Rainbow Gap

by Lee Lynch

  On their way out the man with the notebook stopped and said, “We got an anonymous tip that she works here. I see your wine and beer license is up to date, ma’am. Don’t you try to sell any other spirits.” He didn’t wait for a response, but his heavy emphasis on the word license warned they were going to be watching.

  Who in heck told on Allison?

  When she got home, Momma was sitting on one of the old chairs she left at the house, fanning herself with a magazine, her oversized white straw purse on her lap. She had grown heavier in the last few years and her lap spread to either side of her.

  Jaudon remembered how shook up she’d been after walking in on Allison’s so-called class in her living room. Seeing Momma made her remember the animal desire, the panic, the regret and added another shock: Momma was aging. The Beverage Bays were her life and her constant attention to them was taking a big toll on her. The Vicker family had been prominent in Rainbow Gap long ago. A road out in the country was named after a great-grandfather; Momma wanted that name to be prominent again.

  Momma held an index finger up to her temple, like she was trying to remember something.

  “You okay, Momma?”

  Momma looked startled. “Why shouldn’t I be?” Her eyes shifted down, as if she’d dropped her memory on the floor. She met Jaudon’s eyes, blinked and barked, “Answer me one thing, Daughter. Why do U.S. Marshals think we have a criminal working for us?”

  The hairs on Jaudon’s arms rose. “You think I know? They came to my store too.”

  “And your part-time help was there?”

  “Was and wasn’t.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Some girl who came in looking for a job.”

  “White girl?”

  “Yes.” Their argument about Momma’s old-fashioned hiring practices was ongoing. What Momma had said to Pops about Olive Ponder, which she said within earshot of Jaudon, was that she expected everyone had a prerogative to learn from their mistakes. Jaudon had sworn on the Bible Olive was not a mistake.

  “You’ll see,” was Momma’s hissed response.

  Jaudon remembered thinking, We have a race riot of our own, here, between Momma and me.

  This day Momma wanted to know, “So your hippie took off when the government showed up?”

  “What hippie? If you mean my part-timer, she wasn’t there when they left. I took over her work. The store’s fine.”

  “It takes some doing to set federal agents on a person. If it gets out we employed a criminal, if such a thing is reported in the papers, we can say good-bye to our reputation. It’s another mark against us. I know some people who won’t patronize your Bay because of the other person you hired.”

  “Mrs. Ponder is doing a great job.”

  “The better customers are going elsewhere and we’ll be serving the dregs. Next thing you know, they’ll start robbing us.”

  “Momma, quit talking that way. We’re bound to hire a lemon here and there, but Olive Ponder is not one of them.”

  “It pains me to write out her check. If you think I’m going to pay the hippie for time put in since her last wages, you have another think coming.”

  “You’re being so unfair.”

  “I know your daddy made you a manager. I told him it was too soon, you’re still a baby with who-knows-what-all wrong with you affecting your judgment. I want to clear any hires until you grow up.”

  “But, Momma, it wasn’t the part-timer they were after, didn’t look a thing like her.”

  “Why in heaven’s name did she run?”

  Jaudon shrugged, arms out, to show she was stymied.

  “I’ll be doing the hiring out of the office from here on in. You give me the applications and I’ll fill the jobs.”

  “That’s so harsh, Momma. I do everything I know to prove my worth to you. I’m studying management this year. I’ll be more knowledgeable about business when I’m done than you and Pops combined. Besides, it’s too much for you. You’re wearing yourself out.”

  “You’re talking out of your hat, child. When your brother gets out of the service, I expect him to train alongside me to take over and hiring is one of the jobs he’ll learn first. This company will be appreciated more with a man at the helm. A man who’ll be producing my heirs once he comes home and finds a decent girl to marry.”

  Momma’s plans knocked the wind out of Jaudon. She was speechless. Bat didn’t care about the business that was her own heart and soul or he’d be home doing his job. What did Momma want her to be, one of those women who wears white gloves to church and lunches in the department store restaurant, trading Jell-O mold recipes before going home to watch game shows and produce heirs?

