Rainbow Gap

by Lee Lynch

  Berry shook her head, but she couldn’t stop a smile.

  “Aw, I love you, my glorious swamp flower.” Jaudon pulled Berry into her arms, sudsy hands and all. The ringing in her ear turned to swing music at Berry’s touch.

  “Good. I was afraid that bike stole your affections away from me, angel mine.” She flattened Jaudon’s cowlick with the suds.

  “I talked to your old mechanic at Cloud Christian today. He said it’s a classic. I can put a double seat on it so we can both ride.”

  Berry laid a gentle hand on her chest. “If you don’t mind, Jaudon, get yourself a big soft single seat. That bike is your baby. I don’t see myself on the tail end of it. The seat it came with will torture your sweet parts.” She trailed her hand between Jaudon’s legs.

  “Can you spare some tender loving care to those parts and put your worries to rest?”

  “Oh, you,” Berry said, her voice soft.

  Gran was at bingo. There in the kitchen Jaudon reached under Berry’s loose cotton shorts and rested the heel of her hand on Berry’s spot. They might know all the body terms now, but Jaudon was partial to their own language. Berry interrupted her thought by unzipping Jaudon’s fly front and imitating the rhythm of Jaudon’s hand with her own. She loved when they both felt this together, the swirls of energy that wrapped around them and lingered for long minutes.

  Until the phone rang.

  Jaudon growled and nipped at Berry’s neck. She stayed put until she heard Berry greet the caller with a cheerful voice.

  In the garage to put a brighter bulb in the bike’s headlight and bouncy from the brief encounter with Berry, Jaudon lit a citronella candle and thought she’d give the bike a name. Zoom, maybe, though it couldn’t.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Berry was bored, overheated and her feet hurt. This was their third hour outside city hall. They shouted, chanted, waved signs and demanded to speak with the mayor. The city had never elected a female city council member. Also there were no Native American, Hispanic, or black representatives in local positions. Once they were represented, they’d have power to make more changes.

  Judy Fish and her girlfriend Nina were there. Samantha O’Connor, who came despite her husband, brought her bright-eyed youngest. Perfecta Maldonado and Donna Skaggs displayed a homemade banner. Mercie showed up minus her new girlfriend—they hadn’t worked out. Cullie and Jaudon were both at their jobs, but ready to post bail bonds.

  The mayor didn’t speak to the crowd. He had a young underling come outside to tell them the city didn’t respond to unruly mobs filled with outside agitators.

  From the sidewalk, a woman yelled, “He better agitate his chicken white butt out here or we’ll show him how unruly these inside agitators can be.”

  The crowd, at least fifty or sixty strong, howled in approval. Up on the steps someone started a chant, “Chicken white butt/Get outta your rut!”

  Both exhilarated and apprehensive, Berry joined in, shaking her sign in the air with the other women, but remembering the headlines reporting the arrests of thousands of anti-war protesters in DC. What were a few women to the police?

  It was frustrating. Four Lakes was a testing ground for larger Southern cities. Respectable Donna Skaggs and other women had asked for appointments with the mayor and the city councilors repeatedly. Today Berry found the courage to approach the mayor’s secretary and ask to see the mayor. The secretary treated her as an annoyance, took down her name and contact information, but refused, as she had all the others, to set a time.

  A few minutes before noon, two of the police officers who were standing around watching for trouble moved to the front door, blocking it. At noon, another officer wrapped a chain through the oversized door pulls and padlocked them.

  Berry looked at Mercie beside her. The shock on her face reflected her own.

  “I don’t understand why we have to keep asking for the rights we ought to have,” said Mercie as they moved with the crowd around the building. “I don’t want to go through more messes like Selma and Watts, but if this mayor thinks women can’t make big trouble, he’s got another think coming.”

  At least half of the crowd surged around the side of the building to the parking lot. Several women tried to surround the mayor’s car and were pushed away by city police.

  Berry said, “Oh, Mercie, I hope the police have learned at least a little bit from the civil rights movement. But look at the street—they’ve brought in a line of highway patrolmen.”

