Well, if he got liquored up, no telling.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.” I pulled my ponytail over my neck and twirled the ends of my hair with my finger. “And just when things were going good…”

  “We’ll call the lawyer directly. I just imagine he can get papers drawn up to stop that Bozo person from coming within any distance of you. You got a tag number for his vehicle?”

  As I searched my pocketbook, fishing through tissue paper, female needs, and pieces of Juicy Fruit, I thought how wrong I’d been about Claudia Tyler the first time I met her. I assumed I could put her in a neat little box because she lived in that nice big house on Elm Drive. Miss Claudia would tear out of any box anybody ever tried to put her in. And I suspected she had done so before.

  While she sat at the kitchen table and used her portable phone to ensure my safeguard, I could make out bits and pieces of the conversation.

  “So the divorce papers were already served. I see.” Shaking her head, her hazel eyes locked on me. I knew my eyes were all big and scared-looking. In my mind, when those papers got handed to Bozo, he probably went slam nuts.

  I could just see him driving to the Brown Jug and telling everybody how I kidnapped his grandbaby and how he would rot in jail before seeing me keep her. “Them papers say I’m her daddy by law,” he’d shout at no one in particular. Knowing full well he couldn’t raise Cher and she was better off with me. It was that pride thing he had. The same thing kept me from telling Miss Claudia about my black-and-blue past.

  Once I confessed my fear and she made the phone calls, I felt stronger. I’d never leaned on anybody before and wondered if I was venturing on shaky territory by letting Miss Claudia get so wrapped up in my business. To be honest, at the time I felt like if she didn’t get involved, I very well might have one of Richard’s nerve attacks. I decided telling her about things that shouldn’t be discussed in public was better for her in the long run. The other option was her seeing me run down Elm Drive in broad daylight screaming and pulling my hair out.

  “Sheriff Thomas will handle things from his end too. He’s a good man,” Miss Claudia said and fingered her pearls. “You know, sometimes the law likes to look the other way at messes like we’ve been through.”

  I stopped twisting the ends of my ponytail and looked up at her. “Well, you got to trust somebody, don’t you?”

  She just offered a soft smile, and I hoped she was not about to tell me that the man who set her up with all these nice things had violated her in any way. Right then, I ne
eded the image of a good and decent man. Wade Tyler’s picture hung in her bedroom and offered a glimpse of a soft man with a receding hairline and a shy smile. I imagined him running his department store and letting Miss Claudia take the limelight by fellowshiping with all the customers, complimenting a woman on this dress or flirting with a man over the new suit he was having tailored. I wanted to plug my ears and not listen. I needed that image of Wade Tyler.

  She looked down and drew circles with her index finger on the white tablecloth. “I never will forget the time I called the law on my first husband. That Luther Ranker. We’d only been married two months before I knew I’d gone from one hell on earth directly to another. Funny, I don’t even recollect what the problem was. Me just a girl, don’t you know. But anyway, he set in to pounding on me for something I should’ve done or shouldn’t have done.”

  Miss Claudia stopped drawing imaginary circles on the tablecloth. Instead, she squeezed the lace into a ball.

  “The next morning after my beating, Luther went off in his boat, and I went straight to the sheriff’s office to file a complaint. I still remember how the sheriff’s fat chin glistened with sweat. He leaned back in his chair and put his big hands behind his round head. The sheriff said he didn’t like to get in family matters. He asked me if I had talked to my folks about this yet. I wanted to yell at him and tell him my real daddy was dead. If he counted that no good Maxwell as my papa, I did not share his opinion. I thought at the time if he knew what Old Man Maxwell had done to me, he would’ve locked him up too. I was such a silly thing back then. Sitting in that hot office with the black iron fan rotating in the open window and thinking that if the sheriff locked Luther and Old Man Maxwell up, Mama, my baby sister, and me could all live in the big store on Main Street. But instead, I was a good girl and followed the sheriff’s order.

  “Only problem was, Old Man Maxwell stood in the door to his store and told me in no uncertain terms that I made my bed and would have to sleep in it. I knew he was lying when he told me Mama didn’t want to see me. I tried to push my way inside the door. He grabbed at my breast and squeezed hard, pushing me out the door like some old drunk being tossed out of a saloon. ‘Get from here, before your mama sees you looking like some beat-up whore,’ he yelled and closed the store door. While I laid there on that nasty wooden sidewalk, I just didn’t know what was worse, getting that beating from Luther or being kept away from my own mama by the devil incarnate.

  “I even wrote Mama about how I made a mistake marrying Luther. I never did go into details about the day before I ran off and the liberties Old Man Maxwell took with me. Some things are just better left alone, I decided. I just wrote about the current hell and begged Mama to contact the sheriff and get me some help. I worked on that letter every day for a week and planned on dropping it off at the store when Luther took me to town on Saturday. When I hid it in the closet, I had no idea Luther would be smart enough to find the letter tucked inside my shoe.

  “Luther waited until we were riding in the truck on the way to town before telling me to give him my pocketbook. He claimed he had a piece of money for me and wanted to personally put it in my pocketbook. I don’t think I could’ve gripped that little black pocketbook that carried the letter I wrote Mama any tighter. After a few minutes of teasing, Luther yanked it out of my grasp and pulled over on the edge of the dirt road. It was right near Yorkshire Pond. I can still hear the locusts sounding off out in the pines.

