A Trashy Affair

by Shurr, Lynn

  The Fast ’N Fun opened at six a.m. He jogged across the street to grab a couple of hot sausage kolaches and a jumbo coffee. Hearing Jane in the back of his mind say, “Have some fruit with that,” he picked up a bottle of orange juice, too. While waiting in line, a cardboard display of Christmas wrapping paper, stick-on bows, and tape caught his eye. He let two truckers move ahead and went back to select a pack of cheerful holly wrap like the necklace Jane wore for the picture session, a red bow, and tape in case he couldn’t find any around the house. Milly Olinde promised to deliver his picture order around ten, and he wanted his gifts for Jane to be ready, wrapped, and sitting under that little tree when she returned even if he wouldn’t be there to see her open them.

  Milly made her delivery right on time, and for what he paid her, she should have included the gift wrap, but he hadn’t thought to ask. Viewing the selection of photos on his laptop down at Intracoastal City, he quickly figured out she made a bundle on frames, but hell, he wasn’t going to shop for them. He selected plain black for the family shot, wood rubbed with gold leaf for the sunset pose, and silver like the one in Bernard Freeman’s office for the apple blossoms. The last was a little too sweet for his taste, but women liked that sort of thing. Jane sure looked pretty in her red dress against that fluffy white background and the way she looked up at him, he could stare at that all day.

  He made a pile of the framed photos and managed to wrap the holly paper around them without too much trouble, but the damned bow wouldn’t stick. He sat in his room looping tape around his middle finger to put on the back of the ribbon when he heard a car door slam. Could be a neighbor or even across the street. He applied the tape loop and mashed the bow onto the top of the irregularly-shaped package. Done! Below him, the kitchen door opened and closed. Someone moved around the house. Cautiously and as quietly as he could, Merlin made his way down the stairs and let himself in the front door. He smelled coffee brewing, followed his nose, but should have used his eyes. Tripping over a suitcase left in the dim hallway, he crashed into a very solid wall.

  Jane appeared with a meat fork held defensively before her. She dropped it immediately and ran to his side or rather his place on the floor. “I’m sorry. The house was so quiet I thought you might still be asleep. I should have put that in the bedroom. Are you okay?”

  “Yep.” He shook his head, got up, and flexed all the joints in his body. “Nothing broken. How come you’re here? You should be in Dallas by now.”

  “My flight was cancelled. Dallas is backed up because of a blizzard in the west, and my next stop is Denver where the airport is completely closed. I’m told I won’t get home for Christmas. Come into the light and let me look at that bump on your head.”

  “Aw, you know I’m hard-headed, sweetheart. Let it go.”

  “Kitchen. Now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Coffee would be good. It’s a cold, gray day out there.”

  Washing the small wound on his forehead and dabbing antibiotic cream on it, she fussed over him, and he liked it. She brought him coffee with real sugar and didn’t tell him to get his own milk. Better yet, he had Jane all to himself for Christmas. Then, he took note of the red on the tip of her nose and the puffiness of her eyes, and the way her subtle eyeliner had been wiped away.

  “Jane, you been crying?”

  “A little. All I wanted for Christmas was to be with my family. It seems this year, I won’t get anything I truly desire.”

  “I know a man with a big-ass truck who can get you to Montana.”

  “No, Merlin! That trip would take three days at best, and you’d miss Christmas with Doyle. We could get caught in a storm and not get there at all. What would be the point of that?’

  “Are you done naysaying? I need to pack so we can get started. I can have you in Dallas late afternoon. We check with the airport. If you can get into Denver, I’ll put you on the plane. If not, we drive there next. If that airport is still closed, we go straight on to Bozeman. It’s a good plan. Consider it part of my Christmas gift to you. I have another one upstairs. Oh, and thanks for mine.” Merlin stood, ready to head out.

  “You opened your presents before Christmas?” Jane said as if he’d committed sacrilege.

