“Hey, McElroy,” said Goat Cheese as I pushed my stool away from the counter, “Tell me, how many stitches did the Satterfield girl have to get?”
Damn, news traveled fast.
“Doc didn’t advise stitches,” I said. “He’s more worried about infection setting in.”
“Infection?” The man in the corner stood. Richard Damn Paris. Of course.
“Rosemary had to see a doctor? What did you do to her?”
Goat Cheese leaned back from the counter so he could see what was going to happen. He’d asked that question on purpose because he’d known who was in the corner.
“I didn’t do anything to Romy. She got bit by a dog, and I took her to the doctor.”
“She didn’t call me?” His eyes fell.
I felt sorry for him in the split second before he punched me in the jaw.
I hit the floor, but I bounced up. Curtis had taught me it was easier to kick a man when he was down. As if by reflex, my fist flew toward Richard but stopped short. My reward for such restraint was to be knocked down again. The next thing I remembered was my fist connecting with his nose. He went down hard, and Bill stepped between us, his massive belly an effective barrier.
“That’s enough, boys! I’m not going to have any of this mess in here. That’s all I need is for Len to come in here and shut me down.”
Richard stared me down, both hands over his nose with blood running between his fingers. “I don’t know for the life of me what she ever saw in a redneck hick like you.”
“Well, you’re the reason we’re still married.”
The words came out of my mouth before I thought. Goat Cheese almost swallowed his cigarette, and Richard made a lunge for me. Bill easily stopped him since he still had both hands over his nose.
“Julian,” Bill said gently. “This is strike two. Third one and you’re out of here. For good.”
I nodded and walked out the door, waiting until I was outside to work my jaw back into place. Sure enough, there was the silver Porsche parked underneath the tree beside the empty parsonage. If it’d been a snake it would’ve bitten me.
When I climbed into the truck, I slammed my hands against the wheel. News of Romy’s and my secret marriage would canvas the whole town before nightfall.
So much for keeping that little secret from Hank.
Romy
Goat Cheese wasn’t at his house when I got there, and his wife, Adelaide, had no recollection of having ever met me. Finally, I talked her into loaning me some of the colostrum stash her husband kept in the freezer by giving her my charm bracelet as collateral.
Despite how long it felt, it was only twenty minutes before I was back in the middle of the pen trying to get the calf to take the bottle. I heard the Porsche speed up the drive, but willed myself not to look away from the task at hand. The calf skittered away, and I cursed to the point where Daddy muttered something under his breath about the student surpassing the master.
“Mr. Satterfield, I need to find Rosemary!”
“There she is,” my father deadpanned.
“Rosemary, we have to talk about this Julian character.”
The calf backed away from me again, her wobbly legs collapsing under her. She needed to eat.
“Richard, I’m busy here!” I hissed under my breath.
“What the hell?”
“Shut up or leave.” When I looked over my shoulder, Richard stared at me slack-jawed. No one spoke to a Paris that way—especially not a farm girl who’d been wallowing in manure and mud.
“But, Romy, you’re bleeding.”
In the second I looked down at my bandaged arm, the stubborn little calf latched on to the bottle. Tentative at first, she ended up taking me for a ride. I could commiserate with those mama cows whose babies would butt the udder so hard the cow’s back feet would come off the ground.
“Romy, did you hear me? I said—”
Daddy and I both shushed him as the calf finished the first bottle.
“Make yourself useful and hand her that second bottle,” my father murmured.
Holding the rapidly emptying bottle with my left hand, I stretched with my right for the second bottle that Richard held over the gate. I fell backward, breaking the calf’s latch, but she stepped forward and eagerly took the second bottle. Now that the adrenaline had faded, my left arm ached like the devil. Still, I held the bottle steadily as the calf slurped and bucked, her tail swishing and her back feet stamping.
Finally, she let go.
I sagged into the gate as she danced around in a circle before bedding herself down with a sated moo. “We did it, Daddy.”
“No, Romy, you did it. Proud of you, girl.”
For those few moments, I forgot Richard was even there. I hadn’t felt so proud since I was in sixth grade and Daddy had spent an afternoon teaching me how to catch fly balls.
“Rosemary, seriously. The blood is seeping through the bandage. I have half a mind to find your ex and beat him to a pulp for what he’s done to you.”
“Julian didn’t do anything to me,” I started, but then I saw Richard’s swollen nose and a few traces of blood. “Good heavens, what happened to you?”
“Your husband punched me in the nose.”
“What?” No one could punch out a flat “what” like Hank Satterfield.
“Daddy, it’s a long story—”
“When did you haul off and marry that McElroy sonuvabitch?”
“A few days before graduation. You know, maybe I ought to take care of this arm, after all.” My arm had progressed from ache to burn but I preferred it to anything else the two of them were discussing. I unchained the gate and squeezed through, forcing Hank to back his chair up to let me pass.
“Oh, you aren’t changing the subject so easily. When exactly did you plan on telling me about this? And what are you doing agreeing to marry Richard here if you’re already married to Julian?”
“It was a mistake, Daddy.” I shot daggers at Richard. What in the hell was he thinking? “And I would already be divorced from Julian if Richard hadn’t torn up the papers.”
