Cry Baby Hollow (7 page)

“Not making me wanna go look at it,” Joe informed her.

“But…” her shoulders slumped. “I didn’t hit it. Something attacked it.”

Joe nodded. “I’ve seen your car. I know you didn’t hit a deer in it.” He put his hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “What you need to appreciate is that there are plenty of things not made by Winchester that kill deer here abouts. Hell, there are feral pigs in most of the hollows that are more dangerous than bear. They have tusks that can disembowel you with a shake of their head.”

“It wasn’t a pig I saw,” she assured him.

“Then what was it?” He asked gently.

She dropped her eyes to avoid his look of concern.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But it sure as hell wasn’t a pig.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I believe you. Now can we go get you some Band Aids?”

She nodded, defeated.

“And maybe some stitches,” he added.

CHAPTER NINE

Aubrey woke up
, washed her battered face, pulled her hair back, and went out onto the deck for a stretch
before going to try to find the trail across from Joe’s.

She wasn’t at all shocked to find his truck parked behind her car in the driveway. He was leaning against it, resplendent in jeans and one of the white ribbed undershirts that he insisted on calling a “wife beater”.

“Morning,” he called, saluting her with his beer.

“You’re up early,” she observed, all too aware that the tank top and cut off jeans that she’d pulled on when she climbed out of bed showed off all the scratches and bruises from yesterday’s adventure and ashamed that she cared what he thought about how she looked.

“You had company last night,” he told her, pointing with his longneck to where her latest mailbox lay dented in the center of her yard. She came down the steps at a run and stood, open mouthed, staring at the post that now listed at a forty-five degree angle, partially blocking the drive.

“That’s it!” She told him. “I’m calling the cops.”

She turned to go back into the cabin for her phone when she saw Joe’s scowl.

“What?” She demanded, rage bubbling up inside.

“Well,” Joe told her with an unconcerned air that only fanned the flames of her anger. “There are two things you can do and neither of ‘em involves callin’ the sheriff’s office.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because they won’t give a damn,” he told her.

“This is vandalism!”

“Yup,” he agreed.

“It’s illegal!”

“Yup.”

She stomped into the house.

Five minutes later she was back, madder than before.

“They don’t give a damn,” she told him angrily.

“We
have
tried that route in the past,” he informed her.

“So what are my two options?” She asked, regretting it almost instantly.

“Well, you can either spend a lot of money trying to make a box they can’t knock down or you can get one so cheap that you don’t care when they do. Me? I go cheap.”

“There’s a shocker,” she mumbled.

“Last time someone got uppity and put in a big brick job they couldn’t bust up they threw a chain around it, hitched it to their truck, and dragged it down the Dixie Highway until there was nothing left but dust. Kind of a waste of time and money if you ask me, but you’re the boss.”

“Never mind,” she told him. “I’ll handle it myself.”

She stormed into the house and emerged again a moment later with a toaster sized cardboard box with the word “Amazon” emblazoned on all sides, a sharpie, and a roll of duct tape. She scrawled the word “mail” across the box in large, block letters and copied over it again and again until it was bold enough for her taste and then drew a square around all the Amazon’s and colored them in so they wouldn’t confuse the issue of what the box was for.

Joe watched her intently, a small, amused grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

She placed the box on top of the listing post and tried to tape it down, but as soon as she released it to grab the tape roll, it fell off. She looked up at Joe and he smiled encouragingly, giving her a thumbs-up sign. She clenched her teeth and propped the box on the post, standing beside it and letting it lean against her chest for support while she pulled out a strip of tape. A gentle breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees overhead and sent the box tumbling out into the road. Sighing heavily, she rounded it up, pulled out several long strips of tape, stuck them to her leg, gripped one of the box’s flaps with her teeth, steadied it with her upper arm, and managed to get a piece of tape on it before it fell again. Once it was affixed, she went over and around it several times with the tape, careful not to cover the word “mail”, and ended with a long spiral down the post until she was sure it was secure. She ripped the end free of the roll and slapped it down smooth with the heel of her hand.

Joe finally moved. He moseyed over to the thick underbrush on the far side of the drive and kicked around for a minute before he found what he was searching for. He bent over and came up with a rock the size of a watermelon. He cradled it in his arms like a baby and carried it over to the mailbox. Using his foot, he pushed the post straight and dropped the rock with a thud at its base, shifting it with a few judicious kicks until it acted as a prop, holding the post in a more or less upright position.

