Breaking TWIG

by Deborah Epperson

  I tossed the salad, filled our bowls, and shook the bottle of Italian dressing. Johnny sliced the pizza, and then offered me the first piece. We barely spoke. I think we were about talked out. Johnny hadn’t said anything about the discovery of Frank’s truck and the body in it. I was grateful. Donald and death were the last things I wanted to discuss. After supper, we did the dishes together. I washed, he dried.

  "Why didn’t you call or come by when you were here in May, Johnny?"

  "I came by your house, but no one was home. I called the store and asked for you. Someone told me your family had gone on vacation."

  "Frank took me to see the Atlantic Ocean as a present for graduating from junior college. We rented a house on the beach for a week. It was the best time of my life."

  Johnny frowned. "I think being stuck with Helen for a week would’ve been hell."

  "Momma stayed at her rich friend’s house in Atlanta. You remember Eva, don’t you?"

  He nodded. "You and Frank spent the week together? Just the two of you?"

  Something in Johnny’s voice caused a warning bell to ring in my head. I’d omitted telling him Frank and I had been lovers and planned to marry. Momma often employed a diversionary tactic whenever she got backed into a corner. She’d pretend to be insulted and then put her attacker on the defensive. I decided to try it.

  "What do you mean by that remark? Frank and I were family and as you said, having Momma along would’ve been hell. She hates the beach."

  "I didn’t mean anything, Twig. I just said—"

  "If it hadn’t been for Frank, I would’ve never got to see or do anything. He’s the one who insisted I go to college, the one who looked out for me. You of all people should understand that." I threw down the dishcloth and marched off to the living room.

  Johnny trailed after me, offering his apology.

  I accepted it and changed the subject to his work on the Baxter house. It was really more of a cabin than a house. It consisted of a kitchen, a bath, a storage room, and a large front room that had a fireplace on the north wall. That end of the main room served as the living area, while the opposite end of the room contained a beat-up knotty pine bedroom set. Johnny explained his plans for fixing up the place and I offered to help. Then he brought up the subject of Donald.

  "Did Sheriff Hays tell you and Helen about the body we found?"

  "Yes. He said they’d do an autopsy, but he was pretty sure it was Donald."

  "It was definitely Frank’s old truck. The big question is how did it end up sailing off the cliff?"

  "What makes you think it went off the cliff? Maybe Donald drove the truck in. There’s a bunch of old logging roads leading down to the bottom of the canyon."

  "It went off the cliff all right. We spotted pieces of the truck up in the rocks. Looked like it hit the wall a couple of times before landing on the canyon floor."

  I sat down on the arm of an overstuffed chair. "Can you tell when it happened?"

  "We’re pretty sure it happened last Friday. We interviewed a couple who were camping downstream. They heard an explosion and saw smoke rising out of the canyon that afternoon."

  "Why didn’t they call the sheriff?"

  "They figured someone was clearing land by blowing up a stump and burning brush."

  I played with my hair—twisting it, braiding it, unbraiding it—while Johnny gave me an unsolicited explanation on how the investigation would proceed. All possibilities would be considered. Murder. Accident. Even suicide would be mulled over, despite the fact that Donald was too much of a son-of-a-bitch to do the world a favor and kill himself.

  Everyone close to Donald would be investigated for motive and opportunity. Gordon Zagat, the fired employee. Charlotte, the wife wanting a divorce. Sheriff Hays and Johnny had heard the rumor that Donald was having an affair with Wanda Gimmer and that Wanda’s brother, Mitch, wasn’t too happy about it. They’d both be checked out and so would Momma. Her dispute with Donald over Frank’s will wasn’t exactly a secret.

  "Why did Helen sign her property over to Frank in the first place?" Johnny asked.

  "While I was living in Alabama, Frank left Momma. People starting talking. Rumors began flying. Momma desperately wanted him to move back into the house, even if it was just for appearances. She offered to put things in his name if he’d move back."

  Johnny scratched his head. "I never thought of Frank as being the type of man to take advantage of a woman, even one like Helen."

