Dress Codes for Small Towns

by Courtney Stevens

  I knock rogue sawdust from the front of my shirt and from hers. I imagine what would happen if this were Woods and her in a half-lit garage. If that flick of the wrist across her chest might become more. Maybe a hand in the small of her back. Palm touching soft skin. Yes, I think it would.

  Janie Lee returns my glasses, resettles herself on the freezer, and continues the conversation. “I highly doubt Tawny Jacobs will need me to saw anything.”

  “The dreams of small children?” I suggest.

  “She’s not that bad. We had a good week.”

  This is a very Janie Lee way to feel. Tawny’s the only woman in Otters Holt to be nominated ten times for the Corn Dolly and never win. Way back when, she baked pies and gave away whole Snickers bars for Halloween. But now, she’s Otters Holt’s very own Miss Havisham.

  The entire youth group got called in to trim trees and pick pecans at Tawny’s after school on Thursday. Her husband has been dead for sixty years, and she manages forty-one acres alone. If she weren’t such a mean old biddy, I’d slap a sash around her chest that said Feminist of the Year. Every acre, save the one with her “homestead,” is buried under a canopy of fruit- and nut-producing trees.

  I’ll say one thing for her. She is the owner of the best white perimeter fences in the whole damn county. Miles and miles of fences made for racing. If you’ve never raced fences with a best friend—on anything with wheels—you really haven’t lived. Mash, Woods, Fifty, and I once hijacked two zero-turn mowers from Big T and raced them down the lane like it was the Indy 500, all while Tawny shook her broom on the front porch. The four of us have done quite a bit of living. Janie Lee, for the most part, has done quite a bit of watching. She doesn’t go fast. Or honk her horn. Or throw gravel. Or hijack mowers. Not anymore.

  She cheers for us and has 911 at the ready.

  “You might have had a good week. She told me that dressing like a man attracts wanton attention,” I say.

  “What did you say to that?”

  “Well, I wanted to tell her that if Jesus wore a skirt, I could wear pants.”

  “Billie—”

  “I said wanted to. Don’t worry, I thanked her kindly for the insight.”

  “How were things with Grandy?” she asks.

  I low whistle. She didn’t go easy on me. Tuesday after school, she sent me up the attic stairs to bring things down. “Just a little sorting,” she promised. Forty-three boxes were given to Goodwill, although a few bearing “art supplies” landed in my garage. I did find a tin of Christmas cookies from 1999. Mash ate one on a dare. “I’m happy to say he didn’t throw up,” I tell Janie Lee.

  We discuss the other assignments, how they’re off to a rip-roaring success. How we feel as though we might be turning the tide regarding the opinion of Community Church Youth Group. It’s a perfectly good conversation, until she mentions asking Woods to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I keep my commentary to a solitary statement. “You better be sure, because if you ask him, it changes everything.”

  “And that’s why I haven’t said anything yet,” she admits. “There should be a manual for all this relationship shit.”

  “Truth,” I say, lowering my glasses. I cut three more two-by-fours before Janie Lee interrupts me.

  “Are you ever going to finish that thing?” She indicates Guinevere.

  I pretend to be appalled. “The Daily Sit has my full attention.”

  I’m sort of famous for two things: unfinished projects and gifting ridiculous unfinished items. I once gave Woods a television made entirely of book covers. He has it hanging on the wall in his room. We watch it sometimes as if it’s real. I like it better than cable.

  “Maybe you should gift the couch to Davey,” she says.

  “Maybe I will.”

  There’s still dust on her chest, over her heart. She swipes at it and says, “You know, you two would make a cute couple,” without lifting her eyes.

  I turn on the saw.

  Five minutes later Davey turns up in my garage looking useful in his beat-up jeans and Waylan Academy Lacrosse T-shirt. There’s faint purple eyeliner making his eyes pop and sparkle. The temperature is in a truly Kentucky mood, which means I grab a sweatshirt, just in case. It’s morning, but he lies on the concrete floor, spread-eagle, and says, “We’re never going to be done serving the old people.” I nod, but he gives me an exasperated snarl. “What do you know? You’re the Energizer Bunny. Do you ever get tired? No. You’ve probably been up working on that dang couch since midnight.”

