by Lee Lynch
“Why?” asked Jaudon.
“That’s what I’m going to study, Jaudo. I want to pry open their brains and see if we can fix sick people. I’ll find out what we do to bring violence on ourselves.”
Jimmy Neal reached over Jaudon and grabbed Rigo’s shirtfront. “I don’t want to hear anything about us causing the violence, Professor Lunkhead.”
“Yeah.” Jaudon pulled Jimmy Neal’s hands away from Rigo. “Why would we do that?”
“Sometimes people send signals and don’t know it,” Rigo explained.
“The signal is acting like a fag. Wearing mascara, for example,” said Jimmy Neal, swiping his hand toward Rigo. “But being ourselves shouldn’t be an invitation to half kill us.”
“I want to know why we act like fags. Can’t we be gay without carrying on? A lot of guys act straight. Those who don’t—is it peer pressure? A way to belong?”
“What about me?” Jaudon was lost in all this conjecture. “I don’t carry on. I was born looking this way, moving this way, and have been put down for both my whole life. The ear doctor is talking about a hearing aid. Won’t that add to this sad package.”
Rigo put an arm around her. “Hell, Jaudo, if I had your mother, I’d run quicker than a swamp rabbit away from her style. And who else was around for you to ape? Your Pops and Bat.”
“I don’t ape anyone.”
“Poor choice of words, Bub,” said Jimmy Neal. He always called Rigo Bub. “Jaudon endures enough grief over her androgyny.”
“Okay, you don’t copy them, but they’re your role models.”
“You’re wrong, Rigo. My doc says I’m part boy because I have too much male hormone in me.”
“That’s not a gay thing. That’s biology.”
“It got me beat up and bullied as a kid. They were right. I turned out to be gay.”
Jimmy Neal ducked his head. “I’ll be guilty the rest of my life for being part of that. I was frightened when I kept falling for other little boys. I was trying to beat the queerness out of me when I whaled on people I thought were queer.”
“You see why I need to study these subjects?” said Rigo. “There are hundreds of variations of such twisted thinking at the very least. I want to make the world better for you and us and Berry.”
“That’s what Berry says. She wants to leave the world a better place than she found it. She wants to do it through healing and feminism.”
Jimmy Neal raised both arms as if he just won the gold. “Hell, yes. Women should be able to have abortions and men should be sterilized if they can’t be responsible. No one on this planet has any business having more than two kids.”
“My boyfriend is a feminist.” Rigo held out a hand. “Here, Jaudon. Here’s a black onyx ring my mother thought I needed when I turned twelve. I bet it fits you.” Rigo slid it on her pinky finger. “Onyx will keep you strong and self-confident.”
“That’s neat—a superpower ring.” She admired it on her hand and grinned at the gift. “Me strong like bull.” She filled her lungs with air as she flexed her arm muscles.
“Exactly.”
Jimmy Neal said, “You know I’ll always protect you too, Jaudon.”
She got up and shadowboxed.
“I think you created a monster out of her, Rigo.”
“Hey, is there a stone to get rid of hair you don’t want?”
Rigo sniggered. “Sure, it’s called a pumice stone. It’ll take a layer of skin with it if you’re not careful.”
Jaudon took a wide stance and moved across the wood floor on the balls of her feet, jabbing at Jimmy Neal. “Me Jane, you Tarzan.” She fell on the couch, waving her arms about until the three of them were silly with giggles.
“It’s clear that’s the stone for you,” Rigo told her.
This was what she needed: to be playful with friends. She decided to have fun with Rigo and Jimmy Neal a speck longer before she went home to give Berry the green stone. She didn’t expect Berry’s gloom to dissipate immediately, but she sure itched for it to scram soon.
Chapter Thirty-five
They sat on the porch eating Pop-Tarts with Rigo early on a Sunday morning the next June. Jimmy Neal’s car didn’t start so Rigo dropped him at the Bay and invited himself to Pineapple Trail for breakfast. A batch of mud hens swam in and out of the reeds down past the pond bench.
