There Is a River

by Charlotte Miller

  “He don’t remember it—and he smells like cigarette smoke,” Katie said, dismissing him, wrinkling her nose with distaste, then turning her attentions back to the teddy bear.

  21

  The following week passed with the normal worry over money that now plagued every day. By the next Saturday, Katie’s asthma was under control, and Joanna let her ride along with her grandparents when they left to visit J. T. and his family in Opelika.

  With Katie gone for the day, Joanna spent the hours working, for there was always plenty to do about the place. As afternoon came, she went in to bathe and change, then got her purse and keys to drive to the little country store only a few miles from the house. She had been dying for a Coke all day, and they needed a loaf of bread.

  The little store looked much as she remembered it when she was a child, with its screen front door and several fading Coca-Cola signs nailed to its exterior. There had never been a sign lettered with the store’s name, though it had changed hands and names twice in her lifetime alone. It was Webb’s Grocery now; it had been Linden’s and Jones’s before that. Her grandpa sometimes called it Owens’s Store, for it had been owned by the Owen family from before his birth in 1907 until sometime late in the 1960s.

  As Joanna pulled open the screen door that Saturday afternoon, hearing the loud screak of the door spring as it stretched open, she could not help thinking that her grandparents had shopped in this same store when they first married, and her grandfather’s parents had shopped here, and his grandparents, as well. Tom and Deborah Sanders had sharecropped land owned by the same Owen man who had once owned this store. Something of this place was very much a part of her life, she thought as she looked around at the painted board walls, and at the ancient Coca-Cola cooler and glass-sided Tom’s Peanut display alongside the front counter, both of which had sat in those same locations for uncountable years.

  The person behind the counter was a part of her life, as well, Joanna thought as she met the woman’s small eyes. An unwelcome part.

  Vertie Webb sat on a high stool behind the counter, a stool with a seat obviously not wide enough for Vertie’s ample backside. She hung over it, all the way round it, Joanna noticed as she stared at the navy polyester pants whose lower hems had ridden half-way up both Vertie’s calves to expose knee highs where they had rolled themselves down to encircle Vertie’s puffy ankles.

  And she was Dwight’s mother’s sister, which made her Katie’s great-aunt.

  Vertie sat with hands folded neatly atop one chunky, blue thigh as she met Joanna’s eyes, but Joanna had seen what had been in those hands up until the moment Vertie had noted her entering the store. Vertie had been reading a thick, historical romance novel when Joanna first stepped up onto the store porch. She had seen the book clearly enough through the screened door, for Vertie had seemed reluctant to tear her eyes from the page, much less to put it down. Vertie’s mouth had been slack and open, her eyes riveted to the page, one pudgy hand clenched into a fist and pressed tight into the blue and white flowered fabric of her polyester blouse between two substantial breasts. There was no doubt that it was a historical romance she had been reading—a bodice-ripper. Its front cover, complete with half-clad man with rippling muscles and young woman in hoop skirts, with a bodice and sleeves trimmed with substantial quantities of lace—a young woman with one hand clenched into her own chest in a pose strikingly similar to the one Vertie had been affecting—left little doubt. The book had been put away beneath the counter the moment she entered the store, though Joanna knew that it would be taken out again the moment she left.

  “Well—hello, there!” Vertie said, bringing a smile to her face.

  As always, the smile was forced, as well as phony, and Joanna returned it in kind. Vertie was one of the worst gossips in Eason County; she had never approved of Dwight marrying Joanna, and had made her feelings known, though, of course, never to Joanna’s face. Joanna had heard it second- and third-hand from various people throughout the county.

  “Did you bring Katie with you?” Her eyes moved from Joanna out through the now-closed screen door.

  “No; she went with Mama and Daddy to visit J. T. today.”

  “I want you to bring her to see me. I haven’t seen her in months now. She won’t even remember her Aunt Vertie.”

  Oh—she’ll remember you, Joanna thought. Katie had left here the last time Joanna had brought her to visit, with a mouthful of bubble gum that her Aunt Vertie had given her over Joanna’s protests. The wad of gum had gotten stuck into Katie’s long reddish-gold hair behind one ear before they had gotten home. It had taken Joanna the remainder of that afternoon and the better part of the evening to get the mess out of her hair. The evening had ended with a screaming, red-faced three-year-old stating that Aunt Vertie had known that she wasn’t supposed to have gum, and Joanna reminding that red-faced three-year-old that Katie, herself, had known as well.

  “I have some new pictures,” Joanna said, pulling her brag book out of her purse. She moved closer to the counter and handed the book across to the woman. Vertie took it and flipped through the photographs of Katie, but Joanna could tell she was paying them little attention.

  The woman’s eyes kept straying to Joanna instead as Joanna moved to a shelf holding a half-dozen loaves of bread. While she tested each by lightly squeezing the loaves through their wrappers so she could choose the softest, Vertie begin to make a clucking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. When Joanna turned back the woman was still looking at her, and for a moment Joanna thought she was about to be reprimanded for squeezing the loaves of bread.

  “You know, I heard about the problems you’ve been having at your place—is it really as bad as they’re saying?” The brag book, face open on the counter, was forgotten now.

