Just Fine with Caroline

by Annie England Noblin

  In one summer, she devoured every book the library had to offer about the gangsters, and she was crestfallen when her father came home one evening empty-handed. “Alright,” he’d said. “I can tell you some local lore, but don’t you dare tell your mother or she will have my head. She doesn’t like to talk about this kind of thing.”

  At once, Caroline was interested. It wasn’t often that Max O’Conner did anything against the wishes of his wife. Her mother, for reasons unknown to Caroline, never liked to discuss local rumors, especially if the rumors had to do with the Cranwells. “Tell me!” she’d practically screamed with excitement.

  That was the night that her father told her about their neighbors across the road from the bait shop, the owners of the old Cranwell Station. Caroline couldn’t remember a time when the station had been occupied. Once in a while a man came to check on it—unlocking the door and staying inside for a few hours—but that was it. She’d tried asking her mother about it, but all she would say was, “It’s been closed down almost as long as you’ve been alive.”

  Max O’Conner wasn’t one for gossip, but what he told his daughter that night went beyond the stories old women tell each other over the phone on Sundays after church. It was the story of the Cranwells and their secret bootlegging operation. Caroline couldn’t believe that the decrepit store across the road from the bait shop could hold such mysteries. “Did they still sell grain alcohol?” she wanted to know. Did any of the gangsters she read about ever frequent the joint?

  Her father couldn’t say for sure. After all, he hadn’t been born until 1945, nearly twelve years after Prohibition ended. All he knew was what his father told him and what he heard about from the other boys at school whose fathers spent time out at Cranwell Station. As for him, Max O’Conner was never out that far without a sibling with him, just in case the eldest son got any wise ideas about sampling the wares, as the younger kids would surely tell their father.

  Caroline remembered wishing after that her father hadn’t been such a square. She wished that her grandfather had at least been out there one time so that there would be another story to tell. At school, none of her friends were interested in Cranwell Station. None of them were interested in long-dead gangsters. Even Ava Dawn, who tried so hard to placate her cousin, said that Caroline should find a better hobby, something cool like boys or music, and her father eventually tired of discussing the Cranwell clan, leaving Caroline to her books—the books she’d read time and time again.

  Max O’Conner, while sympathetic to the poverty-stricken folks of Cold River, believed that everyone could dig themselves out of hard times if they simply worked hard enough; after all, that’s what his parents had done. He didn’t believe that there was ever a reason to turn to illegal activity like bootlegging moonshine like the Cranwells or running methamphetamine across state lines like Reese’s family. Caroline’s father saw those activities as lazy, driven by the need for instant gratification rather than a solid work ethic like the one he had. Although he never let it show while he owned his family practice, Caroline spent enough time with him throughout the years to know when he was silently judging someone. His stories about Cranwell Corner were tinged with an all too familiar disdain for his neighbors.

  Maureen O’Conner, on the other hand, lived in a world of gray rather than black and white, having been the oldest of eight children in a strict blue-collar Roman Catholic family in New York. She’d seen struggle, a never-ending struggle that she’d fled the city and her family to escape. She argued for hours on end about the difference between generational poverty—the kind of poverty in which most of the townspeople lived, and situational poverty—the kind of poverty in which she and her husband had lived while Max was putting himself through medical school. “For us, there was always a light at the end of the tunnel,” she’d said. “What kind of means might you resort to if there was no light for you? For your family?”

  Her husband waved her off. “I wouldn’t resort to that kind of morally bankrupt activity, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Maureen O’Conner only shrugged, winking over at her daughter. Her mother always let her father win in front of her, but Caroline knew that the conversation would continue long after her mother put her to bed that night. It had been one of Caroline’s favorite things to do, to sneak into the hallway and listen to them argue. Their discussions were rarely angry, and they almost always ended with laughter and with her father saying, “I love you so much, Maureen.”

  Now Caroline longed for those kinds of conversations between her parents. She wished she could quietly watch them debate, and she wished more than anything that she could ask her mother more questions about the Cranwells. She wished she could ask about her friendship with Jep. Caroline wished she could confide in her mother about Noah.

  She wished she could confide in her mother about anything.

  Instead, she muddled through the last five years of her life hoping she didn’t make a mess of things. At least, she thought, watching the air-conditioning repairman walking up the steps and inside the shop, I haven’t let this place fall down around me. And for that, she knew her mother would be proud.

  Jackie Dale, the repairman Boyd’s sent out to install the new motor, eyed Caroline cautiously. “Give her a whirl and see if she starts up.”

  Caroline did as she was instructed, and slid the switch over to “Cool.” She let out a sigh of relief when the familiar whirr of the air kicked on seconds later.

  “I got yer bill right here.” Jackie Dale produced a smudged piece of paper.

  Caroline glanced down at the bill—380 dollars was only a few more than she’d expected. “Hang on a second. I have a check for you.” She emerged from the back room a few minutes later with a leather binder full of business checks. She hadn’t written one in ages. Almost all of the monthly bills were paid online, even the local vendors. “Do you have a pen?”

