I slipped out the back door, ticked off they both had to spew their vinegar on Romy.
She wasn’t the one to blame—I was.
Romy
The next day, I got up entirely too late thanks to a full school year of burning the candle at both ends. Daddy only had instant coffee, and the sun was already high above me by the time my mental fog lifted enough for me to tromp to the garden to pick the green beans he’d asked me to get.
Good thing I’d ordered a Keurig coffeemaker last night. Paid an arm, a leg, and two toes to get it next day, too. It might not be as fancy as whatever contraption Richard had, but it was better than stirring coffee crystals into hot water.
I’d grown up working in the garden, often picking up potatoes in the heat of July, but my city years had made me soft. I picked only halfway down one row before the world started spinning. I couldn’t catch my breath in the humidity, and something about the plants caused my hands to itch like the dickens. To top it all off, my fancy nails kept me from deftly picking the green beans as I must have done at least a thousand times in the past.
“I’m going to have to try this again tomorrow,” I told no one in particular as I grabbed a half-full bucket and went to the shade of the barn. At least I’d been smart enough to bring a bottle of water with me. And to think, if I’d stayed in Nashville, I would’ve been lounging by the pool at Richard’s subdivision and reading the fluffiest book I could find.
Instead of reading poolside I needed to check on the cows. Cussing under my breath, I walked beyond the garden to where the main pasture began. When I found a low spot in the fence, I straddled the ancient outer barbed-wire, then gingerly lifted my leg over the newer inner strand of electric wire. And promptly snagged my other leg on the electric one.
Jolting out of reality and back, I tasted metal and inspected the snag in my favorite jeans in a daze. Only I would get caught in the electric fence. Damned metallic taste stayed with me, too, as I picked my way around briars and cow patties until I found Daddy’s small herd huddled under the shade tree by the pond.
I counted one bull, nine cows, and all six calves. Every last one of them was a full-blooded Angus, solid black. Fuzzy ears facing forward and tails relentlessly switching, they counted one ridiculously out-of-place city girl in their pasture—not that it bothered any of them as they chewed their cud, occasionally slinging their heads back to get rid of the flies. The cows knew an impostor when they saw one.
Tromping back to the barn, I lost my balance and placed one tennis shoe in the corner of a fairly fresh cow pie.
So that was going in the trash.
And I was getting some boots.
As I rounded the barn to perform my last appointed task, I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t someone better suited to this job. I couldn’t pick even one row of beans, I’d lost my ability to properly navigate the pasture, and I didn’t know anything about cows with prolapsed uteri.
Maggie May, oh she of the prolapsed uterus, mooed at me from the corner as if to say, “Still good.”
“Go on, turn around and let me make sure your stitches are holding up,” I said. As if the cow could understand me or would do what I asked even if she could. Then the squat black Angus snorted and did a one-eighty so I could see that all was well beneath her tail.
“Well, thanks for cooperating, Miss Maggie,” I said.
She flung cow snot over her shoulder and in my general direction.
“You missed,” I said before walking back to the house. Using the concrete step to pry off my ruined shoes, I kicked them to the side. “Alas, poor Adidas! I knew them, Horatio.”
On the other side of the door, the cat mewed, which made me jump.
“Wrong play, Mercutio,” I muttered to myself as I entered the back porch and discovered I had another task to go: doctor the cat’s ear. Mercutio howled and wiggled, but I washed his ear with soap and water. By the time I finished, we were both out of breath and sopping wet.
“See if I help you out again,” I said before stepping into the kitchen.
“Who you talking to?” Daddy asked.
Um, animals. Why am I talking to all of the animals? I’m like a weird Dr. Dolittle.
“Just the cat, Daddy.” I looked at the instant coffee and willed the Keurig to get there faster, then reached for a water glass instead.
“Genie called,” he said.
Of course she did. I had been hoping for a day or two of peace before I met with Genie Dix to go over reunion particulars. We had been classmates since kindergarten, though, so I should’ve known she was too type A to let me rest when there was still so much work to do. “What did she say?”
“Wants you to meet her at The Fountain tonight for that singing thing.”
I could tell by his growl that Daddy wasn’t too keen on the idea. “Karaoke?”
“That’s it.”
“I told her your car broke down back in Nashville, so you had to leave it in the shop. She said she’d pick you up at eight.”
I sighed. My flabby suburban self was tired.
But they would have something alcoholic, probably beer.
I leaned on the table to stand up because my quads hurt worse after a few minutes of bean picking than the last time I tried Pilates. A shower was in order. Then maybe I could curl up somewhere with a novel that didn’t involve mockingbirds, dead dogs, flowers, Algernon, or insanely long paragraphs about a boat ride into the heart of freaking darkness.
Daddy folded down his paper so he could give me his tilted-head look. “You gonna go finish picking those beans?”
Or I could drink some more water and dream the impossible dream out in the garden.
Later that afternoon I’d managed to pick the green beans and trudge back to the house. I went upstairs to get a change of clothes and everything I needed to shower, but as I hit the last step coming down I heard something I never thought I’d hear in the Satterfield home place:
A meow followed by “Yeah, who’s a good boy?”