  "Frank didn’t want to accept it, but I talked him into it. He wanted a divorce, but went back because I begged him to. I couldn’t bear losing both you and him." I grabbed Johnny’s hand, squeezed it. "Can we talk about something more pleasant? Your cousin, Emelda, told me your wife was expecting a baby. Did you have a boy or a girl?"

  He pulled away, walked over to the fireplace, and stoked the fire he’d started earlier.

  "Maybe I misunderstood Emelda," I said.

  "No, you understood right. We had a baby in December of ’69. A son."

  "What’s his name?"

  "We named him Robert Earl, after my dad and hers, but everyone called him Robbie." Johnny smiled. "You should have seen him, Twig. He had a grin that would melt your heart. When I’d come home, he’d hear my voice and squeal like a piglet until I picked him up."

  I could picture Johnny with a son. Playing with him. Hugging him. Loving him. "You must miss him a lot, with you here in Georgia and him in Texas."

  "Yeah, I do. I miss him." Johnny plunked down on the cracked leather sofa. He stared into the fire, sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment before exhaling. The air came out of him in a sluggish, whistling flow, like when you remove the plug from a kid’s blow-up toy.

  "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel sad," I said.

  "He’s gone. Robbie’s gone." Johnny leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.

  I got down on my knees in front of him. "You’ll see him again. I’m sure you’ll visit—"

  "You don’t understand." Johnny grabbed my shoulders. "He’s dead. Robbie died last year, two days before Thanksgiving. He got sick all of a sudden. A problem with his heart. The doctors did their best, but they couldn’t save him."

  I hugged Johnny tight and let him cry until the heat from the fireplace began to burn my back. I sat down at the end of the couch and motioned for him to lay his head in my lap. My mind searched for something comforting to say, but words seemed so trivial. I wanted to tell him I understood the pain of losing a child, the pain of losing his child, but couldn’t. I vowed never to tell Johnny about Havenwood or the child we’d made and lost.

  He rested in my lap for a good hour before getting up. The fire had died down and the radiance of the smoldering embers cast a muted, dreamlike glow across the room. He pulled me up. My feet were asleep and I wobbled a bit. Johnny drew me into his arms and kissed me. It wasn’t a light kiss, nor overly passionate. I judged it to be just right.

  He nuzzled my neck and murmured, "Stay with me, Twig. I need you."

  My toes tingled as warm blood began circulating through them, chasing away the numbness. My body trembled as Johnny’s warm breath tickled my skin, awakening my dead heart. "Don’t worry," I whispered. "I’m not going anywhere."

  *****

  It was almost dawn by the time Johnny and I got around to making love. The soothing touch of skin upon skin helped keep us calm as we made our way back to each other, stumbling at times through the debris that cluttered the past five years of our lives.

  I lay on Johnny’s bed, naked except for my panties, and felt no shame. The shy, frightened sixteen-year-old who had shared his bed in a flooded Tennessee fishing camp no longer existed. Gone too was the clumsy young man who'd claimed me as his common-law bride in a marriage sanctioned by no one except us and perhaps, the Lord Almighty.

  Johnny slipped off his briefs and stood nude at the foot of the bed—so handsome, so erect, so ready. He bent over, pulled off my w
hite, cotton underpants, tossed them on the pile of clothes we’d shed earlier. "You’re beautiful, Rebecca."

  I smiled at him, pleased by the way he slipped back and forth between calling me Twig and Rebecca. It made me feel like some sophisticated woman, a woman too complicated to have only one name.

  He pressed his knees on the mattress. The silence of the room amplified his heavy breathing and the crackling of the rekindled fire. Dark, widening eyes inspected my body as he crawled toward me in cautious anticipation.

  My chin quivered, a reflection of my body’s own eagerness. Pulling him close, I pressed him into me, urging him to deposit his pain and suffering deep inside of me.

  He cried out my name twice. "Rebecca . . . Re-bec-ca." Then all movement ceased.

  The intensity of our mating surprised me. Though brief, it lasted long enough to produce the shuddered relief our bodies craved. Johnny rolled off me and onto his back.

  We lay side-by-side, our fingers intertwined.

