It's Not Like I Knew Her (9 page)

Miss Mary's squeals shattered any semblance of balance, giving ground to the certainty of doom. Jodie felt the air rush from her lungs, her words frozen, left unspoken. Yet she made no attempt to conceal the comics. She accepted that only Miss Mary's sudden death, or her own, could forestall the inevitable. She pressed Wonder Woman to her chest and imagined the day she'd find her strength and wrestle the strap away, and she, not Miss Mary, would rule in Red's absence.

Next to her, Hazel curled into a tight ball and whimpered.

Jodie wrapped her arms tightly about herself and held her breath against the certainty of Red's heavy steps crossing the front room, the slamming of the door, the pitch of sand beneath the Dodge's tires as he made his escape.

She stood, her calves pushed up tight against the bed, her thighs straining to flee, but she could not summon the will to resist. Revenge approached: one, two, three—fourteen angry strikes against the splintered floor.

Miss Mary stood in the doorway, her feet spread, her wide girth blocking the room's only escape.

“How dare you disobey me? My word's law in this house.” Her loathing regurgitated from deep within her bloated belly.

Hazel screamed, “No, Mama, please. Daddy .…”

Miss Mary never as much as looked at her daughter. Her wrath was focused solely on Jodie. It was never about the deed, but the bargain Red had struck. The truth of his betrayal burned through Jodie like venom, and every good she'd ever felt for Red Dozier was poisoned.

A cornered, animal-like hissing forced open Miss Mary's hard mouth, and a scream of pure agony escaped. Jodie believed she heard an echo of her own pain—the absence of love suffered each time Red bargained her to Miss Mary's rage. Her full vengeance fell across Jodie's right shoulder, and fire spread along the strap's bloody path, Jodie writhing in pain. Slumping onto the floor, she crouched next to the bed. Her arms shielding her face, she squeezed her eyes shut against her fate. Miss Mary gathered her strength, her unabated fury lashing out again and again. Jodie closed her mind, absenting herself from the pain and humiliation, her psyche transcending the moment.

At first, Jodie did not recognize the voice that called to her, her consciousness returning only in her memory of the strong arms that lifted her. Her mama's laughter comforted her, bidding her return from the enveloping darkness that had swallowed her, and only just now spit her back into full awareness.

Red stood over her, and he glared at Miss Mary, each poised in mortal combat. The old woman's mouth gaped as she sagged back against the doorframe, her arms limp at her sides, and she leveled no resistance as he took the strap from her and wound it around his fist.

“Use this again and I swear to God you'll go early to your grave.” His voice was chilling, his eyes flashing a deeper burning, and Jodie shuddered. Still, she questioned what Red professed to know of God.

“Lie still. I'll get something for those welts.”

For the first time since her arrival in this house, Jodie believed she heard pain in his voice equal to her own. He straightened, stepped past Miss Mary, and Jodie listened for his footsteps until they'd faded. She heard what she thought was water filling the kettle, and maybe she only imagined the scent of sulfur.

Miss Mary's words were barely audible above her raspy breathing. “He'll never own you. I'll see to that. You'll never be more than his wretched whore's bastard.” Her words were eerily calm, but Jodie felt their certainty. Red's flagging will was no match for her vengeful cunning. The beatings might stop, but the hate would stay.

Jodie took the flat envelope, addressed to Red in Aunt Pearl's neat handwriting, from the mailbox on the road and worried what Miss Mary labeled as her “sassiness” had convinced Red to go back on his word. She was wrong to defend her mama against Miss Mary's slander, and he now intended to force her back on Aunt Pearl. Months earlier she would have been grateful, but now things were oddly different. She had Maggie and Miss Ruth, and even Silas, and giving up what was beginning to feel like a make-do family would be hard.

She'd ripped open the letter and read Aunt Pearl's seemingly dry-eyed explanation that county officials intended to relocate the pauper's cemetery where Jewel was buried to make room for the ever-expanding county dump.

It was Maggie and Miss Ruth who drove Jodie to her mama's gravesite. Red had claimed urgent business elsewhere. The crude, hand-drawn map Aunt Pearl included in her letter led them to an overgrown cemetery seventeen miles north of Ava, Alabama.

