It's Not Like I Knew Her (37 page)

“Patty, bring me a clean cup, please.”

The rustle of Clara Lee's clothing and the swishing sound her silk-clad legs made, smoothly gliding one over the other, roared in Jodie's ears, and the familiar flexing of her ankle as she gently swung her right foot was hypnotic.

Jodie glanced in the direction of the departing waitress and worked at pulling herself together, attempting a casual tone. “Has it really been seven years?” She knew right down to the day, but would Clara Lee?

“Time best measured in roads not taken. But yes, it has been. I was away most of the summer, only heard last evening you were back. I hoped I'd see you before I left again.”

“I'm not exactly back. I'm leaving as soon as Red's better.”

“Yes, I understand that he's quite ill. I'm sorry.”

“He was, but he's better now.” Clara Lee wasn't here to talk about Red's illness, but Jodie needed more time to sort her jumbled thoughts. “The day I arrived I saw them. Your twins, I mean. They're fine looking boys.”

“Yes, they are. But I'm sure you've heard, I'm a terrible mother.” There was a resigned sadness about her, the kind that took time to gather, and Jodie understood that a painful price had been extracted from Clara Lee.

The waitress brought a clean cup, poured a round, and looked quizzically at Clara Lee.

“No, thank you, Patty, I'm fine.” When the reluctant girl had moved on, trailing steam from the hot pot of coffee, Clara Lee leaned and said, “I've thought about you often. Where you might have actually gone.” She twisted a loose strand of hair that she now wore shorter. “Are you with someone special?”

Jodie removed the cup from her lips and set it back down, sloshing coffee. She glanced about the café, but it was nearly empty.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry, make you uncomfortable. I apologize.”

“No. I mean, I'm fine. And yes, I am … with someone, you might say. She's smart and pretty. Lives in Mobile, Alabama, but she's coming with me to Dallas. I'm leaving tomorrow.” It wasn't a lie, but a decision she'd only just made.

Clara Lee looked down at her folded hands, but not before Jodie noticed that her eyes flashed a familiar, warm liquid gold.

“I've known for some time that I should have gone with you.”

In the moment, Jodie's body ached with the memory of how it had felt to touch Clara Lee. She needed her not to get so close to where her feelings could get tangled.

“At least tell me we weren't just a couple of misguided girls.”

“No, Clara Lee. We were much more.”

Clara Lee smiled, but it wasn't the one Jodie had cherished. “I'm sorry, but I must go. I promised my boys a rare trip to Panama City Beach. They love the kiddy rides.”

She reached across the table and squeezed Jodie's hand. “Will you remember me?”

“Yes, I will.”

Clara Lee stood, crossed the café, and stepped into the waning heat of an Indian summer.

Jodie signaled the waitress. “What's the damage?”

The waitress answered sixty cents, and Jodie slipped her hand into her pocket for three quarters.

“Gee, thanks. I'm saving for junior college.” She leaned closer and whispered, “I'm going to be a writer someday.” The girl blushed under the weight of what Jodie had known as a Jewel sentiment: don't go wishing for what you can't have. Life's kicks in the teeth hurt less that way.

“That's good.” Jodie stood. “Can't hurt to have a plan.”

She left the café and crossed the vacant lot. It had been a long time coming, but she too had a plan working its way through her brain, its clarity as pure as the brilliant sunlight.

T
he return trip was made in strained silence, and now Red sat, hunched in defeat, Maggie occupying the rocker across from him. Their steady gazes made Jodie prickly, and she wished he'd get on with whatever he'd insisted needed settling. He'd handed Maggie a set of pages bound in a blue cover, titled Last Will and Testament of Charles E. Dozier. When she'd finished reading the document, she came up out of the chair, her round face red with anger.

“I knew all along Hazel had plundered those old records. How many times did I plead with you to put that savings passbook in Silas's safe?”

“Spilt milk,” he muttered.

“Damn you, Red Dozier. That's all you got to say?”

“Hush now, Maggie. If I'd got to that lawyer boy first, I could've turned this thing around.” He rubbed his hand across his grizzly face, the roughness of his whiskers audible in the closeness of the room.

