by R. R. Banks
I backtracked over the path that I had followed Coy down and quickly realized that there wasn’t much further for me to go. The road was blocked off just beyond the post office and I was forced to turn back into the same spot I had occupied the day before. There was music playing in the distance and I followed it into the center of the Hollow where I had seen the piñatas. I quickly realized that I was far over-dressed for the occasion as the people making their way toward the festivities with me stared at my slacks and button-up shirt as they hurried by in more types of denim than I knew existed and every color of sundress that could possibly have been made. Forcing myself not to think about how out of place I felt, I turned my attention to scanning every face that I saw in hopes of recognizing Beatrice. I envisioned the sexy black mask on every woman, but none even began to look like they could be her. Suddenly a thought came to my mind and I muttered a few creative obscenities at myself for being such an incredible imbecile.
Stepping off of the main path so I didn’t block the way of the people walking up behind me, I fished my phone out of my pocket and called Nia.
“Hey Cousin,” she said when she answered.
“What’s Beatrice’s last name?”
“It’s good to talk with you, too.”
“Yes. Great to hear your voice. What’s Beatrice’s last name?”
“Galloway.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll call you later.”
I hung up and tucked the phone back into my pocket. Feeling a bit of hope that I was a step closer, I started toward the festival more quickly. I soon found myself in the midst of what looked like a little street carnival. People played games on either side of the street, others gathered around booths selling every kind of handicraft imaginable, and the air was filled with mouthwatering smells. As I walked through the carnival I remembered spending time with my family at fairs when I was younger and we traveled from town to town, gig to gig, before my father decided that my mother and I slowed him down too much. The thought made me nostalgic for my mother and I was so engrossed in the memories that I almost missed the banner in front of me that read “Galloway Farm”.
My heart leapt slightly and I started for the booth. As I approached it, a tiny voice came into the back of my mind, questioning why I was going through this. No woman had ever meant this much to me. Did I really care about finding Beatrice, or had she become some sort of game that I wanted to win? If that was the case, what was I supposed to tell her if I did find her?
Before I could answer myself, I got to the booth and found a small but strong-looking old man sitting in a wooden rocking chair behind it. The counter was scattered with jars of preserves, baskets of vegetables, and, as with every other booth that I had walked past, loaves of bread.
“Hello there,” he said, standing. “Benson Galloway.”
“Roman Renshaw,” I said.
We shook hands, him holding onto mine for an extra beat as he looked me over, a suspicious glint in his eye.
“It’s good to meet you, Mr. –” he started.
“Roman,” I said. “Just call me Roman.”
“It’s good to meet you, Roman. Is there something I can get for you?”
“Actually, I’m looking for someone.”
Before I could finish, another man who appeared to be around Benson’s age came up to the booth.
“Benson,” he said. “It’s good to see you out of the house.”
“Hi, there, Leslie. How are you doing?”
“I could actually use your hand over at my booth if you have a minute.”
“Sure do,” he said. He looked back at me. “Just give me one second. I’ll get you some help.” He turned and looked over his shoulder. “Bitsy? You here? Come on up here and help me for a minute.”
“I’m coming Granddaddy.”
I heard her voice before I saw her, and the sound traveled through my body and into the memories I had replayed a thousand times before.
“What can I do for you?” she asked as she came around the back of the booth and toward the counter.
She walked up to the counter and looked at me, and I saw her full face for the first time. She was startlingly beautiful even through the look of shock that came to her face when her eyes met mine.
****
Bitsy
Oh, hell. Oh, shit-hell. Oh, mother-fucking shit-hell damn hell-shit fuck. What is he doing here?
I couldn’t believe he was here. What was he doing here? How did the man from the Halloween party even find me?
“This here’s Roman ,” Granddaddy said, gesturing toward him. “He says he’s looking for somebody. I thought you could help him out while I help Mr. Calhoun.”
I nodded, feeling like my throat was too dry to say anything, and Granddaddy walked out from the booth to follow Mr. Calhoun further into the festival.
“Renshaw,” Roman said.
“What?” I asked.
“Renshaw. It’s my last name. Roman Renshaw.”
I nodded again.
“Bitsy.”
So, he has a name.
Oh, shit.
A name I’ve heard.
“You’re Nia’s cousin,” I said.
“Yeah.” I dropped my head, shaking it in embarrassment, and his voice got a little louder like he was trying to get through my humiliation to me. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I had no idea who you were.”
I lifted my head sharply.
“Because that makes it so much better.”
“I’m sorry.”
I let out a slight growl of exasperation.
“Why didn’t Nia at least give me a little heads up?” I grumbled to myself.
“She didn’t know I was coming,” Roman said.
I looked up at him again.
“She should have at least told me when she found out that it was you.” As soon as I said it, though, I groaned and rolled my eyes. “But I lost my stupid cell phone in the fields.”
“You what?”
