by Lee Lynch
Not long after her mistake with Lari, Jaudon drove through Tampa and passed a small pack of peace marchers going up and down the sidewalk outside the US Courthouse Building. Through her open windows, she heard them chant, “Hell, no, we won’t go!” They wore bandanas around their necks and waved poster board signs on cardboard tubes. People called insults from passing cars.
She was madder than a wet hen. It was their duty to stand up for American soldiers.
It was winter and cool enough for jackets. She remained churned up about the marchers, and Lari, and Momma. There was ongoing unquiet between herself and Berry.
On their way home from work one night, she said, “It made sense for Bat to join the army. He’s proving his independence. Momma lords it over me. What does she think, that if not for her, I’d be homeless, jobless, and loveless?”
“The army? You want to help kill more of those poor people over there?” Berry was driving, but reached to slap Jaudon’s thigh. It was the first time Berry had touched her since that night with Lari. “Wouldn’t you be afraid of getting injured?”
“Me, afraid? You know me better than that.”
“I can’t stand the thought of you going away, Jaudon. Tell me you won’t enlist.”
There was icy terror in Berry’s voice, but Berry had been pretty icy for a while.
“I’ll solve a lot of people’s problems. They need soldiers in Vietnam. Those peace demonstrators aren’t helping anyone. Bat hasn’t got a scratch on him. I’ll learn a skill besides running a store. Momma and Pops won’t be embarrassed about bringing up a freak. You’d get on with your life and not have to protect me anymore. I bring you all kinds of calamity.”
Berry drove the van under a canopy of low-hanging Spanish moss outside the closed Rainbow Gap general store. Eyes shut, fingers locked around the thin plastic steering wheel, weak from fear and anger, she breathed herself calm.
Had she been too hard on Jaudon? Did Jaudon want to leave what they had? She wouldn’t hold her back if she needed to see the world. Or try other loves, though it would about kill her. She imagined Larissa Hand instead of Jaudon at war, going through the ordeals Bat told them about. Too bad women weren’t allowed in combat. She stopped herself and, without words, apologized to the Great Spirit for wishing capture and torture on Lari.
Jaudon was so tense she trembled. She knew Berry had a knack for soothing anyone, fixing any mess Jaudon made. She wasn’t giving up on Berry, but they still slept separately and she didn’t dare approach her about making love. “I would. I will, if it would make you happier to be without me.”
A car with no muffler idled at the one stop sign and revved onto Front Street.
Berry stamped a foot on the van floor. “Go on—there’s a recruiting poster with the phone number on the store’s window.”
Jaudon stared at Berry. She wanted to swallow her words. Her response was weak. “But you don’t believe in fighting.”
“Sounds to me like you do, Jaudon. I’m not here to control you or pass judgment on what you set store by.”
“I guess you don’t need me around.”
When Berry didn’t answer, Jaudon put a hand on the van door. Her insides twisted up as she walked to the poster. What was she blowharding about? She didn’t want to leave home. Like Berry said, why pester people in another country? She did believe in America, though, and that meant going along with what the government decided.
She went to pull the poster from the wall, jerked her hand away, and got in the van without it.
“I forgot,” said Jaudon. “How can I show this body at the physical exam? They’d reject me for being a werewolf.”
“They see all sorts of bodies, but they’d make you wear a bra.”
“I don’t want a soul to see this body but you. If you ever want to again.”
Berry took Jaudon’s hand in hers. “I hope you know I’ll never stop you, but I don’t want you to go.”
She looked at their hands and caught her breath. She repeated one of their childhood catchphrases. “Cross your heart?”
Berry gave Jaudon’s ear a quick kiss. “And hope to die. Together. Peacefully. In Rainbow Gap, Florida, USA.”
“For real?” She leaned forward and tugged Berry closer.
Berry allowed her. They held like that until Jaudon let go.
“I don’t ever want to leave your side, Berry. But I still want to help our soldiers.”
“Let’s send them a care package. One a month until this is over.”
“It’s not much, but at least it shows them we care, Berry.”
“What do you want to put in it?”
