by Brad Smith
“What are you driving?” she asked.
He indicated a pickup truck with MID-STATE PAVING on the door.
“Let’s go,” Billie said.
Five
WILL WAS DUTIFULLY COOKING HIS MORNING oatmeal when he heard Jodie calling for him from somewhere outside. He looked out the window and saw her running up the hill, wearing pink jeans and a yellow top. She burst through the door like a summer squall.
“Dory is hurt!” she exclaimed. “She cut herself on that scrap pile.”
Will turned the gas off under the pot. “All right,” he said calmly. “Let’s have a look.”
The nanny goat had a cut on her front leg, a couple of inches above the hoof. It was bleeding, but it wasn’t deep enough that it needed stitches. Will hooked a lead to the animal and took her into the barn. Jodie held the goat’s head still while Will washed the leg with witch hazel and smeared Barclay’s Liniment over the cut before wrapping it with gauze and fastening it with tape. Instead of turning the nanny out again, they put her in her stall for the day.
“That’ll keep her from further shenanigans,” Will said. “After breakfast, you and I are going to clean up that pile of scrap.”
They headed back to the house. The sun had been full up for an hour, promising another hot and cloudless day. The little girl walked beside Will, trying to match his long stride.
“What are shenanigans?” she asked.
“A good way for a goat to get into trouble,” Will said.
“Can people get into shenanigans?”
“They certainly can.”
“Did you ever?”
Will laughed and when he did he began to cough. He stopped walking for a moment until the fit passed. They climbed the steps to the back deck. Back in the kitchen, Will turned the gas on under the oatmeal.
“Did you have breakfast?” he asked.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry,” Will said. “I asked if you had breakfast. Throw some bread in the toaster and we’ll divide this oatmeal down the middle.”
“Just like our winnings?”
“Just like our winnings,” Will agreed.
She did as he suggested, standing by the toaster, waiting for it to pop as Will doled out the porridge. They put brown sugar and milk on the oatmeal and ate the toast slathered in strawberry preserves.
“I used to make breakfast for my daughter,” Will said. “Sunday mornings we’d have pancakes. I used to make them in the shape of animals.”
“No way.”
His mouth full, Will nodded.
“What animals?” Jodie asked.
“Oh, different ones. She was always coming up with something new for me to try. I think she was trying to stump me. A giraffe one week, maybe an elephant the next. One time she wanted a pancake that looked like a duck-billed platypus.”
“What is that?”
After they finished eating, Will went into the living room and brought back a volume from the encyclopedia set he’d bought secondhand thirty years earlier. He leafed through it to find a platypus to show the little girl.
“Is that a real animal?”
“It wouldn’t be in the encyclopedia if it wasn’t,” Will told her.
“I never saw an animal like that before.”
“Don’t they teach you anything in school?”
She was reading the text beneath the picture. “I start fourth grade this fall. Maybe that’s when they teach animals like this. Look what it says—they only have these in Australia and Tasmania.” She hesitated on Tasmania, sounding it out.
“You sure about that?” Will asked. “I think I saw one under the porch last night.”
“You did not.”
“Could have been a possum.”
Will had fed and watered the horses at daybreak. Now they decided to put the donkey and the pony in the barn with the goat, out of the way. He hooked the Case tractor to the hay wagon and backed it through the paddock gate and over to the scrap pile. He found work gloves for them both and they began to load the fence posts and wire and the rest of the debris onto the wagon. There were paint cans and scraps of two-by-four and plywood, left over from Will’s various building projects over the years. As they worked, the girl talked and talked, which was not a problem. Will liked the sound of her voice.
“I can only stay until noon today,” she said when they started. “I’m helping Aunt Micky again this afternoon.”
“We’ll be finished by noon. What are you and Aunt Micky doing?”
“She cleans houses.”
“Does your mom work with her?”
“She used to.”
Will, trying to pull a tangle of wire from under the pile, gave up and went into the machine shop for a pair of pliers. When he returned he began to cut the wire into shorter lengths that he could pull free.
“Is your mom working now?”
“No.” The girl paused a moment, looking not at Will but at the scrap pile. She sighed. “She’s got a new boyfriend.”
“And what does he do?”
“Not a whole lot that I can see, Will. They were still in bed when I left this morning.”
“What’s his name?”
“Troy Everson.”
Will rolled a heavy cable reel out of the way, pushing it over by the wagon. The day was growing hot and he stopped to wipe his brow. He had known Troy Everson’s father, Ronnie. He was a shiftless little bastard who couldn’t be trusted with an Indian head nickel. Somebody shot him in Willisburg ten or twelve years earlier, over a debt or a woman or maybe both. He had survived the stomach wound but Will hadn’t heard of him since. Presumably he’d moved on, away from the man who had found reason to fire a bullet into his belly.