  Lari was whiny. “What do these men think we’re up to? We want to talk about inequality and punishing rapists and birth control.”

  Judy yelled to the police, “You better call out the National Guard. Women are dangerous to your status quo.”

  Perfecta took Judy’s arm. “Shh, Judy. We need them on our side. They don’t understand our problems are their problems.”

  “I hope this doesn’t show up on the news,” Berry said. “Jaudon has the radio going at the store constantly. I can see her come whipping up here on her scooter to save me.”

  Perfecta and Mercie both covered their mouths as they laughed. They all turned to watch new activity. The mayor stepped out a side door. Berry checked her white nurse’s watch. It was lunchtime.

  “Mayor Crum,” cried Allison.

  “She’s going to get herself arrested,” grumbled Lari.

  Judy said, “Her lawyer will kill her for surfacing.”

  The mayor spoke, but without a mike. Berry strained to hear him.

  Allison moved to the mayor with the stack of petitions outlining their demands that the city issue a proclamation supporting women’s equality and instruct city departments to make hiring more representative of its population.

  The mayor accepted the papers, turned, and handed them to a stone-faced police officer. Another officer forced a police car between the mayor and Allison and drove the mayor away.

  Berry knew her pulse rate was soaring. She was light-headed from the sticky heat and hunger, and worried Jaudon was worrying about her. Perfecta mentioned her reddened face, motioned to Mercie, and they led her to a concrete bench under a fully leafed live oak that spread over the pavement. Mercie used a hat to fan her. A breeze off the big lake reached them.

  “We did what we came for. Let’s go home,” Perfecta said.

  Her voice weak, Berry reminded them that she was Allison’s ride home.

  “I’ll go tell her.” They watched as Perfecta tried to cross the lot to Allison, but was stopped by a police officer.

  By this time the bulk of the demonstrators, sweaty and cranky, were massed tight in the parking lot behind city hall, denying access to a pizza delivery guy. Women crowded him with offers to pay for the pizza he’d never be able to deliver to officials inside city hall. He shrugged, took their money and retreated to his small car, driving with caution between the women. It was lunch hour and the crowd had grown.

  Lari said, “I want to shoot these politicians with the biggest machine gun I can find.”

  In her black outfit, black bandana around her head, Lari appeared capable of that, thought Berry. “Who licked the red off your candy today?” she asked.

  Lari’s smirk got deeper, but her eyes had less light in them than usual.

  Perfecta soothed Berry’s damp brow with a cool hand. “We passed a restaurant with a big air-conditioning sign.”

  “I’m doing better,” said Berry, queasy enough that she leaned away from the smell of meat-laden pizza. “Look at all these women who left work to join us. They want what we want. It’s beautiful.” She took her friends’ hands.

  Clouds swelled above them, some dark, some with undersides laundered white. They threatened to burst, but held off, shedding their swift shadows on the crowd of women.

  Allison stood on a low cinder block wall. Though she wasn’t tall, her head was above the crowd. She smoothed her hair.

  “They’re shutting us out of our own city hall,” Allison roared. The women booed. “The mayor refuses to talk
with his constituents. The police have been called to keep taxpaying citizens outside the offices of our government.”

  “Let us in! Let us in!” the crowd yelled.

  “But wait,” Allison shouted. “There’s more than one way to enter city hall.” Her words were met with questioning murmurs. “We can storm the doors or we can elect women to office. They’ll have to let us in, won’t they?”

  She paused to let the idea sink in. “How many of you plan to vote for a female council member if we have one on the ballot?”

  The response was universal applause.

  “And for a female mayor?”

  There was a short silence. There were open mouths, startled looks. One woman’s deep voice sang the first words of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Others joined in.

  When the song was done, Allison said, “I am declaring my candidacy for mayor today. Will you support me? Will you campaign with me?”

  “Millar for Mayor!” was the rallying cry.

  “Is there any chance she can win?” asked Mercie.

  “Doesn’t she have to live here?”

  Berry said, “The election is two years off. She’ll be living here with Cullie long enough to establish residency by that time.”

  “Is she with Cullie?

  “I predict she will be.”