“Oh, candy bars, comic books, crossword puzzles.”
“Real books too, Jaudon. We’ll send them paperback books.”
“Socks and foot powder. Beef jerky—”
Berry drove them toward home, thinking. Jaudon was an action type. If she had a conflict, she’d fret and fume. Give her a task to do and she was happy as the day is long.
As they jounced along Pineapple Trail, Jaudon said, “I bet we have leftover fried chicken. I can almost smell it from here.”
She was confounded by Jaudon’s fickleness with Lari and her hasty impulse to run away to war. Was she asking too much to want Jaudon all for herself? For the moment she would work on forgiveness and send the last of her misery to the Great Spirit, but couldn’t resist bedeviling Jaudon. “The way you’re always hungry, she wouldn’t cook fast enough to keep you satisfied.”
“Who?”
“Larissa the kisser.”
“I didn’t kiss her. I never kissed anyone but you. If I think there’s ever a chance of it happening again, I’ll run like heck. I’ll call the cops on her if she comes near the store again.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll call your momma. Bless her heart, she’ll be a lot better at chasing away all the girls who’ll want you. If you went into the service, goodness knows how you’d fend them off.”
Berry acted cheerful enough, but it was obvious she would never forget that night.
Jaudon woke up well before dawn the next day to find her arm wet where Berry lay beside her.
“Berr?” she whispered. Berry was crying in her sleep again.
This happened once in a while, the crying; at times Berry called out for her ma and pa. She mumbled in her sleep too, and said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Jaudon didn’t understand why Berry’s folks left. She wished she was enough to replace them. She kept to herself a suspicion they crashed their motorcycle and died or got amnesia. You saw such stories on TV—why not in real life?
Was she crying this time because of what Jaudon did? It must have brought back the hurt her ma and pa had done. She was a trial to this woman she loved more than anything, yet who declined to be left in peace. Once again she considered military service. If she was brave enough to risk going to Vietnam, she ought to have the courage to stay faithful to Berry.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, taking Berry’s warm hand under the covers. “I’ll always be here.”
Love was the best thing and the worst thing in the world. She wanted to tear Lari limb from limb, eradicate from the face of the earth anyone who got between them. Herself included, if need be. She told the sleeping Berry, “Nothing and no one will come between us again. I promise.”
The next day, Rigo stopped by the house early. “I asked Lari to come with me,” he said. “She dropped an armload of books and practically fell backward down the stairs trying to catch them.”
“Give her a push next time, won’t you?” Berry said, tossing her braid in lingering resentment. She wasn’t about to try forgiving Lari too.
“Am I hearing our Berry Garland talking? How unlike you. What did you girls do to Lari?”
“She got herself in trouble with my momma, for one thing,” Jaudon said.
“Heaven forbid. Who in this county hasn’t?”
Berry told the whole story, with an apology for her bitterness. Jaudon looked nowhere but the floor.
“Darn pothead Yankee. I brought her to meet you girls because she seemed so lonely.”
“Pothead?” Berry and Jaudon said in unison.
“Can’t you tell? She’s stoned most of the time.”
Jaudon’s fists went to her hips. “Is that what I smelled on her?”
Rigo’s eyebrows went up. “Didn’t you ever smell marijuana before?”
“Jaudon and I don’t know any dope fiends.”
“Look at you, the two Miss Innocents. It’s a good thing you have me to protect you.”
Jaudon punched him in the arm, clowning. “You ought to introduce Lari to some straight girls. You’d be doing girls like us a big favor.”
Berry indulged in another vile image of Lari Hand: she pictured her in jail for dope. Serve her right.
“I’m confident you’re here for breakfast, Rigo. Berry’s planning to cook up a mess of sausage gravy and biscuits.”
Rigo never turned down a home-cooked meal. He set his book bag under the kitchen table. “What’s the matter with you, Jaudon, letting yourself get lured into Lari’s trap?”
“Hormones,” said Berry. She was relieved to be her reasonable self again. “I’m learning about them in one of my courses. At our age, they take over our brains when they’re stimulated.”