Jaudon had her eyes on Berry, smiling. “I don’t know if it was your protection stone, Rigo, or returning to school that did it, but I’m tickled to death at how much lighter Berry’s walking these days.”
At the start of spring term, Berry began classes part-time to study psychology. She planned to keep on training to be a psych nurse.
Rigo said, “I’ll take credit for the psych courses too, if you please. I’ll be up onstage with you when they hand you your master’s degree, bowing.”
Berry broke open her Pop-Tart. “I can’t imaging working long and hard enough to finish a master’s, Rigo. I’d rather put the energy into my patients.”
“Maybe your patients would benefit in the long run.” He looked around. “Why isn’t Gran making us her fried cornmeal mush? These Pop-Tarts are cardboard next to sorghum molasses on mush.”
Jaudon flicked a balled up napkin at him. “Look who’s talking. I do believe you have enough of these things in your cabinet to feed you and Jimmy Neal for a year.”
“Why do you think I come over here?”
Berry did a little bounce in her seat. “Gran’s off on a two-day bus trip over to Myrtle Beach. The Air Force is putting on a flight demonstration and she’s hoping to admire in person the gold airplanes she saw in the paper. I’m delighted she’s gotten so active.”
“I wish she’d pass down some of her recipes to you,” Rigo said.
“Oh, one of us could cook up a mess of fried mush if we weren’t so busy.”
“Berry’s working as hard as Jimmy Neal between nursing and learning.”
“It keeps them out of trouble,” Rigo said.
“As long as you’re taking responsibility for my new goal, Rigo, I’m having a problem with one of my psych assignments. And you know how I think you’re a better teacher than the ones I have at school.” Berry tried fluttering her eyelashes at him.
“Oh, hon, you have it all wrong.” Rigo did a quick flutter too. “You have to practice to be this expert at batting your lashes. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at your homework before I go in for my behavioral experiment.”
“What’re you messing with this time, Dr. Shrink?” asked Jaudon.
“We’re testing tests.”
Jaudon smacked her knee with a hand. “Jiminy, I’m so glad I’m running a store and not a psych lab.”
“I hope to the good Lord above to skip statistics and experiments,” Berry said.
“You’ll do well in both once you take them. They’re very useful for understanding the whole science. This one’s to look at stress while taking tests.”
“I can tell you the answer is yes,” Jaudon said.
“Psych is in its infancy, Jaudo. I’m dying to move into psychobiology.”
Jaudon raised an eyebrow.
“It’s fascinating to the nth degree. We study how personality, behavior, and mental illness are related to biological, social, cultural, and environmental factors. Yes, we know testing causes stress, but is there a biological basis or do we learn to stress out? Can we reduce that through meds or some other brain stimulation? I want to help put that puzzle together.”
“Can you stop making my head spin with all your learning?” said Jaudon.
Berry placed a hand on each side of Jaudon’s head. “Is that better, dizzy-dumbbell?”
A small car passed the driveway. It braked, reversed, and turned in. The driver peered through her window.
“That’s one of Allison’s Four Lake buddies,” Berry said.
“Judy’s lover?” asked Jaudon.
“Her name’s on the tip of my tongue.” Berry looked at Rigo. “She’s a rabid separatist.�
�
“What the heck’s a separatist?” asked Jaudon, a sharp edge to her tone.
“The way she’s looking daggers at me, I think you can guess,” said Rigo. “This is going to be fun.”
“Rigo,” said Berry.
“What? I said fun. I’ll be good.”
Jaudon decided to keep her mouth shut. Why did Berry’s pals have to hate men so much?
“Nina, that’s her name,” said Berry.
Nina carried a sack to the edge of the porch and set it down. She spoke to no one but Berry. “Judy’s trees are having an extra good year. She asked me to drop off these blood oranges for you and your…partner…before her ex-husband shows up and takes them for his new wife.” She used the word husband with disgust.
“Thanks for bringing them.” Berry waved the woman forward. “Come on up and set awhile. We’re having a Pop-Tart breakfast. Want one?”
