Bethel's Meadow (30 page)

But then Sidebottom walked in.

“Well, if it isn’t the notorious library book annotator himself,” I whispered to Glory.

Glory laughed, and then said, “I got his privileges restored. Since he’s your friend I got his penalty reduced, and he can now check out books again.”

As Sidebottom strolled in our direction, he looked like he had something on his mind. When he got to the table he didn’t even say hello to Glory, nor did he thank her for the restoration of his library privileges.

“You know, Smith,” he said, “I’m tired of covering for you about this whole toilet paper business.”

“Hello, Wally,” I said. “Won’t you please properly greet this lady?”

“Um, sorry,” he said. He looked at Glory and frowned. “I’m really sorry about the books. Thank you for sticking up for me.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said with a bright smile. “What’s this about toilet paper, though?”

I smiled at Sidebottom and said, “Yeah, Wally, is annotating library books with a red pen worse than correcting an improper method of dispensing toilet paper?”

He scowled at me. He really wasn’t in a pretty mood. “You know, it’s all over town that you’ve written a book. So you of all people should appreciate the importance of proper grammar and sentence structure.”

Glory’s eyebrows shot up and she smiled at me. “You wrote a book?”

“Wally, you have a really big mouth, you know that?” Now I wanted to beat him up.

“Yeah,” he said to Glory. “Our man Smith here is a man of letters, but I had to hear about it on the street. My best friend didn’t tell me about what he was doing.”

Okay, I thought, now we’re at the root of the anger.

“I’m sorry, Wally. Okay? I only really told Samantha—”

“Bullshit,” he said, a little too loud for the environment we were in. “You didn’t just
tell
her about it—you gave her a copy of your magnum opus. She’s read the whole thing.”

Glory wasn’t pleased by this news. As the sparkle from her eyes vanished, I felt my stomach turn. Even though I thought the book was basically crap, I should have told her about it anyway.

“Aw, Glory, please don’t get upset with me,” I said. “If you want to read it, I’ll print up a copy for you. I promise.”

“Oh, a lovers’ quarrel,” Sidebottom cracked. “How adorable. You truly never miss a beat, do ya Smith?”

I knew right then that Sidebottom had spoken with Samantha about yesterday’s incident. He was taking her side and believing whatever tale she had related of the encounter.

I stood and began to reach for his fucking throat, but Glory sprang up and saved his life.

She said, “Gentlemen, I’ll kick you
both
out of here if you don’t start being quiet. And you’d better be nice to each other, too.”

“You and I will talk later,” I said to him quietly. “Get out of here right now. Just walk out while you still have your hide intact.”

It was painfully obvious he wanted to tell me to fuck off. Samantha must have given him a doozy of a story. He finally dropped his head in a mild display of contrition and sauntered away.

“I’m really sorry,” I said to Glory. We were still standing. Her look of disappointment scared the hell out of me. I thought I had just blown it. “Look, I’ll tell you every crazy thing that’s gone on in my life in the past several weeks. I told you about my childhood, and in time you’ll know everything else. I won’t hold anything back from you.
Nothing
.”

She nodded, seeming satisfied with my plea. “You don’t have to tell me about your personal life right now, Bethel. Besides, I know about what happened between you and Tricia. She’s a crazy bitch and she’s moving out by the end of the month. I’m kicking her out.”

I sighed in relief. That was one thing off my mind.

“I will say one thing,” Glory said with a smile. “If God put you to the test with Tricia, to see how you’d handle her, then I would have to say that you passed that test. I know all about her, Bethel. Believe me. I don’t know why I stayed friends with her for as long as I did. But now it’s over with me and her.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for believing in me.”

“But you’re not off the hook just yet,” she said. “Before you go back to work, you have to tell me something.”

Uh oh
, I thought. “Okay, I’m guilty of turning toilet paper rolls so that they feed from the bottom.” But I knew her grave expression had nothing to do with toilet paper.

