Jilted (5 page)

Strangely enough, Clyde liked his job. He stood alone in the kitchen of the Dairy Queen, stirring a vat of orange-brown chili. His responsibilities were mundane and predictable, mirroring his life. Troy had been urging him to apply for a wind-tech position, but honestly, Clyde wasn't interested in risking his life for the betterment of the community. And just this morning, Lynda had seemed dead set against the notion. Not that he had talked to her about it. Maybe Troy's wife had let the cat out of the bag, or maybe Lynda had read his mind. Either scenario was believable.

As he finished an order of chili dogs and set it on a red plastic tray, he saw Lynda through the front windows getting out of her car. He wiped a drip of chili from his work surface, but instead of starting the next order, he watched her for a second. A rain shower had left water in every pothole in the parking lot, and as she sidestepped and hopped, her long hair blew across her face. Lord, she was pretty. And tough. And aloof.

And fragile.

When she entered the restaurant, she gave a curt greeting to the front-end workers, then came around the counter to lean against the door of the walk-in freezer. “What time you get off?”

“Twenty minutes.” He picked up a knife to chop onions, but before he made a cut, he pulled a wooden match from the pocket of his apron and stuck it between his teeth. He had read once that the chemicals in the match head kept the onion from burning your eyes. He figured Lynda would make fun of him, or at least ask him about it, but she only stared at the back of the ice-cream machine and rubbed her lips against each other. Something was up.

“Ruthie wants to make me a grandmother.” She laughed, but there was no trace of humor in her eyes, and Clyde knew something else was wrong. Lynda may not have been keen on being a grandmother, but he had seen her with Nathan enough times to know that she wasn't completely against it. “A granny,” she mumbled.

A soft ache nudged Clyde's stomach, and he slowly lifted his head, not wanting her to notice he was watching her. “You don't say.”

When she nodded, her hair shifted across her shoulders. She had changed clothes since this morning at the bookstore, and now she wore old shorts and a tank top with her usual black Converse sneakers, looking more like a teenager than a granny. Clyde went back to slicing.

“And Ansel's dying.” Her voice quavered, and the rattle in her throat, in her confidence, in her heart made Clyde's hands shake.

Lynda's parents had died in an auto accident when she was fourteen, so Ansel was the closest thing she had to a daddy. If he died, it would be one more person abandoning her. Clyde swiped the diced onions into a plastic bin, still gripping the knife. He wanted to stab something, but he forced himself to calm down. “That right?”

“He's got some kind of advanced cancer.” She held her hands tightly at her waist, one palm gripping the opposite thumb. “Velma said he might not live six months.”

Clyde wanted to go to her, unclench her hands, and give her a hug. But touching wasn't something they did. “That's not long.”

“Nathan won't even remember him,” she snapped.

Clyde pictured Ansel sitting in his recliner holding newborn Nathan in one arm and the remote control in the opposite hand. Now that the baby was older, Nathan would cruise around the recliner, jabbering nonstop, and Ansel would shoot the breeze as though Nathan were one of his buddies down at the feed store.

“Fawn has pictures.” It was a silly thing to say. He desperately wanted to make things bearable for her, but what could he do? Lynda would never stand for it if he walked over there and …
what?
… let her cry on his shoulder?

She was too stiff and independent for that.

He blinked hard. Actually Lynda was as needy as Nathan had been when Fawn brought him home from the hospital. As needy as Dodd and Ruthie's baby would be. But Lynda didn't need
him
.

“Velma said she'll take care of Ansel at the house for a while, but pretty soon he won't be able to get around, and something else will have to happen.” Lynda's eyes bored into Clyde's for a count of five, and then she looked away, this time to the back door leading out to the parking lot.

Probably she wanted to run out that door, to escape the unpleasant details.
Something else would have to happen.
Did she mean he would be in a nursing home? “Could be a while,” he said.

“Yeah.” She took a few steps to stand in front of the corkboard by the door. It was covered with announcements and old Dairy Queen sales pages. She had her back to him, with her head tilted to the side as she read a crooked note, but then she froze. Not moving, probably not reading, maybe not breathing.

“Velma will get through it.” His statement wasn't enough. It wasn't even what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that
she
would get through it, that she could survive this just as she survived everything else, that this didn't have to set her back. He wanted to remind her to keep living. He wanted to walk up behind her, wrap his arms around her, and shelter her from everything life might hurl her way.