Rigo leaned over the bag and took an orange. “These look delicious. Mind if I help myself?” he asked as he dug into the peel with his thumb.
Jaudon hadn’t heard what Rigo murmured, but she saw his vague and innocent expression. She held a bark of laughter at the sudden pinched look on the woman’s face, as if they were forcing her to inspect their outhouse barrel.
“Yum, sweet. Thank you.” Rigo, with great slow care, separated sections of orange and passed them to Berry and Jaudon. He offered one to the woman, but she went toward her car.
“I’ll guess we won’t be seeing you at the bar anytime soon,” Rigo called to her.
“Sweet,” Jaudon said. She pointed to her mouth. “Not our visitor.”
Berry clucked. “Really, Rigo, you’re one of the best people I know and she treated you like a poison snake.”
Rigo hissed.
Their visitor slammed her car door and reversed fast toward Pineapple Trail.
Jaudon jumped up and thundered, “Stop!” but it was too late. As Cullie turned into their driveway, Nina, in Judy’s pint-size buggy, smashed into Cullie’s big pickup and bounced off the heavy bumper. Cullie stopped the truck with such suddenness a bunged up pool ladder flew out of the bed.
They jumped from the porch and ran toward the collision.
Cullie was out of the truck and looking in Nina’s window.
“Is she okay?” called Rigo.
Cullie opened the car door and supported her as the woman hobbled out, all stooped over.
“I can’t stand up straight.” She was coughing and crying.
Berry already had a finger on Nina’s wrist, eyes on her white watch.
Jaudon raced to the house to call an ambulance.
“How bad is the car? Why did Judy make me take her car?”
“If you have more oranges in the trunk,” said Rigo, “they’re juiced.”
The woman cried out, frozen in place by pain. Berry wrapped a blanket around Nina and had Rigo support her.
Jaudon returned, out of breath.
“Listen,” Berry said. “Here comes a siren already.”
Jaudon didn’t hear it yet. She told the woman, “The volunteer fire department isn’t far.”
Cullie sat cross-legged on the ground, Kirby in her arms. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going over five miles an hour into that turn. I know this sandy driveway. You have to drive slow.”
Rigo asked, “How’s your dog?”
“I don’t know. My little coconut went flying from the seat like a hoppy toad off a lily pad. Nothing seems broken. I think she’s traumatized. Of course I’m steady as a rock.” Cullie held out her shaking hand.
Peahens and their peacock from down the road strutted into the yard, peering and pecking as they arrived. When a deputy sheriff braked to a stop on Pineapple Trail they fled in an awkward line into the undergrowth.
“Aw, heck,” said Jaudon. “Not the police again. Trouble comes in threes. What’s next?”
“You didn’t call them?”
“No. This is private property—I didn’t think I needed to. They must have heard about it from the dispatcher.”
“What’s wrong with the police coming?” Nina asked. “I was hit by a goddamn truck. I want to make a report.”
Cullie looked at Nina, open-mouthed.
“Where’s your sisterhood, Nina?” said Berry.
It was clear Nina was at fault, trying to speed away. Jaudon had watched the whole thing and Nina never once looked behind her. She rubbed her damaged ear. “As long as the cops don’t hit me again. They’ve been here way too often.”
Rigo retrieved the pool ladder.
The medics arrived and the deputy directed them around the wreck to Nina. As they checked her out she emitted short shrieks of pain. She looked at Rigo, not Cullie, as she said, “Don’t think sisterhood will keep me from getting somebody to pay for this.”
Rigo held his hands up, palms out, as if to ward off a threat.
“Be kind,” said Berry. “Let’s have some peace and compassion here. She’s in pain and not thinking well. A crash like that, even going slowly, can compress the spine. I’ll call Judy and have her meet you at the hospital, Nina.”
“It hurts, it hurts,” was Nina’s reply.
Jaudon was irritated beyond endurance. “I hate to leave this party, but when I was inside my part-timer called in sick. The churches will be letting out any minute. I need to go to work until I arrange coverage.”