  “What is it they’re saying?” Joanna asked, though she knew. Here in Eason County, where everyone not only knew most everyone else, but where most people could also name several generations of your ancestors, and gossip about relatives of yours who died decades before your birth, people thought it their right to meddle in each other’s affairs: business, personal, or otherwise. Joanna had little doubt that Vertie knew they were behind on their mortgage. She probably knew how many payments they were behind.

  “Are you about to lose your place?—there are so many farms going under. Why, John Renfroe—” and she was off gossiping about someone else. Joanna knew Vertie had not forgotten her question, however. Joanna would not answer it, which Vertie well knew, for the Sanders did not talk their troubles outside their own family.

  Vertie would not need an answer; she would happily supply one herself, and would likely tell it to most anyone who would listen to her, out of all the people who would visit in the store in the next week.

  Vertie was staring at her when Joanna looked up from placing a can of Coke on the counter beside the loaf of bread.

  “You know, I don’t think you’ve gained an ounce since high school; have you?” Vertie asked, smiling.

  Joanna shrugged, not certain what to say. She knew she had rounded out a bit, but she weighed much the same. It just was not like Vertie to mention such a thing.

  “I remember you wearing that same blouse when you were in high school.”

  Vertie was still smiling, pulling the loaf of bread and the Coke closer on the counter so she could ring them up. She was leaning now off the front of the stool, her pudgy thighs and large bottom resting almost exclusively on the edge of the seat. Joanna watched, thinking the prop would skitter away and out from under her at any moment to send her crashing to the floor. She started to say something, but stopped herself.

  “That’s the good thing about being so small on top, isn’t it?” Vertie continued. “Things still fit you like they did back when you were a child—”

  Then she interrupted herself before Joanna could say anything in response, Vertie telling her how much she owed for
her purchases. Joanna reached into her purse to pull out her wallet, willing herself not to answer. It would accomplish nothing.

  Vertie accepted Joanna’s money and made change, then pushed the loaf into a too-small paper sack, which only made the bread more difficult to carry. The edge of the sack did not even come up as far as the end of the loaf inside its plastic wrap, causing Joanna to have to cradle it on one arm to keep from either losing the sack or mashing the bread. Vertie had the brag book again and was staring at a photograph of Katie when Joanna looked up.

  “She doesn’t look at all like Dwight or any of the the Lees,” Vertie said, studying the photograph for a moment, “or like the Mitchells.”

  Vertie had been a Mitchell before her her marriage, as had Dwight’s mother.

  “You know, she doesn’t look like your family, either, does she?” Vertie said, her eyes fixing on Joanna, her tone making certain the insinuation was clear.

  She snapped the brag book shut at last and handed it back to Joanna. Joanna clenched her teeth to keep from responding, knowing that anything she said would only make Vertie gossip all the more, and she was not about to have the woman gossiping about Katie, if she could help it. She accepted the small photo album and stuck it into her still-open purse, took up her can of Coke and started for the door.

  “You bring Katie to see me, you hear?” Vertie called after her, but Joanna did not respond. She went on out the door and onto the porch, then down the board steps and out into the parking area before the store. She was so furious that she had squashed a section of the loaf bread even before she could reach the car, then accidentally ripped the side of the paper sack and dropped the wrapped loaf out onto the ground. She was cursing furiously under her breath by the time she was in the car and putting it into gear. She had to force herself not to shove down on the gas pedal, for to peel out of there would only give Vertie more to gossip about:

  “I just mentioned to her that that child of hers don’t look like nobody in our family . . . Poor Dwight—you remember she just threw him out . . . Poor boy—he had to drop out of school after that . . . I wonder if he caught her with someone else . . .”

  Joanna could just imagine the gossip.

  When she reached the turn that would take her back toward the house, she kept going straight instead—she had to calm down before she went home. Of all the nerve, for the woman to insinuate something like that about Katie, or about Joanna.

  When the blue lights came on behind her car a short while later, Joanna could not help but to think—of course, what else could happen. All the people in this county, and I’m the one to get a cop behind my car.

  The officer was all business.

  “Where is it you were going in such a hurry, ma’am?”

  “Home.”

  He studied her license. “You were going the wrong way to be going home, weren’t you?”

  “I was driving around—”

  “Driving around?”

  He sat in the patrol car watching as she put the car in gear and started away slowly, a speeding ticket now on the seat beside her.

  She didn’t start to cry until she was more than a mile down the road, when it hit her that speeding tickets cost money and money was one thing she didn’t have—of all the stupid things.