I blinked twice. Was that Daddy? Talking to the cat? I pushed through the door that separated the steps and the living room, bobbling clothes and toiletries. Sure enough, Daddy sat in the recliner and Mercutio lounged on his lap. “I thought indoor cats were for ‘stupid city people.’ ”
Daddy’s lips quirked. “Well, if I leave him outside those damned McElroy dogs are going to chew him up. Some idiot took out his claws.”
He was referring to the same idiot who’d dumped the cat in the dip of the road between the McElroy farm and ours. Almost all of my childhood pets had come from that very spot, a dark place where people slowed down their cars just long enough to abandon unwanted dogs and cats. Last year while home for Thanksgiving, I’d rescued Mercutio from that very spot. Daddy, not being a fan of Shakespeare, insisted on calling him Freddy Mercury or a more generic “buddy” instead.
“So you decided to go, huh?”
“Well, you told her to come on over.”
He frowned. “I thought you might call her back and tell her no.”
As if I’m a mind reader. “Next time give me the option.”
His eyes narrowed, but he continued to stroke the cat, reminding me of Bond’s nemesis Blofeld. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“Daddy, I’m a big girl. It’s karaoke night, and I’ve been there before.”
“Still.”
He didn’t mention Julian directly. He wasn’t going to say that name because he’d taken Julian’s betrayal almost as hard as I had. Maybe harder. He’d had to get over his initial prejudice against the McElroys only to be proven right. I had been proven wrong and gained the prejudice as a consequence.
I huffed out a breath. “You don’t think he will be there, do you?”
“Doubt it. Goat Cheese told me he swore off going that night he and the Gates boy raised a ruckus.”
Interesting. Julian had once told me he was done with fights, but he’d been in at least one more.
“It never
ceases to amaze me that you can call a grown man Goat Cheese and keep a straight face.”
Mercutio turned around three times and nestled deeper into my father’s lap.
“Well, I’m not the idiot who announced to the world I was going to make my millions raising goats and selling their cheese.” To my father’s mind, the world was full of idiots. Idiots who tried to raise goats for cheese. Idiots who declawed cats. Idiots who kept cats in the house. I supposed he’d just joined the ranks of the latter, but I wasn’t going to point it out again—that would make me one of those “idiots who can’t mind her own business.”
I shrugged and headed in the direction of the bathroom, a sixties add-on to the back porch—thank goodness Granddaddy Satterfield hadn’t been so concerned about the integrity of the home place to insist we keep the outhouse.
“Hey, you.”
I turned around, not entirely certain if he was talking to the cat or to me. Rather than answer, I gave him the same look I gave my students when they were disrespectful.
“Dammit, don’t look at me like that. When you do, you look like her,” he scowled.
“Well, I do have a name.”
He muttered something under his breath before continuing, “Well, Rosemary, I found something the other day I thought you might be interested in. It’s on the old sewing table by the window. Your mother wanted you to have it.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” I said softly. I walked past the kitchen table to the little sewing table that had been Granny Satterfield’s. There on the top was a manila folder with papers jutting out at all angles. On the front my mother’s neat script proclaimed, A History of the Satterfield-McElroy Feud.
I shifted towels, clothes, and such to the right and let my left hand skim her handwriting reverently. I’d heard about this folder. Before she got sick, Mom would tell me old stories, things she’d dug up from the newspapers and things she’d heard from the old-timers. She’d always told me she was going to write a book about it when she got better.
About that . . .
I laid the folder on the table and told myself not to worry about whether Julian would show up. Say what you would about Goat Cheese, he was generally the best source of Yessum County gossip.
As I turned to go, I snagged my jeans on the corner of the folder. Papers spilled then floated to the ground. I collated the typed pages, grateful for Mom’s foresight in putting page numbers even though her work looked more like a draft than the book she’d wanted to write. Next I gathered the newspaper clippings and slick microfiche paper that had scattered. Finally, I saw a lone stack of papers that had slid underneath one of the chairs: Happenstance in Love: A Comparison of Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing by Rosemary Satterfield.
Since that handwritten assignment had brought Julian and me together, I could see Mom had really been doing her homework. I thought back to how she took me to the big library in Jefferson and taught me how to use the microfiche. It was one of her last good days, and she told me, “Now this is something your father won’t be able to teach you, and the good Lord will take away my cosmic library card if I don’t show you how to do this before you go to college.”
She couldn’t have known that scanned files on the Internet were working to make microfiche obsolete by the time I got to Vanderbilt. She also couldn’t have known that I would later take Julian to the same library and show him how to pull up microfiche or that we would end up leaning too closely together while I did.
But I wasn’t going to think about that day. As a librarian, Rosemary Satterfield wouldn’t have approved of love among the microfiche—especially not if her daughter had been falling for the worst possible boy.
Julian
The last thing I had to do before showering was check on Beatrice. The palomino ambled tentatively around the little paddock I’d made for her, reaching down to snuff the ground for a bite of grass here and there. The wind changed directions, and she sniffed the air then walked toward me, no doubt because she could smell the apple I held in my outstretched hand.