Rigo fanned himself. “I didn’t know girls had urges.”
“Jiminy. I almost lost Berry because of some science thing? I was walking a tightrope of fishing line. Thank you, Lord. It was more than hormones, though. I was flattered. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in me besides my Berry.”
Berry squinted at the top of Jaudon’s head, spit into her hand, and patted her cowlick down. “I’ll have to remember to flatter you more in the future.”
“Look at Jaudon and me, the opposite of hunks, or whatever you call girl hunks. I’m a complete hairy chunk. An endomorph, speaking of biology class.”
“He hit the nail on the head, Berry.” She was stammering in front of Rigo. “I’ll never understand why you want me. I walk like an ape and I acted like one.”
Rigo tried to talk, but laughed through his nose instead. Zefer got excited and made to jump in his lap. “Come up here, you monkey-haired doggie.”
Berry set down a bowl of biscuits and pointed to them. Rigo put two on his plate. She realized Jaudon’s eyes were glazed with tears and ladled extra gravy over her biscuits. She held the full ladle over Rigo’s plate. “No gravy until you tell us what you’re laughing about.”
Rigo used a paper napkin to wipe his face. “It shouldn’t be funny at all. People may think I’m a red-haired ape-man with a perm. It cracked me up to hear Jaudon say the same. I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you, Jaudo. We need to remember we’re vibrant, sexy people, which should be a turn-on for anyone.”
Berry touched his curls. “These aren’t permed.”
“Haven’t you ever seen an ape with curls before?”
“We’re not seeing one now. Neither of you.”
Rigo pretended to eat with his fingers and made grunting sounds. Jaudon swiped Rigo’s cheek with a finger full of warm gravy. Rigo put gravy on his spoon and catapulted it at Jaudon. Berry swatted them both with her napkin.
Gran came out of her room to see what the commotion was about. “When your plates are empty, I’m going to shoo you three away to get to school. I’ll clean up here.”
Rigo squinted at the kitchen clock. “I’m off to the teach-in.” He pulled a comb from his book bag. “Jimmy Neal invited me.”
“Jimmy Neal Skaggs from the gay bar?” Berry asked.
“He’s been asking me to go out with him. I told him he’s not my type, too gentle and shy, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
Jaudon sing-songed, “Rigo’s got a boyfriend.”
“Teach-ins don’t count as dates. It’s more like sharing a ride to class.”
“He can at least carry your books.”
Berry said, “I saw signs for the teach-in on campus. I’ll see if I can join you for part of it after my pharmacology class.”
Jaudon said, “Watch out, Berry, three’s a crowd. What the heck is a teach-in anyway?”
Rigo explained to Jaudon. “A number of local professors are against the war. They canceled their classes and invited students to learn about Vietnam in the lecture auditorium in Desoto Hall.”
“And you’re both going?”
Rigo was at the door. “Why not?”
“The darned Communists will try to brainwash you.”
“Well, hello, Ms. Joe McCarthy,” said Rigo. “This is about information, not persuasion. No need to get paranoid. You’ll be leaping at your shadow next, thinking it’s subversives.”
Jaudon speared her last biscuit so hard it slid from her plate. She retrieved it from the pine floor and picked at the dog and cat fur until it was clean. “It’s no skin off my nose if you want to go. Mind you, be careful of those types against our government.”
Rigo looked at Berry who smiled and nodded. “We’re learning so we can decide what to believe, Jaudon.”
Jaudon scowled. “I have all the information I need from our Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
“Do you actually believe Berry and I are incapable of making up our minds, Ms. Paul Revere?”
“Aw, heck, Rigo. ’Course not. What do you take me for? If you believe the president and Congress have our best interests in mind, you don’t need to learn anything else.”
“I don’t know about the president, but I bet what Congress has in mind is its own pockets. War brings in big profits. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the politicians have shares in every munitions manufacturer in the country.”
Jaudon feared there might be some truth in what he was saying. Hadn’t Pops mentioned he was losing his trust in government? She didn’t want to think about it anymore. “Go on, you two. Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. If you find out anything worth knowing, you better tell me.”
