It's Not Like I Knew Her (25 page)

“Bess just now said the poor thing was to have had the choir's solo part in church yesterday.”

With her back still to Bitsy, she managed, “There's stage fright, but damned if that don't take the prize.” She closed her eyes, cursing herself for the cowardice of her words.

“Good God, Jodie. You're one cold-hearted bitch. And you don't even care what's being talked around?”

Jodie turned and Bitsy was staring at her in disbelief. “Christ, it's not like I knew her.” Talk, what talk? Fear displaced her grief, shutting her down to all but self-preservation.

Bitsy stomped away, passing among the rows of idle machines.

Jodie called to her, “Bitsy, please, wait up.”

Bitsy stopped and turned, glaring.

“I'm sorry. I'm … I didn't mean what I said. Please. Did you learn her name?”

“Name? You said yourself she's just another dead woman. Now you're telling me you're planning on sending flowers?”

“I never said she didn't matter. But what I did say was stupid. And I feel like ripping my tongue out.”

“Her name was Sarah. Sarah Curtis.” Bitsy wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “And don't it scare you? A pretty, smart woman like her? And me with this ape-ugly mug, barely hanging on. What do you think I might do?”

“Bitsy, listen to me. You're feeling ugly … and all alone. But you're not.”

“Yeah, well, if you're figuring on those flowers, you'd better get a wiggle on. Deputy Lloyd cut short our tryst last night over some story about making arrangements to escort her body out of town. Her prick husband refused to have the undertaker fix that poor woman's face. He's sending her home to her family looking like that.” She turned and walked away.

Outside the building, Jodie leaned, clutching her middle. Did Reverend Curtis mean to return Sarah's body to her family the way he might a broken appliance? After all, he was promised a whole woman, not some freak of nature. Jodie bit into her bottom lip and tasted her own blood. She wiped at her lip, and when strength returned to her legs, she walked back onto the floor, taking her place on the line.

Eight hours later, Jodie clocked out, called a tentative good-bye to a still brooding Bitsy, and headed for her truck. The open field between the parking lot and the highway lay blanketed in a heavy frost, and a stiff north wind blew loose gravel across her path. It was a damn poor day for a funeral.

Driving onto the highway, she considered a detour that would take her away from the converted plantation mansion with its huge white columns, serving bereaved whites only, but instead her grief drove her on in its direction. Across from the funeral home, she pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the highway and sat hunched and shivering. The warmth from the clattering heater couldn't touch the cold gripping her heart.

A polished black Cadillac hearse sat at a side door, flanked by four men dressed in dark suits. The men slid a plain wooden box into the hearse, and Jodie had a sickening sense that the box held Sarah's remains. The oldest of the men stepped to the driver's side door, looked back at the three men still standing, and laughed at some shared joke before sliding behind the wheel. He eased the hearse along the gravel driveway and onto the highway without the customary police escort. But there was no need for such; not a single car followed bearing grieving family or friends.

Jodie floored the old truck, sped onto the highway, and wedged the truck into the space between the hearse and the car that had pulled up directly behind it. The driver raised a fist, and she read profanity on his lips. Her careless action forced, if nothing else, the appearance of a slow-moving funeral cortege—one comprised of a jagged line of disgruntled strangers—until Jodie broke rank and turned back.

She stopped the truck in front of the pink trailer and shut down the engine. As heavy silence reclaimed the tiny clearing, she feared the weight of her own despair. She stepped onto the narrow path of trampled star thistles and moved unsteadily toward the single light hanging above the door.

A
t the sound of Jodie's voice, the stray paced back and forth, keeping its customary distance. She lifted her glass in mock salute before putting it to her lips. The cat sat back on its haunches and watched her from the pile of dirty laundry, as though it needed time to make up its mind. Teddy had warned that she needed something steady. Sarah Curtis was everything, but nothing, that Teddy had imagined for her.

“What do you think, cat? Should I call Silas?” If she were to call him, there was nothing she could tell him about Sarah Curtis and her recurring bouts of guilt.

