Return of the Dixie Deb

by Nina Barrett

  She chose the shady side of the road as she walked. The moisture from the river and the lush vegetation combined with the afternoon’s heat to increase the humidity. She swatted away a cloud of gnats. In the pines ahead, she could hear a redheaded woodpecker at work. How was Mac, here from the big city, adjusting to day labor in the rural South? If she didn’t resemble the person she’d been back in Atlanta, the federal agent in shirt and tie was a thing of the past for him too.

  Something glittered off to the side, catching her eye. She left the road and pushed her way through waist-high clumps of cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace. A set of tire tracks led down the backside of a hill to a gully where she could see the rusting hulks of old cars. So this was where Mac had stashed the pizza delivery car they’d appropriated. She thought she could recognize the roofline beyond an old station wagon.

  Climbing back to the road she glimpsed a white frame cottage with a number of buildings beyond it in the distance. Approaching the house, she could see the pick-up parked in front, displaying a picture of a leaping fish below the legend Maggie May’s Trout Farm. From a greenhouse in back of the house, a figure in trousers emerged, walking briskly with a clipboard.

  “Excuse me, s…” She choked back the last word as she got nearer the lean, rangy figure in work clothes and boots. Something about the short salt and pepper hair, weathered face, and blue eyes gave her pause.

  “Hi.” She caught her breath. “I’m Jan Thimmons. I’m looking for my friend, Mac. I understand he’s working here.”

  “Sure.” The voice, although gravelly, was clearly female. She pulled off a work glove and extended a hand. “I’m Maggie. Mac said you all were staying down at Louis and Etta’s for a while. Glad to meet you.”

  “This is quite a place.” Looking around, she could see movement in the water filling one of the elevated cement block rectangular enclosures.

  “Let me show you around,” Maggie offered. “I’m grateful as all get out to Mac for the extra hand. Fish farming is a 24/7 business. Trout don’t do well if someone isn’t around to take care of them.”

  She followed her guide to one of the tanks.

  “In here are the nine-inch rainbow trout. They’re ready for delivery. We stock fishing ponds and breeding tanks in this part of the state. Most public waterways in Alabama are too warm for rainbows. These here are fed a special diet twice a day from the automatic pellet dispensers.” She reached over and clicked one. The shower of granules brought a swarming crowd of young fish. “Mac’s bringing me some sacks out of storage to load the dispensers now. Over yonder in that pond…”

  The older woman moved over to another of the rectangular enclosures.

  “These guys require more care.” Maggie took a seat on the edge and trailed a hand in the water, her voice growing soft. “They’re big enough to be outside, but they don’t really feed on their own. They need to be hand-fed and encouraged.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It’s constant. I’ve got a back-up generator in case the power goes out. You’ve got to keep the oxygen circulating. There’s your boyfriend.” Maggie pointed to a figure carrying something out of a shed to a wheelbarrow.

  “I brought him some lunch.” Jan held up her sack. “Etta is letting me help out in the café since we’re living in her old fishing cabin.”

  “She’s a good soul. Tell Mac he can rest now. He’s more’n earned it.”

  She crossed to where Mac had stopped with the wheelbarrow watching her.

  “How about some lunch? Maggie said you’re due for a break.”

  He was dressed in brown coveralls with a Maggie May’s Trout Farm and a fish logo on the shirt. He pulled a handkerchief from a back pocket to wipe his face.

  “I won’t argue.” He looked around. “How about over here at the picnic table?” He pushed the wheelbarrow into the shade of a sweet gum tree and took his time lowering himself down on a bench.

  “I helped out with the lunch crowd.” Jan seated herself across from him. “They do quite a business at noon. I didn’t realize how much of a crowd they get out there off the beaten path, but we probably served over a hundred people including take-outs.”

  She unpacked the sack, laying out the sandwiches and opening the packet of hush puppies.

  “I didn’t bring anything to drink, but I do have these cups.”