Berry kissed Jaudon good-bye. “I’ll take notes on the brainwashing.”
They left in high spirits, Berry in the van, Rigo dropping Jaudon at work.
“Don’t you lead Berry too far along that path,” Jaudon said by way of good-bye.
Rigo honked his trick car horn as he turned onto Eulalia Road. It sounded to Jaudon like a sick cow.
Chapter Twelve
It was taking a long time to get back Berry’s trust. She was pretty sure time was the only cure there was.
Jaudon’s new classes were filled with men—and with a few women who said they planned to keep the books for their husbands’ small businesses. For the first time her teacher was Afro-American.
Her life was a blur of lectures, studying, and preparing for her license. She wasn’t aware of world events or that Berry wasn’t home much either. She ate at the Bay, studying between customers and stocking the shelves. Olive Ponder always came in to work for her when she needed more study time and sometimes gave her a wink and shooed her home to spend a few hours with Berry. She met weekly with her mentor, who taught her about real world retail beyond what she learned at school. Often, Berry was in bed asleep under a light sheet, ceiling fan going, when Jaudon lay down for the night. Berry caught rides to school with another student rather than add to Jaudon’s feverish schedule.
Two or three weekends a month they managed time alone at home. It was short, but rich.
“Jaudon, how do you keep up this pace and still manage to send me over the rainbow?” Berry squeezed her legs around Jaudon’s strong thigh, the pleasure contractions going on and on. It was a muggy Sunday and she wanted to stay in bed all day under the breeze of the fan, with the scent of climbing roses outside her bedroom window. Gran was at her new church. Toby hung out at the bottom of their bed until they drew apart, then climbed on Jaudon’s stomach, twenty pounds of him, and claimed their attention with loud purring.
Jaudon stretched her arms over her head. “As long as we have close time together, I’m dandy.”
Berry snuggled again
st her. “Time’s going to get shorter as I get closer to graduation. When I start my practicum, who knows what hours they’ll assign me.”
“Someday I’ll finish up the licensing exams, and be able to arrange my schedule around yours.” Jaudon curled her body around Berry. Toby arranged himself across both of them. “Are we nuts to work this hard?”
“Of course,” said Berry, “but it’ll make life easier in years to come. Gran said it’s why we’re given heaps of energy when we’re young.”
Toby decided to clean himself at that exact moment, lost his balance, and fell between them. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” Jaudon whispered when Toby swiveled his head as if to see whether they picked up on his indignity. They stifled their laughter and soothed him with petting.
Jaudon said, “He looks like a college break kid on a drinking spree.”
“Are you seeing many fake IDs this spring?”
“The usual dribs and drabs. I want to know how they afford the trip. We live here and don’t have time or money to take a week off.”
“Why? Are you dying to spend a week drinking and getting sunburned?”
Jaudon rolled away on the wrinkled sheet and made a face. “Can you see it? You and me and thousands of girls chasing boys and boys chasing girls?”
“It’s a mating ritual. Spring festivals go back to the Greeks and Romans, orgies and fertility.”
“Now, they should teach that in Sunday school.”
“Oh, angel, they hide the details of pre-Christian religions. Eddie Dill’s church didn’t observe Easter because it came from Paganism.”
“Well, well, ban the bunnies and the baskets,” Jaudon teased. “Bunch of jerks.”
Berry gave her a soft slap.
“Tell me more,” Jaudon said. She wanted to show Berry she cared any way she could, even if their interests were different.
“You mean the way the priests invented the Virgin Mary to give people a substitute for their goddesses?”
“Where are you picking up these tidbits? Are they true?”
Berry scooted out of bed and came back with books. She stopped and admired Jaudon, propped on an elbow, her hair more unruly than ever, her shoulders wide as a competitive swimmer’s, her breasts tiny, stomach flat. She loved being held by those strong arms and getting Jaudon’s muscled legs to slacken and fall open, the hairs on them like gold threads. Berry saw herself as the other end of the feminine spectrum, each part in curvy proportion to the next, her hair, not yet braided for the day, a bit wild from the sex and the weather.