She drained the glass and headed straight into the drunk that promised to blunt her memories and bend her reality into a version she might bear. But first, she'd make that long overdue call.

She squeezed her eyes tight against her dread, counting the long, empty rings. She had started to believe Silas had opened the shop and gone next door to the Flamingo Café, where he would tolerate weak coffee for a chance at flirting with a willing waitress, when he finally answered.

“Hey, Silas, it's me.” Her mouth flooded with words and there was no holding back. “I was damn stupid to leave the way I did. And I'm sorry for not calling back before now. But it was nothing like what you think. And you've got to agree to never again ask me about Roy Dale or why I left. You do, and I'm hanging up for good.” Her outburst left her winded.

The phone line crackled, and she thought about all the wrongs her words would need to heal. And it was too much to expect that time, alone, had done more than scab over the deeper wounds.

“All right, Jodie. If that's what it takes to know your crazy ass is still in this fucked up world.”

“That's good. Real good. I'm glad.” Until her avalanche of tears for Sarah Curtis, Jodie hadn't known how much she'd missed him.

“If I'd known where, I would've called two weeks ago.” His tone carried the full weight of tragedy.

“God, is it Red?”

“No, it's that Miss Ruth passed. Sudden-like. And Maggie's run off.” His voice was barely audible.

Denial pressed so hard on her vocal cords she was speechless.

“Jodie?”

“She wasn't sick.”

“Heart attack—a big one. Took her while she and Maggie sat peacefully on their back porch. No warning … nothing. One minute fine. The next not.”

Jodie remembered—although she had not fully understood at the time—Maggie speaking of her and Miss Ruth's shared moments on their back porch as their sitting with their backs to the world's meanness. Moments when sheer pleasure rose as naturally as cream to the top, she'd chuckled.

“And what do you mean, Maggie ran off?”

“Don't know for sure. It's just that she hasn't come back.” His voice grew weepy, and he cleared his throat. “Mr. Samuel and me followed her home after the funeral and helped her load her boat and gear. “After a day or so I got worried and went looking for her. Found her truck parked where we always cooked. But there was no sign of her.”

“Where's Red? He'd know where to look.”

“He's off on one of his damn whoring trips.” His flash of anger surprised her. He'd always defended Red.

“Silas, Maggie can take care of herself. She knows that river like her own mind.” She sought to quash her own fears as much as his.

Jodie pictured Maggie camped near the ancient bald cypress, her favorite spot on the river. The tree rose forty feet against the sky, its woody, right-angled knees sprouting out of the water, and she'd sworn that if it were not for its knees, the cypress couldn't breathe. The knees were anchors, she'd claimed, and instead of blowing over in the worst winds, it held strong. Jodie now believed that Maggie had meant to make a point about family.

“God, girl, we're all she's got. Why won't she let me help her?”

Jodie had no answer other than
She's Maggie.
Silas couldn't hear that. He needed to believe he could fix whatever she needed. Still, she'd say as much as he could hear.

“Silas, she'll be back when she's ready. And then she'll need you more than ever.”

Jodie hung up the phone, Silas still pleading for her to come home to help look for Maggie, and although she knew neither could fix Maggie's pain, she could not manage as much as
when she comes home, please tell her I love her.

Jodie drank whiskey and slept, woke and drank more, until the whiskey made her too sick to drink. She dragged herself out of bed, hugged the toilet, and puked until she was too weak to stand. She lay curled on the shower floor, her loss so acute she felt as though her mind separated from her lifeless body, and that it wandered in search of her mama, Miss Ruth, everyone she'd loved. She did not care if she drowned.

F
or two weeks, the gossipers had crowded into the break room, never tiring of chewing and regurgitating the smallest morsels surrounding Sarah Curtis's death—so much so that Jodie started taking her supper break sitting on the tailgate of her truck, beneath the glow of a security light.

The sudden crunching of loose gravel from the direction of the side door startled her, and she turned toward the sound. Bitsy walked into the circle of light carrying a covered plate.

“Hey, gal, you got something stuck in your craw that you can't eat with me no more?” Bitsy glared as though prepared to do an about-face should Jodie's response not suit her.

