Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Oh, I am, am I? Am I living with an incipient member of the Moral Majority?”

  “No.” He pressed his lips together.

  “You’re kinda emotional.” Laura jumped in where angels feared to tread.

  Leave it to your kids to tell you the truth. She sagged against the doorjamb. “Yeah, I guess I am. I don’t know what’s the matter with me but I feel like Pandora’s box.”

  “That’s okay—with us. But out there”—Hunter gestured toward the window—“I don’t think people will, uh, cut you a break. Everybody depends on you to stay…” He made a smooth motion with his hand, a horizontal line, which meant “even.”

  Cig dumped herself on the end of the bed. “I’m definitely not myself except I’m more myself than I ever was.”

  “Huh?” Laura threw her mother a pillow to lean against.

  “Don’t you keep a lot inside? You walk around day after day and you don’t say what you’re really thinking or feeling, it’s just, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and ‘See you at Goodling’s Farm at seven thirty next Saturday.’ You know what I mean?” They nodded in unison and she continued. “But I’m thinking all the time. I just shut my trap. On the surface everything’s okay. But nobody really knows who I am or what I think.”

  “Maybe they do,” Hunter said somberly.

  “Oh God, I’m transparent.” Cig flopped on the pillow.

  “Nah.” He waved his hand. “But hey, everybody knows everybody. Habits, favorite colors, you don’t have to say what you’re feeling. Lots of times people do know.”

  “Yeah, but lots of times they don’t.” Laura pushed her pillow down at the end of the bed, and lay on her stomach next to her mother, both women propped up on their elbows.

  “Is it so important that people know how you feel?”

  “Or what you feel, Hunter?” Cig reached over and squeezed his knee. “We’re skimming the surface, and that’s okay until something really goes wrong. Then you don’t know who your friends are.”

  “Find out, though.” Hunter swung his chair around and rested his feet on the side of the bed. “Look at the people who helped us out after Dad died and the ones who didn’t do bugjuice.”

  “We aren’t their responsibility.”

  “Mom, Uncle Will isn’t on food stamps.” The right half of Laura’s mouth lifted in scorn.

  “No, but like I said, we aren’t his responsibility.”

  Hunter didn’t accept this. “We’re a family, Uncle Will’s part of it. He should pitch in.”

  Cig stiffened then forced herself to relax. “Grace helps me but will doesn’t know. So don’t you dare tell. I probably shouldn’t have even told you.” Cig was sorely tempted to tell her children about what her sister had done. They might have understood, but what was to be gained by besmirching their father’s memory and clouding their love for their aunt?—only sympathy for her, and she didn’t need sympathy that badly. Maybe when they were older she’d tell them. No reason to spoil things for them right now. By the time they could handle it, she might well have forgotten. The thought amused her. Alzheimer’s or radiant forgiveness?

  “Hey, Mom, about this feeling thing… this mean you’re going to, you know, emote all over the place?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going through a sea change.”

  “What’s that mean?” He scratched his ear.

  “I’m not sure except I’ll be, uh, I’ll be profoundly changed from the inside. Might not show on the outside.”

  “Throwing away the television shows on the outside.”

  “Laura, quit harping on the goddamned television.” “See, Mom, there you go again. Another goddamn,” Laura chided.

  Cig dropped her legs over the side of the bed and bounced up. “You’re right. My conversational ability has hit the skids. I’m going to bed. I suggest you two do the same. Hey, before I forget it, we’ve got to start practicing for the Oak Ridge Fox Hunt Club’s hunter pace.”

  “Piece of cake.” Hunter snapped his fingers because it was anything but.

  “Okay, lights out. Tomorrow will be a long day.” Cig kissed them both on the cheek. She couldn’t have known how long a day it would be.

  Not taking her own advice, Cig sat in bed with the first family Bible. When she was lost in time she had wanted to come back here so badly that the early days were like water balloons filling with grief.

  Now here, she missed Fitz, Margaret, and Tom almost as much as she had formerly missed her children.