  She was crying so hard she knew she had to stop the car. There was an abandoned store on the opposite side of the road just ahead, so she slowed and pulled across the other lane and over into the potholed parking area out front. The brakes scrubbed slightly as she stopped the car and put it in park, and it occurred to her that she had been hearing that sound for more than a week now, doing her best to ignore the noise, for there was no money to have anything done to the brakes. By the time she had the money, they would have probably done additional damage which would cost only more. Dwight would not pay his child support, and had never paid it, more than an occasional check here or there when his conscience—if he had one—was bothering him. Joanna knew the talk that Katie might not be his might very well have started with him, in an attempt to save his own precious reputation here in Eason County where he had so many relatives—Why should I pay for a child who might not even be mine? she could almost hear him now, when he knew damn well that Katie was his. Even now, years after Joanna divorced him, he was the only man she had ever been with—God, what a loser, she told herself, though she did not mean Dwight in that moment. She had a college degree, but she was driving around in an eight-year-old car with a hundred and forty thousand miles on it. Her child wore hand-me-down clothes, and the blouse Joanna wore today truly was one she had worn in high school. There was no money for clothes. There was no money for anything. They were losing the land, and she was working for almost nothing—and what else could happen now? What else—?

  There was a tap on the rolled-up window beside her. Joanna lifted her head from where she had rested it against her crossed hands at the top of the steering wheel, thinking it might be the cop again and that she might have done something else that would cost her more. But the man standing beside the car, knuckles tapping again on the closed window as she stupidly wiped at her wet cheeks with the back of one hand, was Stephen Dawes, with a frown on his face.

  Elise Sanders stood at the front window in the living room that night, staring into the darkness beyond the lighted porch. She was still dressed from the day, as was Janson, who sat, silent, in the recliner across the room. He was leaning forward in the chair, tapping his walking stick steadily on the floor between his feet, waiting, as was she—Joanna had not come home all afternoon. Now, well into the evening, there had been no word from her.

  Henry and Olivia were not home with with Katie yet, though Janson had called J. T.’s house to find they had left more than two hours ago. Janson had wanted to go looking for Joanna on his own and had gotten the keys to Henry’s truck, but Elise had taken the keys and refused to give them back.

  “I can see good enough t’ drive!” he had yelled, though he had not driven a vehicle in years.

  He had almost hit a child on a bicycle and of his own decision had not been behind the wheel since.

  “I didn’t see him ’til I was almost on him,” Janson had told Elise that day, shaking still an hour after he reached the house. “I didn’t see him—an’ then it took s’ long t’ stop. I could’a hit him, Elise. I could’a hit him—” even as he wiped his face with one shaking hand.

  But tonight he was determined to drive.

  “I can see good enough—give me th’ keys, Elise,” he said, holding out one hand, as determined and as mad as she had ever seen him. “Joanna could be hurt. Th’ car could’a broke down. She might be out walkin’ in th’ dark—give me th’ damn truck keys, Elise!”

  But Elise had refused to hand them over. She was just as worried as him, and if her own night vision were not so poor, she would have tried to drive herself.

  Janson had retreated to the telephone, muttering all the way.

  “I ain’t that old . . . Taught her t’ drive, but I wouldn’t do it again if I had t’ do it over. Damn woman. Damn—”

  He had called J. T.’s house, and had tried to reach Matt, then had turned on the local radio station, hoping not to hear a report of an accident, or even something worse, in Eason County.

  Elise kept telling herself that Henry and Olivia would be home soon and if Joanna was still not back then Henry could go look for her. Janson could ride along, for Elise knew very well that he would not stay home. Joanna had a good head on her shoulders; she knew how to take care of herself. She had probably just let the time get away from her—but the thought kept reoccurring to Elise of a night when Henry had not come home during their first year on this place. That was the night Janson found him beaten and bloody, and the old jalopy demolished, at the side of a road. Buddy Eason had been responsible for what happened that night—but Buddy Eason was an old man now. He had left them alone since Janso
n had made it clear that to bother them again would be a fatal mistake. Buddy would not have done anything.

  But he could, and Elise knew it. Things happened in Eason County, things for which only Buddy Eason could be responsible. Now she could not get out of her mind the image of that huge, twisted old man in his wheel chair. Buddy Eason was nothing but a sickness on this county, a sickness that had grown progressively worse as the years passed and the sickness inside Buddy’s own mind increased. He was capable of anything, and Elise knew it.

  She looked at the clock on the nearby wall, feeling suddenly chilled even in the warm room. She rubbed her arms and looked out the window, hearing the steady tapping of Janson’s cane.

  Lights swept across the yard, and then turned in the drive. The tapping of Janson’s cane stopped abruptly as Elise moved toward the front door, relief washing over her—she would give Joanna Sanders Lee a piece of her mind. Worrying them all so—

  The thought went unfinished as she recognized Henry’s Ford LTD and watched him get out and come up onto the porch with the sleeping Katie in his arms. Olivia was beside him.

  “Joanna’s gone; she’s been gone since the middle of the day,” she whispered, stepping out onto the porch to hold the door open for him so that he could carry Katie inside. “She said she was going to the store for some bread. Henry, you don’t think—?” But she could not finish the sentence.

  His eyes moved to where his father now stood in the open doorway. Janson moved aside as Henry entered, then waited while their son went to lay Katie in her bed. When Henry started back outside a few minutes later, he found his father already getting in the passenger side of the LTD. Olivia tried to follow, but Henry put a hand out to hold her back.

  “No, stay here in case she comes back while we’re gone.”

  “But, your mother will be here—”

  “Stay here.” His voice rose. She stood beside Elise and watched as he and Janson pulled away.