“Suit yourself,” he told her, admiring his work. Straightening the post had the effect of making the cardboard box look horribly crooked. “But I’m not sure Tina will deliver to cardboard. She takes her job mighty serious.”

“This,” she motioned to the box with a flourish, “is not me taking care of it. It’s temporary.”

“I’ll pass that along to Tina,” he assured her. “I reckon she’ll be okay with it in the short term.”

“Thanks,” she told him sarcastically. “I appreciate the help.”

“No trouble,” he smiled his enragingly slow, easy smile, completely unperturbed by her tone.

“Not for you,” she agreed. She snatched up the duct tape and the sharpie and took them into the cabin, dropping them on the dining room table and grabbing her purse. She slung it over her shoulder and walked back out to where Joe had resumed his previous stance, leaning against the side of his beat up old truck, one bronze, well-muscled arm draped lazily along the rim of the bed, the blond highlights in his close cropped hair nearly blinding in the morning sun, his sky blue eyes half-closed in languid contemplation of nothing much. She suddenly realized why she’d recognized him when they’d first met. He was the spitting image of the new James Bond.

“Where’s the nearest Lowe’s?” She asked him tersely, hands on her hips. She was aware that she didn’t have any cause to be angry with him, but fuming at someone made her feel better and as people were constantly reminding her, Joe was handy.

“Knoxville, I guess,” he told her after a moments consideration, “or maybe over the border in Asheville, but there’s a regular hardware store in town. What’re you after?”

“Do they have plumbing?” She asked, ignoring his question.

“Your commode is brand new,” he told her. “I replaced it myself not two weeks before you got here.”

“Not fixtures,” she explained, growing impatient. “PVC pipe.”

“I can drive you in if you want,” he offered genially. “I don’t imagine you can fit much more than a teakettle in that trunk of yours. Now what do you need pipe for?” he wondered aloud.

“Forget it,” she snapped, realizing it would be faster to go look herself than get a straight answer from him. She pulled open the door to her car and threw her purse into the passenger seat with enough force to launch her iPhone out and send it skidding onto the floor. She climbed in, retrieved it, started the car, and waited.

Joe stood watching her, a bemused expression on his face.

“She revved the engine and when this didn’t elicit the desired results, she popped the stick into neutral, pulled the emergency brake and opened the sunroof. She stood up on her seat, sticking her entire upper body out the sunroof and turning at the waist to face him.

“I can’t get out unless you move your truck,” she pointed out.

“I figured as much,” he agreed.

“Then why didn’t you do it?” She asked.

“Well,” he grinned again, showing off his white, straight teeth. “I thought it might be fun to watch you try.”

She dropped back into her seat, slammed the car into gear, and cut the wheel as far as it would go. It took several minutes of surging forward and reversing, wrestling with the steering, but she managed to maneuver the car out from behind the truck and face it in the other direction. She pulled up beside him, coming as close to his foot as she could without hitting his side mirror.

He knelt down so that his face was even with hers, completely unphased.

“Every time I see this thing I expect a mess of clowns to come pouring out,” he told her with a boyish grin.

“Really?” She asked archly. “The only thing I expect to come pouring out of yours is empty beer bottles.”

She slammed down the accelerator and the tiny car leapt forward like it had been shot out of a canon.

“Those are for the recycling,” he called after her. “I’ve gone green.”

CHAPTER TEN

She was only
half a mile away when her phone rang. She punched the hands free button on her steering wheel before she realized that it was still in her pocket. She dug it out and accepted the call.

“Yes?” She answered warily.

“That how you answer your phone?” Joe asked from the other end. “Whatever happened to ‘hel
lo’?”

“Hello,” she said sweetly, making a rude gesture at the phone. “What do you want? Wait. Where are you calling from?”

“Your place. I haven’t had time to get home.”

“You can’t just break into my house and use my phone without permission, Joe.”

He was silent for a moment and she pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the screen to make sure she hadn’t lost the call.

“You mind if I use your phone?” Joe finally asked.

“No Joe, go ahead.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind since I was calling you,” he explained apologetically.

“It’s fine Joe. What do you need?”

“And the door wasn’t locked,” he observed, “so I didn’t break in.”

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s fine. What do you need?”