  She remembered when she and Margaret had recited the Twenty-third Psalm together. She drew comfort from that. She turned to the Psalms. When she reached the page for the Twenty-third a thin cut strip of parchment marked the place. It read:

  Groundnuts

  Land at the Falls

  Drain swamps, pour oil on standing water

  No Africans

  Educate girls

  Breed horses

  Number six had been added later, the handwriting at an angle.

  She sucked in her breath. It sure looked like her handwriting.

  43

  “My brother got ten thousand dollars an acre for his land on Garth Road and I’m not budging unless I get ten, too.” Harmon Nestle stuck out his chin, not easy to do since it receded.

  Cig smiled. “It’s always nice to make a profit. The only real difference between your tract of land and your brother’s is his lake.” She wondered how many times she had pointed this out.

  “Don’t care.”

  “Well”—she forced the fatigue and disgust out of her voice because he’d received yet another very good offer on his raw land—“I’ll take this contract back to the buyer and try to be creative.”

  “Not having anyone say my brother’s smarter than I am.” Harmon hit the nail on the head.

  “No one’s saying anything like that.” Cig lied through her teeth.

  He pointed his bony finger at her. “People think I’m stupid, that’s why they offer me less.”

  “Harmon, Mr. and Mrs. Fincastle hail from Teaneck, New Jersey. They don’t even know your brother and they think you own a nice piece of land out there on Route 810.”

  “Yankees got more money than this contract shows. You go back home and get me some.” He slyly smiled.

  “Yeah, well, Yankees taught me the value of money by keeping it all to themselves.” She agreed with him, which elicited a chuckle from the bilious old man.

  “My grandfather fought with your great-great-grandfather. He was just a boy at the end of the war, you know, PopPop Nestle. Said Reckless Deyhle was the bravest man he ever saw. Jumped right over a twelve-pound cannon once, and those Minnesota boys was just firing away. Kinda wish I’d been there.”

  She almost said, “Maybe you were.” Instead she gathered up the documents. “You know, Harmon, you missed your calling when you didn’t stay in the army. Daddy used to say that with your military bearing, you would scare the bejesus out of buck privates.”

  “Ha!” Harmon recalled his youth. “I ‘member one time in Arnhem…. Oh, Cig, the Jerries was on the other side of that bridge and it was a pretty thing, real old, too, and they were so close I could see their features, real clear. We knew they was gonna blow the bridge the minute we set foot on it and I called out to this little wispy corporal from Tennessee. ‘Get on up there in that house.’ I said, ‘and keep those buggers busy. I’m gonna go under that bridge and find the charge.’ Well, that boy was a sharpshooter. He kept them hopping, a real square dance. Got the charge, too. I can still feel that cold water getting higher and higher and me trying to hang on to the belly of that old bridge. I was too busy to get scared.” He put his hands behind his head.

  “Reckless would have been happy with a soldier like you.”

  “You think?” His busy eyebrows curled upwards.

  “I think.” She stood up and he did, also.

  As he walked her to the door, he glanced up at the ceiling. “Denby tears my ass with boredom. Know what I mean? I gotta get the same amount he
did. Just once.”

  “Harmon, I’ll do what I can.”

  Driving down the dusty lane she rolled up the windows of the truck and turned on the radio. The country music station boomed back at her.

  “I’ll write the reverse country song,” she said out loud. “I’ll make a goddamned fortune and be out of this mess. The lyrics will be: Got back my car. Got back my dog. Got back my house. Got back my wife.” She laughed then pressed down on the pedal and felt the rumble underneath. Bad as the twentieth century might be, it sure was good to be hauling ass down a country road in a big dually truck.

  She could see dust in the opposite direction. A stop sign at the Walnut hill Baptist Church slowed her. She stopped as Binky West rolled to the sign on Harleyetta’s confiscated orange motorcycle. She drove across the road and rolled down her window.

  “Hey, Bink.”

  “Harleyetta been spilling her guts out to you?” he snarled.