  “Wasn’t any note telling me not, no. The clipping is great if I can figure out how to hang it on those slanted beams, maybe on a wire run in between them. The falcon, I really like the falcon. It’s up on my desk right now.”

  “Glad they made you happy, but—”

  “No buts. Give me a few minutes, and we’re on our way.”

  “If I’d known this would happen, I’d have given you a gas card,” Jane mumbled.

  “I wouldn’t have enjoyed that half as much. Hurry up, daisy! Get ready to leave again. You got about fifteen minutes to use the bathroom and repair your makeup.”

  He left before she could come up with more objections. He’d get her there safe and sound, he would. Dumping his dirty laundry on the floor of his room, he freed up the duffel bag and stuffed it with handfuls of underwear, a couple of pairs of jeans, T-shirts, heavy socks, and every really warm item he owned: a navy peacoat, a couple of flannel shirts, gloves, a knit cap, a sweater made by his granny and never worn. Add his shaving kit, an extra pair of shoes and some work boots. Shove Jane’s Christmas presents in there along with two other small boxes and good to go.

  Still looking doubtful, Jane stood in the kitchen with her rolling suitcase and a heavy red wool coat slung over her arm. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m feeling pretty positive lately. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Despite a chill breeze and threatening skies, they cleared Dallas by early evening, leaving behind a still clogged airport. Merlin pushed on with Jane asleep on his shoulder far into the night, finally stopping for rest in Norman, Oklahoma. In the morning, they stoked up on the free breakfast offered by the hotel and headed into a wind strong enough to tangle with a big-ass truck and try to push it off the road. They made Denver by early evening, stopping there because Merlin said he had something he wanted to do in the area. Though he would never admit it, Jane suspected his arms ached from holding the truck on the road.

  Denver, a city that knew how to deal with snow, had its main roads plowed, but the airport remained closed. She swore Merlin seemed pleased about that. He made a phone call, asking the person on the other end if he’d arrived too late for a visit, hung up, and told her he had to go out. Seeing his face go bleak, Jane put a hand on his arm.

  “Where?”

  “I’m going to see my gunner’s widow. I should have done it when I got home, but didn’t have the guts to face her.”

  “Would you like me to come with you?”

  “Yes.”

  That one word answer told Jane enough. She got in the truck and helped him follow the directions to a street still two feet deep in snow and lined with small homes. Merlin’s big tires crunched through this insignificant barrier and carried them up a driveway beside a house with a large blue spruce in the yard and a small pine tree, the size a single woman could manage, sitting in the picture window, its Christmas lights glowing in the night. Margo Bailey opened the door immediately because who could miss the sound of Merlin’s truck bearing down on them? She held a toddler, newly bathed with his red hair slicked back and clothed in footie pajamas patterned with little airplanes. They waded toward her across an unshoveled walk.

  “Sorry about that. My father keeps saying he’ll cover over and dig me out, but he hasn’t made it yet. Come in out of the cold. So nice to meet you, Merlin Tauzin, after all my husband said about you. Can I offer you some coffee, hot chocolate?”

  “No, thank you, we can’t stay. This is Jane Marshall, my uh…”

  “Friend and tenant,” Jane said. “Merlin insisted on driving me to Bozeman to be with my parents for the holidays when the airports closed.”

  “Yes, I thought he’d be that kind of guy, always there for a person in a crisis.” Curvaceous with dark hair framing
her pretty face, Margo Bailey had wide blue eyes that held less happiness and more wisdom than she should have possessed at her young age. She led the way to the room with the Christmas tree and a single stocking hanging on the fireplace.

  “I can’t put gifts out yet, not until Santa comes tomorrow night, or he’ll get into them.” She hugged her son affectionately. “Say hi to Mr. Tauzin, Scotty.” The child hid his round blue eyes in his mother’s red sweater.

  “I guess I’m pretty scary. I haven’t shaved in two days. He looks like his daddy and has the same name.”

  “He’s at a shy age right now. Yes, we had another name picked out but after…anyhow, I decided to name him Scott Jordan Bailey, Jr. for his father. My husband said if we had a girl we should name her Merry after you.”

