“I doubt that. I grew up here and I want Katie to grow up here—”
They talked for hours, and there was still more to say. Stephen had never felt as comfortable with a woman, and she seemed comfortable as well, except for a few brief minutes—
“Won’t your wife or girlfriend be wondering where you are?” she asked, her eyes on his face. “We’ve been gone a long time.”
“I don’t have a wife. Or a girlfriend.”
“Oh?” She was watching him still. “Girlfriends, then,” she said, stressing the plural. “Playing the field and having a good time.” It was a statement, not a question, Stephen noted. She had folded her hands together in her lap, distancing herself from him.
“No.” Stephen was staring at her. “I was living with someone in Birmingham. She came here with me when I moved to Eason County; we talked about marrying, but it didn’t work out.” He did not say more, though he could have. Andrea had lived with him in his grandfather’s house for barely three weeks. She moved out after she said she had found the old man staring at her through a partially opened door as she was dressing one day. She begged Stephen to return with her to Birmingham, but he refused.
Stephen had watched as she went down the front steps to her car the day she left. She was crying so badly that he did not know how she would see to drive to Birmingham.
“That’s my boy,” the old man had said, reaching up to take Stephen’s hand for the first time Stephen could remember. Buddy Eason had held his hand with what appeared to be close to affection, and Stephen watched, allowing the bloated, liver-spotted fingers to move over his own until Buddy released him at last. By then, Andrea had driven away.
He stared at Joanna now. He thought possibly that color had risen to her cheeks there in the semi-darkness. He could tell she did not believe him.
“You think I pick up every woman I meet, and take her for a ride to Blackskillet, Lightning Stump, and Wells, and then let her eat a burger and fries in my truck?” he asked, in a lighter tone.
“Not exactly.” There was an extraordinary dryness to her words, which made Stephen laugh.
“I guess I’m behind schedule, then. Do you want to get undressed first, or shall I?” he asked her, then immediately regretted the words, thinking she would never see the joke behind them.
But she laughed, pushing reddish-gold hair back from her eyes.
“The direct method, huh?” she asked, and he smiled. “I guess that’s why you carry such a supply of Trojans around with you.”
Stephen looked blankly at her.
“The day we first met—well, I don’t guess we actually met that day, but the day I saw you at the Feed and Seed, I happened to pass your red car out on the street. You had quite a supply in the car that day. They were spilling out all over the seat, along with a magazine that really ought not to have been out in the open.”
“Oh, good God, my grandfather—” but then he stopped. She was damned direct, and nosy as well.
He did not know why he had been about to explain.
But then he did, anyway.
“It was a ‘care package’ from my grandfather. He said I should make sure to use them, that he didn’t want any little ‘problems’ running around.” Stephen shook his head. “The magazine came from him as well. He said wanted me to see what I was missing since Andrea moved out, that I was too young and healthy to be alone—yeah, I looked at it. I’m human. That day I just threw it in my car when I left his house.” He realized he was angry. He did not know why he was explaining to her, but he found himself continuing. “I didn’t know it was laying open until I went back to get in the car. I threw it over into the floorboard and sat down—that’s when you laughed at me.” He was pouting as he stared at her, and he knew it.
She laughed again. “You were such a funny sight, catapulting yourself out of the car. I thought you deserved it, for letting that old man—”
“Enough,” he stated firmly. He intended to remain angry at her, but found that he could not. She was smiling, and it struck him for the first time how pretty she was. Her red-gold hair was like honey in the dim light, and he could not see the color of her eyes now but he knew they were a brilliant blue. Her smile made him feel comfortable as he sat back against his seat—and then he impulsively leaned toward her, put his hand to her hair at the back of her head and drew her forward. The kiss was nothing but an impulse to begin with—and then it continued and he felt her lean into him. When it ended at last she moved slightly from him, taking up the purse that had fallen into the floorboard and holding it tightly. The thought occurred to him that she might hit him with it if he tried anything else. He began to laugh as that image came into his mind, of being beaten about the head with a woman’s purse for getting fresh in a truck in a school parking lot. He laughed harder.
When he took a breath at last, she said, “Maybe you’d better take me back to my car—” Which made him laugh all the more.
“I’m sorry,” he said, calming down. “I just had this image of you beating me to death with your purse because I kissed you.” He was smiling now.
She seemed to try to repress her return smile, but it came anyway. “‘Man found beaten to death by purse in Wells High School parking lot; kiss turns deadly—film and story at ten’. . .?” she suggested, improvising for him the mock news bulletin, and her smile broadened even further.
It was hours later that he drove her back to her car.
“Can I take you to dinner tomorrow night?” he asked, after having gone around his truck to open her door, which he could never remember having done for a woman in his life. She stood now between her vehicle and his, her keys in hand.
“I can’t. I should eat supper with Katie. She expects me to.”
