It's Not Like I Knew Her (33 page)

Jodie shifted the truck into gear and he stepped back a ways.

“Don't you want to use the phone?” He motioned toward the office.

“You still keep the key behind the kerosene tank?”

He nodded, his confusion obvious.

“I'll come back later, if that's all right.”

She didn't wait for his answer, but pulled the truck onto the street, working through the gears and trying to come up with any explanation for Teddy's urgency—anything that blunted her memory of Teddy's last narrow escape.

J
odie parked the truck behind the shop, shut off the headlights, and ran a zigzag pattern across the lot, avoiding rain puddles, thunder shaking the ground beneath her feet. Reaching the station's overhang, she was drenched, and she stomped her feet, shedding water soaked into her shoes and jeans. She retrieved the key and let herself into the office. It felt no bigger than a Buster Brown shoebox and smelled like an old toolbox. The pay phone hung on a back wall.

She shivered, her gut cramping, and she wished for easier, but there was no preparing for what she might hear. There was only doing it or giving up. She gave the operator the number, dropped six dimes into the slot, and asked to know when three minutes were up.

Teddy answered on the third ring, and she was sucking air as though she'd been running.

“Teddy, what's the urgency? Are you all right?”

“Jodie girl, you're gonna want to come here to Mobile.” Her voice was excited, in the way she'd spoken of Maxine's boy's base hits.

“Mobile? What the hell are you talking about?” Maxine had written that Teddy was renting an extra room from Crystal Ann. Or maybe it was a couch.

“Something good here. Real good.” Teddy gulped, and Jodie figured Teddy was drinking. But she'd never known Teddy to drink heavily. It was too risky for her. “That bat-brained bitch Brenda pulled out of here three days ago. And damned if she didn't steal Crystal Ann's car. She won't make it to Kentucky in that piece of junk. Hope her whoring ass is stranded on some mountain road in the company of half-wits with their dicks out.”

Jodie's throat had seized, and whatever else she'd thought to say stuck in her throat. She eased her butt along the wall and sat on the floor with its decades of ground-in boot filth.

“Jodie, did you hear what I said?”

“I did, and how's this different from all the other times?”

“Trust me. Crystal Ann is done with Brenda.”

“And you know this how?” She'd need to hear it from Crystal Ann, and she'd still hold her suspicions. She wasn't about to set herself up for that kind of emotional tumble.

“Okay, so maybe she does need a bit more time to figure her next move. But that's where you come in.” Teddy took another big swig from whatever she was drinking.

Jodie teetered back and forth, struggling to stay on top of all that pulled her down. She only needed to remember how her time since the morning Crystal Ann drove from the clearing had done little more than drag—empty time. She stayed half-crazy with loneliness and was so horny Maggie had teased she'd likely be blind by the time she left Catawba.

“Jodie, trust me.”

“Go to hell, Teddy.”

Jodie sat, her forehead resting against her forearms She trusted no emotion that made her feel so excruciatingly vulnerable.

T
he silence between Jodie and Red stayed, neither seeming to know how to open a door to the other, and Jodie wasn't surprised when Maggie set about her remedy for what both she and Maggie knew to be much more than a family squabble. Still, she called Silas, and on the following Saturday they gathered for the conciliatory supper Maggie had fussed over.

Silas stepped through the door smelling of his familiar splash of aftershave and wearing pressed jeans and a blue dress shirt with the sleeves turned back two neat turns. He hugged Jodie and followed her into the kitchen. He stepped to the table where Red had stationed himself and took Red's hand in a two-hand grip.

Maggie looked up from chipping ice and smiled. Silas leaned and kissed her on the cheek, and she blushed, popping him a quick one on his behind. He took the ice pick and finished chipping ice for tea.

“All right, we're not strangers, here. Everyone get to the table. Food won't be good cold.”

Her optimism rang a bit hollow, but it was clear Maggie meant to take aim at the awkward silence that hovered over the table. She set about picking bones from the fried catfish on Red's plate, coaxing him to eat the way she might a picky child.

