Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  If there was anybody in Cade County, Texas, you could count on to be not just out and about but at full typhoon force at eight-thirty on a weekday morning, it was my aunt Dove. As I pulled up to the curb in front of her house I could see her, a straw hat trimmed with a red bandanna on her head, bent over her spring garden.

  Dove's garden was the talk of the county. Teeming with every vegetable and annual native to East Texas, it was also a kind of multicultural shrine that she'd decorated with tiny statues and prayer stones and amulets and religious medals, the way most of her neighbors set out plastic geese in ladies' bonnets and cast-iron donkeys pulling wheelbarrows. Hardly a day went by, especially in summertime, that folks didn't stop, sometimes driving quite a distance, to look over the place, and some felt moved to add their own trinkets to the mix, so that in among the rosaries and miniature Buddhas, you just might find an Elvis Presley key chain or a shot glass from the Isle of Capri casino in Bossier City. Dove didn't really care if you wanted to pray to Jesus or Krishna or Santa Claus or the almighty dollar; one thing was as sacred as the next, as far as she was concerned, and "live and let live" was her motto, though I can't say that it was the prevailing one in Mooney, Texas, population 990, about nine hundred of them hard-shell Baptists.

  "Some folks is up early," she said as I came through the gate. "Then again, some folks's been partyin' all night."

  She showed me the saucer in her hand, where fifteen or twenty slugs floated in a shallow pool of liquid. "Last call for happy hour," she said, her blue eyes glinting. Tufts of white hair like goosedown escaped from the brim of her hat. She wore a T-shirt featuring an iron-on likeness of Porter Wagoner in full pompadoured and sequin-suited splendor over the block-printed slogan, WHAT WOULD PORTER DO?

  I bent to the dish and sniffed. "Beer?"

  "You know, I been doin' this for I don't know how long, but I always thought it was somethin' in the brew that killed 'em. Come to find out it ain't the alcohol—they just fall in and drown. I sure wish I'd a figgered that out sooner, I could've saved me a piece of cash over at the Pak 'n' Sak. That boy runs the register acts like he's fixin' to turn me over to Liquor Control." She jiggled the dish contemplatively. "Must've been some bash. There's more of 'em over there. Looks like they invited all their friends. It's a wonder they didn't keep me up all night, singin' and dancin' and gettin' in fistfights."

  "What's with the shirt?" I asked.

  "You like it? Me and Rowena thought 'em up." Rowena Sheppard was Dove's oldest friend and cohort in the Cade County Garden Club. "I was over at her house last week and she had that CMT on the TV and, I swear, you'd a thought we was watching America's Most Wanted on the Fox channel—all them boys with big old baggy pants and scraggly beards and sunglasses, looking like they been sleepin' under abridge somewhere, holdin' up gas stations and smokin' who knows what. Goodness sakes, I says to Rowena, is this what things has come to? Whatever happened to the days when country music was so fancy and proud, when the ladies had gowns and hair up to there, and the men wore them beautiful suits with all the beads and spangles? It was Rowena blurted out, 'Yeah, what would Porter do?'" I laughed. "We're thinkin' of havin' a batch of 'em printed up and sell 'em at Market Days downtown," Dove said. "Then, if that goes good, maybe branch out, get set up on the Intranet. Start us a reg'lar campaign."

  "Hm. Maybe I ought to get in on that."

  "So, how about it?" She held out the saucer full of little bloated bodies. "You here to help me round up the casualties?"

  "No, thanks. I've seen enough slugs floating facedown in their beer to last me one lifetime." I picked up a little metal Matchbox car with Dale Earnhardt's Number 3 on it, squeezed in between Saint Francis and a Chinese Foo dog.

  "Any particular slug on your mind?" Dove asked as she tipped the dish's contents, bugs, beer, and all, into an old coffee can. "Or is there some other reason you're standin' in my front yard at the break of day looking like you got the devil on your heels?"

  "I look like I've got the devil on my heels?"