  Jackie Dale reached into his shirt pocket and handed her a black ballpoint pen. “I gotta say, Carolina, I wasn’t expectin’ you to be so agreeable.”

  Caroline knitted her eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”

  “Lloyd told me how you wasn’t happy about the motor takin’ so long to get here,” he replied. “I figured you’d have somethin’ to say about it, that’s all.”

  Caroline scribbled her name down at the bottom of the check and replied, “Lloyd doesn’t have the good sense God gave him to come in out of the rain. You’ve known me since high school, Jackie Dale. I’ve never been anything but nice to you.”

  “True enough,” he agreed. “I reckon I was expectin’ hell, more on account of I was friends with Roy.”

  “Oh.” Caroline ripped the check from the binder. She’d forgotten about Jackie Dale and Roy being friends. She’d almost forgotten about Roy. She hadn’t seen hide or hair of him since that night at the church. “Well, who you choose to be buddies with is your business.”

  “Will you tell Ava Dawn I said hello?”

  “You can tell her yourself,” Caroline replied, handing him the check. “Her number’s still the same.”

  Jackie Dale managed a smile. “You never was one to mince words, was ya?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well,” he replied, waving the check in the air, “it was good seein’ ya. You’ll be cool as a cucumber in here in no time.”

  “I sure hope so,” Caroline called after him. Jackie Dale had always been a nice guy. They’d never really been friends in high school—he was older than she was, in Roy’s class, but he’d married one of the girls in her class, and they had a couple of cute kids. She didn’t understand how he could still be a friend to someone like Roy. Surely he knew, just like everyone else knew, that Roy was a mean drunk and almost always drunk. It was the worst-kept secret in Cold River that he’d beat Ava Dawn senseless on more than one occasion. Maybe none of Roy’s buddies said anything because they figured that he and Ava Dawn would get back together again, just like always. Or maybe the
y were just as scared of him as Ava Dawn was. Caroline didn’t know, but she did know it was about damn near time that Roy Bean’s reign of terror ended.

  For good.

  CAROLINE CLOSED THE shop to let it cool off. She decided the best way to clear her head was to go for a swim in the river, this time in the daylight when she wasn’t drinking. Maybe the reason she’d been so nice to Jackie Dale was because really, the only thing she could think about was Noah and the cave and what she and Noah had done in the cave. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected after they came back out into the sunlight, but Caroline, for one, felt completely changed, and it wasn’t just because they’d made love. Noah had shown her something that, until now, nobody else except his family knew about. She hoped he understood just how much that meant to her.

  Today, the heat was an added bonus for Caroline, because she had the river to herself, and that was just how she liked it. Most locals came fishing or swimming in the morning and evening to avoid the heat, and most of the tourists stayed indoors during the hot part of the day, as well.

  Once she got herself situated and stripped down to her bathing suit, she was grateful for the heat on her bare skin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn her bathing suit. It didn’t seem right that a girl could live so close to a body of water and not jump in every once in a while. She dipped her toe into the river. It was chilly, but it felt good.

  Before Caroline knew it she was up to her waist in the water, wading through the current. She looked down at her threadbare bikini top and couldn’t remember how long she’d had it, but it had been years and years. There were summers when she’d needed three or four bathing suits in three months, but that was when she spent more time swimming and fishing than she did helping her mother at the shop. Her first bikini had been given to her by Ava Dawn the summer they were thirteen. Ava Dawn had outgrown just about everything by then, and the still-waiting-to-develop Caroline became the proud owner of a wardrobe her mother would never let her wear out in public. The bikini was okay so long as she wore a shirt over it, something Caroline did only when her mother was present.

  At twenty-five, Caroline figured she could probably still wear most of those clothes if she had them. As a kid, she’d hated being smaller than everyone. She’d hated when boys called her scrawny. She’d wanted to be tough like everyone said her brother had been. She wanted Ava Dawn’s voluptuous curves, but despite her insecurities, summers in the Missouri heat kept her from being modest. Eventually, she learned to appreciate her small stature. Small didn’t necessarily mean weak, and by the time she was eighteen, scrawny gave way to proportion.

  Caroline dipped her head underneath the current. The river was pulling and pushing her, lulling her into acquiescence. She felt at ease in the water; she felt calm. Sometimes, the only way she could think clearly was to get into the water. She was so enjoying herself that she hadn’t even noticed that someone was watching her, that someone had been watching her since she first stepped into the river. When she opened her eyes she saw Noah standing next to her fishing tackle, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing sunglasses that covered most of his face, but she could have seen the smirk set on his lips from a mile away.

  She put one hand above her eyes to shield herself from the sun and hollered, “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” he called back. Noah stepped closer to the water’s edge.

  “You wanna go for a swim?”

  Noah seemed surprised at the offer, taken aback for a few seconds before replying, “I don’t like to swim.”

  “Oh yeah?” Caroline splashed towards him, cupped her hands underneath the flowing stream of water, and splashed it up onto the bank, soaking Noah’s shoes and pants in the process. “I seem to remember you jumping in the river after me at least once.”