They were well into the meal, a fragile ease displacing their earlier discomfort, when Silas turned to Maggie. “I do believe you've outdone yourself.” His praise was genuine enough, but his tone carried a tinge of some disagreeable matter yet unspoken. He took a deep breath, his features pinched, and still he hesitated.

Jodie laid her fork down and braced for whatever she was about to hear; it wasn't going to be one of Silas's funny stories. Red leaned in, but since the stroke, reading his facial expressions wasn't easy.

“Boy, damned if you ain't wearing me out.”

“Scuttlebutt about town is that William and Hazel have hired that new lawyer friend of Walker Junior's. Something to do with Red needing their help managing his affairs.”

Quick, weighted glances passed between Red and Maggie.

“Then we know Tubby Slatmore favors idle gossip over the dull truth any day of the week,” Silas quickly countered.

“Yeah, but his gossipy mama's right there in the thick of it,” Maggie quipped.

Red's face flashed with color, his spastic hand flinging about, overturning his tea glass. His garbled words spit from his slack mouth.

“‘Damn her rotten heart' is right,” Maggie repeated, coming to her feet. “But hold still, before your rearing brings on another stroke.” She reached for a dishtowel and soaked up the spill. Red's rant made him visibly weaker, and he leaned against Maggie's hip.

Silas fussed with righting the tipped salt shaker and scraping spilled salt into his hand. He seemed confused as to what he should do but then tossed the salt over his shoulder.

Maggie's hard gaze fixed on Silas. “It's not that we don't know the law can go contrary to everything that's right.”

“Aw, come on, Maggie. Why don't we finish this fine meal and leave lawyering to lawyers? It's likely no more than loose talk.”

“Silas, you of all people should know any chance of Red tangling with Judge Walker can't be taken lightly. He'll be on Red like a buzzard on road kill.”

“What the hell are you three not telling me?” Jodie felt they were playing a game of blind man's bluff. She'd watched Silas's anguished face, and was convinced he wouldn't have risked upsetting Red on the strength of gossip alone, but something had backed him off.

Red nodded toward Silas, demanding that he tell what it was they alone shared.

“Hell, Mr. Red. Why stir an old stink?” He looked to Maggie against Red's insistence.

Maggie's chin jutted forward and she, too, pinned Silas to the truth. Cornered, he looked toward the door as if he suddenly remembered a hundred places he'd rather be.

“All right. Clara Lee and me messed around some after she married Walker Junior. But it sure didn't seem to matter to her.”

Now it was Jodie's turn to wish she was someplace other than sitting across the table from the eyes that watched her chest rise and fall, her shock nearly taking her wind.

“Sheriff Walker was in a tight reelection primary, and everything turned to shit when his opponent paid the motel clerk a couple of bills to rat us out.”

Once again he looked to Maggie, but she pressed him for more.

“Walker had Junior rush Clara Lee out of town before she could decide to tell the truth. Then the sonofabitch threw my surprised ass in jail.” He blushed deeply, bowed his head, avoiding eye contact.

“Sonofabitch is right,” Maggie echoed. “And would you believe on charges of kidnapping and rape?”

Jodie gasped. “No, no, how could he?” Had Clara Lee been forced to give a statement accusing Silas? Against all she knew, she still didn't want to believe Clara Lee was capable of such a selfish act.

“You're forgetting Walker is the law.” The sound of Maggie gritting her teeth against such an injustice was audible.

The very thought of Silas as a rapist left a foul taste in Jodie's mouth, and while she knew him to be a habitually unfaithful husband, she was just as certain he could never be a rapist. He'd pressed her for sex after she turned fourteen, but he'd never attempted to force her.

Maggie glanced at Silas, and maybe out of pity she took up the story.

“Walker figured less damage if voters believed his daughter-in-law was raped. Lucky for Silas, Walker's race for reelection heated up, forcing him to bargain dropping charges against Silas if Red agreed to double-cross his opponent. Deliver votes to him instead.

“Red didn't trust Walker. Instead he took Walker's money and double-crossed him. To this day, he holds a fierce grudge.”

Jodie winced.

Red didn't speak, only nodded, conceding his guilt.