  “There’s a hose around back. Let me get some water.”

  She had started on her sandwich when he returned, crunching the crisp lettuce, the soft white bread and flakey cornmeal breaded fish. She could see why people made a special trip out to the café.

  “Looks good. The candy bars I brought didn’t go far.”

  “The hush puppies are mine. I worked the deep fryer today.”

  “Picking up all kinds of new job skills, aren’t you?” He picked up a handful to pop in his mouth. His arms were sun brown now.

  “Maybe I have a career at the Alabama-Rama?” She watched the breeze in the leaves ripple shifting lines of sun and shadow across his face. A lazy piece of Spanish moss floated from a branch. “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here, Mac? We need to get back to our real lives.”

  “I don’t know. Maggie has asked me to go along when she delivers a load of young fingerlings to a finishing plant north of Montgomery tomorrow. I thought I could use the opportunity to make a call. The Bureau has a 1-800 tip line. I’ll leave a message explaining the situation from our point of view. Then we’ll wait for a public response. I don’t want to make a call from around here and give away our whereabouts before I’m convinced they won’t come in with guns drawn.”

  “Do you think our pictures are in the papers yet?”

  “I’m sure they’re showing the footage from the surveillance cameras. You know I forgot to spray paint the one back in Titusville.”

  “There was a lot going on.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know if they’ll show my file photo from the Bureau. They’re not going to be eager to publicize the fact one of their agents has gone over to the dark side. As for your picture…”

  “It wouldn’t be that hard to get one.” She lay her sandwich down on the wrapper and propped her head up on a hand. “I hope they haven’t contacted my parents. That worries me. They don’t know that the I.R.S. audited me, or my business folded. In fact, they aren’t aware of this whole undercover thing. They used to be proud of me. I told them the wedding was off and I was busy with the accounting practice. I can’t bear the thought of them seeing me staring up from the front page of their paper.”

  “The papers will probably just use the footage from the bank. Hopefully, no one will I.D. us from that.”

  “Do you think there’s a reward out for us?”

  “Oh, count on it.”

  “Go ahead and have the other sandwich. I’ve had enough.” She used her napkin and put trash in the sack. She’d lost her appetite.

  “Thanks. It’s been a long morning. I’ve got to say it feels good to be back doing something physical though, working out some tension.”

  “So what have you been doing?”

  “Moving feed, cleaning tanks, hauling trash mainly. Maggie has a big operation. The trout are hatched out in the greenhouse and kept there until they’re big enough to be put outside. The little ones have to be hand fed.”

  “That’s what she was telling me. What’s that like?”

  “Different. You put the feed in the water and the minnows come up and nibble it. Some of them are determined to suck on your fingers. Maggie had two high school girls come out to help us today. They’ll be here while we transport the bigger fish to the trout finishing plant in Montgomery tomorrow.”

  “First time I’ve seen a fish farm.” She flicked a ladybug off a sandwich wrapper and gathered up his trash to stow it in the sack.

  “Yeah, it’s similar to the salmon hatcheries out West.” He got up to chase a piece of plastic that had blown away. “You’ve got to admire her drive. Well, I think I need to get ba
ck to work before I blow this job, too. I’m going to stop in at the café on my way back and see if the paper’s come in. Maybe there will be some good news. What’s on your agenda this afternoon?”

  “Oh, I’ve got big plans.”

  She smiled.

  ****

  He froze in his tracks. The sight of a bra flapping in the breeze had that effect. Along with the white cotton underpants dangling in the foliage of a young redbud.

  “Oh, hi.” Jan stopped in the cabin doorway to wring out some sopping denim. “Did you find a paper?”

  Mac watched dumbly as she walked to a scrub pine reaching up to drape her jeans over a low limb. She had put on the tea-length dress from their last robbery. The sun behind her backlit her long legs and rounded butt through the thin cotton.