  “Said she was making some big changes.”

  “I’ll cut her off without a cent!” He turned up the gas, but kept the motorcycle in neutral.

  “Now, Binky, give this some time. You two might work something out.”

  In a falsetto voice he imitated his wife. “‘You drink too much. You don’t pay enough attention to me but you pay too much attention to’—fill in the blank. ‘You got to have some goal in life.’” He switched back to his voice. “I do have a goal in life. To be rid of that nagging bitch.”

  “Ah, come on Binky. You’re wrought up. Don’t be talking like that. She didn’t say anything hateful.”

  “You women stick together.” He glared at her because he wanted total agreement.

  “It’s not that. I think maybe time apart will help you both.”

  “She can drag her fat butt to Siberia and that still won’t be far enough. We’re not getting back together. Ever. And she’s not getting one penny of my money. All she ever wanted anyway.”

  “That’s not true.” Cig’s voice hardened.

  “She sure spent enough of it.”

  “On what? She never blew your money on jewelry or clothing, and hell, she gets up and goes to work everyday and she doesn’t have to do that. She could have just sat around the pool, know what I mean?”

  He was so mad he revved his motor then shouted above it with his whiskey breath. “And I’m sucking off my trust fund! I know what you all say behind my back. Binky West couldn’t get arrested. I’m good enough to pay my hunt club dues.”

  “Binky, you know, people say you’re a real asshole but I don’t listen to everything I hear. Now cut the crap, calm down and go home.”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do. You couldn’t keep your own man in line. Don’t start with me.”

  “Adios, Motherfucker.” Furious, she pulled the clutch back into drive and left him in a cloud at the stop sign. She didn’t look back, but she heard him lay rubber as he tore out after her.

  Binky roared up alongside the truck. He shook his fist at her then whizzed out in front of her. A sharp turn lay up ahead—a stone wall on the belly of the curve, a ditch on the other side.

  Binky hit that curve at sixty miles an hour, the gravel spinning out from the hind tire. The bike swerved to the right. He turned hard left, causing the Harley to plunge into the ditch. The front wheel stuck in the ditch, the bike nosed straight up, and Binky flew like a trapeze artist. With a flop he landed in high grass and thistles.

  Cig squealed to a stop, ripped open her door and vaulted the ditch. Binky, wobbling to his feet, fell down.

  He got up again, saw the Master of the Hunt, and complained, “Damn mare refused the fence!”

  The fact that he was drunk, loose as a goose, probably saved him. Cig put him in the truck and carried him to the hospital. She’d seen too much of that hospital.

  The admitting physician found no broken bones but kept Binky overnight to sleep it off.

  By the time Cig got home she’d calmed herself enough to walk into the tackroom and call the Fincastles. They were surprisingly accommodating, but then ten thousand an acre compared to the prices where they lived must have appeared a modest sum. They wanted to talk it over and they’d get back to her. She suggested that they meet Harmon’s price but ask him to hold paper on a small second mortgage, the difference between the two prices.

  She hung up the phone as Grace walked into the barn.

  “Cig?”

  “In the tackroom.”

  “Where is everybody?”

  “The kids must have taken people out on a trail ride. I’m home an hour late because Binky West wrecked Harley’s bike. I took him to the hospital. He’s okay.” She paused. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to see you—and Kodiak.”

  “You’ve seen me.”

  “You’re acting like a hardboot. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know where Kodiak is. He’s not in his stall.”

  “Maybe Laura took him out.” Grace ran her fingers through her hair. “I told her I didn’t know if I’d get out here today.” She paused. “Want me to help you muck stalls? You probably should take it easy.”

  “The kids will do it. I’ve got to call Harmon about my suggestion to the Fincastles. I’m trying to make this deal work. You’ll have to excuse me.”

  “I’ll make myself useful.”

  Cig bit her lip. She wanted to take on Grace when she was calling the shots. Having her sister come over unannounced—not that she needed to announce herself, she never did—put her off balance. She knew she was fishing for excuses. It didn’t matter when she took out after Grace. It mattered that she did it. Pain and anger boiled inside her.