  “Now that would be terrible to do to a little girl. Good thing the baby turned out to be a boy.” Merlin kept his eyes on the child, unable to look directly at the widow, glanced at Jane, and came back to the boy.

  “I want to thank you for keeping his father alive long enough to come home on leave and give me this baby.”

  Jane would have described the expression on Merlin’s face as agony when he looked at her before blurting out, “No, don’t say that! I got him killed trying to save those other men, and they were shot down later, all of them dead. Scotty died for nothing.”

  Frantically, Merlin dug in the pocket of his navy jacket, unbuttoned but not taken off because he wanted to flee back outside into the freezing night as quickly as possible. “I want little Scotty to have this. It won’t replace his father, but…” He offered an open box holding a medal, a propeller on a starburst hanging from a red, white and blue ribbon, the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  Margo folded his hand over the box. “No, you keep that for your own son someday.” She gazed sideways at Jane when she said those words. “I have the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for Scotty. We both know my husband could have died over there any day of the week by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You tried to save some lives. He would have said ‘Go for it, Magician’.”

  Merlin’s head came up. “He did, those very words just before…but it doesn’t change that he died, and I didn’t. They try to shoot the pilot and got him instead because I swung my chopper around at just that moment to pick up those other guys.”

  “Listen to me, Merlin Tauzin. I want only two things from you. Stop blaming yourself and stay in touch. I’d like Scotty to know a man who flew with his father.” With her blue eyes tear-filled, Margo wiped her face on the back of her little boy’s pajamas, the ones with the airplanes on them.

  “I can do that, stay in touch. I swear.” He met those brave, blue eyes for the very first time.

  “No need to swear. I believe you. Now, coffee, cookies?”

  “No, we need to go. Maybe on my way back, I’ll stop by again and take the two of you to dinner.”

  “If you do, I’ll cook. Scotty is a bad little boy in a restaurant right now, always wanting to get down and throwing his food on the floor.”

  “Kids his age are like that. I have a nephew a little older. Okay, Jane, long drive ahead tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

  Margo Bailey, still holding Scotty, saw them to the door. She coaxed a bye-bye wave from the boy which brought a smile to Merlin’s weary face. He trudged into the snow, breaking a better path for Jane, opened the door to the truck, went around and started the engine to warm the cab. Jane hung back a minute.

  “Thanks for telling him that. Maybe he’ll be able to sleep at night now.”

  “I’m glad I could help. You are more to him than he can say, you know. He must have looked at you half a dozen times as if you were holding his lifeline.”

  Jane shook her head. “But he won’t say.”

  “He got these words out, and that must have been hard. Don’t give up on him, Jane.”

  “People keep telling me that. I’ll try a little longer.”

  “Come on, woman! We’re wasting precious fossil fuel here,” Merlin called.

  Somehow, those words made her feel better, too.

  ****

  Jane braced herself for the nightmare, stayed awake anticipating Merlin’s thrashing and frantic calls for backup because the visit with Margo Bailey must have brought every excruciating minute of his ordeal to the forefront of his mind. She waited to talk him down, then put her arms around him and hold him for the rest of the evening. She could afford the loss of rest because no way would he allow her to drive Big Blue through the snow, and she could sleep while he steered.

  Merlin slept deeply, barely moving by her side, allowing her too much time in the darkest hours of the night to think of their relationship if he ever admitted they had one. He’d certainly been unable to define it for Margo, the understanding widow of his best friend, mother of a sweet, fatherless boy, but that pretty-faced woman pegged Merlin perfectly. Always there for a person in a crisis. That said it all. Would he now feel an obligation to care for Margo and Scotty, enter their lives and stay there permanently, maybe offering marriage out of guilt or a growing affection after several months of contact?

  “How jealous and petty can you be, Jane?” she muttered in the dark. If Merlin could leave her that easily, he did not love her in the first place. She waited, not realizing she’d finally fallen asleep until the sound of Merlin in the shower made her open her gritty eyes.