She sat back down, motioning me to do likewise. Then she reached for my hands and held them gently in her own. “I want to know what the great heartbreak of your life is, Bethel Smith. I know you never married, and I know that Caitlin doesn’t qualify. It was someone else who broke your heart, who is responsible for your negative demeanor, who keeps that dark cloud hovering above you.”

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. Although I promised her I’d answer anything, I wasn’t ready for this.

“It wasn’t a woman,” I said. “Well, it was a female, but not a woman.” And then the waterworks began. I felt like such a loser. I was weeping right in front of her.

“You don’t have to answer,” she said. “I already know it.”

Oh shit.

“What was her name?” Glory asked. “What was your daughter’s name? Why don’t you speak to her anymore? What happened?”

I wiped away my tears and looked straight at her. It scared the absolute shit out of me that she could see right through my heart and my soul.

“Miranda,” I said. “My daughter’s name is Miranda.”

35

I
T WAS LATE SUNDAY afternoon. There wasn’t a happier man on the planet than Bethel Smith. I was at home in my music room, strumming my acoustic guitar in sync with Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” as it played on my MP3 stereo. After my date with Glory last night, I couldn’t get that song out of my head—the lyrics expressed everything I was now feeling about her. I’d spent the entire day practicing the tune, and I was getting pretty close to nailing it. I smiled at the realization that my lack of sleep had had one positive side effect: I’d improved remarkably as a guitarist, and I was having a damned fine time with the hours I played in my house alone, just me and my guitar.

I was completely in love with Glory Nolan. I’d never had so much fun being with a woman. On each of the past three evenings we’d gone dancing and dining. Last night we went to a Latin dance club where we drank frozen mojitos and danced for nearly four hours. Glory taught me the merengue and some salsa steps (something I hadn’t given Water Girl a chance to do). Afterward we were completely drenched in sweat and famished. We stopped by a Thai restaurant where none of the help spoke much English, and they didn’t seem to mind that we smelled like dirty sweat socks. We feasted on red snapper and sticky rice, and we devoured that poor fish until it was nothing but little twiggy bones, washing it all down with a delicious Thai brew called Singha.

By the time we’d arrived at her place each night we were both so physically exhausted and full of rich food that we couldn’t have made love even if we had wanted to. Well, being relatively young, I suppose we
could
have, but I don’t believe either of us saw the point in rushing things. We were so comfortable with each other that there wasn’t even the slightest hint of the type of desperation that had always been the active ingredient in fueling so many of my past sexual relationships. There was between us the strong sense that there
would
be a tomorrow, and a next day, and a next day, and a day after that, and many more days well off into the future. Kissing and hugging and feeling each other up a little bit was enough for the time being. I viewed our necking sessions as an extended version of foreplay, a series of hot and heavy preludes that I knew without any doubt would eventually lead to the best sex
ever
. I just knew it.

And yes, I did indeed bare my soul to her about everything important that had ever happened in my life. And that included the story of my daughter. . . .

…

About a dozen years ago I was working as a data systems engineer for a large information technology consulting firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. I’d been on the job for nearly five years and I had traveled the world, including exotic locales like Kuala Lumpur, Okinawa, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris, and Hong Kong. Those were the days when the technology sector was booming, and even the least educated technician could earn a rather decent living. I did better, though, because I had an MIS degree. I enjoyed a six-figure salary and received substantial bonus money for both accepting a contract and for completing it.

Unfortunately, I partied and drank away a good deal of my earnings. I could afford to wine and dine some of the most beautiful women a man could ever hope to see, and I took full advantage of what the money could do for me in that respect. I imbibed such prodigious amounts of alcohol that I don’t remember a lot of what I did during those days. I suppose it was because I was young and strong that I was able to perform well on the job during the day, even after a night of heavy drinking and dirty dancing. For those five years I was a train wreck, a tragic accident waiting to happen. My manic depression was in full bloom during that time, too. I frequently skipped lithium doses and experienced prolonged periods of what my doctors then called hypomania.