“Well, how about later, after she goes to sleep? We could go for a ride, maybe take in a late movie. There’s no theater in Eason County, but we could drive to Anniston.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling. “I’d like that.” He had not kissed her again after that first time, and he wondered now whether he should, but then she was getting in her car and it was too late. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she said, after shutting the door and rolling down her window. She smiled up at him. “Katie should be asleep by eight.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight, then.”
He had watched the taillights of her car recede after she drove away.
The time since had dragged interminably.
He sat now in his grandfather’s office, waiting for the old man to finish his call. Stephen just wanted to get this day over with, and for the remainder of the afternoon and early evening to pass so he could see her again. He had done little else but think about her from the moment she left last night, and it seemed now this damned meeting with his grandfather would never end.
“Boy—”
His grandfather said the word twice before Stephen even knew he was being spoken to. Buddy was staring at him when Stephen lifted his eyes, the telephone back in its cradle, disapproval on the old man’s face.
“Did you say something to me, grandfather?” Stephen asked, regretting the almost awe-filled tone he could hear in his own voice—but he could not help it. His grandfather always made him feel as if he were still that frightened, small-for-his-age five-year-old the old man had so disapproved of.
“I didn’t send for you so you could just sit in my office and daydream.”
“I’m sorry, grandfather. I just—”
But the old man had already turned away to papers on the desk an arm’s length away over the massive stomach, as if Stephen’s excuses or explanations were of little consequence. Stephen watched him, knowing he would be spoken to again when the old man was ready, and knowing that what he had done truly was beyond excuse. He should never have allowed his attention wander in his grandfather’s presence.
When Buddy Eason thought his grandson had
been properly chastised, he lifted his gaze and looked at Stephen through the dark glasses.
“These reports the accountants made can’t be right,” Buddy said, shoving the papers in his hands across the desktop. “There’s something wrong with them. Find it.”
“Yes, Grandfather,” Stephen said. He would find the error, whatever it was. If there was no error, he would simply make one up. He had done it before. Buddy Eason expected something to be found, and Stephen Dawes Eason would give his grandfather exactly whatever it was that he wanted.
23
Stephen was running late by the time he reached Joanna’s house that night. When he pulled into the drive, he found her out in the yard by her own car.
“My father—and my grandfather, especially—objected to my ‘going off,’ as they call it, with someone they don’t know,” she told him after she had gotten into his truck. He caught a quick glimpse of someone watching them from the front windows of her house, and he did not like it. “I reminded them both that I’m twenty-three,” she continued, “that I’ve been married and divorced and that I haven’t been a minor for a long time now, but that doesn’t matter to either one of them.”
He turned to look over his shoulder as he backed out into the road. “They didn’t want you going out with me, huh?” A problem with the parents of a grown woman was one headache he did not need.
“Especially not after I told them you were taking me across the state line for a night of wild sex,” she said.
He choked, and then started to cough so badly that he had to pull over to the side of the road to try to catch his breath. She was pounding him in the middle of his back so hard by the time he could breathe again that he was almost certain he would have a bruise there.
“You told them what?” he asked, his voice still a harsh, strangled whisper in the cab of the truck.
“I was kidding—” she said, looking embarrassed and trying not to laugh at the same time. “I didn’t tell them anything, other than that I was old enough to look after myself.”
He was clearing his throat now, trying to get his voice back. “Good God—I could just see your father following us tonight with a shotgun.”
She laughed outright then and Stephen found himself smiling—she really was rather pretty.
“A night of wild sex, huh?” he asked, grinning now.
“Don’t even think about it.” But she was still smiling.
“Oh—I’ll think about it,” he assured her.
They did drive to Anniston to see a movie, the details of which Stephen could not remember later, and then took their time afterward driving back to Eason County. When they were within a few miles of her home, he pulled off into the parking area before the abandoned store where he had found her parked crying the day before. Joanna was smiling and looking at him quizzically when Stephen turned to her.
“I figured it would be safer to kiss you goodnight now instead of waiting until we reach your house. Your folks will be waiting up, won’t they?” he asked, and her smile widened.
“Probably. Daddy might turn the lights out and watch from behind the curtains, but my grandpa does not believe in subtlety; he’ll leave the lights on and probably come out on the porch if I don’t come into the house within two minutes of the truck pulling into the drive.”
Stephen laughed. In some ways she made him think of some other place and time. He reached to brush her hair back from her eyes, realizing that if she were any other woman, it would never have occurred to him to wonder if her parents and grandparents might be waiting up to make certain she got home. The thought had come to him tonight without any accompanying doubt, and he found that he did not really mind.
She came into his arms easily enough, and he kissed her, but when he tried to prolong the moment she gently held him away. Stephen returned the smile she gave him and released her.
“Not exactly wild sex—but it’ll do,” he said, then turned to put the truck back in gear.
When he pulled the truck into the drive, the lights were on. The curtains moved and he thought he saw the shape of a man inside looking out at them.
“They did wait up,” Stephen said unnecessarily. She was opening her door, and Stephen realized suddenly that he should have put the truck in park, gotten out and gone around to open the door for her, but it was too late now.