  “And don’t you go running to your daddy about this. You came into a drop more of his Vicker blood than you have my Batson blood. It makes you as gullible as him. He won’t be running the drivers much longer, as soon as Bat gets home.”

  “Bat wants to re-up, Momma. He wants to put in twenty years and get retirement pay before he comes home.”

  “He never told me. Don’t you be carrying tales behind his back.”

  “He’s afraid to tell you, Momma, but it’s what he wants. He’s fond of the service.”

  Momma sat there looking around and steaming, her face scrunched up with thinking. The confusion she observed earlier took over Momma’s face. Without a pause, she was on about a new pet peeve.

  “I want you to get those pictures off the wall, you hear? March on Washington for aborting babies. What’s gotten into you? Mobilize against the war? Has Bat seen them? Lord A’mighty, where you get these ideas, I don’t know. I’m sure Berry doesn’t go in for this. Not with her Gran riding herd on her.”

  Nothing in the world was going to make Jaudon say they were Berry’s posters, with Berry’s ideas.

  “I’d close up this place until Bat returns and have you move in with me to keep an eye on you, but I need to make a good impression on neighbors and business associates at gatherings I have there.”

  Stung, she said, “This is our home, Momma. Can’t we decorate it as we please?”

  “This is Vicker land. Your ancestors’ home, child. You can live in it as long as you respect it. I don’t call what I’m looking at respectful. I ought to be getting rent from the lot of you.”

  Momma’s eyes grew warmer and her face relaxed, as if she’d heard herself say the word child. “I don’t propose to be hard on you, Daughter, but your father let you run wild while I put the long hours into creating a future for us all. I may be your mother, but I’m your employer as well, which means I care about you twice as much. If you get yourself mawmucked up, I want you to tell me about it. Is being a manager too much for you with your studies?”

  “I want to be a manager, Momma. Go look at my store. It’s shipshape and you know it.”

  “As long as you understand the business comes first. And, by the way, no more shorts at work and get rid of your chambray vest—it’s worn and stained. We’re getting to be important in this community. I’m enforcing the dress code. The bright blue jackets make us stand out and look professional, not like one of those shameful go-go bars. Wear yours.”

  “But it gets so hot in there. I have to stand in the cooler some days to dry off the sweat.” She wasn’t giving up the shorts. Let Momma go ahead and fire her. There was no way to air condition a big open hangar.

  “Don’t stay in the cooler unless there are no customers.”

  She was tired of this. Most customers were willing to wait a couple of minutes before tooting their horns. “Of course not.”

  “Some people will take advantage and help themselves. I see it happen.”

  Jaudon folded her arms. “Are we going to get some of those convex mirrors to reflect the whole store?”

  “What do you need them for? You have eyes in your head.”

  “I caught kids creeping in on foot. They take bottles of Coke or boxes of cookies out of the cases.”

  “You insist on opening those case
s at delivery. I told you to keep them shut.”

  She spread her arms in frustration. “It’s so much faster if the boxes are already open, Momma.”

  “And our inventory is safe from youngsters’ hands if they can’t open the cartons.”

  “Unless it’s company policy, I’ll do it my way.”

  “Don’t look to me if you have shrinkage problems. It’ll come out of your pay.”

  “Most places give a bonus for keeping down the shoplifting losses—you dock pay. No wonder some of the Bays can’t keep adequate help.”

  The blank, searching expression returned to Momma’s eyes. Her hands never rested. She gave her head a slight shake. “They’re hiring at the 7-Eleven, Daughter.” She hefted her considerable bottom up from the chair.

  Where was the slim younger Momma she first knew? She pledged never to put on weight like Momma’s.

  Momma took Jaudon’s chin in her hand and seemed to search her face. “Remember, you represent an upstanding business in this community and you need to fit in, not shame us.”

