There were some new pictures from work that Lynnette was telling him about now. “It was a Florida vacation,” she said. “Old couple. Palm trees, blue water. But no typical shots—no Disney World, no leaping dolphins. Instead, there are these pictures of mud, pictures of tree roots and bark. Trees up close. And all these views of a small stucco house. Pictures of cars at motels, cars on the beach, cars in a parking lot at a supermarket. A sort of boardwalk trail in the woods. Then a guy holding up something small. You can’t tell what it is.”
“How small?” Cobb was trying to follow her description with his eyes closed.
“Like a quarter he’s about to flip.”
“Tell me one of your stories about the pictures.”
“Let’s see, they used to live there long ago. They raised their kids there, then moved far away. Now … they’re retired now and so they go back, but everything’s changed. The trees are bigger. There are more cars. The old motels look—well, old. Someone else owns their house, and the crepe myrtle and the azaleas she planted have grown into monsters. But she recognizes them—the same shade of purple, the same place she planted them by the driveway. They go and spy on the house and get chased away. Then they go to one of the parks where there’s a boardwalk through the woods. A man raped her there once, when she was young and pretty, but after all these years going back there doesn’t mean much. Then she loses her wedding ring and they retrace their steps, looking for it. They look through cracks in the boardwalk. They take all these pictures, in case the ring shows up in the pictures and they’ll be able to tell later. Like in that old movie we saw, Blow-Up? Then they find the ring, and she photographs him holding it up. But it doesn’t show up in the picture.”
“That didn’t happen to you, did it?”
“What?”
“Getting raped.”
“No. I just made it up.”
Turning over and opening his eyes, he said, “The way you do that, make up stories—you wouldn’t change that, would you? When we’re old, you should still do that.”
“I hope I have a better job by then.”
“No, I mean the way you can look at something and have a take on it. Not just take it for granted.”
“It’s no big deal,” she said, squirming.
“It is to me.”
She set her yogurt on the lamp table and suddenly pounded her pillow. “You know what I hate the most?” she said. “Those spread shots guys take of their wives or girlfriends. I think about those whenever I do my stretches for running.” She shuddered. “It’s disgusting—like something a gynecologist would see. It’s not even sexy.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t look at them.”
She ate some yogurt, and a strange look came on her face, as though she had just tasted a spot of mold. “You don’t expect a nurse or a doctor to go to pieces when they see blood, so I should at least be able to look at those negatives. It’s not personal. It’s not my life—right?”
“Right. It’s like TV or movies. It’s not real.” Cobb tried to comfort her, but she wriggled out of his grasp.
“It is real,” she said.
Cobb kicked at the bedspread, rearranging it. “I don’t always understand you,” he said, reaching for her again. “I’m afraid I’ll screw things up between us. I’m afraid I’ll make some mistake and not know it till it’s too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, something my brother said.”
“It’s a mistake to listen to your relatives,” she said, spooning the last of her yogurt. “They always believe the worst.”
That weekend, he took Lynnette to his mother’s for Sunday dinner. His mother would have liked it better if he had taken Lynnette to Sundaymorning church services first, but he couldn’t do that to her. And he didn’t want to start something false he’d have to keep up indefinitely.
“You’re not going to believe her house,” said Cobb on the way. Lynnette was wearing a black miniskirt, yellow tights, short black boots, a long yellow sweater. She looked great in yellow, like a yellow-legged shorebird with black feet he’d sometimes seen at the lake.
“Why are you so nervous about her house?” she asked. “All women have a unique way of relating to their house. I think it’s interesting.”
“This is more than interesting. It’s a case study.”
His mother was in the kitchen frying chicken. She wore an apron over her church clothes, a gray ensemble with flecks of pink scattered all over it. She said, “I would have stayed here this morning and had dinner ready for you, but we had this new young man at church giving a talk before the service. He came to work with the youth. He was so nice! The nicest young man you’d ever want to meet. He’s called a Christian communicator.” She laughed and rolled her hands in her apron.