“Damn his rotten hide straight to hell.” Maggie pulled Red's Dodge to a jerky stop and sat pounding the steering wheel, ignoring Miss Ruth's quiet pleading that “Red's salvation is in God's hands,” and not hers.

Jodie thought about the kind of God Maggie might be, and figured her heaven would be populated by a very different crowd than those of Ginger's mama's stripe.

“Merciful Jesus, Ruth.” Maggie lowered her voice. “It's not like the child doesn't know.” She stared ahead at nothing in particular and then back at Miss Ruth. “Maybe if I didn't always cut the sorry sapsucker so much wiggle room, he'd straighten up and do right.”

“No, Maggie. I understand that you're disappointed in Red and that you hurt for Jodie, but you aren't making this any easier.”

Jodie and Silas sat in the back seat, Silas shaking his head, as though he meant to defend Red, believing Maggie was unfair. But even blind, faithful Silas knew Maggie didn't lie, and deep down he had to know the same could not be said for Red Dozier.

S
ilas rolled the cuffs of his Sunday pants to his knees, and they picked their way through patches of sandspurs, prickly pear, and beggar lice. The worrisome weeds stuck to Jodie's shoestrings and socks, and even to the hem of the new dress Miss Ruth had sewn, insisting Jodie should dress appropriately in honor of her mother. Had Miss Ruth known Jewel, her tone would not have been so confident.

Jewel's grave—an elongated indention in the red clay, marked by a weathered card inside a clear plastic holder fastened to a metal stake—was located at the back corner of the cemetery. While Miss Ruth cried openly for a woman she'd never known, Jodie felt Maggie's heat beside her and heard only the sound of her breathing as she stooped and began snatching weeds from a grave that would soon disappear, as though Jewel Taylor had never as much as drawn a deep breath. Jodie, Miss Ruth, and Silas joined Maggie, and they didn't stop until the gravesite was clean. Jodie wanted the county to know she was no fool. She knew they lied about moving remains. They'd put up new markers all right, but her mama's bones were destined to lie beneath mountains of other people's garbage.

Back in the car, Jodie glanced back at the cemetery, and there was nothing left to do but to pack her grief deep down inside her.

S
unlight crept toward the tidy row of rusted cans filled with blooming pink and red geraniums, and Jodie stared in the direction of the road. But there wasn't a person or vehicle in sight. Maggie was adamant about their being on the river by sunrise, and starting late meant they'd need to fish the deeper pools rather than the shallows. She glanced back at the road, and still no sign of either Silas or Maggie.

Lying her way out of church had been as easy as claiming her habitual Sunday morning bellyaches. Miss Mary's abhorrence at being seen in public with her made Jodie's dishonesty pointless, and she wasn't sure why she kept up her side of the pretense. Miss Mary wasn't saved from the tight-lipped old women, claiming pity for her shameful burden, while whispering “his bastard daughter” behind blue-veined hands.

From the direction of the road, Jodie heard the clicking sound Silas's junk bike made with playing cards clipped to its spokes. She shaded her eyes against the sun and watched his approach. He rode the pedals hard as though the devil chased his tail. He slid to a stop at the gate, his cheeks flaming red, and he puffed like a horny toad.

“Jodie, get down here, right now.”

“What's the big hurry? Can't you see I'm just fine? Sitting here, minding my own business? You could take a lesson.”

“Maggie ain't going to be in a mood to wait. She was up most of the night at Mr. Samuel's, birthing Pokey Dot's litter.”

In the distance, they sighted Maggie's GMC pickup speeding toward them. The battered truck was sixteen years old, but Maggie referred to it as a coming-undone miracle machine with heart. Her proudest possession, a brand new super-powered twenty-five horse Wizard outboard, bounced from the rear of the green bateau in the back. A clutch of fine cane fishing poles whipped like switches from the tailgate. Maggie stopped at the bottom of the lane and lay down on the horn.

She leaned out the window and shouted, “You young'uns get a wiggle on. We're burning good daylight.”

“Told you so. Now come on.” Silas dropped his bike and Jodie sailed off the porch, running hard to overtake him. He was a sprinter and she was built for distance. He faded before reaching the truck.

Jodie slid across the seat and sat next to Maggie.