  “Who’s willing to run for city councilor?” A few hands were raised, Lari’s among them, though she didn’t live in Four Lakes either. Allison called them up front.

  Berry stood and applauded until her hands hurt.

  Allison said, “We need to go inside for the required paperwork.”

  “Let them in!”

  The chief of police passed Berry. She heard him use the word harpies. Lari looked ready to spring at him. Berry grabbed her wrist. “Allison said it best. Electing women will be our best revenge.”

  “But so slow, Berry,” said Mercie. “So slow.”

  *

  “It’s a stroke of luck for Allison that the voting age was lowered to eighteen, Berry. The kids will vote for her.” Jaudon kept trying to be more accommodating about Berry’s friendships. She got crabby, though, from the ear pain and not hearing well and Momma forever leaning on her about the store. Everything was an effort these days.

  “We’re registering young people to vote like all get out.”

  “I’m amazed that you find the time, my Georgia gal.”

  “Just an hour here and there on your late nights. There are more women than men in Four Lakes, but that may not help. Some of these women are such know-nothings it’s not funny. They let their men tell them how to vote.”

  “Aw, heck. No wonder suffrage passed—men must have planned to use their wives as extra votes.”

  “Allison’s going to try to balance that with old voters worried about their health and Social Security. They might like having a nurse in charge who has plans for a senior center. She has a chance of unseating Mayor Crum in the next election if she wins a city council seat this time around.”

  They hadn’t been able to sit and talk for over a week. Gran brought them to Mudfoot’s Fish Fry, the sole restaurant in downtown Rainbow Gap. This time of day the Spanish moss came close to lace trimmed in gold where the sun shone through. Jaudon had wanted to come here; it was a safe and homey place for her birthday dinner.

  Mudfoot’s brought in people statewide, it was that good. The big room, which held fourteen tables and booths, was empty when they got there in midafternoon. Jaudon’s mouth watered at the leftover lunch smells of smoked mullet and deep-fried, seasoned batter. They marched across scuffed-up wooden floors to their favorite table away from the windows. The dining room was paneled and decorated with framed posters of long-ago fishing derbies. Checked oilcloth covered the jumble of square, rectangular, or oval tables. High up were gator heads, trophy fish, a long mural of a swamp, and another of parrots.

  “I hear you’re making your gator bites with chicken again, Mudfoot.”

  The owner, behind the serving window, was preparing his popular breading.

  “You say that again and I’ll make them out of you, Jaudo.”

  Jaudon yelped with glee. She, Pops, and Mudfoot had had an ongoing insult contest since she was in grade school.

  Berry said, “I’m sticking with the butter sauce pasta, coleslaw, and hush puppies in peanut oil. I’ll forgive you anything for your hush puppies—they’re flat-cold good.”

  “I’d marry you for this coleslaw recipe,” Gran told him.

  Mudfoot winked. “You’ll make a bigamist of me yet, Ida.”

  Once they had their sweet tea, Gran said, “Does Allison have any government experience?”

  “What can a little city like Four Lakes want besides a master’s degree in public health nursing and her work at county health departments?” Berry said with a fond smile.

  “Goodness. I’d say she does. Oh, here he comes already.”

  Mudfoot delivered their platters of food. Gran took a bite of the slaw and gave a happy sigh as she patted her lips with a brown paper napkin.

  “Isn’t Mayor Crum up there a land developer?” Jaudon asked. “I don’t think we need to keep land grabbers in office.”

  “You win the prize,” said Berry. “All he knows about government is how to sign permit requests and convince the city to let him rip up the countryside.”

  Gran pointed a popcorn crawfish at Berry. “Is that all he’s got going for him? Why, we’d beat him standing on our heads and whistling Dixie. It wouldn’t take but a minute’s thought to decide on Allison if I lived in Four Lakes.” She dipped her crawfish in Mudfoot’s special tartar sauce.

  “Of course, Mayor Chicken Whitebutt has money to run a campaign.”

  That got Gran to chuckling.

  Berry explained how the man got his name.

  “The money does make a difference, doesn’t it,” Gran said.

