Down Home Dixie (10 page)

Love, K?
What was that supposed to mean? Maybe it was nothing more than a convenient way to close the note. Or maybe…maybe? What if he was starting to feel the same way she was feeling about him?

She tried to call Kyle on his cell phone, but he didn't answer. That wasn't surprising. Still, she wondered why he hadn't previously mentioned his mysterious errand. Visions of him wrapped in Andrea's arms assailed her, imagination providing the details. Andrea would be overflowingly voluptuous, wear long dangling earrings and stiletto heels. She'd stuff herself into sexy see-through underwear and smell of musk. Her voice would be husky and deep.

When Kyle didn't call by the time she was supposed to put the turkey breast in the oven, Dixie contacted Joy, who was visiting at Bubba's house.

“Kyle's not here,” Dixie said flatly even though it pained her to do so.

“You mean, he won't be back for dinner?” Dismay surfaced in Joy's tone and also a degree of mystification as if she couldn't imagine that Kyle could be absent after Dixie's glowing report.

“Uh, not sure,” Dixie hedged, trying not to show her own disappointment. “His note wasn't all that specific.”

“Well, at least he left a note.” Joy muffled the receiver, then returned. “Dixie, Bubba says why don't we have dinner with Katie and him. Katie got the results of her sonogram, and their baby's a girl. They feel like celebrating with some of Bubba's home-brewed beer and barbecue.”

“Okay,” Dixie said with a sigh. If Kyle came back in time, he could follow later. “Can I bring something?”

“Katie says if you've got one of your fabulous desserts in the freezer, you might tote it along.”

“I have half a caraway-seed cake that I was going to serve Memaw if she brought her friend Dottie over to see my new house this week. Don't worry, they'll be just as happy with brownies.”

“Awesome! You'll have to give me your caraway-seed cake recipe before I leave. Bubba says to get here around six-thirty. Oh, I forgot, I have to drop off Mama's medicine at the house. How about if I stop by and bring you over here? I'm driving my Chevy, it'll be like old times.”

“Okay, that sounds good.”

“About six-fifteen?”

“Sure. Pick me up before you drop off the medicine so I can say hey to your mother. I haven't seen her in a couple of weeks.”

“Right, will do. See you later, Dixie.”

Slowly Dixie replaced the phone in its cradle then picked it up again to dial Kyle's cell phone. All she got was a prerecorded message delivered by a female with a serious attitude problem. “Your call did not go through. Please try again later.” She wondered what gave phone companies the right to unloose snotty disinterested voices on perfectly innocent people.

Sighing, she went to get the cake out of the freezer. Too bad Kyle wasn't around to eat it. He loved caraway-seed cake.

Before Joy arrived, Dixie dialed Kyle's cell number again. This time the call went through, but it rang and rang. Whatever Kyle was doing, she hoped he was enjoying it. She wouldn't be making another cake for a couple of weeks.

Plus, when she went to check on the new rake that Kyle had said he was going to buy, it wasn't there. The old one was in pieces on the workbench, the tines broken off.

What could have been so important that Kyle would go off before he brought the new rake home? Must have been something major.

If someone ever ran a contest for the most irritating and annoying modern invention, the cell phone would win hands down. At least that's what Kyle fumed after he tried to call Dixie for the fourth time that afternoon and got the message “Service Unavailable.”

He hadn't expected to be on his way to Camden so late in the day, but a call from Jarvis Wilfield had speared him into action. Kyle's main motivation for answering Wilfield's summons was that moving to South Carolina seemed like a better idea every day, and steady work hereabouts would make such a move even more likely.

When Jarvis called, he'd been in an agitated state of mind. “Mac McGehee was rushed to the hospital this morning,” he told Kyle. “He's had a stroke, and with the Carolina Cup coming up at the end of the month besides.” The Carolina Cup was one of two big steeplechase events of the year.

“What can I do to help?”

“Come over here and help me with Kingpin, one of our horses who is set to compete. He's thrown a shoe.”

Kyle'd jotted down a few notes about the horse and the location of the stable. “I'll be there as soon as I can,” he'd assured Wilfield, and now he was heading to Camden, singing along with WYEW and feeling good about his prospects.

If he'd been able to reach Dixie, perhaps she could have ridden along with him. He would have been grateful for the company. He recalled her mentioning that she had an appointment that afternoon, and there wasn't much he could do about that. He'd taken the time to leave Dixie a hastily written note, which he now realized he should have made more explicit. Perhaps he'd be able to reach her through his cell phone as soon as he came within range of a cell tower.

Kyle slowed his speed as he drove into the Camden city limits. He felt bad about not being able to explain to Dixie, but she'd understand. By this time, they were one hundred percent a couple.

And would be for quite some time if he had his way.