  "Damn, Twig . . . damn."

  "Are you okay, Johnny?"

  "I’m not sure yet," he said, a touch of amusement in his voice.

  I rolled toward him. "We’ve both learned a few things since that fishing camp."

  He grinned at the ceiling. "Who taught you all that . . . that stuff?"

  "Do you really want to start exchanging names, Johnny?"

  "Forget I asked."

  I kissed his shoulder. "We should each be allowed some secrets, shouldn’t we?"

  He nodded. "I’m whipped."

  "Yeah, me too."

  Johnny kissed me goodnight, turned over and fell right to sleep.

  I snuggled up close to his back, taking in its musky scent and warmth. My fingers skimmed his body—a light touch so as not to awaken him, yet firm enough that even the deepest recesses of my brain acknowledged the reality of him. This time, the dream was real.

  Satisfied that Johnny was not an apparition, I turned over and fitted my back to his so we could sleep cheek-to-cheek, in a manner of speaking. I thought myself content. Yet when I closed my eyes, I didn’t see Johnny’s face. I saw Frank’s.

  CHAPTER 32

  Three days later, the dead man found in Frank’s burned-out truck was officially identified as being Donald Wooten. Even so, it was the middle of the next week before they released the body for burial.

  Donald’s funeral didn’t draw the number of mourners Frank’s had. Still, the chapel at Levin’s Funeral Home was standing room only. Most attendees were either friends of Charlotte’s or people who’d gone to high school with Donald. A decent number of employees from Cooper’s Hardware and Garden turned out, including Gordon Zagat, Wanda Gimmer, and her brother, Mitch. Everyone asked if I was going to run the stores again. I gave the stock reply, "We’ll see."

  In addition to mourners, family, and several local reporters, a contingent of law officers, including Sheriff Hays attended the service. The inquiry into Donald’s demise had been designated a suspicious death investigation and would be treated as a murder case until the evidence proved otherwise. Johnny explained how deputies often go to funerals to watch the reaction of family and friends because it’s usually one of them who committed the murder. According to Momma’s unofficial, but reliable source—Roy Tate—there were at least five people who had both motive and opportunity to kill Donald.

  Gordon Zagat admitted fighting with Donald over being fired. He claimed he had nothing to hide because Donald was alive when he left Starview Mountain. No one could verify his claim except me, and I wasn’t talking.

  When Donald called Wanda Gimmer that Friday to say he had to cancel their tryst because of truck problems, she figured he’d lined up another girlfriend for the evening. Claiming a family emergency, she and brother Mitch left work. Later that afternoon, they showed up at the Sugardale store demanding to see Donald. When she discovered he’d left for the day, Wanda started cursing, knocking over displays and screaming, "That bastard is going to regret two-timing me." Neither she nor Mitch had a good alibi for the afternoon Donald died.

  Charlotte told Sheriff Hays she’d been in Athens all day Friday. But her neighbor reported seeing her and a large, good-looking man entering her Sugardale apartment late that Friday morning. When caught in the lie, Charlotte claimed she’d been so upset by the news of her husband’s disappearance, she’d forgotten about returning to Sugardale to get extra clothes for the girls. Her gentleman friend had supposedly come along to protect her from Donald.

  Momma enjoyed telling me Johnny had been taken off the case because he too was a suspect in Donald’s death. One of his fellow officers remembered that Johnny had once threatened to kill my stepbrother. I reminded Momma that Johnny made the threat eight years ago because Donald had raped me. She replied, "Maybe so, but some folks think it’s a mite strange that Johnny returns to Sugardale and a month later Donald is dead."

  The fifth suspect lived in our house. Momma had no alibi from the time she finished an early lunch with Betty Powell until 6 p.m. when her Sunday school teacher, Sue Atwood, called to brag about winning the trip to Las Vegas. Momma never could take defeat very well. The next day, I caught her spitting into the batter of a pineapple upside-down cake Mrs. Atwood had ordered.