Cobb tried to see his mother’s house through Lynnette’s eyes. All the glass objects made him suddenly see his mother’s fragility. She was almost sixty years old, but she had no gray hair. It dawned on him that she must have been dyeing it for years. His mother didn’t look at Lynnette or talk to her directly. She spoke to Lynnette through Cobb—a strange way to carry on a conversation, but something he had often noticed that people did.
Jim, the CPA, shooed them into the living room while Gloria cooked. Smoking a pipe, he fired questions at Lynnette as though he were interviewing her for the position of Cobb’s wife: “Are you related to the Johnsons out on Jubilee Road? What does your daddy do? Who does your taxes?”
“I always do my own taxes,” Lynnette said. “It’s pretty simple.”
“She’s not but twenty-three,” Cobb said to his stepfather. “You think she’s into capital gains and tax shelters?”
At the table, Cobb remarked, “George called this morning and said he saw one of those coyotes out at his place. We’re going out this afternoon.”
“We’re going to look for coyotes,” Lynnette said enthusiastically. She pronounced “coyotes” with an e at the end, the way he did, so Cobb figured that was the correct way.
“Lynnette likes to go walking out in the fields,” Cobb said. “She’s a real nature girl.”
Gloria said, “George is after me every summer to go back on that creek and look for blackberries, but now I wouldn’t go for love nor money—not if there’s wild coyotes.”
“George says they’re moving in because of all the garbage around,” Cobb explained. “They catch rabbits out in the fields and then at night scoot into town and raid the garbage cans. They’ve got it made in the shade.”
“Y’all better be careful,” Gloria said.
“They don’t attack people,” Lynnette said. During the meal, she talked about her job. She said, “Sometimes I’ll read about a wreck in the paper and then the pictures show up and I recognize the victim. The sheriff brings a roll in now and then when their equipment isn’t working.”
“I sure would hate that,” said Gloria.
Lynnette, spearing a carrot slice, said, “We get amazing pictures—gunshot wounds and drownings, all mixed in with vacations and children. And the thing is, they’re not unusual at all. They’re everywhere, all the time. It’s life.”
Jim and Gloria nodded doubtfully, and Lynnette went on, “I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about some pictures that came in Friday—a whole roll of film of a murder victim on a metal table. The sheriff brought the roll in Friday morning and picked them up after lunch. I recognized the body from the guy’s picture in the newspaper. I couldn’t keep from looking.”
“I saw that in the paper!” said Cobb’s stepfather. “He owed money and the other guy got tired of waiting for it. So he got drunk and blasted him out. That’s the way it is with some of these people—scum.”
Lynnette dabbed her mouth with a mustard-yellow napkin and said, “It was weird to see somebody’s picture in the newspaper and then see the person all strung out on a table with bullet holes in his head, and still be able to recognize the person. The picture they ran in the paper was a schoo
l picture. That was really sad. School pictures are always so embarrassing.”
“Would you like some more chicken?” Gloria asked her. “Cobb, do you mean you’re eating squash? I thought I’d never see the day.”
That afternoon was pleasant and sunny, still nippy but with a springlike feel to the air. Cobb and Lynnette drove out to George’s, stopping at Lynnette’s apartment first so that she could change clothes. Cobb was glad to get out of his mother’s house. He thought with a sinking feeling what it might be like in the coming years to go there regularly for Sunday dinner. He had never seen Lynnette seem so morbid, as though her whole personality had congealed and couldn’t be released in its usual vivacious way.
George popped out on the deck as soon as they pulled up. The dog barked, then sniffed Lynnette.
“Ruffy was barking last night about eleven,” George told them, before Cobb could introduce Lynnette. “I turned on the outside light, and Ruffy come running up to the deck, scared to death. There was this damned coyote out in the yard stalking that goose! It was fluttering in the wind and the coyote had his eye on it. Ruffy didn’t know what to think.” George pointed at the wind sock and made hulking, stalking motions with his body. He laughed.
