A Dixie Christmas (12 page)

Clay decided to check out this cow breeding business.

What he saw when he entered the huge barn stunned him. First of all, there was the overpowering smell. Cow manure, the hot earthy scent of animal flesh, and fresh milk. A cow belched near him and he almost jumped out of his wingtips. The sweet reek of the cow’s breath that drifted toward him on the wake of the cow burp was not unpleasant, but strange. Very strange.

There was a center aisle with about sixty black and white cows lined up in stalls on both sides. Jerry Lee was washing down cow udders and stimulating teats, while Roy was hooking the teats up to automated milking contraptions, six cows at a time.

Hank was shoveling feed in the troughs for the big cows, which must weigh about fifteen-hundred pounds, at the same time ministering to the sixty or so young stock at the far end of the barn. The whole time he was addressing the cows by name. Florence. Sweet Caroline. Aggie. Winona. Rosie Posie. Lucille. Pamela Lee. On and on, he chatted with the cows. How he ever remembered all the names, Clay didn’t know.

Johnny was sitting off to the side bottle feeding a half dozen baby calves. “Hey, Clay, wanna help me?” he asked.

“Uh
 . . .
I don’t think I’m dressed for that,” he declined. Besides, he wanted to see what Annie was doing at the other end of the barn. She and Chet were in a separate, larger stall with one humongous cow about the size of a minivan. That must be the breeding section.

“Where’s the bull?” he inquired casually, as if he strolled through barns every day to view cow sex.

Chet and Annie jerked to attention. Apparently they hadn’t heard him come up behind them. Well, no wonder. With all these cows mooing, he could barely hear anything himself.

“We don’t have any bulls,” Annie answered. “We butcher or sell off all the male stock.”

“Why?”

“Bulls are too darn ornery, that’s why,” Chet answered. “They’re not worth the trouble, believe me.”

“But
 . . .
but how do you breed the cows then?”

“Artificial insemination,” Chet informed him. “This is the twenty-first century, man.”

It was only then that he noticed Chet was holding the cow still, even though it was tied by a loose rope to the front of the stall. Annie, on the other hand, stood there with a big brown apron covering her Virgin Mary gown. On one arm, she wore a plastic glove that reached all the way to the shoulder. In the other hand, she held a huge syringe-type affair, more like a twenty-inch caulking gun.

My Lord
!

“You better step back,” Chet warned him.

Clay’s eyes bugged and his mouth dropped open before he spun on his heels and rushed outside
 . . .
where he proceeded to hurl the contents of his stomach which Aunt Liza had taken great pains to stuff all day long.

I wonder where this ranks in the God’s Big Toe category?

It’s now or never…

Clay had almost botched things, bigtime.

At first, it had seemed as if their blooming relationship had been slam-dunked back to step one, or zero, with his disastrous reaction to that scene in the barn. He still shivered with distaste at what he’d seen, but he was doing his shivering internally. The sooner he could erase that picture from his mind, the better. In time—maybe ten or twenty years—he would, no doubt, forget it totally.

Annie had appeared crushed when she’d followed him out of the barn. He could understand that. Farm work, in all its crude aspects, was what Annie did for a living—her identity. It had been obvious that Annie thought he was repulsed by her.
Not her, what she’d been doing.
But Clay hadn’t dared say that. Instead, he’d lied, “My stomach has been upset all day. It must be the after-effects of those pain killers, or something I ate.”

She’d stared at him dubiously. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea for us to go out on a date. Things have been happening too fast. We haven’t stopped to consider our differences. It’s probably a good idea for us to slow down and count to ten—”

Reconsider? Count to ten? No way! We’re not even counting to two. Oh, God! She’s going to dump us.
He’d backpedaled then and convinced her to give him another chance. At what, he wasn’t sure. He only knew he loved her, cow breeding or no cow breeding. And he didn’t want to blow the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Now, strolling down Memphis’s famous Beale Street, he was getting yet another view of his Annie. This one he liked a whole lot better than all the rest. So far, he’d had the Priscilla Virgin Mary, the jeans and flannel farm girl (He was still waiting for the Daisy Mae outfit, darn it!) and the cow breeder to the bovine stars. Now, Annie wore a calf-length floral print skirt of some crinkled gauze material over a satin lining. It was robin egg blue with gold flowers. On top was a long-sleeved, matching blue sweater of softest cashmere that reached her hips and was belted at the waist. The gold flowers of the skirt were picked up in embroidery around the sweater’s neckline. It was probably a Thrift Shop purchase, knowing Annie, who spent nothing on herself. On her legs she wore sheer stocking and black high heels that did amazing things to her already amazing legs. Her lustrous brown hair was pulled off her face by gold clips and hung in disarray to her shoulders. She’d even used some makeup—a little blush, mascara, and lip gloss, as far as he could tell. She looked smart and sexy. Sort of like a young Julia Roberts, but better, to his mind, as he’d thought before. No wonder he’d fallen head over heels in love with her.

Clay couldn’t stop looking at her.

And she couldn’t stop looking at him.

He smiled at her.

She smiled back.

He was using one crutch to keep his full weight off his sprained ankle, which was almost better today. With his free hand, Clay twined Annie’s fingers with his.

She swung their clasped hands.