  “The paper?” She turned with a smile, cocking her head.

  He inhaled. It seemed he was supposed to make a response. Nothing came out.

  Clearly, there was only Jan under her dress. As naked as the day she was born. She was coming toward him, her breasts bouncing in rhythm to her stride.

  “So are we still making the front page?” She pulled the paper from under his frozen arm and walked back to the cabin. The clean smell of soap and fresh laundry engulfed him as he watched the sway of her hips.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. At least, his vocal chords were working again. There was something he had to tell her. If he could think of it.

  She took a seat on the step and opened the paper, a furrow in her brow as she bent over to read it.

  He stopped, mute in front of her, watching the shadowed curves her plunging neckline revealed.

  “I see they’ve upgraded Jake’s condition to serious, but stable and taken him out of the critical care unit. These pictures of us are awful, thank goodness.” She held up the paper toward him.

  His heart rate was slowing. Breathing was back.

  In the photo Jan’s face was hidden under the trailing, lacy brim of her hat. Wearing make-up, pearls, and dark glasses, she was miles away from the half-dressed wood nymph on the steps in front of him. His own picture showed the head and shoulders of a dark-haired man with sunglasses, his hand helping to obscure his jaw line.

  Subconsciously, he rubbed his face now evincing more than just a twelve o-clock shadow since his shaving kit had bit the dust back in Titusville.

  She folded the paper. “I decided to wash my clothes since I’d been living in them the last few days. Hopefully, they’ll be dry by morning.” She looked out to where her bra was trailing in the breeze.

  It seemed she hadn’t been sending him a signal.

  “Oh, sure.” That sounded intelligent. He wondered what her bra size was.

  “Maybe you’d like to wash your stuff out. I’m just going to sleep in this tonight while everything dries.” She tugged at the sleeve of her dress.

  Too bad the dress wasn’t wet too. Clinging to her, all the way down to the hidden darkness between her…

  He concentrated on a pair of squirrels running up the trunk of a nearby tree.

  “You could sleep in your overalls.” She tilted her head evaluating his Maggie Mays’ Fish Farm outfit.

  Nothing under his uniform but him?

  He’d be sleeping on his stomach tonight.

  ****

  Jan wadded up pieces of newspaper and poked them into the kindling. Flames ignited pine needles, giving off their aroma. She wrinkled her nose as she pushed in some of the broken slats from the wood box and shut the stove door. She heard the door open behind her.

  “I thought I’d start a fire. There’s a breeze picking up outside.” She turned to face him.

  “Got my washing hung up.” Mac came over to sit at the table. “Hopefully, it’ll be dry by morning. While I’m in town with Maggie tomorrow, I want to pick up some toiletries for us. I’m feeling like a backwoods hermit.”

  She smiled and leaned down to run a hand through his hair. Mac sat motionless as her fingers were caught in its tangled thickness. With his unruly hair and three-day beard, he looked even less like a white-collar government employee.

  “I’ll give you a list of some things—comb, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste. Gosh, this is exciting. Do we have enough money? Everything I had was either in my purse or luggage back in that parking lot.” She took a seat beside him.

  He nodded. “We’re all right ’cuz Maggie is paying me by the day. I think she’s had experience being poor herself.”

  “What about being out in public tomorrow? Do you think anyone will recognize you?”

  “I don’t know how hard the Bureau is pursuing this. There are better pictures they could have used if they wanted us captured. My feeling is they’re trying to do this as quietly as possible before the media catches on to their part in setting up the robberies.”

  “What are you going to say if you get a chance to call?”

  “I’ll leave a message. I don’t want to get anyone live on the line trying to trace the call. The tip line is monitored so someone will hear it eventually. I’ll say we were set up. The keys were locked in the car accidentally or we would have been killed. We had no connection with the explosion. I’ll ask them to publicize a way we can turn ourselves in and get this resolved, take polygraph tests or whatever it takes to clear our names.”