  He moved back, emitting a noise from his throat that sounded more like something that would come out of Yara than a person. “That’s because I thought you were drowning.”

  Caroline began to laugh, losing her footing and toppling into the water, her head submerging. By the time she came back up for air, Noah was stripped down to his boxer shorts, making his way out to where she was standing.

  “You better start swimming!” he exclaimed, his hands just barely failing to catch her around her waist. “Shit! This water is freezing!”

  Caroline swam her way to a shallow sandbar in the middle of the river. She continued to laugh while Noah continued to curse about the temperature of the water. He splashed his way over to the sandbar and plopped down beside Caroline. She tried not to stare at the way his boxer shorts clung to his skin, but she couldn’t help it. She knew she was blushing thinking about what happened the last time he’d been this close to her. They hadn’t really spoken since that afternoon in the cave, other than to wave hello or to have a brief conversation under the watchful eye of Ava Dawn or one of Caroline’s customers. She had hoped that he would come over and say something, anything that would let her know he didn’t regret what they’d done.

  “What are you thinking about?” Noah asked, scooting closer to her. He propped his elbows up on his knees.

  “Nothing,” Caroline lied.

  “Your face is red.”

  “I’m probably getting a sunburn.” Caroline tried to stand up. “I should head in.”

  “Wait.” Noah reached out and pulled her back down to the gravel. “Seriously, what are you thinking about?”

  Caroline’s first impulse was to ask him why he cared. She didn’t want to be skeptical of him, but she was skeptical of everyone. “I guess I’m just wondering why we haven’t . . .” She paused. She didn’t even want to hear herself say what she was about to say. “I’m wondering why we haven’t talked about what happened in the cave.”

  “Shhhh . . .” he said. “The cave is a secret, remember?”

  “What, you think the water might steal your secret?”

  Noah laughed. “No, I’m not worried about that.”

  “Then what are you worried about?”

  “You want the truth?”

  Caroline felt her heart sink. She knew what was coming. “Yes.”

  Noah pressed his hands into the sandbar, little pieces of rocks sticking to his palms. “The truth is that you’re all I’ve been able to think about since then,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get you alone for days, but I didn’t want you to think I was too eager.”

  Caroline looked over at him. He was staring at her so intently that she felt like his eyes were cutting right through her chest. Before she could say anything, Noah reached over and pulled her closer to him, his lips gently brushing hers. “Give me a chance,” he said, before standing up and splashing back across the river.

  She pushed her fingers up against her still-tingling lips and watched him go. She waited until he was gone to wade back into the water. She knew she should probably go back up to the shop. It had probably more than cooled off by now. But the water just felt so good. Caroline knew wandering too far into the river would put her in way over her head, but something told her that maybe being in over her head was exactly what she needed.

  CHAPTER 23

  CAROLINE SAT IDLY ON COURT’S FRONT porch, drinking a cool glass of his father’s famous lemonade. Court was next to her, dozing off in the other rocking chair. It felt good to sit and do nothing. It reminded her of their lazy teenage summers. There was always a porch, and there was always lemonade.

  “Think we’ll still be here doing this when we’re ninety?” Caroline asked, the ice in her glass tinkling as she brought it to her lips.

  “I reckon rocking chairs will hover in the air by then,” Court joked. “Hey, get me another glass of that, will ya?”

  “You get it yourself.”

  “Please?”

  “I think Tyler’s right,” Caroline said. “You need a wife.”

  Court opened his eyes and looked over at her. “I need a wife like I need a goddamned hole in my head.”

  “I bet
a wife would get you lemonade.”

  “That’s awful sexist of ya, ain’t it?”

  “Shut up.” Caroline couldn’t help but laugh. Court knew just how to pull her strings. It made sense that so many people thought they should get married. It made even more sense that so many people wondered why they hadn’t. After she and Reese broke up, folks around town speculated that it was because of Court. They were sorely disappointed when the two of them hadn’t run off together. If they knew the truth, that Court did love someone, but that it wasn’t Caroline, well, it would have caused for more rumors than the town could have handled, she supposed. He was never going to have a wife. Begrudgingly she stood up and held out her hand. “Give me your damn glass.”

  “You’re the best.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes and walked inside to the kitchen. Court’s father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. A stack of at least twenty papers sat beside him. “Catching up?” Caroline asked him.

  Joseph Brannan nodded. “I got a bit behind recently.”

  “Understandable.” Caroline liked Joe. He was a nice man and didn’t deserve most of what life handed him. Her father used to say if it wasn’t for bad luck, Joe Brannan wouldn’t have any luck at all, but Caroline thought that it was more opportunity than anything else. In another life, Court’s father might have been a doctor. She filled the glass full and headed back outside.

  Out on the porch, Court was staring down at his phone looking worried. “Well, shit,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Caroline asked. “I thought you weren’t on call today.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Oh, Reese wants to come over and barbecue.”