All Will knew about the son was what he’d read in the weekly paper and heard in the local bars and diners. He was apparently in the business of recycling auto parts, stealing cars and trucks and cutting them up and selling them piecemeal. Whatever his skills as a mechanic, his expertise as a thief was lacking as he kept getting arrested, although running a chop shop was considered petty crime in the county and he usually spent just a few months in jail before being kicked loose to go back to his thieving ways. Will also recalled a story that he’d been mixed up in dealing drugs, too— selling crack or meth or whatever it was that kids were using to fry their brains these days.
And now, it seemed, he was mixed up with Jodie’s mother. Will wasn’t happy with the news. It was none of his business but that didn’t mean he was thrilled to hear it. The girl, pulling fence posts from the pile, had fallen silent. For somebody who could chatter like a magpie she didn’t have much to say about her family life as a rule. The fact that she spent most of her free time at Will’s spoke volumes anyway.
“Where’s Tasmania?” she asked after a time.
“Down there by Australia somewhere,” Will told her. “We can look it up later if you want.”
“That would be cool.”
“It would be cool,” Will mimicked. “You know, you can have those encyclopedias if you want them. My daughter used them all the time when she was your age.”
“Didn’t she have a computer?” Jodie asked.
“No. Most people didn’t have computers then. She didn’t need a computer. She had those encyclopedias. Plus she was smart, like you.”
“Do you think I’m smart?”
“I think you’re as sharp as a tack.”
Jodie frowned. “Does that mean smart?”
“It does.”
“Sharp as a tack,” she repeated to herself, so softly Will could barely hear it. “Does your daughter have a computer now?”
Will knelt down to snip more of the tangled wire. He stood, winding the wire into a ball before tossing it onto the wagon. “I don’t know. I expect she probably does. Even I got a computer, although I’m not exactly a going concern on it.”
“Where is she anyway?”
“Ohio somewhere, far as I know.”
The girl was nine years old but she was perceptive enough to know when to leave a thing alone. Maybe her own experience informed her of this. Whatever the reason, she didn’t press Will on the matter.
By eleven o’clock they had the pile of scrap reduced to nothing but a few odds and ends on the ground and the large cable reel by the wagon. Jodie was raking the dirt and telling Will about a birthday party she’d been at the previous weekend.
“And then Bailey said that Dylan asked her first. But Chandra said that wasn’t true.”
“What’s Dylan saying?” Will asked.
“Dylan’s not saying anything. You know what boys are like. They don’t say nothing if they can get away with it.”
“I’ve heard that.”
Jodie tossed a coffee can on the wagon. “And I’m not even telling you what Jeremy did.”
“Who’s Jeremy?”
“Jeremy is Bailey’s brother. He’s older than her but he acts younger. He can be a real brat, especially if he’s with Teddy because Teddy likes to stir the pot, or at least that’s what Bailey’s mother says.”
“All these characters, I’m going to need a scorecard pretty soon,” Will said. He put his shoulder against the cable reel and began to lift.
“Melissa says that Bailey is just lying,” Jodie said as she continued to rake, gathering the last of the wood splinters and wire into a pile.
Now Will lifted the reel, got his legs under it, and heaved it onto the wagon. As he did, he released a sudden moan. Jodie looked over just as he fell backward to the ground. His right hand was pressed to his chest and he was gasping as if he couldn’t catch his breath. His eyes were wide open, looking at the bright cloudless sky that had tormented him these past weeks.
“Will!” the little girl shouted and ran to him.
Billie stood by the living room window, looking to the street out front. The rain that had chased them from the quarry the night before hadn’t amounted to much. There were no puddles in the driveway and the pavement was already dry. The pickup with the paving company logo was parked alongside the house in plain sight. It was the first time Billie had slept at home since remodeling Rory’s Corvette. She assumed by now he would know she had overnight company. If he was driving to Circleville to look for her, he was surely checking out her house on a regular basis. But she wasn’t concerned. Like most bullies, Rory was a dyed-in-the-wool coward. He wouldn’t come calling, knowing there was a man on the premises.
He hadn’t followed when they had left. Billie saw his truck in the parking lot, the front end still damaged, the headlight held in place with wire. She had expected him to come crashing out the back door of the bar, but he hadn’t, possibly for the same reason he wouldn’t come to the house—Billie’s guest. Maybe he merely wanted her to know of his presence, that he hadn’t forgotten about her. If so, it was a psychological ploy that she would have guessed was beyond him, but then who knew what went on in that mind of his?
They had driven off in the truck, heading south. Leaving the bar’s parking lot, Billie had been obliged to give a condensed version of the Rory saga, calling him a jealous ex-boyfriend who was having trouble moving on. She didn’t feel compelled to mention the physical abuse, or the beloved Corvette that now resembled an accordion. On the way out of town they picked up a six-pack of beer at a mini-mart.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Drive,” she said.
“We could go to the motel where I’m staying but I share a room with one of the guys,” he said. “They’ll be rolling in soon.”
“Do I look like the type of girl who would go to a motel room with a guy I just met, even if I did kick his ass on the pool table?”
“I guess not,” he said with a smile. “But I’d be a fool if I didn’t try.”