A heavier silence engulfed the small kitchen, and William's angry threat that Red had done things and that he had proof resounded in Jodie's head. She could only hope that Red's shrewdness meant he still had leverage: he knew too much dirt on Walker.

Silas helped a visibly weakened Red to his bed while Jodie set about putting leftovers away, and Maggie poured heated water from the kettle into the dishpan and began to wash their dishes.

“God knows, Silas got bad hurt in all that mess. And as much as I love the boy, the truth is what he made it. He's never been one to holster his pistol, and it was bound to catch up to him.” She straightened, turning to face Jodie.

“And for what it's worth, I do believe the Walkers meant to see Silas in prison. The law ignored the fact that she'd checked in a half-hour before Silas. And that it had not been the first such meeting between them.”

“What about Clara Lee in all of this?”

“Don't know if she had a part in framing Silas. But I know firsthand that she got herself knocked up and expelled from the university. Her blubbering mama went to Doc and he flatly refused. Doc limits his work to making some devil's evil go away, claiming life's too hard on bastards of any color born straddling the tracks. Me, I figure, it's the mama's decision whether or not she wants to bring her baby into the cruelty she and it are bound to suffer. Lord knows, Doc and I have had our differences. Now we mostly stay out of each other's way.”

Maggie walked onto the back porch and pitched dishwater into the yard.

Jodie felt Maggie's words in the pit of her stomach, and she leaned on the counter, considering a mama's choice. She wanted to know if Jewel had considered Maggie's kind of help. Since she could never know, she chose to believe that her presence in the world was answer enough.

Maggie walked back through the kitchen door. She took one look at Jodie, gave the dishrag a hard pop, and hung it on the stove handle to dry.

“You're gonna need to get some decent-looking dishrags in this house.”

“I never knew about you and … any of that.”

“Child, you don't want to know any part of what I know. The truth of it has ground my few remaining teeth to the gums. Right along with breaking my old heart.”

They each turned at the sound of Silas coming into the kitchen. He wrapped his arm around Maggie's shoulders, drew her close, and whispered in her ear, and whatever he said caused her blue eyes to water, her haggard face to brighten.

“Guess I'll be moving on. My baby girl expects her daddy home for story time. I'm damned determined she'll not grow up without knowing the pleasure of a few good books.” His demeanor shifted, and he shoved his big, calloused hands deep into his pockets, his body swaying.

“Good for you, son. It ain't like we couldn't use a lot less ignorance around here.” Maggie chuckled, handing Silas a waxed paper–wrapped dish. “See our boy out while I look in on Red.”

Silas stopped on the porch and turned to Jodie. “About that mess with Clara Lee … I never meant for it to hurt you.”

“No, just surprised, I think.” If he worried that she felt betrayed, he had it all wrong. But, why wouldn't he? He deserved the truth, but the thought of losing him terrified her.

“Whatever happened to her at the university messed her up real bad.”

“What about your part in what happened?”

“I've thought about that a lot, and it's pretty much a mystery, right on. Maybe it was a revisit of whatever hit me that night at the fair when we were kids. I guess I still wanted to punish Stuart's privileged ass. Maybe hers too. They had what I wanted—a chance at something better.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

He turned and walked off the porch. His stooped shoulders said all she needed to know about his regrets. She called goodnight, but he had moved beyond the sound of her voice.

Maggie came onto the porch. “I'd like your company in the morning. That is, if you don't have something better to do.” She smiled.

They settled on a six-thirty start, plenty of time to go and get back before Red would want breakfast.

Jodie undressed and got into bed, her back pressed against a pillow, her longing big enough for both her and Maggie. She squeezed her eyes closed; tiny pinpoints of light danced against the backs of her eyelids, and she worked at setting aside her worries for Red and her tangled thoughts of Clara Lee. Come morning, she was to learn Maggie's newest secret, but tonight sleep would be a stranger to her.

J
odie stood at the end of the lane, watching the truck's fast approach. The bald tires slid to a jerky stop twenty feet beyond her. Jodie approached, watching Maggie's hard frown reflected in the side mirror. Maybe Maggie also worried now that she was alone, she might have slipped a cog or two.