“Yep, Velma's a trooper,” Lynda mumbled.

An order came back, and Clyde tossed two chicken-fried steaks in oil. Lynda still hadn't moved.

He shouldn't do it. Probably she wouldn't want him to, but he stepped toward the bulletin board and paused for a second as he stood behind her. She was so short he felt like an ogre about to pet a hummingbird, so instead of touching her, he carefully bent at the waist and tilted his head to gaze at her cheek.

Her eyes were closed, and her lips were pressed into a tight line. She was holding herself together, but barely.

Clyde laid his palm on her shoulder, afraid his touch might crumble her concentration, but she only inhaled, then exhaled, then opened her eyes.

Slowly she turned her head to peer at him, first at his hand on her shoulder, then into his eyes, and in one fluid movement, she spun on her heel and buried her face in his chest.

Clyde straightened quickly, then held his breath. His hands were on each of her shoulders, and he squeezed slightly, not knowing if he should hug her outright. Her arms were still crossed over her chest, and as she leaned into him, he could feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt. She didn't seem to be crying.

He lifted one hand to touch the top of her head, but she took a half step back and wiped her nose. “I'm all right.” Her words tumbled over each other. “Sorry to get all emotional. I'm just fed up with things happening to me. Or I guess this isn't really happening to me. It's happening to Ansel. And to Velma. And … Nathan and everybody.”

“I reckon you can claim it, too, Lyn.”

Turning away from him, she stepped to the back door, causing a wave of regret to wash over Clyde, as if he held a lottery ticket that was one digit short of the jackpot.

She tilted her head toward the parking lot. “I'll wait for you out here.”

When she pulled the metal door open, a flash of afternoon sun shot into the kitchen, and Clyde squinted, but just as quickly, the door closed behind her, leaving him blinded from the brightness and alone with his thoughts.

He fled back to his vat of hot oil and removed the well-done steaks, trying to figure out what had just happened. His heart ached for Ansel's family like it hadn't ached since his grandpappy died, but in spite of the gloom of Lynda's news, a tiny glimmer of hope cast a ray of sunshine in the darkness. Because Lynda was waiting for him in the parking lot.

“Want to go see the windmills, Lyn?”

Lyn.

Sometime over the past two years, Clyde had started calling me that, but sometime over the past two days, I had decided I didn't mind. “Where's your car?” I asked.

“Broke down again. Can I drive yours?”

The question seemed bold, but I was tired. “Sure.” The two of us settled into my hatchback and rode silently through town, past the city-limit sign and twenty miles down Highway 84. He took me farther than I had come on Thursday—almost to Roscoe—and as the terrain opened up into endless cotton fields, my mind became less cluttered.

When he pulled to the side of the road, my head rested against the seat, and I let my gaze wander along the edge of the Caprock. I inhaled deeply, and when the breath released from my lungs, a tiny bit of my tension relaxed. “Not everybody has an addiction to wind turbines,” I said.

“There's worse things to be hooked on, believe me.”

I twisted my neck to look at him. “Do you think there's a twelve-step program?”

“If there is, you're somewhere around number seven.”

“You sound like Ruth Ann.”

“She's a good girl.”

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I can't believe she wants to be a momma.”

The windmills rotated in slow motion, mocking my heart, which spun as frantically as a child's pinwheel. Maybe my sanity would be torn to shreds like a plastic-and-foil toy thrashed by the gusts.

“It was bound to happen.”

Irritation blossomed like a flowering thistle, but snapping at Clyde wouldn't change Ruthie. “I wouldn't mind her having a baby if it didn't mean I had to be a grandmother.”

“I'm a grandpappy.” Clyde's enormous frame shrugged as though he were trying to make himself look smaller than he was. “Is that bad?”

“No.” I said the word too forcefully but didn't back down. “It's not against the rules for men to get old and gray and wrinkled.” I yanked the rearview mirror around so I could look at my reflection. “Think how many movies have a man in his sixties courting a woman in her twenties. You never see it the other way round. Ever.”

“You're not sixty.”

“I might as well be.”

“You want to be with a kid?” His eyebrows bounced playfully, but I didn't feel the humor.