The medics readied Nina for their ambulance. As they closed the double doors, Cullie muttered, “Don’t forget to floss. Devil-woman.”
Jaudon tried not to laugh. She hugged Berry. “You were terrific. I’ll be home as soon as I can be. Do some of your breathing and praying while you work with Rigo, okay?” She rolled Zoom out of the garage.
“Hey,” said the deputy, grabbing her handlebar. He wasn’t one of the deputies that shopped at her Beverage Bay, but he had been at the house the night Cullie and Allison escaped. “Where do you think you’re going? I need to take witness statements.”
She stifled her fear and tried to act casual. “Don’t worry, officer, I’ll come by the station. I’m needed at my place of business.”
“Most folks would rather stay out of the station, sir. You come in within the next twenty-four hours and give me your contact information now.”
Sir again, she thought. Ashamed, fuming, aggrieved, she sat on her bike, hands on hips, as she gave him the information. As soon as they were done, she kicked Zoom to life without meeting anyone’s eyes.
Chapter Thirty-six
Allison didn’t as much press Berry about Gran’s land as induce her to dream what they could accomplish with it. She knew someone—of course, Jaudon said when Berry told her—who was a civil engineer. Allison inveigled her to walk the property.
Berry was working Saturday morning and able to take off Friday afternoon. It was a cool day.
Gran held Berry’s arm to steady herself as they followed Allison and the engineer. “Mind your arms, girls. You don’t want to end up brushing against swamp sumac.”
The engineer stopped. “Is this where everything fell in?”
Gran clucked. “That’s the place. Poor Eddie, he wasn’t the worst man in the world.”
Berry held her tongue.
Allison said, “We need to know what you might tell a developer about this acreage. Do they always put in streets and houses?”
The engineer pursed her lips, looking around. “You’ll need a topographical survey for height and drainage patterns. Probably a soil evaluation and perc test. You need to consider if the soil in the leach area is permeable enough to support a septic system. What did you use here before?”
Gran grinned. “A barrel we emptied well into the marshland like everyone else outside Tampa. Remember that, pet?” Gran gestured east.
“Yes, I have a shadowy memory of Pa rolling the barrel farther into the marshy area for you. I can picture him gunked up with mud and muck, a straw hat pulled low down to protect him from mosquitoes. He wore high boots for the snakes. He was gone so long I was afra
id he was lost.”
Gran whooped. “You smelled him coming with that empty barrel. And you ran to your ma.”
The engineer led them forward. “This is a remarkable piece of land for wildlife. Look at that little green heron, and the black ducks out on the scummy pond over there.” She stood, arms folded, nodding. “I shouldn’t say this since it’s how I make a living, but I don’t want to see it developed.”
Gran clapped her hands without making a sound. “That’s my vote too.”
“We aren’t talking about hundreds of homes or a shopping center,” Allison said. “A small central lodge for cooking depending on how much money we raise. No hunting, no fishing, no electricity or phone.”
The engineer kept her arms folded. “We can dig down seven to ten feet for rock and soil samples. If there’s a problem, you might resolve it, but at quite a price. Is the site appropriate for road access, parking, storm water? Is it made up of the type of clay that shrinks in a drought or swells when it’s wet? If so, you’re going to see cracked foundations, sinkholes, and subsurface voids. Developers kill off what’s natural to the land. The birds, deer, foxes, possums—all of them love the purple pokeweed berries. Trumpet vine sustains the hummingbirds. The moneymen don’t care if a toxin kills a weed if there’s money to be made. Small changes impact hundreds of wild things.”
Allison asked, “We have to do all that to put in any structures at all?”
“To be legal, yes. I can tell you I trust some parts of the property more than others, but I wouldn’t throw my life savings into any of it.”
Allison turned to Gran. “You might want to sell this piece of land, Mrs. Binyon, to buy a smaller parcel, higher quality.”
A rush of wings and cries went up. A number of pink-legged white ibis, beaks down curved and bright red, rose from the saw grass and landed way up on a line of scraggly swamp bay trees, making their soft hah, hah, hah sounds.