“Naw, I like the clean smell of frost.” She pulled her jacket tighter, the air as cold as it got on average.

“Do believe news of the second coming would go unnoticed by that crowd.” Bitsy took a seat next to Jodie on the tailgate. “The poor woman's dead and in her grave, cold as their hearts. You'd think they'd let up.”

“I hear hate's got a long lifeline.” Jodie wadded the uneaten half of her PB&J in waxed paper and tossed it into the bed of the truck.

Bitsy handed Jodie the slice of cake she'd been holding.

“If you're worried about losing friends among that bunch, you can forget it. Then, my junkyard dog could use a friend. He's ‘bout to get shot for screwing a neighbor's fancy bitch.” She smiled one of her twisted smiles that could leave Jodie confused as to her meaning.

“That's too bad. I end up being liked by most dogs I meet.”

“Speaking of curs, my baby turned seven yesterday. And that asshole daddy of hers didn't as much as call and make up one of his lame excuses.”

“Damn, that kid deserves better. You deserve better.”

“Aw, don't we all.” Her laugh was like a razor cut. “He never claimed her. Tried telling the damn fool I was fifty-one percent sure.”

“That's not exactly what you'd call good odds.” Jodie playfully bumped Bitsy's shoulder.

Bitsy raked a finger through the frosting, making a big show of licking the creamy chocolate icing away. “Maybe I'll try me a man darker than that chocolate smeared on your shocked face.”

“I take it you're tired of living.” Jodie worried that Bitsy was crazy enough to do such a thing. Then, that was no crazier than queer sex with a preacher's wife.

Bitsy jammed her hands between her knees and gazed into the cold darkness beyond the glow of the security light.

“You're fooling about smelling frost, right?”

Jodie shook her head. “Hell no, can't you tell? It's the clean smell covering all the stench in this shitty world.

J
odie stayed away from the Hide and Seek, straight through spring and into early summer. Although she believed Teddy knew more than she let on, Jodie admitted to nothing, not even having known of Sarah Curtis's death. During the long days and weeks, she'd slept restlessly, ate little, shot baskets, and ran the five-mile distance of the dirt road until time to make her shift at the jean factory.

When her physical exertion could no long vanquish her most basic urges, she drove out of the clearing, headed for the one place she felt truly welcome. She backed her truck into the underbrush, respecting Crystal Ann's notion that doing so upped her chances should she take a sudden notion to leave. Shutting down the engine, she pulled the bottle of Jim Beam from beneath the seat and took a slow pull, the warmth of the liquor stoking her determination.

A faint breeze played catch-me-if-you-can among the tops of the tallest pines while sultry air hung at ground-level like a damp dishrag. From somewhere deeper in the woods, the frenzied baying of a pack of hounds charged the upper air currents with a certainty of death. She paused at the edge of the tree cover and stared back in the direction of the empty road that shimmered in the moonlight like a free-floating kite's tail.

She announced herself to the door person, and with her best butch leading, she strolled into the bar. Gabby looked up from fishing beers from the tub of ice.

“Damn, gal. How long has it been?” Gabby pushed a cold Pabst into Jodie's hand, and although she sensed an unfamiliar restraint pass between them, Jodie checked her anxiety.

“Too long, but I'm back. And I've brought along my urgency.” She sat at the bar and took a long pull on the beer, sending bubbles up her nose.

“It's a mite slow, but it's early.” Gabby paused. “Then your type will be along.” The dark skin beneath her right eye quivered. “We get 'em all in here. Sunday school teachers to those working both ways. Reckon we'll be here as long as I grease the right palms.”

Gabby loaded a tray with beers from the tub. “Watch the store? I'm going out back and carve meat for you carnivores.” She walked away, the tray resting on her forearm.

Jodie watched her maneuver her way among tables of jovial women, exchanging cold beers for empties as she made her way to the rear door. Jodie looked for the slightest indication that what she'd just heard wasn't intended as a warning, and that there were no rumors that might connect her to Sarah Curtis. Women who threatened to bring trouble were dealt with swiftly, and not always in ways that were friendly.