  “When he saw that letter, I never heard so much yelling and swearing in my life. Luther went plumb crazy. Telling me how I thought I was going to pull something over on him and how he was watching my ever move. Then, he just leaned against the driver’s door and started kicking with his boots. He only caught me with one good jab to my arm before my hand found the door handle and I jumped out. He screamed that I’d be six feet under before he’d let my mama get in our business. I didn’t see what he pulled from under the truck seat until the tree limb above my right shoulder dropped to the ground. Before the pistol smoke cleared, I took off running.

  “I ran all the way around the pond and through the briars and underbrush. The briar bushes tore my legs to pieces, but I never felt a thing. It was only after I made it to Aaron and Missoura’s place that I noticed the blood on my legs.

  “Aaron was hoeing in the garden when I came running up to him, crying and carrying on. Missoura later told me that I jumped right at his big chest like a little young ’un excited to see her daddy. He saved me that day and time and time again. A more gentle soul you never did know.”

  Miss Claudia drew zigzag lines all across the tablecloth. Her face met mine, and she flinched as though she just remembered something she had to accomplish. “Oh, my goodness. Listen to me just rattle on. Not a bit of use in talking about things that are best left buried.”

  She held the edge of the pine table and lifted herself up. I didn’t move to try and assist her. I remained at the table feeling embarrassed over how my own problems had somehow peeled away years of hurt that were draped with cobwebs in her mind. I could not for the life of me imagine this woman I was looking at putting up with the life she described. But then again, maybe she thought the same of me.

  “But what I was getting at is our sheriff.” She leaned on her cane and lectured with her pointed index finger. “He’s not like that sorry excuse for a lawman in Apalachicola. Wiregrass’s sheriff respects a woman and will take her word. You got nothing to worry about, Erma Lee.”

  I never was any good at taking care of myself. I was too busy caring for Cher or Mama or, until a few months ago, Bozo. And now I saw another purpose with Miss Claudia. I wanted to protect her from further heartache. Those early weeks with her had been spent worrying she’d feel sorry for me. Now that had all changed, and the feeling that came over me was strange, an aching for a person I barely knew that good. An aching for what she had lost at such a young age.

  At such a young age…sixteen. Only a year younger than me when I married Bozo. Sixteen. The same age Suzette was when she got pregnant with Cher.

  “We’re just all thimbles on the big Monopoly board of life,” my Aunt Stella used to say. That afternoon sitting at Miss Claudia’s kitchen table, I couldn’t help but wonder if the God Aunt Stella worshiped had sent me to Wiregrass for a reason after all.

  Six

  As soon as Miss Claudia confirmed that Gerald Peterson was the best mechanic she knew, it made me feel a little more confident about advice from my spiky-haired neighbor. Kasi claimed Gerald Peterson was good, but she didn’t say how good-looking he was.

  He pulled up to my trailer in a shiny black tow truck, and with a nod of his Auburn University baseball cap, he lifted the truck bed conveyer to rescue my ailing car. I caught myself pulling at that white polyester cafeteria uniform while he leaned over, hooked, and prodded all kind of equipment under the hood of my car.

  Gerald was probably in his early fifties. He had a square build and a thick neck. I imagined him rushing down the Wiregrass football field decades earlier, scoring for the home team. A combination of curly blonde and gray hair stuck out underneath his cap. His mustache was still blonde with a few gray patches. He moved like a man determined to complete the mission before supper time.

  Most likely he had a wife and kids to get to, I decided. Maybe he was even a grandfather. I caught myself embarrassed by studying his build for so long. Quickly, I glanced to see if Cher had noticed.

  She stood by me with her hands on her hips, drawing rings in the sand with the tip of her big toe. She seemed to consciously ignore the other trailer-park kids who had gathered on bikes and skateboards to witness the faded Monte Carlo’s elevation to the car ambulance. The humming of the tow truck’s diesel engine drew kids from every corner.

  Looking at Miss Claudia’s big Lincoln parked in my driveway, I couldn’t help but think how out of place such luxury looked at Westgate Trailer Park. Half of my home was the same size as that car.

  When I had shaken my head no to Mi
ss Claudia’s first offer, she stood firm. “Mercy, Erma Lee. If I can’t do this, what can I do? Me with this bum hip, how much driving you think I’ll be doing?” With a toss of the keys she sealed the deal. “You’re taking the car, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Well, hey, Gerald,” Kasi said as she slipped through the growing throng of kids.

  He nodded and, without looking back up, asked, “Where’s your old man hiding these days?”

  She took a deep drag off her cigarette and bent down to the side mirror on the door of my Monte Carlo. “He’s working a job up in Huntsville. Getting paid time and a half. I told him just keep them checks coming, baby,” she said, stretching the ends of her platinum hair.

  Gerald ignored Kasi, and she eventually slid over towards Cher and me. “Cher, baby, why don’t you run over and help Laurel get ready for skating?”

  Cher looked at her and then glanced at me. I knew she didn’t want Kasi to know I had to give my permission first.

  When she walked in front of the kids gathered on the street, Cher flung her hair over her shoulder and never said a word. I worried she was getting a big head because we had that shiny Lincoln parked in our lot.

  Kasi stood next to me dragging on a cigarette and pulling at her denim miniskirt. The diesel engine of the tow truck hummed along with the crickets of early evening. The noisy mixture made me nervous, and I tried to think of something to say to Kasi. I never did know how to act around women like her, the flirty kind that hid behind a pile of makeup and had big breasts that hung out every which a way.

  “He’ll fix it up for you now.” She laid hard on the word now and took another drag. “Me and Ricky met him down at the Moose Lodge one night,” Kasi said while smoke escaped her black-lined lips. “He sure can dance. Gerald I mean, not Ricky.”

  “I hope it won’t cost me a pile of money,” I whispered.