“I was just gonna let you know Burnett’s, that’s the hardware store, they still call it that even though Jim Burnett sold it… Hell, must a been five years ago now. Said he was gonna retire and fish all day, every day but that only lasted a week or so. All he does now is sit down at the laundry mat and watch talk shows.”

“That’s too bad,” she told him. “Is it relevant in any way at all to my going shopping there?”

“I don’t see why it would be,” he said thoughtfully.

She counted to ten, waiting for him to come to some semblance of a point.

“Is that what you called to tell me?” she finally broke down and asked.

“Nope,” he said.

“Then why did you call?” She asked, wishing her cell coverage was worse.

“Thought you might need directions. You should really change your cell phone to a local number, you know. I don’t like to think what it’s costing you in long distance to talk to me. Anyway, you know where the video store is?” He asked. “The one with the tanning beds in back? Hey, you know they got a combo membership where you can get three new releases and up to two hours of tanning a week for a monthly fee? I never tried it. Seems kind of like a coffin to me and I guess I’m a little… What do they call it when you don’t like tight spots?”

She thought of several witty rejoinders but decided it wasn’t worth it since she’d invariably have to explain them to him.

“Claustrophobia,” she answered, slowing down for a left turn. She crossed the French Broad at the old bridge and slowed again as she bumped over the railroad tracks just on the other side.

“Yeah, that’s it. I guess I’ve got that. Anyway, I know a guy who’s girl tried it and he said they let her in there without her drawers on. I don’t mean just no pants, I mean nothin’
at all
.”

“So it’s a clothing optional video store?” She asked innocently, unable to resist.

“Not the video part, just the tanning beds,” he clarified helpfully.

“Joe?”

“Now why would you care if you’re tan down there?” He asked, perplexed.

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

She pulled into a spot in front of Burnett’s and hopped out, hitting the button on her key to set her alarm.

“I’m going to have to let you go now. I’m at the store.”

“You found it?” He asked, impressed.

“Down town is two blocks long and four wide, Joe. I only had to stop and ask directions twice,” she told him, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hell, why’d you do that? I was givin’ ‘em to ya.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt your story,” she told him with a sigh and wondered again why god would play such a cruel joke on women, putting a mind like Joe’s in such a beautiful package.

“Well, the video store is right across the street, if you’re interested.”

“I’ll be sure to check it out,” she promised.

“With or without drawers?” He asked playfully.

“I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll let you know. I have to go now,” she said again.

She ended the call, cutting off his response.

She walked through the double doors into Burnett’s Hardware and instantly regretted that she hadn’t taken the time to put a bra on before leaving. The air inside was frigid and the acne faced boy behind the counter was staring at her in open, unrestrained awe. The good news was that the sight of her nipples kept his eyes off her various wounds.

“Hi,” he sputtered, unable to contain his glee.

She ignored him, taking in the lay of the store. The double-doors opened into a narrow passage where two checkout lines passed to either side of an island of counter top. At the back there was a key making machine and against the front there was a table cluttered with odds and ends marked clearance. There was a bin of fake antique signs, a pile of mosquito biscuits, and a small Jenga tower of sterno cans.

She ducked past a carousel of “For Sale” and “No Trespassing” signs and entered the store proper, completely ignoring the admiring clerk. She nodded in satisfaction when she saw that the store widened out considerably once you passed the cramped entrance and seemed to contain everything from paint to power tools.

“Can I help you find something?” The boy asked solicitously.

She shook her head and went to work. They didn’t have carts, which meant she had to make a pile on the counter and drop things off there whenever her arms got full. It would have been irksome if she hadn’t been the only customer. As it was, the boy could give her his undivided attention and whenever she picked up something that weighed more than three pounds, he appeared instantly at her side and wordlessly took it from her. Perhaps, she decided, not wearing a bra wasn’t the worst thing she could have done.

It took her almost an hour to assemble the supplies she needed, and as the pile grew, the boy looked less and less besotted and more and more intrigued. She knew if she had accepted Joe’s offer of a ride, he would right now be subjecting her to an endless series of questions and digressions, but the boy remained politely uninquisitive in spite of his obvious interest in her varied purchases.

After she’d paid, he picked up a bag of Quick Crete in each arm and followed her out to her car. She expected him to totter over. He was tall, but painfully thin, and the bags were heavy. But taking them both at once was apparently more than sheer bravado on his part, because he strode along beside her with ease. She popped the hatch and he smiled, a huge, beaming grin that transformed his face.