  She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. “So maybe in a day or two, things will be back to normal?”

  “Yeah, the Bureau needs to get to the bottom of what’s really going on. Someone almost killed Jake.”

  In the stove, twigs popped and cracked. Somewhere outside an owl hooted.

  “Smells good,” he said.

  “Our little cabin in the big woods.” Jan got up and pushed her chair away to go in the bedroom, returning with the quilt and pillows. She spread the quilt on the old rug, dropped the pillows on it and lay down on her side, propping herself up a pillow.

  “Join me?” She patted the blanket. “If we don’t have an entertainment center, we can still watch the fire in the grates.”

  “Ah, sure.” Mac got up to move slowly down beside her, moving his pillow to the other edge of the quilt and lying down to face her.

  “This must be real different for you.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “From life in the big city.”

  “Yeah, I did work in the New York City office, but originally, I’m from rural New York State. I grew up in Lake Claire in the Adirondacks region. It’s a little resort town, no one has ever heard of, about two thousand people.”

  “So how did you get to the F.B.I.?”

  “I joined the military after college. Came back and tried law school for a while, but it wasn’t a good fit. I was too restless after the service. I needed something with a little more action so I applied to the Bureau.”

  “Do you still have family back home?”

  He paused a moment, studying the pattern on the quilt.

  “Not now. No.”

  “Were you ever called Mike, or has it always been Mac?”

  “No, it was Michael when I was little. But then in junior high, I went with Mac. It’s what the guys on the team called me. A lot of things were happening about that time and I wanted a change. Sounding tough or grown-up seemed important back then.”

  He rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling.

  “Dad was from the Lake Claire area. His family didn’t have much so he joined the army and spent some time in Europe. When he came back, he worked his way through college on the G.I. Bill. It was his dream to be an art teacher. After he married Mom, he did go on to teach art in one of the county high schools.”

  “Are you artistic?”

  “Me?” He snorted. “I couldn’t draw a name out of a hat. My sister had the talent—sculpture, painting, photography. When I was fourteen, our mom passed away. She’d had trouble with blood clots and one in her lungs killed her.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

  “It was hard. Dad couldn’t suppo
rt us and pay the hospital bills on a teacher’s salary so he left teaching to work in a machine shop.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah, but he did keep doing his artwork on the side. Sketching nature, making crafts for bazaars, festivals, those kinds of things, working with my sister. Anyway, at fourteen, I thought Mac sounded way more macho than my given name.”

  “What’s wrong with Michael?”

  He grimaced. “It’s Michael A. McKenzie. My dad was inspired by his tour of duty in Italy.”

  She looked blank.

  “Think of the David, the Pieta, the Sistine…”

  “Oh, wow! Michelangelo?”

  “Michael Angelo McKenzie. Yeah, and my little sister was Mona.” He stopped and looked at her.

  “Lisa?”

  “You got it. Crazy, huh?”

  “It’s amazing what well-meaning parents can do to their children.”

  “Oh, come on. Jan is at least simple.”

  She looked at him and shook her head.

  “It’s not just Jan unfortunately.”

  “Janice? Janet?”

  “I was named for my grandmothers. I was the first grandchild and they’d been waiting quite a while. Janine and Thalia. Mom and Dad put it together to make Janith.”

  “That’s kind of pretty. It could have been worse. You could have been Thaline.”

  “Yeah? So my full name is?”

  Janith Thimmons. He thought about it and grinned.

  “Sounds like you have a lisp?”

  “You think? Anyway that’s why I go with Jan. Just plain Jan.”

  “Works for me.”

  “At least we’ll know things to avoid when we name our kids.” She yawned and stretched, pushing herself up.

  Beside her, he hesitated, then returned her smile.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Wow, this is better than Christmas.” Jan grabbed the plastic sack he offered dumping it out on the table. “Toothbrushes, toothpaste, yes, dental floss!”