 

W
HEN
D
IXIE AND
J
OY
arrived at Bubba's house for dinner, Katie greeted them warmly at the door. She was a taffy-haired dynamo who was proud of her new belly bulge and immediately hustled Joy off to admire clothes for the coming baby. After spotting the sonogram of a fetus posted proudly on the refrigerator door, a precursor of all the snapshots and drawings to come, Dixie declined to “ooh” and “aah” over the layette for the time being. Despite her genuine happiness for Bubba and Katie, it rankled that she wasn't even a wife yet, much less an expectant mother.

Bubba and Katie's house was small and tidy, built forty years or so ago of redbrick made from native South Carolina clay. It was lovingly furnished with inviting furniture slipcovered in faded cotton prints—“shabby unchic” Katie called it. Dixie always felt comfortable there due to the couple's matchless hospitality. However, on this visit, Bubba started teasing her big-time while the two of them were hanging out in the kitchen.

“You still keeping company with that Yankee?” Bubba asked, handing Dixie a cold beer. This was the polite Yewville way of asking if she and Kyle continued to live together.

“The Yankee's name is Kyle,” Dixie informed him loftily. “Seems like you should remember it, since you were one of the first people I called to help him out. Not that you did,” she added pointedly.

Bubba ignored the barb. “Well,
my
name is Charles,” he said. “Right out of the chute everyone started calling me Bubba, and that's how I'm known to this day.”

“It's understandable. Bubba means ‘brother.' You were somebody's brother as soon as you were born, seeing as how your parents already had Fred.”

“Why didn't they call Fred ‘Bubba'?”

“Gosh, Charles, I have no idea. What does this have to do with Kyle?”

“Your boyfriend is referred to around town as ‘the Yankee' on account of everyone has heard about what he was wearing when you found him. The poor guy might be stuck with that nickname for the rest of his life.”

“I doubt that would bother him,” Dixie said. She took a long swig of beer and changed the subject. “Awesome beer, Bubba.”

“Milo says it's better than he can make.”

“Oh, so you're hanging out with Milo?”

“We've been friends almost as long as you and I have,” Bubba reminded her. He paused, shot her an inquisitive grin. “Why don't the two of you get back together?”

Dixie expelled a long sigh of impatience. “Hel-
lo?
Weren't we just talking about my new boyfriend, the Yankee?”

“Milo still likes you a lot. Dang, I never did understand why you two broke up.”

“You wouldn't. Probably.” Her feelings for Milo had been pure blah compared to what she had with Kyle.

“Try me. Talk to me. Why didn't you and Milo tie the knot?”

If Bubba was going to be difficult, she'd rock him. “Here's the truth of it, Bubba. I broke up with Milo because I didn't feel passion for him.”

Bubba stared as if she had just stripped stark naked.
“Passion?”
he said in a shocked tone. They normally didn't discuss that sort of thing.

She narrowed her eyes, not ready to back off yet. “Like when you want to crawl right into a person, you're so attracted to him.”

Bubba's face turned crimson and he appeared on the verge of swallowing his chin. “Uh, well, we shouldn't be talking about that.”

“Then don't ever bring it up again.”

“Not to worry. Geez, Dixie. I'm going to go get some of those boiled peanuts I stored in the garage.” He slapped a baseball cap on backward and marched out.

Joy and Katie returned, both of them chattering about the baby's wardrobe. Joy reclaimed her bottle of beer. “I propose a toast to—What are you going to name her, Katie?”

“Marcella Jane Granthum,” Katie announced. “Marcy for short.”

“To Marcy,” Joy said. The women clinked bottles except for Katie who had forsaken alcohol for the duration of her pregnancy.

Bubba came back. “I can't find the boiled peanuts that I had in the garage,” he said to Katie.

“They're in the fridge, hon.”

Bubba rummaged for the peanuts and emptied them into a dish. He put a paper bag on the floor for the shells. “Our Marcy's going to be the first of a bunch of born bricklayers named Granthum,” he declared. He'd recently started a masonry business, which he ran with the help of his cousin, and had often bemoaned the fact that it was hard to find skilled masons these days.

“My little girl, a bricklayer?” Katie said in mock disbelief.

“I'll train her early, her and all the brothers and sisters she's going to have. That doesn't mean she can't wear a pretty pink dress with petticoats once in a while,” Bubba said, all puffed up with fatherly pride.

Katie, Joy and Dixie started to laugh. “No one wears petticoats anymore,” Joy said.

“I guess I have a few things to learn about raising little girls,” Bubba said with a grin.

Past the gated bedroom door on the other side of the small dining room, Bubba's old coon dog, Minnie Pearl, wagged her tail, four puppies gamboling around and between her legs. Katie went to the kitchen sink where she began to mix dressing for slaw.