  After Momma drove off in her Cadillac, Jaudon wandered out to the tree house for the first time in months. She realized, for Momma, the Beverage Bays—and her children—were nothing more than a means to make money so she’d never be left wanting again. For Jaudon, it was the rhythm of work, of the store, that she loved. Rolling the door up at dawn, pulling it closed at night; catching freight off delivery trucks, building product endcaps, bantering with the vendors, emptying boxes and breaking them down, stocking the shelves, the coolers, and the freezer. She loved the chats with customers. She loved closing out the drawer, tallying sales, checking inventory, mopping the floors, sweeping the driveway. If she had nothing else in this world, if she lost Berry, she had her work. Momma wasn’t going to take the Beverage Bay from her; she’d fight, fight dirty if she was compelled to do so.

  It occurred to her that Pops and Bat were as spineless as they were because they were afraid to stand up to a force as strong as Momma. She chastised herself, and pledged to be more daring.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Berry found Jaudon in the tree house on their now-mildewed mattress.“What all are you doing, angel?”

  “Fixin’ to give up.”

  She crawled under the table and lay with Jaudon, holding and rocking her without another word. It didn’t take Jaudon long to recount her mother’s unpleasant visit.

  “Take my posters down? And how else can Olive prove herself?” said Berry. “Is this the land of the free or what?”

  “She’s trying to protect the business, Berry. You know the new convenience stores cropping up everywhere are trying to lure our customers. We can’t have a scandal at our drive-thrus.”

  “It’s discrimination, plain and simple,” Berry said, at the same time trying to calm herself. “Your momma won’t hire non-whites as it is and she’s getting finicky with women?”

  “She doesn’t want to lose the business of people with money.”

  “White customers.”

  “Sometimes I think you don’t remember who my family is, Berry. The Vickers, Jaudons, and Batsons eked out a living in the strawberry fields or the canning plants or the phosphorous mines. Momma is the first businesswoman on that side of the family. She keeps to the timeworn ways, unbefitting as they may be, like making me look girly.”

  When it came to the way Momma treated Jaudon, Berry always turned as cross as a bag of weasels. She ran a finger above Jaudon’s cheek. The growth was noticeable, but not very. Customers might see it in certain light. She knew Jaudon continued to be sensitive to the quick about this, and it might hinder her passion to succeed in business. That would be tragic.

  “Your momma could be kinder.”

  “She’s meaner than chicken poop.”

  Mad as she was, Berry drew on her scanty store of wisdom. “Goodness gracious, angel. Gran says that everyone, Momma included, is put in our lives for a reason. We have to serve our purpose in the time that we have.”

  “I have to forgive her again?”

  “No, I do. It’s a way of being kind to ourselves. Who gets hurt most by anger?”

  Jaudon nodded. “You sound old as the hills when you say things like that, Berry.”

  Berry smiled. “I sound that way to me too when Gran’s words come from my mouth. I think what we need to know is out there for the taking. I’m trying to learn to listen for it.”

  “Momma never listened. She’s accused me in the past months of hiring from that pack of crazy feminists.”

  “You told her, didn’t you, that they’re my friends?”

  “We don’t need you in trouble too. Meanwhile, she’s taking the hiring away from me.”

  “She doesn’t trust you? Her own daughter?”

  “I’m messed up. That’s what she thinks.”

  Berry took a deep breath. “Will getting rid of your duck fluff change her attitude toward you?”

  Jaudon’s face flushed red. “Are you agreeing with Momma?” She grabbed Berry’s wrist and thrust it away from her face. “’Cause if you are, I’ll go get this taken care of tomorrow.”

  “Mother Nature put it there for a reason we aren’t privy to.”

  “You know what? She made a mistake growing it on me. I wish people would stop treating me like a freak. Or I need to admit that I am a freak. You’d be better off without me.”

  “And your momma might think better of you if I wasn’t around. I’m what’s wrong with you. I should be taking Gran and moving out. I need to let you go.”

  “The hell you do!” Jaudon said.

  “Language!”

  “You eat your words. You’re my good influence, according to Momma. I can’t live without you, Berry Garland, and Gran’s better to me than Momma. Don’t go away. Please, Berry.”

  Berry shrank from her. She tried to twist her wrist out of Jaudon’s grasp.

  “Take it back,” howled Jaudon, holding on.