Clay couldn’t understand how he got so much pleasure from just holding hands with a woman and hobbling slowly down the street. Annie had been giving him a running commentary on the history of Memphis.

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat yet?” she inquired. “It’s almost eight o’clock.”

He shook his head. They’d already passed up hot tamales and greasy burgers at the Blues City Cafe, where Tom Cruise had filmed a scene for the movie, “The Firm,” as well as ribs, catfish and world famous fried dill pickles, the specialties at B.B. King’s Club.

“How about this?” Annie had stopped in front of Lansky Brothers/Center for Southern Folklore. “This museum is dedicated to preserving the legends and folklore of the entire south, but especially Memphis. They have an excellent photography collection here.”

“My mother was a photographer,” Clay revealed.
Now, why did I mention that? I never talk about my mother.

“Really? Did she use her maiden name or her married name?” Annie was already tugging him by the hand to enter the small museum where a plaque informed him it was the site of the former Lansky Brothers Clothing Store where Elvis, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and others had purchased their clothes.

Well, that impresses the hell out of me. I’d want to buy my boxers in the same store as Elvis, for sure.

But Clay knew he was dwelling on irrelevant garbage to avoid thinking about Annie’s question. Finally, he answered, “Her maiden name. Clare Gannett.”

“Clare Gannett? Clare Gannett? Why, she’s famous, Clay.”

“She is
 . . .
was
 . . .
not!” he said with consternation.

“Well, not Annie Liebowitz famous, but she has a fame of sorts here in Memphis”

It doesn’t take much to be famous in Memphis. Just be a store that sold Elvis a pair of boxers. Or the barber who gave him a haircut. Or the playground where he scraped his shin.

“Annie, my mother was not a famous photographer. For one thing, she died when she was only twenty-eight
 . . .
whoa
 . . .
wait a minute
 . . .
what are you doing?” Annie paid for two tickets, and was pulling him determinedly past the exhibits into another room.

“See,” she said, pointing to one wall where there were a series of photos of Elvis Presley…an older Elvis. In fact, going by the dates under the frames, they must have been taken a few years before his mother had died in 1979; after all, Elvis had left the world in 1977. They were casual shots
 . . .
leaning against a car, strumming a guitar, standing in front of The Blue Suede Suites. A framed document explained that Clare Gannett, despite her youth, had been one of Memphis’s premier photographers, documenting on film many of the city’s early music performers during the mid to late seventies
 . . .
not just Elvis, but many rock and blues personalities who later went on to fame.

Oh, great! My mother knew Elvis. First, I find out my father owned a hokey hotel named after one of Elvis’s songs. Now, I find out my mother must have known the king. What next?

“Legend says that Elvis loved Clare Gannett—”

Clay put his face in his hands. He didn’t want to hear this.

“—but she fell in love with some Yankee who came to Memphis on a business trip one day. They say the Yankee bought the hotel and next-door property where her studio was located as a wedding present for her. The studio later burned down, and Clare Gannett died in the fire. The hotel owner, your father, refused to erect anything else on that site. Isn’t that romantic?”

“Annie, that is nothing but bullshit propaganda, a silly yarn spun for gullible tourists.”

“Maybe. But legend says Elvis was heartbroken over losing Clare Gannett. He died the same year she got married. I know, I know, there are a lot of legends and rumors in there, but still…”

Clay turned angrily and stomped as fast as he could on one crutch out of the building. He was breathing heavily, in and out, trying to control his rage.

“Clay, what’s wrong?” Annie asked softly. She came up close to him and put a hand on his suit sleeve.

He waited several seconds before speaking, not wanting to take out his ill-feelings on Annie. “Annie, my mother abandoned me and my father when I was only one year old. So, your telling me she had a relationship with that hip-swiveling jerk doesn’t sit too well with me, even if it was before her marriage to my father.”

“I’m sorry, Clay. But maybe you’re wrong about her. The legend never said that she loved Elvis. In fact, she supposedly broke Elvis’s heart when she married your father. Maybe—”

He leaned down to kiss her softly, the best way he could think of to halt her words. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

She gazed at him with tears in her eyes.
Tears, for God’s sake!
Not for a moment did she buy his unconcern.

“Hey, let’s go in this place,” Clay suggested cheerily, coming to a standstill in front of
Forever Blue
, a small jazz club. He desperately sought a change of mood. “It doesn’t seem as crowded as some of the other joints.”

He guided her in front of him into the club and an empty table where they ordered drinks and a mushroom and sundried tomato pizza. A short time later, with the backdrop of a piano player filling the room with classic jazz tunes, Clay moved his chair close to Annie and fiddled with the edges of her hair
 . . .
nervous as a teenager on his first date.

“Annie-love,” he whispered, kissing the curve of her neck. She smelled of some light floral fragrance
 . . .
lilies of the valley, maybe. As always, there was this delicious heat ricocheting between them.

“Hmmm?” she purred, arching her neck to give him greater access.

“I don’t want to go back to the farm
 . . .
yet.”

“Me neither,” she breathed, turning to stare directly into his eyes.

“Will you come back to my hotel room with me?”

Annie continued to stare into his eyes, unwavering. She had to know what he was asking. Finally, she nodded, leaning closer to place her lips against his, softly. “I have to go back to the farm tonight, though. There’s the four a.m. milking before we return to Memphis for the Nativity Scene.”