“You're a bigger damn fool than I thought. This was no pool hall brawl you could bleed and get up from. It had the stench of revenge from its onset.”

“Don't you think I knew that?”

“I don't care that it hangs you with a stingy living that'll barely keep you in food and whiskey. Or that when you're pushing up daisies, what money's left, along with this worthless place, goes to Miss Mary. God knows the woman earned every cent.”

“Maggie …,” he pleaded, but Jodie felt his eyes on her.

“Shut the hell up. I ain't had my full say.”

Red nodded, his shoulders slumped.

“Why not leave Jodie that old dog you're so crazy about? Anything at all to have put her name alongside yours. Although why she even cares beats the hell out of me.” Maggie pitched the papers at Red and walked out, the air scorched.

Red lay back on the bed, his hands folded across his chest. “She's just riled. Things will die down and she'll see I ain't holding to this paper.”

He closed his eyes, and maybe his raspy breathing returned to normal, but Jodie didn't wait around to know. Red seemed to have missed Maggie's finer point, but she hadn't.

She'd walked a third of the way to the creek before noticing that Buster followed. He veered off the main path, flushing a covey of quail. The birds lifted on silver wings, ably outdistancing the old dog. While she wished the tiny birds' pursuers were all slow, she was glad that the dog had retained his will to hunt.

After an empty chase, Buster drank his fill at the creek and flopped down next to her, panting. His wet tongue wallowed to one side of his pink mouth, and she stroked his broad head.

Sometime later, she heard footsteps approaching, and Maggie stumbled into the clearing, dropping onto the ground next to her.

“I thought you'd left.”

“I did. Had too. Worried that I might smother him in his sleep. Came back looking for you. Figured I'd find you here.”

“Was he always …?”

“Crooked? Let me tell you a story, and you decide.”

Jodie nodded.

“The summer Red turned a strapping sixteen, he already had a smile to pick life's pocket. He left here, his head full of fanciful notions, and went down south with his mama's no-account kin. He got a job in one of those big Miami Beach hotels, sucking up to rich tourists. He charmed more money out of those fools than he ever knew existed. Came home with his pockets jingling, wearing city duds, and the local girls swarmed him like bees to honeysuckle. He was a sight.” Maggie chuckled. “A time or two he even made me wish I was different.”

“Did he ever go back?”

“Nah, he was already poolhall–wise and rattlesnake-quick. Turned to running bootleg whiskey over on the beaches in a brand new Buick roadster. He left honest work and never looked back. He once joked that what he did was akin to Roosevelt's WPA for rascals.”

“Did he ever try farming this worthless patch of dirt?”

“No, but he liked talking about it. I think it made him think about someday living respectable.”

“About what happened today—whether he ever says it or not, I know he's my daddy. I do think he went into that meeting believing he could turn things his way.”

Maggie sighed. “He bargained everything for the chance to be done with that woman. And finish out his last days here on this godforsaken place.”

From the direction of the house, the long blast of an automobile horn sounded, and Buster set out in a stiff trot. Jodie pulled Maggie to her feet, and they hurried back along the trail. Maggie stopped after a ways, bent forward, her hands resting on her knees, and motioned Jodie on.

Reaching the back stoop, Jodie caught sight of Silas's truck pulling onto the road. Red sat at the kitchen table slurping Rice Krispies. There were two other bowls on the table with spoons placed beside each; a jug of milk and the box of cereal sat in the center of the table.

“Good of you to fix dinner. But we weren't in that big a hurry,” Maggie quipped as she came into the kitchen, panting like a dying fish.

Milk dribbled down Red's chin, but he appeared as smug as if he'd grabbed the good life by the tail.

Maggie shot him a look to kill. “You pathetic old fool.” She turned to leave.

Red pushed up from the table and called, “Maggie, hold up. I'll need a favor.”

“Forget it. I'm not the least bit interested in doing you any favors.”

Red followed her onto the porch, and after a mostly one-sided conversation, Maggie got into her truck and drove away. Red slapped his hand against his leg in what appeared a celebratory shot, and whatever was said between them worked on him like a spring tonic. He scuffed off to bed and slept like a drunken man until time for supper.