I reached out to pet her long face, and she snorted then rooted around for the apple. She flicked her ears forward as she crunched. For her, this was a good day. No miracle had occurred to bring back her vision, and the same milky film covered her eyes, making her look like the horse of a demigod. I should’ve had Dr. Winterbourne put her down because she wasn’t going to get better from being moon blind, but I wasn’t much on killing things. She nuzzled my hand as though she knew what I was thinking, and I reached out to rub her old nose.
“And how are you doing today, Beatrice?”
She nickered, which I took to mean she could really use another apple. Instead I led her to the fresh water I’d put out. She sniffed and snorted then stamped her front feet with a swish of her tail as if to say, “Does this look like an apple to you?”
I rubbed down her neck, picking a few pieces of hay out of her mane. “I’m thinking tomorrow might be a good day to clean you up a bit.”
She drank deeply from the water, ignoring the man who’d brought only one apple. Her ears pricked and she turned her head in the direction of my other three horses in the pasture beyond the paddock. She held her head high and neighed in the direction of the other horses. They, of course, ignored her.
“I’m sorry, old gal, but they’re just plain mean to you when I let you in there.” Again, guilt stabbed at me. I should’ve put her down long ago. I knew the pain that went along with the flareups, and the medicine to help her was expensive enough to break us. But I couldn’t bear to get rid of the horse I’d intended as Romy’s wedding gift.
She backed away from me, tentatively walking in the direction of the fence that separated her paddock from the larger pasture where the other horses roamed. She called to them from her side of the fence.
“You know, I could shoot that horse between the eyes and put her out of her misery.”
I didn’t even turn around. “Don’t even think about it, Curtis.”
“Seems to me, we didn’t get to finish our chat.”
“I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
I turned on my heel and left, but he followed me. “Well, maybe I’ve got some things to say to you.”
As I walked by the tree, the pit bulls barked with all their might, straining against their chains to get to me. “Well, maybe I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
He tried to clap a hand on my shoulder but missed. His eyes squinted and blinked against the light. A moon blind horse and a mean-ass old man who was going blind, too. How sad was it that I’d consider putting Curtis down before the horse?
“You might. I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to have to start turning some things over to you.”
This was a dream—it had to be. If I could get Curtis off my back...
I wheeled around to face him. “What’s the catch? Why so ready to make a deal all of a sudden?”
“You might’ve noticed I can’t see for shit. Doc says I’m going blind.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said.
“He said my eyesight would go quickly. Said I might ought to get some things in order. I’m gonna have to trust you to write the checks one day. Might as well start putting your name on things.”
Yeah, and then you can run up debt in my name and I’ll be the one who has to pay it off. “Why don’t you put it in Mama’s name?”
“That woman wouldn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground,” Curtis spat.
My fists clenched, ready to knock the smug grin off his face. But if I could get everything in my name then I wouldn’t have to kowtow to him anymore.
“All right, I’ll bite. What do you need me to do?”
“I’ll get Charlie to draw up some papers, you know, power of attorney and all that. Then we can talk about getting your name put on the bank account along with mine.” Curtis stopped short of Mamaw’s front porch. He knew he wasn’t welcome in the house I’d fixed up and claimed as my own.
“I’m bringing Ben.”
Curtis cussed under his breath, but he knew I didn’t trust Uncle Charlie any farther than I could throw him. And Uncle Charlie was about a biscuit shy of three hundred.
“Do what you need to do,” Curtis muttered before tottering in the direction of the trailer. I noticed the weeds around the trailer were about waist-high.
Feeling generous, I went for the weed eater and got to work on those weeds creeping up around the trailer. I’d been avoiding them on principle, waiting to see if Curtis would ever get off his drunk, lazy ass and mow his own lawn and do his own weed eating. He wouldn’t have done that even if he could see. At least he lived in a trailer, and there was the possibility of hauling it somewhere else someday. Hell, I was helping myself by cutting these weeds! Now we’d be able to find the trailer hitch.
Done with that task, I put the weed eater away and absently patted the beagle as I walked through the back door. For the first time in a long while I felt like celebrating. Nothing with Curtis was ever easy, but there was a whisper of hope I might get shed of him.
Romy
While I was waiting on Genie to pick me up, I thumbed through the folder of my mother’s notes. She had, of course, arranged them chronologically. The first piece was a yellowed paper she’d typed using a typewriter with an “e” that marked ever so slightly above the other letters. I could almost feel her frustration at not being able to make that “e” straighten up and get in line with the rest. I smiled as I read:
No one knows for sure where or when the feud between the Satterfields and the McElroys started. The 1850 census records show that the Satterfields had already moved into their current property on what is now Bittersweet Creek Road. I have traced the family back to a Satterthwaite who arrived in New Jersey in the late 1600s, but I can’t definitively attach him to the family because that assumes a change in spelling to the current name. It’s just a hunch. We do know that Benjamin Satterfield purchased the current farm from John Wilson in 1849. Legend has it that Wilson was a fellow veteran of the Mexican-American War and that the two became such good friends they wanted to be neighbors.
Bittersweet Creek Page 3