“You also could’ve not married him in the first place.” Hank snorted.
“That ship’s sailed.”
Both men looked at me expectantly, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do: walk back to the house and hope they wouldn’t follow me. Unfortunately, follow me they did, arguing all the way.
“Rosemary will need an annulment to marry me anyway,” Richard said.
“And why is that?”
“I can’t marry a divorced woman!”
“Are you saying my daughter isn’t good enough for you?”
“Mr. Satterfield, I love Rosemary with all of my heart. Since she never consummated the first marriage, getting an annulment shouldn’t present that big of a problem.”
“Huh. Did she do any consummating before the marriage? That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe you and I—”
I wheeled on the two of them, holding the palm of my good hand out but almost getting trampled by Daddy’s wheelchair nevertheless. “What I did with Julian is none of either of your business. And it’s in the past. So you can both get over yourselves. Now I’m going to take a shower. That way I don’t have to listen to the two of you.”
Taking satisfaction in letting the screen door slap behind me, I grabbed some clean clothes from the stack on the dryer and locked myself in the bathroom. The faucet squealed, but the sound of running water soon drowned out everything else.
I peeled off my clothes in record time, but unwrapping the bandage took longer. Too long, since I knew only too well the limitations of the ancient hot-water heater. Beneath the gauze, my skin looked angry. The bleeding had stopped, but it seemed I was destined to have ugly scars after all.
From Rosemary Satterfield’s History of the Satterfield-McElroy Feud
Your daddy once told me that he’d grown up thinking all Satterfields had to have scars. His father and uncles would compare theirs, talking
about where they came from, who administered them, and who got the worst end of the fight.
One of your granddaddy Satterfield’s favorite stories was about the time he went back into the woods with his father (Ben III) and his uncle Myron to check on some property lines. Tucked away in one of the Satterfield hollows they found Christopher Columbus “Lum” MacElroy and his brother George Washington. They’d apparently decided to move their still to Satterfield land after their last brush with the sheriff.
Your great-granddaddy told the McElroys in no uncertain terms to get off his land. Lum and George Washington wanted to bottle what they had first. When your great-granddaddy, a teetotaling Methodist of the highest order, told them no, the McElroy men lunged for him. Uncle Myron pushed your granddaddy, who was only ten, out of the way. Your granddaddy watched all four of those grown men fight over a moonshine still.
Before he died, your granddaddy told me the story himself. He said fists were flying and the glint of knives blinded him. The McElroys won that battle because they weren’t afraid to fight dirty. Lum and George Washington filled up their jugs and loaded up their wagon then took off, leaving Myron to bleed to death for all they cared.
Both of the Satterfield men recovered, but your granddaddy could still remember the pinched face of his mother as she sewed the two men up with her own needle and thread. He said his uncle Myron always walked with a limp from that day forward and that his daddy never rolled up his shirtsleeves again because he didn’t want anyone to see the angry scars on his forearms.
The McElroys did not win the war, though. The Satterfield men went out and burned down the still, but your granddaddy often said he wondered if it was worth it considering what the McElroys burned next.
Julian
After The Fountain fiasco, I drove straight to the Co-op. I needed a new chain for my punching bag and a couple of salt blocks, but when I walked through the door I saw a whole display of steel-toed rubber work boots. Hoping Romy still wore the same size as that pair of cowboy boots I’d got her for her birthday back in high school, I grabbed a pair and put them on the counter along with everything else.
I dared the clerk to say a word about my weird purchases or my rapidly swelling face.
She didn’t.
She did, however, look from the smaller boots to my hands and back up to my eyes before quirking an eyebrow.
“They’re not for me.”
She shrugged as if to say “Sure they aren’t” and took my money. Since my jaw was aching, I was glad to head for home.
By the time I unhitched the trailer and checked on all the cows and horses, poor Beatrice had passed indignant and gone straight to pathetic, holding her head low. She perked up with a little extra sweet feed and an apple. As I walked past the tree where the dogs had been chained, the eerie silence caused something to crawl up and down my neck. Even worse? There was Curtis leaning against the rotting back porch of the trailer, the orange tip of his cigarette glowing eerie against the long shadow of dusk.
“Well, well, Mr. High and Mighty. Seems that my dogs had to go because they had the audacity to bite your girlfriend.”
I kept walking. The little beagle hound nosed up beside me. I refused to pet her. If Curtis saw I loved her, he’d be sure to take her away.
And if I show any emotion whatsoever now, there’s no telling what he’ll do to Romy.
“Goat Cheese said you gave my dogs to Pete Gates.”
And if Curtis knew Romy was my wife? My heart hammered ninety to nothing. “What else did he tell you?”
“That he was sorry to hear about my eyesight,” Curtis sneered.
Relief washed over me. He didn’t know. For some reason, Goat Cheese had actually held back a piece of information.
“That why you jumped at the chance to take the farm out from under me?” Curtis continued. “Thought maybe she’d take your sorry ass back in if you had some land like those do-gooder Satterfields?”
“As I recall, it was your idea. I already do all of the work around here. Might as well get paid for it and get rid of you, too.”