  "Well, maybe not just anybody'd think so. But I ain't just anybody." Thirty-some-odd years before, when my daddy, Raymond Hatch, walked out on my mama and brothers and me, Dove had taken the boys and me under her wing, been more of a mama to us than our own mama, her sister Patsy, ever was, and except for my brother Bailey's wife, Geneva, she knew me better than anybody.

  "Ash is here."

  She looked up, glanced past me toward the Blazer, back to me again.

  "He's at the house, I mean." Dove jiggled the coffee can a time or two, then set it on the sidewalk. "He came last night, during the storm. I found him when I went out to feed the dogs this morning, sound asleep in the backseat of a brand-new pickup. Said he fell asleep waiting for the rain to let up. He acted like this was a regular thing—like he'd been gone two, three days, tops. He couldn't seem to figure out why I wasn't falling all over myself to see him. When I left to take Jude to school, he was getting ready to go inside and take a shower. Just like it was any old day."

  "Well, I'll be. What happened at that dryin'-out place up in Tennessee?"

  "He said they let him out early. He said he's got things under control."

  Dove snorted and gave the brim of her hat a yank. "Well, I'll tell you this—if he shows up here, I mean to sit him down and give him a piece a my mind."

  "I think you can count on it," I said. "Guess what he had in the back of the truck? Forty pounds of crawfish. Says he wants to have everybody over for a crawfish boil. He's talking about borrowing your cooker."

  We looked at each other, then started to laugh. Dove shook her head.

  "If that ain't Ash, through and through."

  I nodded. "A little food, a little drink, a little music, and pretty soon we forgive him all his trespasses."

  "So, you goin' along with this plan?"

  "Have I got a choice? We're still married. The house is still his, half of it anyway. And Jude was so happy to see his daddy, Dove! I could barely pry them apart to get him to school."

  "Well, all I can say is, everbody's gotta face the music sometime," Dove said. "Even if their name is Ash Farrell."

  "Try telling that to Ash. He's got his own rules." I looked at my watch. "I've got to run. If I hurry, maybe I can get to work before the news breaks."

  "I wouldn't count on it."

  "Anyway, I wanted to give you a heads-up. So if he comes breezing in your back door, he won't give you a heart attack."

  "Let him come a-breezin'," she said with a sly smile, and waved as I drove off.

  I wasn't officially due in to work till nine, when the shop opened, but I liked to get in early and get a jump on the day. Some days I beat Peggy in and some days I didn't. Since making me assistant manager, she'd been going around telling people she was semi-retired, but all that meant was that she could run out to meet her friends Alene and Mary Dale for coffee at the DQ whenever she wanted, maybe go home early and watch One Life to Live if things were slow.

  To be frank about it, business in a small-town, home-grown flower shop was not so brisk that Peggy had to be underfoot all the time. I took care of the books and the ordering now, and we had a Voc Ed student from Mooney High who came in from eleven to three to help with chores and delivery. But Faye's had been Peggy's mama's shop before her—that's where it got its name—and it had helped her keep her two kids in clothes and school supplies and put supper on the table, especially after Peggy's husband, Duane Thaney, passed on. What was she supposed to do, she said, now that her kids were grown and gone—sit around the house and watch herself shrivel up and get ready to die? There was enough of that in Mooney as it was, according to Peggy, and she wanted no part of it.

  She'd had a scare a while back that had something to do with it. When I first went to work for her, Peggy had been the size of a parade float, bumping gently around the shop in her bright flowered muumuus. But about five years before, she'd gone in to see the doctor about some shortness of breath and tightness in her chest, and next th
ing she knew, she was in County General with an emergency triple bypass. Over the months that followed, recovering from the surgery, she'd lost sixty pounds. When she got on her feet again, she took up power-walking and lost another eighty, and now she was a hale and muscular figure who could be seen marching through the streets of Mooney in her Spandex bike shorts, hand weights pumping, her hair pulled through a saucy little cap. A lot of women her age spent their days shuttling from one neighbor's house to another, eating coffee cake and playing bridge, but Peggy took pride in calling herself the exception to the rule.

  I pulled in next to her Pontiac and took out my key to let myself in the back door. I'd barely inserted the key in the lock when the door jerked open, flying backward on its hinges. I gave a little shout and dropped my purse. Not even eight-forty-five in the morning, and already my nerves were shot.