“The goose looks absolutely real,” Lynnette said, stooping to pet the dog. “I can see why a coyote would make a mistake.”
“I tell you, it was the funniest thing,” George said, overcome with his news. He stood up straight, containing his laughter, and then said, “Damn, Cobb, where’d you get such a good-looking girl?”
“At the gittin’ place,” Cobb said with a grin.
Ceci was there, along with the three kids. “Don’t look at this mess,” Ceci said when they went inside. “I gave up a long time ago trying to keep house.” Ceci shoved at her two-year-old, Candy, who was tugging at her elbow. The little girl had about ten rubber bands wound tightly around her arm. As Ceci methodically worked them off, she said, “We’re still eating on that shoulder, Cobb. I’ll fix y’all a sandwich to take back to the creek if you want me to.”
Cobb shook his head no. “Mom just loaded us up with fried chicken and I can’t hardly walk.”
Lynnette, who must have spotted the gun rack in the den, asked George, “Are you going to shoot the coyote?”
George shook his head. “Not on Sunday. I can’t shoot him with a shotgun anyway. I’d need a high-powered rifle.”
“I’d love to see a coyote,” Lynnette said.
“Well, you can have him,” said Ceci. “I don’t want to see no coyotes.”
“Maybe we’ll run into one back at the creek,” Cobb said to Lynnette in an assuring voice. He caressed her back protectively.
“They’re probably all laying up asleep at this time of day,” said George. “If I could get out there about six in the morning, then I might see one. But I can’t get out of bed that early anymore.”
“Lynnette gets up and runs six miles at daylight,” Cobb said.
“That must be why she’s so skinny,” said George to Cobb, grinning to include Lynnette but not looking at her.
Ceci said, “I couldn’t run that far if my life depended on it.”
“You have to work up to it,” said Lynnette.
Ceci finished removing the rubber bands from Candy’s arm and said to the child, “We don’t want to see no old coyote, do we, sugar?”
Ceci’s tone with Lynnette bothered Cobb. It implied that Ceci felt superior for not being able to run six miles. Cobb hated the way people twisted around their own lack of confidence to claim it as a point of pride. Agitated, he hurried Lynnette on out to the fields for their walk.
George yelled after them, “Be sure to keep count of how many coyotes y’all see.”
Lynnette hooked her hand onto Cobb’s elbow, and they started out through a bare cornfield spotted with stubble. “I wish we’d see one,” she said. “I’d talk to it. I bet you could tame it if you were patient enough. I could see myself doing that.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you could.” He laughed and draped his arm around her shoulders.
Lynnette said, “I used to know a family that had a tame deer that came to a salt lick they put out. The deer got so tame it would come in the house and watch TV with them.”
“I don’t believe you!” Cobb said. “You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not! During hunting season they’d tie a big red ribbon around her neck.”
The mud from earlier in the week had dried, but Cobb was wearing his new rubber boots. Lynnette had changed into black high-top shoes and jeans. She wasn’t wearing a cap. He loved her for the way she could take the cold.
“Are you O.K.?” he said. “Is it too windy?”
“It’s fine. It’s just—” She gave a sigh of exasperation. “I shouldn’t have talked about those pictures at your mother’s.”
“Yes, you should. It was exactly what she needed to hear.”
“No, I should’ve kept my mouth shut. But her house brought out something in me. I wanted to shock her.”
“I know what you mean. I always want to break all that glass.” He booted a clod of dirt. “Families,” he said disgustedly.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just one of those things.” She bent to pick up a blue-jay feather. She twirled it in her fingers.