  “Come up to the house.”

  “Okay.” Grace tagged along thinking that Cig was a touch strange.

  Once inside, Cig, reviving her courage, said, “I know you had an affair with Blackie and that he most likely died in the saddle, as they say.”

  A long scratchy silence followed.

  Grace pressed her lips together. To her credit she replied, “It’s true.”

  “It doesn’t hurt me that he betrayed me. I’d gotten used to that. What hurts is that you betrayed me!”

  “I didn’t think of it that way.” Grace’s eyes moistened.

  “Don’t try to wriggle out of this.” Cig pushed Grace into the living room. “Now sit down and shut tap.” Grace did as she was told. “Did you think I wouldn’t care? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think at all?”

  Grace folded her hands on her lap, a curiously restrained gesture. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s convenient,” came the sulfuric reply.

  Suddenly Grace blazed. “I never loved you less.”

  “Oh balls.”

  “You didn’t want him anymore.”

  “That didn’t mean you could sleep with him.” She rubbed her temples with her forefingers. “Did you love him?”

  “No. He was great fun but I didn’t love him.”

  “Did he love you?”

  “I’m not sure Blackie loved anybody. You just shared his body for awhile.” She paused, her lower lip trembling. “He loved his children. He did do that.”

  “So long as he didn’t have to care for them. All this crap about equal child care is just that.” She socked a sofa pillow, putting it behind her back. “As men go, he was responsible, I guess. I don’t think they love children as we do. At bottom, they really don’t. They can give their children up long before we can.”

  “He loved them differently.”

  “You certainly are defending him.”

  “No. Men love differently.”

  “Well, goddamned plenty of them can sure walk away from their kids.”

  “Those aren’t real men. Those are guys who dumped their sperm somewhere. The point is, he was responsible. He paid the bills, even if he did get overextended. He didn’t drink to excess, take drugs, or gamble. His weakness was women.”

  “Then why in God’s name did you hav
e an affair with him?”

  Grace blubbered. “I don’t know. It was so innocent in a way?”

  “Innocent?” Cig bellowed.

  Her voice rose to a thin pitch. “It was.”

  “Stop crying—if you don’t I will knock your block off! You make me sick. You stab me in the back but you’re the one sobbing your little traitor’s heart out.”

  “It didn’t mean anything. It was fun. You wouldn’t understand. My God, Cig, you’ve been a faithful wife—ruthlessly faithful.”

  “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You played the hardworking wife who endured infidelities, who stood by her man. You lapped up the respect it brought you.”

  “I’m supposed to fuck around like you?”

  “A little experience never hurt.” An edge crept into Grace’s wavering voice.

  “Well, I guess I just had to live through you.”

  Grace flared. “You’re perfect. Pluperfect. I think Mom and Dad took away your allowance once. Everyone had you on a pedestal.” She imitated a newscaster. “Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle, the child who can do no wrong. Straight As. Superior athlete. Always home by curfew. Gag me.”

  “Listen here, beauty queen—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “You’ve traded on your looks since you were in kindergarten, you superficial shit.”

  “I traded on my looks because they’re all I have. I am not a rocket scientist. With your brain, you could have done anything. So what did you do? You married John Blackwood. Your grades went to hell in college the minute you met him. You gave up.”

  “I did not give up. And I didn’t always make straight As in high school.”

  “You made them enough times for Mom to wave your report card under my nose and ask why wasn’t I more like my sister.”

  “What do you mean I gave up?”

  “You could have been somebody.”

  “So could you. You didn’t have to marry a meal ticket and move back home. I thought you would take New York by storm.”

  “No one takes New York by storm. It takes years to be discovered overnight and what would I be discovered at—having good manners at a party? Jeez, Cig, get real. I have no talent. I can’t see much beyond tomorrow. Will was a good bet. He’s still a good bet. I didn’t know the price would be this high.”