  "Lord, Peggy! Are you trying to scare me to death?" I knelt and started gathering up the spilled contents of my purse: loose change, cough drops, a rubber figurine from a McDonald's Happy Meal.

  "Lucy!" she cried. "I can't believe it!" She had on a hot pink smock over khakis, and she looked terrific.

  "Believe what?"

  "Ash is here!"

  I jerked up my head and looked around.

  "Oh, not here, here. But here! In Mooney, his hometown!" I stood and squeezed past her into the shop. She followed me into the showroom, where I tossed my purse on the counter. "I guess I don't have to tell you, I've been praying for this day a long time."

  I walked over and poured myself a cup of coffee. Peggy and I liked our coffee the same way, Louisiana style, strong and dark and laced with chicory.

  "I'm afraid to ask how you found out." It had barely been an hour since I'd come upon him fast asleep in his truck in the front yard, and the only person I'd told was Dove. The grapevine in our hometown was a mighty thing, but this had to be a record, even for Mooney.

  "He called."

  "Ash? Called here?"

  "Not five minutes ago!" Her face was flushed, eyes shining.

  "What did he want?"

  "Oh, I—something about books or towels or some such. I was just so excited to hear his voice! I guess my brain flew right out of my head."

  I sipped my coffee. It was black and scalding in a way I found deeply satisfying, like penance.

  "Aren't you going to call him back?"

  I set my cup on the counter. "Am I hallucinating? Am I the only one around here who doesn't think it's perfectly okay for a person to fall off the face of the earth for eight months, then just show up one night like nothing's happened, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world? He can't be bothered to check in and let me know he's alive since Christmastime, and now he's calling about towels?"

  "I just knew this would happen! I was telling Alene, someday that boy will wake up and see the error of his ways! I—oh, my goodness. I'd better run over and tell Burton at the cafe. Why, the pot's probably up to a hundred dollars by now!"

  I started to go after her, to tell her that she hadn't even heard the facts yet, such as they were, but I stopped myself. Facts were far down the list of considerations for the crowd at Burton's cafe, well behind intrigue, propaganda, and wild speculation. Since the day I met Ash Farrell, we'd been the object of some kind of pool or another; as far as I could tell, the town was pretty neatly divided, fifty-fifty, between those who thought Ash and I were soul mates, fated for life, and those who hadn't thought we'd ever get together in the first place, weren't surprised when I left him in Nashville and came on home, and wouldn't believe now we'd find a way to piece things back together.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the house, but the line just rang and rang. Maybe Ash was in the shower. Or maybe he'd already turned tail and headed on down the road, his white truck rocketing along the highway, trailing broken promises like a string of cans on the back of a honeymoon car.

  I'd no more than set the receiver in its cradle when it rang again. I answered, bracing myself. "Faye's Flowers, Lucy speaking—how may I help you?"

  "What time is it there?"

  "Denny?" I felt a soup of mixed emotions, relief and anxiety and joy and irritation, at the sound of her voice. "Where are you?"

  "Elko, Nevada. Isn't that wild? Ty booked us some rodeo gig. I thought I'd seen it all, but man, those bull riders know how to party." She sounded hoarse and happy. By now I was used to these calls from all over the country, as well as her more-or-less permanent confusion about what time zone she was in. It was 6:50 a.m. in Elko, Nevada, and my guess was, she was just rolling in.

  "Is everything okay?" I asked.

  "With me, you mean?"

  "Who else am I talking to?"

  "Oh, I'm fine. In fact, I'm great." For a beat or two there was silence on the line. "I met a guy."

  "Not on the back of a bull, I hope." My brother Bailey had rodeoed for a while after high school, and I knew bull riders were as wild as they come.

  She laughed. "Not even close. He's the new bass player in my band."

  I clapped my hand over the mouthpiece to keep from screaming. If there was anything worse than a bull rider, it was a professional musician. Hadn't her daddy taught her anything?

  "His name's Will Culpepper. He's gorgeous. I'm totally in love."