George had bush-hogged a path along the creek, and they followed it. When they started down into the creek, Cobb held on to Lynnette, drawing aside branches so they wouldn’t slap her face. The water had subsided, and there were a few places of exposed gravel where they could walk. They made their way along the edge of the water for a while, then came to a part of the creek where the water was a few inches deep. Cobb carried Lynnette across, piggyback. She squealed and started to laugh. He sloshed through the puddle and carefully let her loose on the other side. She took a few steps, then squatted to examine some footprints.
“A coyote has been here!” she said excitedly. “Or maybe a fox.”
The prints, like dog-paw rosettes, were indistinct. Cobb remembered seeing a red fox running through a field of winter wheat one spring when he was a child. The wheat was several inches high, and the fox made a path through it, leaving a wake like a boat. All Cobb could see was the path through the wheat and the tail surfacing occasionally. He had never seen a small animal travel so fast. It was like watching time, the fastest thing there was.
They sat down on a fallen log next to an animal den in the bank, beneath the exposed roots of a sycamore tree. Dried, tangled vines hung down near the opening, and a dirt path led down the bank to the creek bed.
“What did you really think of my mom?” Cobb asked, taking Lynnette’s hand.
“The knickknacks made me sad.” Lynnette pulled at some tough vines on the ground. Cobb made sure the vine wasn’t poison ivy; he watched her slender fingers worry and work with the flexible stems as she spoke. She said, “I don’t want my mom to have to deal with a wedding.”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t handle it.”
“We don’t have to have anything big.”
Lynnette pulled away from him. “She’s one of these people who have to make lists and check and recheck things,” she said. “You know—the type of person who has to go back and make sure they turned off the oven when they left the house? She’s that way, only real bad. It prevents her from functioning. She can’t make a phone call without checking the number ten times.”
Lynnette’s mother sounded nuts, Cobb decided. He had seen her picture. She was pretty, with a generous smile. Cobb had imagined her, somehow, as a delicate woman who nevertheless had strong ideas. Her smile reminded him of Dolly Parton before she lost all that weight.
Lynnette said, “When I was a senior in high school, my mom tried to kill herself. She took a lot of Valium. I was at band practice and I got a call at the principal’s office to go to the hospital. It was a total surprise. I never would have imagined she’d do that.” Lynnette was still twiddling the feather as she talk
ed, even though Cobb had her hand, squeezing it.
“Why did she do it?” he asked.
“For a long time I blamed myself. I thought I hadn’t shown her enough love. I was always so busy with band practice and all that teenage shit. And I remembered that I had upset her once when I said something mean about Dad. But then only a couple of years ago I found out my dad was shacking up back then with some woman from the country club. And looking back, I realized that all Mom had was that house. She used to work before we moved here, but then she couldn’t get a job, and she didn’t have many friends, and her house was all she had. I remember coming home and she’d be dusting all her knickknacks or pasting up wallpaper or arranging artificial flowers. I used to make fun of it, and I’d never help out. That’s when it started, the way she’d pick over things and count them and try to keep track of them. I didn’t think it was strange then.” Lynnette shuddered in disgust. “I remember when the Welcome Wagon came—these two grinning fat women. They brought us some junk from the stores, coupons and little things. There was a tiny cedar chest from a furniture store. Your mother has one something like it, on that whatnot in the hall.”
“One of her Gatlinburg souvenirs,” Cobb said.
“I hated the Welcome Wagon. I thought they just came to check us over, to see if we were the country-club type. And we weren’t. And then to think my dad would fool around with one of those country-club women—a golfer. I could have died of shame.”
Cobb held Lynnette closely. “Every day I get to know you better,” he said. “This is just the beginning.” He flailed around for some comparison. “This is just the yogurt on top, and there’s the fruit to come.”
She giggled. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard! That’s why I care about you. You’re not afraid to say something that ridiculous. And you really mean it, too.” She dropped the blue-jay feather, and it swirled in the water for a moment, then caught on a leaf. “But I’m afraid, Cobb. I’m afraid I might do something like she did—for different reasons.”
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