“Can I see you tomorrow night again?” he asked, turning his eyes from the house to the girl getting out of his truck.
She stopped with the door open and turned to look at him.
“After your daughter is down for the night?” he qualified as he put the truck into park, knowing that was what she would say.
“Sure,” she said, and nodded, smiling.
Though he had stopped the truck before they reached the house so he could kiss her goodnight, he did it again now without a conscious decision to do so. He leaned toward her and drew her into his arms. She seemed surprised but returned the kiss, her arms going around his neck. After a moment she gently pushed him away again and turned to get out of the truck. He could see the front door of the house open now, an old man in a white shirt and dark pants stepping through the doorway and out onto the lighted porch, a walking stick held in his hand—her grandfather, making certain her date behaved himself.
“Hey—” Stephen said, turning again to Joanna before she could close the truck door. “I don’t have your phone number.”
“It’s in the book, under my maiden name, Sanders,” she answered, smiling up at him, “It’s actually in Grandpa’s name, Janson Sanders—” just before she shut the door.
Sanders—grandpa’s name—Janson Sanders.
Stephen looked toward the old man on the porch.
He had heard that name before.
Stephen Dawes had often heard the name Sanders in the months he had been in Eason County—but he had heard it as well in his years growing up. Almost every time he had visited his grandfather through those years, the Sanders name had come up. His grandfather hated the Sanders family.
And he hated Janson Sanders most of all.
There had been almost-incoherent stories of how Janson Sanders and his father had tried to destroy the agricultural system that had kept the county farmers afloat during the Great Depression. The Sanders family had tried to drive the old Eason Cotton Mill out of business. Janson Sanders had made attempt after attempt on Stephen’s grandfather’s life.
Stephen remembered asking the old man, after one extended tirade, “Why didn’t you just put an end to him one of the times he tried to kill you? It would have been self-defense—”
But his grandfather just rocked back and forth in the creaking wheelchair, crooning, almost to himself: “You can’t kill him—he won’t die—you can’t kill him—he won’t—”
Sanders’s only son had also tried to kill him, according to Buddy Eason.
That would be Henry Sanders, Joanna’s father.
Joanna Lee was a Sanders.
And she did not know who he was.
Or did she?
But Stephen dismissed that thought immediately. The Sanders, from all that Stephen knew from his grandfather, were not a subtle people. Joanna had said herself last night that her grandfather did not believe in subtlety.
As soon as morning came, Stephen went to see his grandfather. He had paid less and less attention to the stories over the recent months. His grandfather was always cursing and ranting about something—but this was something Stephen had to know. He told himself that he was only getting to know her, that he would not call her now, or see her again—but he knew that was a lie. Knowing she was a Sanders made him want to see her all the more. He wanted to know what had happened between their families that had caused her grandfather to try to kill his so many times.
And what would her family do now if they realized she was seeing an Eason, for Stephen was an Eason, whether he le
gally took the name or not.
And he might as well take the name.
He was his grandfather’s only grandson, after all.
Stephen did little more than mention the Sanders name that morning to his grandfather before Buddy Eason began to shake so in the wheelchair that the arm of the device vibrated against the desk.
“That goddamn bastard. That goddamn—I’ll see him dead yet. I’ll see him—” There was a hatred in Buddy Eason’s voice now that Stephen had heard but few times, and each of those times had been when his grandfather had spoken of Janson Sanders and the Sanders family. “That son-of-a-bitch—all of them—they tried to destroy me, but I’ll destroy him. I’ll destroy him and his family and wipe every goddamn one of them off the face of the earth. I’m not that old—all of them—every Sanders—”
Buddy Eason was staring now far beyond this room, unaware even that his grandson remained here, until Stephen spoke again.
“What did he do, Grandfather?”
Buddy’s eyes turned to him, a cold dead blackness in them that startled Stephen. “What did he do!” Spittle flew from Buddy Eason’s lips, his face red with rage. The massive man put his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and pressed down as if he were about to rise. He leaned forward, shoving down with his arms until he had elevated himself from the seat a few inches. He glared at his grandson with that dead hatred in his eyes, and Stephen stood and stumbled back, upsetting and almost falling over his chair. “Goddamn—he tried to kill me! He tried to kill me! Him and that boy—he tried to kill me!” For a moment the huge mountain of flesh trembled, then he collapsed back into the chair. “She—she tried to make a fool out of me—they—he tried to ruin me—to— Those goddamn bastards—those goddamn—” The words were now barely intelligible, spat out between gasps for air.
Stephen made himself move to the old man’s side, but was pushed away as one of the male nurses reached Buddy first, pushing a needle into Buddy’s arm even as the old man tried to fight him away. After a moment, the attack died away and the heavy eyelids lowered toward a drugged sleep, the massive chest rising more normally at last, the insane breathing becoming more regular where the old man sat twisted sideways now in the wheelchair.
There Is a River Page 25