Just before I slammed the door behind me, I heard chairs being thrown and, possibly, the screen door being swung off its hinges. It wasn’t wise provoking Curtis like that, but the way he said “girlfriend” made me want to throttle him. Instead, I hoisted up my punching bag with a new chain and strapped on my gloves.
I threw my punches, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed.
It’s only a matter of time before he finds out the two of you are married. Hell, everybody’ll know. Then she’ll be done with you for sure.
But I was supposed to be done with her. Wanting to kiss her outside The Fountain? That was just something you felt for an old flame.
To you, she’s never been an old flame. She’s been the only flame.
I pounded away at the bag, dust motes flying through the air and catching the last rays of evening sun. Sweat trickled down the side of my face and still I punched. The worst part was that I’d probably just thrown away any hope I had of becoming Curtis’s power of attorney.
He’s going to hang on to the place to spite you. Bastard’ll probably live to be a hundred.
No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t see for shit and no amount of meanness could change that.
But he could put Uncle Charlie in charge.
I punched and punched until I could hardly catch my breath. If Curtis was bad, Uncle Charlie was worse.
They can all go to hell, I thought as I leaned against the punching bag.
It was stupid for me to feel so bad about something that was so clearly Curtis’s fault, but I did. I took off my gloves and unwound the tape. I couldn’t fix things, but I could make them better. Grabbing the boots, I started walking up the road, my little beagle bounding after me. She sniffed her way up the road ahead of me, her tail straight up at attention.
“We are on a stealth mission here,” I scolded her when she bayed at some invisible creature down in the dip between our two farms. She whined at me like she understood and didn’t say another word as we walked up the driveway.
I tiptoed onto the Satterfields’ porch. Looking through the window, I saw Romy take dishes off the table then disappear out of my line of sight. I laid down my gift and rang the doorbell before hightailing it off the porch.
Romy
When I stepped out of the bathroom, the smell of fried country ham bowled me over. My stomach growled a reminder I’d somehow managed to skip lunch. For an irrational second I thought I’d walk into the kitchen and find my own mother, wearing the same pink checked apron she’d helped me sew for 4-H. She’d draw me into a hug and promise me she wouldn’t cook so many fried foods . . . next time.
Instead I saw Richard leaning awkwardly against the upright freezer that sat beside the door that led to the kitchen. He held a white freezer-paper-covered bag of purple hull peas to his left eye. I doubted the tightly packed, home-frozen peas were as good at bruise prevention as the floppy store-bought bags.
“It says peas on here,” he said with a shrug.
I put my stuff on the cane-bottom chair by the door. “Oh, Richard.”
He looked so out of place, so out of his element holding that package of peas up to his face while standing on the porch my granddaddy had added.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” he said. “This has all been such a mess. Things were so much simpler back home.”
Home for him was Nashville. Home was a Starbucks and a Target on every corner, one traffic light after another, and a round of golf at the Brentwood Country Club. Things had been simpler there. My alarm told me when to get up and get ready for school. I constructed my lesson plans to tell me what to do each minute of each class period. We shared an online calendar, and he sent me reminders about date nights, fund-raisers, and galas.
Oh, the places we went without a care in the world! Wine tastings, concerts, horseback riding, antique shopping—you name it. We had brunch each Sunday after early
Mass, then he would let me work the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper. But then he would leave, and I would stay up all night grading papers and constructing new lesson plans that would fill up each second of class and plan for any contingency like the knife fights that sometimes forced us into lockdown.
And suddenly I was tired, so tired of that ceaseless, scripted activity.
“This isn’t working, is it?” He switched the bag of peas from one side to the other.
I sighed. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about the cow thing.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said. “You didn’t know.”
He reached out to caress my cheek. “But I should’ve trusted you. This is your world, not mine.”
My world. This wasn’t my world. Not anymore. I’d snagged myself on the electric fence. Conversations with people I’d known all my life were stilted. I’d had the audacity to leave, and they eyed me warily.
But Nashville wasn’t my world, either. Richard’s private-school friends tittered behind my back. The other teachers at my school—even the students—eyed me suspiciously, as if wondering what the white girl was doing working at a fenced-in school with metal detectors. Sure, I had loans that would be reduced if I taught in an at-risk school, but I wanted more than anything to make a difference, to help kids love literature as much as I did.
I had no world.
No, I was stuck between two worlds. My commitment to education was often frowned upon in Ellery, but my humble roots meant most people in Richard’s social circles couldn’t quite accept me. I was the ultimate oxymoron: an educated hick.
“Hello? Earth to Romy? I was going to stay until your birthday, but I’m leaving. I’ve made things worse.”
“No, you didn’t. I should’ve told you everything from the start.”
“Well, on that much we can agree.” He put the bag back in the freezer, then advanced to kiss me. Part of me wanted to run. Another part of me wanted to see if it felt any different from how it had before.
He didn’t brush my lips first like he sometimes did. Instead he pulled me tight and crushed his lips against mine, his tongue forcing its way in like a battering ram. I whimpered when he crushed my injured arm against me. He broke off the kiss. “I love you. You know that, right?”
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