  “It’s true,” Janie Lee agrees. “You are a bunny.”

  “See?”

  His voice sounds Middle Tennessee today. More southern and long, instead of raw and slow. He’s interesting. I wonder at the difference between interest and attraction. And if that’s what’s really going on with Janie Lee and Woods. Between me and Woods.

  “I probably should get up at midnight if I ever want to finish this stupid couch,” I say.

  Even though I have to leave the Daily Sit to go do another service project, I’m excited to get out of the garage. Throwing tree limbs and mulch sounds therapeutic after thinking about Woods and Janie Lee dancing at the Harvest Festival. The last Harvest Festival probably, because there has been zero time to execute the plan written on Einstein.

  Today’s fire retribution is Wilma Frist, a pear-shaped woman who drives a light-pink Town Car that plays Christmas music year around. She’s just the kind of woman I don’t want to be when I grow up, but she’s charming all the same. When we arrive, she’s bubbling with the delight of someone who overprepares. Fifteen pair of gloves, shovels, hacksaws, and maps are spread out on her picnic table. (There are only six of us working.) Near the woods, there’s a Dodge Ram full of mulch. (“My son Tony brought it over this morning.”) She’s filled a pitcher with yellow Gatorade. She explains what she wants done and ends her speech with “Make sure you hydrate,” before retreating inside to observe us from the kitchen window.

  No one is shocked when Woods offers additional instructions. Davey and I are to walk the trail and remove or saw the larger obstacles. Mash and Fifty will wheelbarrow and dump mulch at various places along the trail. Woods and Janie Lee will rake the smaller debris to the sides. Everyone spreads mulch at the end. This trail is a half mile in length. If we even get to mulch this morning, I’m going to be impressed.

  “I have thirteen grandchildren, and I want this trail safe.” Fifty uses his worst old-woman voice, and then his own. “If she has thirteen grandchildren, why aren’t they doing this?”

  “Because her thirteen grandchildren didn’t set a church on fire,” I remind him.

  Woods and Janie Lee leave us, and Janie Lee gives me a discreet two-thumbs-up, as if I’ve planned these pairings. Their two forms, as seen from the back, are in the same flowing line I notice when they’re playing music. Jealousy might be a shallow well, but I bend my face to it all the same and take a drink.

  “You’re stuck with me, McCaffrey,” Davey says.

  “More like Mash is stuck with Fifty.” I tug Davey to the other trailhead. This is a forest of poplars, oaks, and pines. Trunks are long; branches are high, each competing for sunlight at around one hundred feet. At eye level, everything is gray and brown, with the occasional splash of bright-green moss or deep-green pine. Every half mile or so, a forest like this lurks along the highway, planted by God and used by hunters. But Davey walks into an ambitious ray of sunshine and twirls circles like a princess in Disney World.

  “You don’t have parks in Nashville?” I ask.

  “Nashville is relatively green. Waylan had a forest like this on campus. It”—he closes his eyes and breathes—“smells so good out here. I like this air.”

  I wrap my arm around a nearby tree, inhaling the sweetness of its bark, feeling thankful it does its CO2 thing without me even noticing or asking. Below my feet are fallen leaves. Earth. I wonder: Does the soil on his old campus look this brown or is it tinted slightly red? I wonder: Is he someone who notices deta
ils? I wonder: Do we have other things in common?

  “Are you going to keep hugging that tree?” he asks. “Or are we going to work?”

  We’ve cleared four fallen trees and sawn through a fifth when Davey removes his long-sleeved T-shirt and hangs it on a branch. The Waylan jersey he’s wearing beneath the sweatshirt looks old and lovely.

  Across the woods, I make out the pink of Janie Lee’s cap, hear her voice and Woods’s making music. No doubt she’s kicking leaves in those damn UGGs and having a perfect time. I am staring at them, thinking complicated thoughts, when Davey says, “What was your question just then? The one you didn’t ask.”

  I’d wanted to know if he played basketball at Waylan. Instead, I said, “Are you happy here?”