J
odie woke after a restless night, dressed, and went into the kitchen to start breakfast. She'd decided to tell Red of her plan to leave over their meal. When he didn't answer her calls, she went to his door.

Buster, sleeping next to Red's empty bed, looked up as if he was surprised to see her and not Red. She worried, since man and dog had taken up their old habit of early morning wanderings in the woods behind the house. He would not have gone without the dog. Nor would Buster have left his side if he'd fallen and lay hurt.

In the distance, Jodie heard the deep roar of Silas's wrecker, and she hurried onto the front porch. Diesel smoke billowed from its stack as Silas drove into the side yard, Maggie and Red following in her truck. Jodie hurried off the steps to the sound of heavy chains slipping along a hoist.

“Morning, Miss Jodie.” Silas dropped two mounted tires onto the ground at the rear of the old Dodge and grabbed two more from the wrecker.

“She's all yours, Jodie,” Red called as he got out of Maggie's truck and shuffled toward her. He stopped and leaned on the Dodge, wheezing, as if a single shot of adrenalin had delivered more juice than his weak body could handle.

“Jesus, Red, I thank you. But I've got hundreds of miles ahead of me. Got to be in Dallas for tryouts on the twenty-second, and that's less than a week.

Red showed no surprise at her decision.

Silas squinted up at her from where he squatted next to the Dodge.

“If it's a long bus ride you favor, or Red working a trade with William, then I'll go on back to the station.”

“Screw any trade. I'd walk first.”

“Okay, so back off. Trust me to work my magic wrench on this old gal. She's a bit neglected, but I'll have her purring like a ruby-red Corvette. First, I got to get her off these blocks and back in high heels. Engine's solid. She needs hoses replaced, radiator flushed, carburetor cleaned, engine serviced, wiper blades, and whatever else I find to do between now and tomorrow morning.” He pushed a tire onto the wheel mount and reached back for the iron. “When I'm done, this old gal will take you any place you point her.”

“All right, but don't get my ass stranded someplace between here and Dallas.” She was going for broke, and this time nothing would stop her.

Red waved off Jodie's help, and with considerable effort, he climbed the porch steps and made his way toward the bedroom.

“He held up good this morning. He's going to be fine.”

It was just like Maggie to say as much. Silas sat back on his heels, lit up a Lucky and asked, “You gals got something like a secret handshake?”

“Shit, Silas, we're not the Eastern Star, you know.”

“No, I don't. And what little I do, I don't like. But for now, I've settled on thinking of you as just plain weird. That way it's not such a stretch.”

“That's handy thinking.” She thought her heart would burst and she believed she better understood Maggie's peculiar love for Red.

“If you two are done with that piece of romance, Jodie may want to get that bird's nest out of the back seat and buff up the hood ornament.” Maggie's voice was tender, her round cheeks flushed.

Silas hooked the Dodge behind the wrecker, tied down its steering wheel, and hauled it away.

“Guess I'm done here.” Maggie turned toward her truck, stopped, and looked back at Jodie. “Hell, in all this commotion I nearly forgot.” Her face broke into a smile. “I'm to tell you that a Crystal Ann called the station wanting to get up with you.”

“You sure it wasn't Teddy who called?” Her distrust of hope bubbled up from her gut, but she felt her heart countering with a new rhythm.

“You heard right.” Maggie shook her head and made a small sound of impatience. “Hell, girl, you can always come home with your tail between your legs, and I'll throw you a party.”

Maggie pulled Jodie to her bosom and held her firmly, as if she intended to imprint the feel of her onto her own skin; her embrace carried the feel of a forever good-bye. The scent of gardenia and the slightest tinge of sweat would forever remind Jodie of Maggie. Had she known how unprepared she was to face the loss of Maggie, she might have reconsidered.

F
rom Red's room, she heard, “That you, Jodie?”

A wedge of sunlight played across the bedcovers, and he pointed her to the rocker. The closeness of the room squeezed like a warm fist.

“Jodie, your mama … Jewel wanted to go off with them band boys in the worst way. Me, I didn't want her to and I told her so.” He swallowed hard. “But the truth was, I had nothing to offer the two of you.”