Halfway to Chillicothe there was an abandoned quarry a couple of miles from the highway where the locals sometime went to swim. Billie showed him the side road and they turned off. It was an over-cast night but very warm, and there were a half dozen cars parked along the lip of the quarry. A few people were swimming; the rest were kicking back, drinking beer and wine and playing music.
They parked away from the others and sat on the tailgate of the truck. Billie began to relax. Seeing Rory not twenty feet away had unnerved her. She was going to have to deal with him at some point, but it wouldn’t be tonight. Once again she prided herself on her ability to procrastinate; as a rule it had served her pretty well to this point. But it seemed it wouldn’t work with Rory, not forever. As for the here and now, though, she had a warm night, a cold beer, and a good-looking kid to flirt harmlessly with.
“So this is where you’re from?” he asked.
Drinking, she shook her head.
“Then how’d you end up here?” he asked. “Let me guess, it had something to do with a guy.”
“Nope. It had something to do with a girl.”
“Ooh . . . really?”
“Relax,” Billie said. “What is with you guys anyways? A girl I went to college with was from Chillicothe. A few years back I came and stayed with her a while. Started working at Freddie’s. She got married and moved to Chicago and I just stayed on. So far, anyway.”
“Where you from?”
“Kentucky.”
“So where did you go to college?”
“Kentucky at Lexington.”
He drained his beer, then reached for another. “And why didn’t you graduate?”
“I did graduate,” Billie said. She turned to look at him. “Are you always this presumptuous? First you’re surprised that I’m just a waitress and now you’re assuming I didn’t finish school. You want me to conjugate a couple verbs for you to prove it?”
He smiled. “I guess I deserved that.”
“What’s your story?” she asked. “You got your summer job, and you’re hanging out in the bars, sniffing around the girls like a dog in heat. I bet you have a girlfriend back in Columbus. A looker with a flat belly and a button nose who thinks you are the bee’s knees.”
“Now who’s being presumptuous?” he asked. “Nope, no girlfriend. I had one, going back to high school, but we split up last winter.”
He got down from the tailgate to move in front of her and stood there, smiling, for a moment. Billie’s knees were apart and he moved between them, his legs against her thighs now. “So here I am, drinking beer with a looker with a great body and a button nose. And I’m thinking there’s no reason why I shouldn’t kiss her.”
“I don’t have a button nose,” Billie said and then she kissed him.
She walked from the living room to the kitchen and began to make coffee. Getting out of bed, she’d pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and gone into the bathroom to wash her face and tie her hair back. As she waited for the coffee maker, her cell phone rang in the front room and she went to find it. It was in her purse, where she’d tossed it on the floor beside the couch when they’d come in last night. She recalled making out there before they’d gone into the bedroom. She remembered thinking that she wasn’t going to have sex with him, right up until she did.
It was Athena on the phone, calling from somewhere in Kansas. Checking in, as she had promised.
“Why are you talking so low?” she asked after she gave Billie the update on her drive.
“I got a college boy in the bedroom,” Billie said. She’d walked back into the kitchen.
“No shit?” Athena laughed. “Glad to know you’re moving on. So—how was it?”
“None of your business.”
“Why not? Is this something serious—this college boy?”
“I met the guy in a poolroom twelve hours ago,” Billie said. “There’s nothing serious about it.”
“Then tell me about it,” Athena said. “What did you guys do?”
“Really?”
“I need details.”
“We had a lovely evening. Couple of beers, nice conversation.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know it’s not what
you meant,” Billie said. “My coffee’s ready, gotta go. Call me tomorrow.”
She heard Athena laughing and calling her a bitch as she hung up. She poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Hopefully, the guy sleeping in her bed would give her a ride back to Circleville, where she’d left her car. He was going to be late for work. She had mentioned that to him the night before but he hadn’t seemed overly concerned about it. At the time, they were busy pulling each other’s clothes off, so she could understand why. She knew all about shifting priorities when it came to sex.
Now she heard him in the bedroom, shuffling around. He went into the bathroom and a minute later she heard the toilet flush. He came down the hallway and into the kitchen after that, wearing just his jeans, pulling his T-shirt over his head.
“Hey,” he said.
“Good morning.”
He stood there in the doorway, looking around, at one point dropping his head to glance out the kitchen window to the truck outside. He grimaced slightly, as if realizing that not only was he missing work, but he was in possession of a company vehicle in the process.
“There’s coffee,” Billie said, indicating the pot.
He poured a cup and added milk.
“All I have is brown sugar,” Billie said.
“This is good,” he said and came to sit across from her. He tried the coffee, then set it aside to cool. He looked at her a moment, as if slightly amused by something. “It’s Chris.”
“I know your name,” Billie told him.
“I figured maybe you thought it was ‘college boy.’”
Billie took a moment. “Well, that’s what you get for eavesdropping on phone calls.”
He smiled at that and took another sip of coffee before looking at his watch.
“You have time to drop me at my car?” Billie asked.
“Sure.”
Billie raised her cup. “We can drink these on the way if you want.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
“No,” she said. “I just assumed you needed to get to work.”