  He affectionately pats a tree. “Wilma has nice woods. And this trail, when it’s finished, will be—”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  He sinks the saw teeth into a standing and healthy tree, works the flimsy blade back and forth until it’s stuck.

  “You can say.”

  “No,” he argues.

  “Why?”

  He turns away from the tree, leaving the saw buried in oak. “Because this is your dreamland.”

  “And this is your what . . . punishment?” I ask.

  When he doesn’t answer, I poke. The words come out of me unplanned. “Is being mysterious and unknowable some sort of weird triumph for you?”

  “I am not mysterious and unknowable.”

  I call foul. “You forget. I’ve seen you with your people. I know what you’re like when you’re not holding back. Come on. It’s me. If you hate Otters Holt, you can say it.”

  The saw resists when he tries to jerk it from the tree. “I don’t hate Otters Holt.”

  “But you miss Thom?”

  “Of course. The same way you miss Janie Lee and Woods when they’re not tied to your side. Except they’re right over there, and Thom is a decent drive away.”

  I walk over, bump him out of the way. “See. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He sidesteps my bravado, but the saw doesn’t obey me any more than it obeyed him.

  He taps me on the shoulder, formally, as if he’d like a dance. He says, “I’d like to tell you something.”

  “Well, I’d like the same,” I say, looking from him to the saw.

  “B, if something were going to happen between you, with either of them, I think it would have happened already. They live on one planet. You live on another. You should find someone who is your equal.”

  Either of them? He’s not jabbing at me like Fifty. Not making a sexual comment just to make one. He’s flinging open two doors instead of one. It’s not something I can respond to yet. It’s too fresh. I thought when he said he wanted to tell me something, it would be about him. “Why do you care if anything happens?” I say with more bite than I intend.

  “I don’t,” he snaps back in a way that screams I do.

  He called me B, the letter racing from his lips. I like that he sees the differences between them and me. But I have never thought myself unequal.

  Half a football field away, Woods and Janie Lee round a bend in the trail, come into full view. His unruly hair falls so he has to brush it out of his eyes; hers, a straightened black drape, frames a heart-shaped face. Her arm’s casually looped around his elbow; he’s bent slightly, listening intently. They are a homecoming poster. I have to find something else to see.

  Woods yells a greeting, which we ignore. Perhaps because they’ve interrupted something. Perhaps because we’re hell-bound to remove the saw. They’re still trumpeting out a pop song that will lodge in my head all day. They’re louder. They’re happier. They’re coming closer with each step. Frustrated, I grab the wooden saw handle and plant both feet on the tree and pull.

  “That’s a bad id—”

  I fly backward through the air. I’m flat on my back in the middle of the trail, saw in hand. Sudden laughter tumbles from my belly. Davey throws himself down next to me, hands balled around his mouth like a child from cackling so hard. It takes us a moment to grow still and quiet. His head lolls toward me. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  I roll sideways and lay my temple against the soft pillow of earth to see the apology in his eyes. They are blue—piercing, sorrowful—blue. “I am too.”

  He doesn’t blink. “You know I meant you’re better than them?”

  I sidestep this compliment. “And you know you can trust me with unpopular opinions.”

  “She likes him and he likes her and you like them,” he says, as if it’s a mystery.

  I flatten myself against the ground, wishing this were quicksand and I could disappear. His pinkie taps the ground. I feel the reverb. Cream and butter beams of light illuminate the tree we abused with the saw. I slip my hand into his and stare through the tinted lenses of my sunglasses. “She doesn’t like him,” I say. “She thinks she loves him. Maybe.”

  “And you’re confused.”

  “Because . . .” Does he know?

  “You can’t tell which of them you love most anymore.”

  I hide my face inside my shirt. “Let’s not use the love word, okay?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  He’s compliant because I asked, not because I’ve changed his mind. He sounds sad. And I suppose he is. A preacher’s daughter should be comfortable with the L word.

  He says, “I think there’s a place where love equals history and a place where love equals the future and a place where love is just love and it doesn’t go away no matter whether you get it back or not. Figuring out the difference—”

  “Is impossible,” I finish.