  Momma told Sheriff Hays she’d been home all Friday afternoon. When he mentioned that Mrs. Treadwell hadn’t seen our van in the driveway, Momma claimed she’d put it in the garage to keep leaves from falling on it. The only time I remembered her putting the van in the garage was once when I inadvertently discovered her and Henry going at in the folded down back seat. She claimed they were trying to recapture the days of their youth.

  People talked about nothing except Donald’s strange death. The demand for my baked goods doubled, mainly because customers wanted to drop by, pick up their order, and pump us for information on the investigation. By mid-October, we stopped letting folks pick up their orders and hired a high school boy to deliver them.

  I seldom went anywhere except to Johnny’s. The whispering and stares bothered me. I wondered if the glue holding the veneer of lies that concealed our true lives could withstand the heat of such scrutiny.

  Charlotte wouldn’t comment about her plans for Papa’s house. Momma said I shouldn’t worry because she knew how to handle airheads like Charlotte. Fighting Donald for Frank’s estate would’ve been a cakewalk compared to going against a sympathetic widow, her two fatherless children, and her daddy’s big-time lawyers. Momma accused me of sabotaging her efforts because I’d refused Charlotte’s request to run the stores until the estate was settled. As soon as the law permitted, Charlotte planned to sell the stores and the Starview Mountain property. Atlantic Realty Investments, Inc. offered her half-a-million dollars for Starview.

  When she heard how much money would be going to Charlotte instead of to us, Momma took to her bed. She claimed she had the flu, but I knew she needed time to regroup and devise a new scheme to wangle control of the estate from Charlotte.

  Johnny and I spent much of our time together working on the Baxter house. I painted walls and hung curtains, while he caulked windows, repaired the roof, and replaced rotted boards. In order to avoid Momma, we always stayed at his place. Even so, she made her presence known.

  Whenever I spent the night at Johnny’s, Momma would call at all hours. Sometimes she’d hang up as soon as he answered. Twice, she insisted prowlers had broken in. The intruders turned out to be squirrels in the attic and an overgrown limb slapping an upstairs window. She’d drive by Johnny’s house just to see if we were there.

  It was ironic. Now, Momma was the one alone, while I had someone to care about, someone to laugh with, and someone who could help shoo away the loneliness. And in my new career as a caterer, I could set my own work hours. That gave me more time with Johnny, and I had Momma to thank for that.

  I thought our role reversal funny. Funny, but a little sad for Momma. I hadn’t a clue why I should care about her feelings. She never cared about mine. I tried to will away the ker
nel of sympathy my heart felt for her, but discovered the heart has a mind of its own.

  CHAPTER 33

  Momma came through the front door just as I set out the last tray of caramel apples.

  She pointed to the rolls of orange and black crepe paper. "What’s this?"

  "I thought we’d decorate for Halloween."

  She threw her purse on the sofa. "Did you fill all those orders? We need money."

  "Everything’s done, every cookie delivered." I picked up a bag of angel hair and a handful of plastic spiders. "Let’s hang some spider webs before the trick-or-treaters come. Where’s that witch’s costume you used to wear?"

  Momma yanked opened the top drawer of the buffet. "Shit, I’m out of cigarettes."

  "This might be a good time to start cutting back. We could save some money."

  "Don’t tell me what to do," she shouted. "Don’t you dare." She pushed her hair off her face with both hands. "Why don’t you go to Johnny’s?"

  "It’s Halloween. He’s working tonight." I went to the kitchen and returned with a half-pack of Camels. "I found these earlier."

  Momma snatched the smokes out of my hand, lit one, and inhaled. Her hands trembled as she tried to light a second cigarette off the first.

  "You want some help?"

  "I don’t need your goddamn help to light my own cigarette." She tried again, finally succeeding on her fourth attempt. "I don’t need anyone’s help. Not now. Not ever."

  "What’s wrong, Momma? Did something happen to Henry? Is that why you’re upset?"

  "Screw Henry and you too." She pointed at the candy apples. "Take those out on the porch. I don’t want a bunch of painted brats running in and out of my house." She tapped her ashes into the creamer of her prized silver tea set. "My house. That’s a laugh."

  "What’s happened, Momma?"