Apparently, I’m carrying on a conversation with this man whether I intend to or not.
“I lost my cell phone in the pumpkin patch a while back. So even if she did call me, I wouldn’t know it.”
“You lost your cell phone in a pumpkin patch?”
He seemed to be struggling to wrap his mind around the situation, but I didn’t feel like spoon-feeding it to him. I needed him gone. Like, now.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He looked surprised by the question.
“I came to find you,” he said. “You weren’t at the Halloween party.”
No, no I wasn’t.
“I know. I’m sorry. There were things here that I needed to take care of.”
“That’s what Nia said. But I wanted to see you again. I thought we could spend some time together, so I came to find you.”
“That’s really sweet of you, but as you can see, I’m right in the middle of something and I don’t really have the time to stop.”
“Sure, you do.” My eyes closed and I let out a breath as Granddaddy walked back up to the booth. “I’m back now. You go on ahead and take a break. Help this nice gentleman find what he’s looking for.”
I really don’t think that’s what you want, Granddaddy.
“Thank you, Mr. Galloway,” Roman said.
“Benson,” Granddaddy said. “You can call me Benson.”
“Benson.”
“Go on, Bitsy. Get. I might be old but I can still hold down at Whiskey Day Festival booth.”
I reluctantly made my way out of the booth and to Roman’s side. He smiled at me as I approached and I felt my knees get a little soft. I had been thinking about him in the dim light of the hotel room for a year and a half and now that I was seeing him in the full summer sunlight I could see that he was even sexier than I remembered. But that didn’t matter. I couldn’t let myself think about that anymore. He needed to get out of the Hollow, and it needed to be
as soon as possible.
“Come on,” I said, starting away from the booth.
Maybe if I walked him through the festival it would assuage him wanting to spend time with me and I would be able to get him out of the Hollow at the same time. As we started walking, though, a sense of guilt and unsureness started to build in the back of my mind.
This wasn’t right. I can’t do this.
I took a breath, preparing to speak, but he cut me off.
“I’m really happy I found you.”
“You are?” I asked, taken aback by the revelation.
He certainly hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who gave much thought to the women he slept with. He hadn’t even asked my name before tossing me into bed.
Or bothered to realize that I was half his age and a virgin.
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind that I came out here. It’s just that when you didn’t show up at the party, I started to worry and then Nia told me who you were so I thought I would stop by.”
“Stop by?” I asked, a hint of laughter in my voice. “You just thought you would stop by in a hollow almost two hours from where Nia lives and lord knows how far from where you actually live? Just casually swing by?”
He laughed and nodded.
“Something like that.” He looked around. “So, what exactly is going on here?” he asked.
I sighed.
Let’s see how he deals with this one.
“They say that the area got the name Whiskey Hollow when a group of convicts escaped from the chain gang by spiking the guard’s water bucket with the prison alcohol that they had made in their cells and smuggled to the worksite by soaking the cuffs of their shirts and then wringing them out into the bucket as they walked by. The alcohol was so potent that the guard was drunk after two gulps, gulps that must have been so big and fast that he didn’t even notice the taste, which I can’t really imagine was anything but horrible. Once he was teetering around, they got their chain slithering so it looked like a giant snake and confused the guard into trying to chase it, which just made him woozy. Soon he tipped over and ended up spread out in the middle of the road, letting the convicts steal his keys. They unlocked themselves and ran, ending up in a cute little valley pretty far from anything. At least, that’s what they thought.
The truth was that they had only just gotten over one hill and were only a couple of miles from the prison when they stopped. Even then, they probably could have gotten away with it all if they hadn’t decide that the liquor that they had given the guard was the greatest thing ever made and a gift from the Almighty.”
It was the official legend of Whiskey Hollow, the way that all of us had learned about the area from the time that we were just little.
“So, what does that have to do with any of this?” Roman asked, gesturing at the people starting to gather around the effigies hanging from posts.
“I’m getting to that. Just be patient.”
I proceeded to explain to him about the convicts starting up in the moonshine business, which boomed in the dry county, and the argument that led to one of them dancing naked on the roof of the old church twirling moonshine-soaked batons and falling off.
“Did he survive?” Roman asked.
“He did,” I said. “But only because some outsiders came in to help him. They were able to glue him back together Humpty Dumpty-style, but it was too late. They had already seen the moonshine and alerted the authorities.”
“So, they were actually more successful than the Humpty Dumpty crew.”
“What?”
“You said that they glued him back together Humpty Dumpty-style. But they didn’t actually fix Humpty Dumpty.”
“What?”
“That’s the crux of the whole rhyme. They couldn’t fix him.”
I stared at him for a beat.
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” I muttered under my breath, “couldn’t put Humpty back together again. Oh. You’re right. Anyway, so they put him together better than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. The point is that they called in the authorities and there was a police raid on the Hollow. It didn’t even have a name then. But when the posse came, the people here rose up and tried to fight back. All they had were loaves of bread, but they fought valiantly with them.”