  They got another early start following the trail of freight-hauling big rigs that heated the paving of the road and cleared the interstate. Out of Colorado and into Wyoming, they moved steadily north through steep, rolling hills where snow fences held back the drifts from the traffic below. The sky stayed a frigid pale blue until Merlin’s truck crossed into Montana. Wooly, gray clouds rolled in, and the flakes began to fall hard enough to warrant using the windshield wipers. At a pit stop for gas, bathrooms, and hot coffee in Billings, the convenience store owner, a Sikh with a beard and turban, warned them the road ahead would be closed by the blizzard before they reached Bozeman. He might have been an all-seeing, all-knowing swami because his prediction became true right outside of Livingston where the big-ass truck got shunted onto a side road by a line of orange traffic cones and closed gates across the interstate.

  Merlin held their vehicle slow and steady on the loop of back roads they traversed. He made his way down the middle of the road certain he’d see the headlights of any oncoming cars through the heavy sheet of snow, and they would notice the sharp, blue-white glow of his LEDs in plenty of time to pull aside. Jane, not so certain, dug her nails into the leather seat cushion and held her breath on every turn. When the inevitable happened and another insane driver trundling along through the heavy weather in a big SUV approached, Merlin began his gradual journey toward the side of his lane. As the SUV pushed past, the big tires of the truck hit ice and went into a slow fishtail toward a huge snow bank. The truck’s rear end thumped against something hard and straightened out again in Merlin’s skilled hands. Still, he stopped, backed up slowly, and turned on the spotlights across the top of the cab.

  “This is really no time to check for dents,” Jane chided.

  “It’s not dents that worry me. We hit something way sturdier than a pile of snow.”

  He drew on the black knit cap that made him look like a thug or a longshoreman and his gloves, buttoned up the navy peacoat, and got out to do an inspection. Jane watched as he probed the snow bank. An icy crust fell away from a white fender where the truck hit. Beneath that, two black tires canted into the air as Merlin gradually exposed the rear of an old van nose down in a shallow ditch. He swept off a softer covering and revealed a large rear window. The spotlights penetrated the interior. Without hesitation, Merlin climbed into the rear of his truck, cleared the snow off of his toolbox, and took out a hammer. Shielding his eyes, he smashed the van’s window and cleared the jagged edges of glass with his coat sleeve.

  Jane opened her door. “What on earth are you doing? That’s vandalism!”

&nb
sp; He reached inside the stranded van and lifted out one small body, then another, two rosy cheeked, well-bundled unconscious children. He laid them in Jane’s arms.

  “Try to wake them. Keep them in the fresh air.”

  He returned to the van and snaked himself inside, returning with a groggy woman and dragging her through the opening. Lightly slapping her flushed cheeks, Merlin urged her to breathe deep.

  “Where’s my husband, my kids?”

  “Your children are over there with Jane. I don’t see any man around.”

  “He went…he went for help after we slid off the road. I kept the motor running for heat. Got so sleepy, the children all quiet in the back.”

  Jane jostled the larger boy, the smaller girl with her knees. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, please, wake up.” For your mother, for Merlin, for me.

  Shoving his duffel aside, Merlin helped the woman into the truck. He rummaged under a seat and brought out a thin square of silver cloth, flipped it open. “An emergency blanket, warmer than it looks. We need to keep the windows down for a while. We’ll look for your husband along the way. Jane, how are the kids?”

  She started to say unresponsive when the boy opened a pair of large gray eyes so beautifully fringed with long, dark lashes they should have belonged to his sister. “Mom?” he said.

  “Right here, baby. Come under this cover with me.”

  Merlin made the transfer from Jane’s lap. “Don’t let him go to sleep again, okay? Jane, keep the daughter up front and work on her. We’ll search for the dad as we go.”

  With everyone stowed, he killed the spotlights that made a blinding white wall of the falling snow and eased the truck forward. Slowly, it crunched along, one mile, two. They approached a short bridge over a small river.