  Berry forgot to breathe. She wasn’t able to breathe. “Jaudon, let go. Spider!”

  A fully two-inch wolf spider dropped from the ceiling to the floor next to the mattress.

  “Jaudon, do something!”

  Jaudon scrambled backward out from under the table, sorrows forgotten. The spiders were a fact of life, but Berry never got used to these huge brown ones that kept down the earwig, fly, and mosquito populations in the tree house.

  “Heck, you know they’re not poisonous, Berr.” She checked around her for signs of other spiders, always vigilant for the hourglass marking of deadly gray recluses.

  “I saw somebody the day after she was bit, as itchy and red like she rolled around in poison ivy. She said it itched and burned worse than fire ants.”

  “Oh, for land’s sake. If she carried on, it must have been one of those genteel high school hussies you were running with.”

  “They were not huss—”

  Jaudon caught the spider in a Potato Stix can she kept for that purpose. She threatened Berry with it.

  Berry shrieked. “Don’t do that, Jaudon. You know I’m afraid to death of them.”

  Jaudon took the can to the entryway and shook it until the creature loped away, all eight legs, eight eyes, and wooly body.

  Berry stood and pressed herself against Jaudon. “My hero. You’re so kind to varmints.”

  “Hey, you’re the vegetarian. They deserve to live.”

  Berry gave Jaudon a playful push out of her embrace. “You’re learning.” She was finished arguing; it wore her out. “You come on in the house, Jaudon. Gran’s heating up her barbecue sauce from the other day to put on your frankfurters.”

  “Store bought buns?”

  “Of course not. She mixed up a batch of cornbread and she’s fixing greens too.”

  “What are we waiting for, Georgia gal?” Jaudon herded her out the tree house door. She’d give chase to Berry any day, way up to the Georgia border, or farther.

  After dinner, Gran cleared them out of the kitchen to mash some guavas for
jam. There were moments Gran was as bossy as Berry since recovering from her losses, thought Jaudon. They grabbed their homework and sat on either side of the cypress turned-leg table that had served generations of Florida Vickers. After a while, Berry realized that Jaudon was chewing on a pen, staring into space.

  “What is it, angel?”

  Jaudon took on a hound dog look and turned away. “She hasn’t given up talking about Bat running the company someday. He never did tell her he didn’t want to come home.”

  “All this because of Allison? You see? I make trouble for you, like you predicted.”

  Jaudon kept her head turned. Her face grew damp from tears. “You had nothing to do with it. The problem is I’m female. Momma thinks a company needs a man in charge.”

  “What is the matter with that woman? Doesn’t she know she’s a female?”

  She was wrong to think it, but Berry wished Momma would find a bottomless sinkhole of her own. She and Eddie Dill were welcome to be hateful together from the spirit world. Because here it was, ignorant bigotry on their doorstep again. Didn’t Jaudon’s momma see the harm she was doing Jaudon?

  Her stomach churned from distress. “I’ll go talk to Momma,” she offered.

  Jaudon frowned vigorously.

  “Or I’ll ask Gran to talk to Momma, angel.”

  “Why? I’ll still be me. Momma will still be her cross self. I need to remember she went hungry as a kid after her father died in the phosphate mine. Her momma had to support the whole family on nothing but her earnings at the strawberry plant. Until they replaced half the women with their machines.”

  “She doesn’t need to be nervous about losing Pops to the mines. That can’t be turning her sour.”

  “She gets worse and worse. If fear can make you so hard, I guess you never lose it.”

  “Yes,” said Berry, thinking, my poor castoff lover. Jaudon’s sadness about her mother had to be as heavy as her own about Ma and Pa never calling for her. She was as much of a castoff as Jaudon for that matter, though Jaudon’s boyishness was the way she was made and her Pops sure loved her.

  “I guess Momma was always obstinate. When the plant laid her off was when she got her allergy to eating strawberries. She quit high school and walked the five miles to work at the big produce stand they used to have up on Buffalo Road. It’s where she learned to run a store. She refused to bring children into the world unless she could feed them, so Bat and me are lucky we got born at all. Having enough means everything to her.”