  “You can say that again,” said Berry. “Your momma has a couple of stores in Four Lakes, doesn’t she, Jaudon?”

  “One east of town and another west. You’re not thinking of asking Momma to donate? She’d sooner run herself than give money to a candidate.”

  “Now, there’s a bad idea,” said Gran. “Has your momma ever thought about running for office?”

  “I’m not privy to what Momma’s thinking, but she’d beat whoever she set out to beat come heck or high water.”

  Gran looked serious. “I believe it. No offense, but I don’t know if I want Momma Vicker running any town.”

  “Or your life.” Jaudon fingered her face. She caught herself doing that a lot to catch any new growth. She hadn’t become less self-conscious about her looks, but she quit agonizing over them most of the time. “She won’t listen to me about advertising the Beverage Bay as a convenience store. We have to start moving that way or lose business to major chains showing up here any day.”

  Berry said, “You’re a real businesswoman, Jaudon.” For some reason, Berry’s eyes got wet when she mentioned such things. Her little friend Jaudon who was all grown up.

  “Aw, heck, Berry, I’m a store clerk.”

  Gran’s eyes were on Jaudon. “Nothing wrong with having a trade.”

  “I never thought of it being a trade. Working at the store is a sort of fun-and-games way to earn a living.”

  Gran said, “I expect one day you’ll do CPA and tax work full-time, given your momma’s plans.”

  “That fight isn’t over yet, Gran. Momma will wake up and smell the roses one of these days. Bat’s seen the world. What’s in flyspeck Rainbow Gap for him?”

  “Settle down and live happily ever after, like us?”

  “With a military pension, Berry? I can’t think he’ll have the drive it takes to build a business. He doesn’t have the instincts. I know he’s my big brother and all, but he can be lazy.”

  Gran used a finger to clean her plate. “I discovered that myself. He leaves dirty dishes for the women to take care of. I find candy wrappers, bottle tops, and all
manner of scraps everywhere he’s been.”

  Earlier she told Berry to call ahead and make sure mango pie was for dessert. Mudfoot presented the pie with a citronella candle perched on top. “All’s I found on short notice. Happy birthday, youngster,” he said, and sat with them. They devoured the pie, lingering after Mudfoot returned to his kitchen while Jaudon and Gran downed coffee.

  Jaudon’s enthusiasm showed in her sweeping gestures. “This area is a goldmine. More people move here from the Midwest daily. I think the Bays can go beyond the idea of drive-thrus. Let the drive-thru part be a gas pump or two and while the cars are being gassed up, customers can come inside and pick up a quart of milk, a six-pack of beer, bread, and a candy bar. I guarantee more sales. Impulse buying they call it.”

  “It’s the uniqueness of the drive-thru that attracts your customers, Jaudon,” said Gran. “They’re fond of staying in their cars and being waited on in their slippers, with a jacket over a nightgown or a T-shirt. Leastways, I know I do when I can afford it.”

  “The tourists and the new people stop at the drive-thrus too,” Berry said. “They think they’re quaint and scenic. You’ve seen them take pictures.”

  “Pictures don’t make us money, Berry. They’re more comfortable with a name they know from their own state. I have to find ways to bring them inside.”

  “There’s six ways to Sunday to accomplish that, Jaudon. Start with a sale.”

  “Did you say sale? Momma won’t allow it. We don’t take coupons or food stamps either. She thinks that’s giving handouts. You see what I mean? In her mind, Momma never did move out from behind her first counter at the roadside where she sold nothing but strawberries, cold pop, and candy bars. I’m so stymied I want to holler.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Later, Berry closed her eyes and considered this developing side of her lover. How did that eight-year-old grow up to scoot around on a motorbike and to have passions both for working in the store and for business planning, for taxes and accounting, for training and supervision? Berry considered herself a natural for a healing profession, but never predicted Jaudon’s intense interest in business itself, not just the Beverage Bays. Had the blow to her head changed her? Was she becoming her unlovable momma? She expected Jaudon to be more of a Mudfoot. He ran his restaurant the way he always had, simply, with his original recipes and original style, one of the few surviving genuine fish camp restaurants.