“I hope y'all are agreeable to barbecue,” Katie said, glancing briefly over her shoulder. “How about you, Joyanne? Is pulled pork allowed on your diet?”

“I might have to make an exception so I can pig out on Bubba's 'cue,” Joy said. “I'll compensate by not eating anything but lettuce and watercress tomorrow.”

Bubba removed a couple of foam containers from the refrigerator. The containers held barbecue that he'd picked off the pig he'd roasted over his backyard pit last fall. “We'll heat the meat in the microwave and spread everything out on the counter so we can help ourselves,” he said.

As Dixie and Joy pitched in, Katie glanced out the window where a red truck was pulling up beside the chinquapin tree. “You'd better get out another one of those barbecue containers, Bubba. Milo's here.”

Dixie exchanged an alarmed glance with Joy. She certainly hadn't expected her old boyfriend to show up for dinner.

“I didn't invite him, but it's not unusual for Milo to stop in,” Bubba said, observing Dixie's ill-concealed alarm.

Joy took the lead. “It'll be great to see him,” she said. “We were both active in the theater group when we were kids.”

“Milo checks on Minnie Pearl's pups a few times a week. Say's he's of a mind to buy one.” Bubba tossed a peanut shell into the paper bag on the floor.

Katie smiled. “Oh, Bubba, you might as well give him his favorite, the little female. Then when she's grown, you two can go coon hunting together.”

“Just like the old days when our daddies did the same thing,” Bubba said. “Dad gum it, I believe I will give Milo that dog. I'll make enough money off the others to furnish the nursery any way you like.” He and Katie shared a loving smile.

Dixie considered that she ought to be going but didn't have her car. Milo came in, all smiles at seeing Joy, or were the smiles for Dixie? He enveloped Joy in a big hug, proclaimed that her bouncy new hairstyle was awesome and that she was prettier than ever. This might be a good time to go powder her nose, but before Dixie could make a hasty exit, Milo hugged her, as well. She escaped as soon as possible, insisting on setting the table so Katie could sit down and prop her swollen feet on a chair seat for a few minutes.

Milo's curly hair looked as if he'd tried to smooth it down with some kind of gunk. Everything about him was too tidy—unwrinkled white shirt tucked neatly into khaki pants, shiny loafers without a smudge of dirt, fingernails trimmed just so. Of course, eating had to wait while Milo brought himself up to speed on Bubba's beer.

This led to reminiscing among the five of them. Dixie, keeping her distance from Milo by perching on a stool at the breakfast bar, attempted to return the topic to the here and now, but the conversation worked its way back to the chilly fall night when they'd all gone cow tipping in Mr. Hibble's field.

After they laughed over that, Milo recalled the year that Bubba treated himself to an orange-and-purple Mohawk haircut and was thus single-handedly responsible for the institution of a dress code at Yewville High. More seriously, Katie, who was a year younger than they were, mentioned the day their assistant principal, Mr. Dacoti, was wounded in the eye by a student who attacked him with a numchuk, a martial arts weapon that shouldn't have been on campus in the first place.

It had been years before the shootings at Columbine, but in the space of a few short minutes after Mr. Dacoti was carried away in an ambulance, an atmosphere of fear settled over the high-school campus.

Dixie hadn't recalled that day in years. She'd been a fifteen-year-old sophomore and worried that more violence was imminent. Rumblings of student discontent had been reported earlier in the day, so anything could happen. When Milo discovered Dixie cowering behind her locker door, he had immediately shepherded her off campus and driven her home. Her mother, already alerted to trouble at the school by the Yewville grapevine, had thanked him profusely.

Fortunately, the campus remained peaceful. Both Dixie and Milo were penalized for skipping classes, but she'd never blamed him for taking charge that day. It was the first time Dixie had known that Milo really cared for her.

Remembering that day made her smile at him, and his eyes lit up.
Damn,
Dixie thought.
This beer must be much higher in alcohol content than the store-bought kind.
She had unwittingly lowered the barriers that she'd thrown up between them earlier. As the others started to talk about what had happened to the rest of their high-school group in the years since graduation, she excused herself and went to play with the puppies on the other side of the gate barrier.

A tactical mistake. Milo soon joined her, smiling goofily. She recognized that grin, all right. She'd spotted it on his face at church the Sunday he proposed to her.

“I'm going to take that pup over there,” he said, gesturing toward the brown-spotted one that was poking at a red rubber bone with its nose.

“What will you name her?” Anything to keep him on the safe subject of the dog.

“Starbright.” Milo glanced at her sideways out of the corner of his eye.

Oh, drat.
The name struck a too-familiar chord. On their first date, a church hayride, as they jounced over a rutted country road surrounded by energetically necking couples, the stars above had started to pop out spectacularly and Milo had recited a poem.