“Look out for that sack of hot biscuits and ham you're about to set your nasty butt on.” Maggie's bark rarely vanquished the twinkle in her blue eyes.

They spent what was left of the morning fishing the steep banks of the Apalachicola River that formed the western-most edge of land that had once been a part of Maggie's family's ancestral cotton plantation. When they'd caught enough for dinner, Maggie ran the boat onto a sandy beach, and they began to unload what they would need.

“Take this hatchet, boy. Cut lighter wood off that pine stump. Enough to get this grease hot. And while you're about it, try your damnedest not to piss off old grandpappy rattler.”

“Dang, Maggie. You didn't have to say that.” Silas stomped off, watching his bare feet.

“No, I didn't. But now maybe you'll look where you're going and go where you're looking. Jodie, you start in on cleaning fish while I get us set up to cook. Then I'll come help you.”

Silas claimed Maggie's habit of giving orders she got from her army days. But Jodie believed Maggie was born to boss.

The fish were nearing ready when they heard the clatter of a vehicle approaching from the direction of a clearly marked private road. Maggie stepped away from the sizzling pan to stare toward the sound. A flatbed loaded with well drilling equipment pulled into the clearing.

“Damned if it ain't that no-account Samuel.” She waved him over.

He got out of the truck and hobbled toward them. He favored a twisted right foot. Odder than his bum foot were his eyes, set deep into his brown freckled face—eyes that were every bit as blue as Maggie's.

“My nose led me here.” He flashed an easy smile.

“You've never been a slouch at rooting out a ready meal. Take a load off. Just now taking it up.”

“Don't mind if I do. Where'd ya'll fish at? Water's down a mite for backwater fishing.” He removed his wide-brimmed straw hat with the built in green visor strip, and ran a slow hand over his balding head.

“Uh-huh, and on top of that, we got a puny start. Some contrary old hog farmer wouldn't be satisfied unless I hung around and drank bad whiskey while his sow dropped her seventh litter. Never needing help doing any of it.”

“Now ain't that a shame?” His booming laughter echoed across the water and skipped merrily back to them.

Jodie leaned and whispered, “She delivers pigs too?”

Silas replied, “Sure, babies, foals, calves, whenever she's called on.” He spoke with a certain pride as if her status included him.

“Morning, Little Red.” Samuel was the only one who called her that, and although she liked that he did, it always caused her to blush. Maybe he knew of a confession she wasn't privy to.

“Hey, Mr. Samuel.”

When they'd eaten their fill of bluegills, fried crispy-brown, along with hushpuppies and canned beans sweetened with molasses, Mr. Samuel stood and rubbed his belly, his face serious as a gravedigger.

“Mighty proud you kids came along with this old woman. Would've hated sitting down to sardines.”

“I do believe I was the very one who taught you not to eat the worms, but bait the hook for something better.”

He chuckled. “Now that I've raised her hackles, I'll take my leave. Catch me a string before sundown.” He walked away, got into his truck, and drove back in the direction he'd come.

“Sure wish we didn't have to go just yet.” Silas gazed toward the broad river and back at Maggie, a boy's pleading in his tone.

“Who said anything about going? Let's pack up, stow away, and get back on the river. There's fish to be caught.”

Jodie jumped up and began tossing sand on the coals. Their staying meant dinner on the grounds and an afternoon of gospel singing at Miss Ruth's church.

“Yeah, another Sunday afternoon lost to God's selfishness.”

They giggled at Maggie's blasphemy, and Jodie liked the way she swore in their presence. It made her feel grown-up, and Silas always sat a little taller and fished harder. But the day either could out-fish Maggie would be the day Maggie shaved her underarms.

T
he first break in the summer's heat came the third week of October, the day the much-anticipated carnival caravan approached Main Street. Only the arrival of the new football season could equal opening night at the county fair. It was a throwback to the times of bountiful harvests, Red had said, and although there was now little to celebrate, it seemed everyone still welcomed a measure of fun.

The customary fire drill emptied the student body onto the sidewalk to cheer an assortment of thrill rides, sideshows, wagering attractions, and caged animals creeping into town atop flatbeds. Exotic, dark-skinned men and their hard-edged women of the same hue waved from last-breath vehicles towing travel trailers.