  The singing is now nearly over the tops of our heads. Carefully, without discussion, we unclasp our fingers. There’s no way to know from Woods’s expression if he sees or not, because he’s too busy busting our balls about lying down on the job. “We’re slaving away out here and you two are making forest angels.”

  I say, “Being reprimanded by two people singing show tunes who haven’t broken a sweat doesn’t make me hop to my feet.”

  Davey and I separate enough to claim our own pieces of ground. We swing our legs and arms about wildly until we’ve moved the brush as if it were snow. While I’m still moving, I argue, “We’ve already done some serious work.”

  Woods looks at Davey, glares at me. Looks at Davey, scowls at me. “Oh, I can tell.”

  The tone warrants raising my sunglasses and a flash of my lizard eyes. Davey tenses. The staredown ends with Janie Lee’s totally obtuse statement. “Aw, Billie, you look really happy.”

  Part of me takes flight and lands spritelike on a limb far above the forest, keen to observe the truth.

  There is Woods. There is Janie Lee. There is Davey. There is me.

  I do not know what type of love we are—history, future, or infinity—but we are love all the same. Welded strangely together like something in my garage. Like Guinevere or the unicorns. And we are just as unfinished.

  9

  With the semi-success of Operation Service Project, Dad offers me a short reprieve. Janie Lee is invited to a dinner of Cheetos, pizza, and Mom’s very un-southern tea. When Mom and Dad start debating church politics at the table, Janie Lee and I escape to my room.

  She takes the desk chair and opens her violin case. I settle on the bed with a box of Legos. For an hour, she plays, I build, and we are happier than two baby goats chewing on the same chunk of grass. We’ve always done silence as a deep conversation. In that span of time, I don’t think of the future, or the past—I let myself breathe present air.

  We are here, and I am comfortable.

  Then, we are temple to temple watching Saturday Night Live. Neither of us is a fan, so we flip the channel until we find Betty White.

  And we are here, and I am comfortable.

  At eleven, Mom knocks, and tells us not to stay up too late. “Church tomorrow, girlies,” she reminds us. “Want me to flip the light?”

  We
do. The alarm clock’s blue glow illuminates Janie Lee’s shadowy image. She’s wearing large-frame glasses, and pajamas I detest with holy passion. I smell honeysuckle—her face cream—that reminds me I am not particularly clean after a day of hard labor. I carry myself off to shower and return to find her still awake.

  I grab a blanket I call the Sheep and toss it over her. Skip this step and experience says I’ll wake up stripped of covers and shaking. I bury myself next to her, and she says, “You remember sophomore year?”

  Sophomore year refers to one day in particular. My twin bed seems like a king. “Hey,” I say warmly, and then her head, her tears, are on my chest. “No one thinks about that anymore.”

  The Tuesday after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, thirty-five Otters Holt students found Marie Miller, Janie Lee’s mom, on a desk in first-period chemistry. Naked. With Mr. Klinger. Also naked. The formaldehyde pig, Tog, was also a casualty. As were two Bunsen burners.

  “Why are you even thinking about that?” I ask.

  Janie Lee finds words. “Because she’s why I don’t date. Why I’m afraid of asking Woods to the dance. Afraid of everything when it comes to relationships.” She has never said these words before. Nor the ones that come after. “What if I’m like her? What if I miss out on someone like him because I can’t—”

  “Janie Lee, you might live in the same house, but you don’t come from the same place.”

  “But so many people think of her, of that, when they see me. Eleven months. Eleven months.” She repeats her mantra several more times.

  “A) You aren’t in their brains, so who knows? And B) You can leave Otters Holt in eleven months, buddy, but you’ll pack that fear in your suitcase unless you realize you aren’t like her.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Your mom is Corn Dolly material.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t make me wrong.”

  She’s worried she’ll turn out like her mom; I’m worried I won’t. Somehow my introverted mother has mastered the art of marching to her own drum in a rhythm people appreciate. She’s bohemian in a town that can’t spell the word—an artist, a kind artist—and people respond to her warmly, whereas I am kind, but people don’t respond to me warmly. Except for the Hexagon. Without them, I’d probably be buried in a pile of newsprint and aluminum. Or still up a tree at the elementary school. No one will ever award me a Corn Dolly.