“They won?”
“Oh, good lord, no. About 80 percent of the village ended up in jail. But they didn’t go down without causing a serious inconvenience to the police. That’s how the Hollow got the name Whiskey Hollow.”
“And why you celebrate Whiskey Hollow Day,” Roman said.
I grinned.
“Exactly.”
Just then I noticed that people around us were starting to take up their loaves of bread. It was time for the ceremonial bashing of the effigies. I grabbed two loaves from a nearby table and offered one to Roman. He took it and we both approached the nearest piñata. Soon we were laughing as we swung the loaves, doing our best to dodge the crumbs and chunks flying through the air. When I could see that the paper police officer was looking about ready to burst, I grabbed Roman’s wrist and started tugging him back.
“You’re going to want to get out of the way,” I said.
“Why?”
Just as he asked it the piñata split open and the goodies inside came spewing out. These consisted of plastic-wrapped cupcakes, decorative whittled miniature bread loaves, and tiny bottles of Cletus’s Clementine Moonshine. A few people groaned and hit the ground when struck by the goodies, but soon rallied and we dove forward to gather up some of the treats. We were laughing so hard when we pushed our way out of the crowd that I was no longer thinking about the negativity that had been hanging over me since I first saw him. When I looked up and met Roman’s eyes, though, it all came rushing back. I could see the passion there and felt my breath catch, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest. This couldn’t last.
I had to tell him.
“Roman,” I started, “there’s something that I need to—”
“Bitsy?”
Oh, no.
I turned and saw Claire coming toward me, a nervous look on her face as she bounced the crying baby in her arms.
Well, that’s a segue for you.
Chapter Twelve
Roman
I felt like my heart wasn’t beating as I watched the woman rush up to Bitsy and hand the baby girl into her arms. She was crying, her tiny eyes scrunched up in her face, but that didn’t change what I was seeing. Her coloring was so far from Bitsy’s. Instead, it was like mine. Her hair was dark and richly colored, tumbling around her chubby face in ringlets. Her skin was a smooth tan color, lighter than mine, but distinctly darker than Bitsy’s. When the baby looked up at me, tears still streaming down her cheeks, they were like looking at Nia when she was that little.
Holy shit.
“Roman, this is my daughter, Lorelei.”
Her daughter.
She had emphasized that the baby was hers, accentuating it almost as though she were already trying to push me away.
“Your daughter?” I asked. “Is she mine?”
Bitsy kissed the baby’s head, soothing her until she stopped crying and then cuddling her closer. She looked at me and I saw the hesitation in her eyes.
“Roman,” she started.
“Is she?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
I drew in a breath, trying to process what I had just learned. This was my baby. My baby. I had a child.
“I –”
“I have to go,” Bitsy said. “I need to get her somewhere cool where she can eat.”
She rushed away before I had a chance to say anything to her. I took a step toward her, but felt a hand touch my arm and turned to see an extremely pregnant woman standing to my side.
“Just give her some time,” she said. “Don’t rush her.”
I didn’t know who this woman was, but she seemed so sure of herself and I didn’t have anything else to go on, so I fell back. Around
me the festivities didn’t feel as fun anymore. I walked away from the festival, returning to my car and driving back to the motel almost in a daze. When I got to my room I found Day changing the sheets.
“Well, hi there,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’m in your way. I’m just here making up your bed.”
She stroked her hands across the sheets, leaning over the bed and glancing back over her shoulder at me. I nodded.
“Uh huh,” I said.
She straightened.
“So, you’ll be staying for the second night?” she asked.
I started to tell her that I wasn’t, that I was going to check out early, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t care if Bitsy was trying to run from me right then. I wasn’t going to let her.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’ll be staying for another night. In fact, I might be here for a while. Can I just keep an open account?”
Day looked like she was trapped between wanting to come up with something subtly inappropriate and wanting to maintain her businesswoman persona.
“I don’t do open accounts,” she said.
There was a touch of emphasis on ‘open’, but I didn’t let myself dwell on it.
“Can I pay in advance?” I asked. I saw the hesitant look on her face and I reached into my pocket to withdraw my wallet. I took out a stack of bills and tossed them onto the bed. “Cash.”
Day’s eyes locked on the money and then rose to mine. She picked up the cash and leafed through it.
“Well, it’s not something that I usually do, but for you…”
“Thank you, Day.”
As soon as she was out of the room, I dropped facedown onto the bed again. Everything seemed to crash down on me. The heat. The adrenaline. The baby. My brain seemed to shut down and I fell asleep.
When I woke up my stomach was growling. No tray of food had magically appeared at the end of the bed and I noticed that I had forgotten to put the leftovers from the night before into the tiny refrigerator tucked in the corner of the room. I was going to have to go out for dinner again, and that meant only one thing.