  I closed my eyes to conjure a picture of my stepdaughter, the way she looked in the eight-by-ten photo that hung over the bar at the Round-Up—the same one I had on my bureau and Aunt Dove kept as part of the family shrine on top of her TV—with her torn jeans and beat-up boots and flame-colored hair the same shade as her Fender guitar, aiming her feisty smile at the camera. But my mind kept going back to the day she'd first showed up to stay with Ash and me, a chunky, stringy-haired fourteen-year-old with a chip on her shoulder and a gift none of us, least of all her daddy, could've imagined. I missed that girl. She'd needed me in a way nobody, not even my son, had before or since. I don't care who you are or what kind of job you've done, it's hard to see somebody you've had a hand in raising take off out the nest, to stay behind and watch her fly.

  "I can't wait to meet him," I said. I wondered if Ash knew this Will Culpepper. I wondered if he'd greet him like a comrade, or just go ahead and have him killed.

  "But, look, that's not why I called," Denny said, her voice going suddenly solemn. "There's something else. Something I think you need to know. I got a message yesterday on my cell phone. That is, I got the message this morning, a few minutes ago. But the call came yesterday." She paused. My throat felt like it had been sandpapered. "It's Daddy," she said. "He checked out of the rehab place. Left, I mean, without being discharged. He just took off. They don't know where he is."

  I started to laugh.

  "Lucy?" Denny said. "Did you just hear what I said?"

  "Sorry. It's just that I know all this already."

  "You mean they called you, too?"

  "No, I mean he's here. He showed up last night. In a truck, in the rain."

  "Well, I'll be a— Is he okay?"

  "I'm not sure. I think he may have had a lobotomy."

  "What?"

  "Or maybe it's just selective amnesia. He knows Jude and me, all right. But he acts like we just saw each other yesterday and things were swell. When I left for work he was getting ready to take a shower."

  "His old self, in other words. King of Denial."

  "He had a cooler with him, full of crawfish."

  "Crawfish?"

  "Forty pounds. He said he bought it off the side of the road in Arkansas."

  "I don't get it. Is that supposed to be some kind of peace offering?"

  "You tell me. I mean, I like crawfish just fine, but I'd rather have a straight answer out of him."

  "Good luck."

  "And you should see this truck. Great big shiny four-by-four, crew cab, leather seats, satellite radio, the works. It had to have cost forty thousand dollars. It still has the dealer's plates on it. I was too scared to ask him where he got it."

  "I guess this means the re
hab thing didn't take."

  "I had a hard time getting a straight answer there, too. All he'd say about it is that he's got it under control. You know your daddy—he could be standing in the middle of a tornado and he'd be saying things are under control."

  "Yeah, with a beer in one hand and a shot in the other one while he was saying it." Both of us mulled that one over awhile. "So, are you gonna take him back?" she finally asked.

  "You mean, let him park in the yard and use the shower? Or let things start up where we left off back in Nashville? Right now I can't even think straight. It seems to me there's an awful lot of muddy ground in the middle."

  "Well, you sound like you're handling it okay."

  "I don't think it's really sunk in yet. But Jude's bound to be telling it all over school, and Peggy just ran over to the cafe to spread the word. I imagine it'll be a three-ring circus around here in no time."

  All of a sudden she gave a yelp. "Hey!" she said, and then there was laughter and muffled conversation on her end. It made my heart hurt. From a mother's perspective, I wanted her to be happy, but woman to woman, what I felt was pure, smoldering envy.

  "Lucy?" Her voice was suddenly clear again, bright and breathless. "You still there?"

  "Let me let you go," I said quickly. I hoped she wouldn't want to put Will on. I didn't think I could stand it, not today. "Listen, try not to worry about your daddy and me. I'm sure this will all make sense in a day or two." I didn't really believe that, but what else was I supposed to say? Leave Elko, Nevada, and Will Cul-pepper and your Fender guitar and get on down here and give me a hand? She'd have done it, and I knew it. I had to remember an old promise I'd made myself, that I'd never get in the way of my kids' dreams, not unless it was life or death, and this wasn't, at least not yet.