But toward the end of all that craziness and danger my life changed in a dramatic way. That was when I met Tamara Linhart.

I had spent a week in Knoxville, Tennessee, on business. Our client enticed me to stay through the weekend so I could enjoy some major college football action. It was the home opener for the University of Tennessee Volunteers. I can’t remember who their opponent was, nor do I remember the game’s outcome. I do, however, remember the following morning quite vividly. I was driving on the highway that runs amidst the beautiful rolling hills of the Appalachian Mountains in East Tennessee, killing time and doing a little sightseeing. I had a late afternoon flight, so that gave me plenty of time to check out a small town I’d passed by on a few occasions while driving back and forth.

Kingston, Tennessee is located approximately a half-hour drive west from Knoxville and a scenic two-hour drive east from Nashville. I entered Kingston via Interstate 40, passing two one-thousand-foot-tall smokestacks located on the premises of the Kingston Fossil Plant. About twenty cars were parked on the shoulder as folks on the side of the highway had their cameras and binoculars trained on the shoreline of Watts Bar Lake. I figured they were either shutterbugs or environmentalists gathering evidence against the evil coal manufacturing plant. I later learned that the steam plant was a favored spot from which locals and tourists observed the activities of great blue herons, ospreys, and other waterfowl.

With its population of less than 6,000 residents, I was certain I had never driven through a small American town as serene and picturesque as Kingston, Tennessee. I couldn’t help but draw contrasts between this bucolic paradise and all the big cities I had traveled to through the years: instead of towering rows of concrete and steel buildings lining the highway for as far as the eye could see, there were majestic tall trees, including pines, birches, dogwoods, and maples; instead of a dull haze of smog lingering grimly overhead, I rolled down my window to take in the clean, crisp mountain air that cleared my mind of all its troubles; instead of a downtown area filled with the cold, banal testaments to commerce and unbridled urban growth, there was a magnificent abundance of rolling hilltops, generously blanketed with an exhilarating array of autumnal colors. The whole of it produced a settling effect on me, as did the smiling, friendly, and inviting faces I saw everywhere I looked.

After driving through the quaint downtown area, I found myself on a road that branched out alongside a narrow channel of the town’s lake. I had passed the public dock to my left before realizing I was driving away from the restaurants; I wanted to find a greasy spoon where I could eat a decent waffle and half a slab of bacon. I was so mesmerized by the scenery that I had briefly forgotten my mission. I turned my rented Ford Taurus around and drove back to the downtown area, where I quickly found what I was looking for.

I’m ashamed to admit that after downing the waffles and bacon, I wasted no time in bedding down my waitress, whose name was Tamara Linhart. It was a careless and reckless act, perpetrated against a very beautiful—but uneducated—young woman. I don’t want to say that Tamara Linhart wasn’t bright or that she lacked core intelligence; it’s just that she wasn’t very well-read. She had a heavy East Tennessee accent so thick that my city-boy ears had trouble fully comprehending what she was saying. When speaking, she used contractions that I didn’t even know existed. Yes, she was a country bumpkin in many ways, but since her father had saved a good bit of his earnings from his years working at the nuclear plant in nearby Oak Ridge, she’d inherited enough money to take proper care of herself. She had outstanding dentition and a crystal-clear complexion. Tamara Linhart was a natural beauty, not requiring one dab of makeup. Her blond hair (I can’t recall if it was a bottle job or not) was a carefully constructed replica of what Dolly Parton was sporting at the time, and her breasts were damn near the same size as Dolly’s, too.

After eating I drove around town until her lunch break at noon. I bought her lunch at McDonald’s—yes, Tamara Linhart just loved the chicken nuggets at the place my father always called “The Gastric Arches”—and then she invited me straight to her house over on Lakeshore Drive.