I popped open the door and climbed out of the car. Even though I had no reason to be upset with him, anger had become a familiar blanket I habitually wrapped myself in. I bundled my hair and held it at one shoulder to keep the wind from slapping it against my face. I stared at the windmills traveling across the land and noticed a frozen turbine unaffected by the currents. A slight movement at the top caused me to squint and refocus, barely able to make out two men working high in the air, two gray dots on the head of a needle.

After a few minutes, Clyde appeared quietly beside me, leaning against the car with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I'm not mad at you.” I pouted the half apology. “I'm mad at Ansel.” Even though it wasn't Ansel's fault the cancer was taking him, any more than it was Ruthie's fault I was getting older.

Clyde nodded but said nothing. There was nothing to say to such an absurd notion.

Yet still I wanted to break something.

“Let's walk.” Clyde pushed himself away from the car and stepped to the front bumper. When I didn't follow him, he started down the highway without me.

After a few seconds of indignation, I caught up and matched his turtle pace.

“I'll keep it slow,” he drawled, “since you're so much older than me.”

When I swatted his shoulder, my hand stung. “I'm only a few months older. Besides, you're the one who's a grandparent.”

He glanced at me, and his lip curled. “Your hand okay?”

“If your muscles weren't so dang hard, it would be fine.”

“Can't be helped. My doctor has me drinking Ensure.”

My sour mood dissolved amid his light banter, and I laughed softly before my humor died. “Ansel drinks Ensure. A lot of good it did him.”

Two cars sped past, and we moved closer to the muddy ditch, walking half on, half off the pavement. We continued in silence while the sun slid behind the Caprock and the turbines transformed into silhouettes against the orange-gold sky. In another hour, they would be hidden by darkness, yet even in the thickness of night, they would continue their endless toil. Suddenly I was weary. I was as small and inadequate and overwhelmed as a child, and I felt myself yearning to hold Clyde's hand, remembering a day when I was tiny, walking through the pasture with my daddy on our way to Picnic Hollow. His palms were large, and as was our habit, I wrapped my chubby fist around his index finger, holding on tightly as I tripped along beside him. I felt secure that day, knowing he would protect me from varmints and cacti and whatever else we came up against in the pasture.

Clyde cleared his throat softly. “Ansel doesn't want to leave.”

“I know.” I didn't have to ask what he meant. It was no secret I hadn't adjusted to Hoby's exit very gracefully.

As our shoes shuffled across the gravel on the side of Highway 84, I realized Clyde's strength felt safe, and I toyed with the idea of slipping my hand in his. But that was impossible. My memories wouldn't allow me to release the shadows from the past. The doubts.

“I was just thinking about Picnic Hollow,” I said. “Remember when we used to go there back in high school?”

“I forgot about that place. Think it's still there?” His gaze slid across the horizon, where somewhere in the distance, a tiny bluff, covered with carvings from past generations, lay nestled between crags and boulders.

Another car zoomed past us as I snickered. “Where else would it be?”

“Could be underwater.” He frowned. “I ain't been out there since they built the lake.”

“I didn't think about that.” I shut my mouth then, figuring I had said enough for a while, and I followed Clyde's gaze, wondering if Picnic Hollow had been relocated to the bottom of Lake Alan Henry.

That would've been a shame. My family had gone there many times when I was young, hiking through the ravines and down the riverbed, across to the sandstone cavity, whose walls were weathered smooth. Generations of people had hiked there with picnic lunches, spent the day in the cool shadows, and carved their names into the soft rock before making the slow trek home.

Back in the day, I had allowed a boyfriend or two to take me there. Clyde and I had even been there at the same time once, though I had been with Neil, and he had been with Susan.

Clyde stopped walking. “Neil acted strange yesterday.”

So Clyde was thinking about that double date, too. “How so?”

“He seemed … antsy.”

I didn't answer.

The words
Neil
and
antsy
didn't belong in the same sentence, and I certainly didn't care why Clyde had perceived him to be nervous. I had enough worries without adding
antsy Neil
to them.

Clyde started walking again, even slower. “You think the high school kids still go out there after the homecoming game?”

“Ruth Ann never mentioned it when she was in school. Neither did JohnScott.” A short sigh cut from my throat. “It's on private property.”

He was silent for a while, and when he answered, he sounded hesitant, almost as if he were asking a question. “We should go look for it sometime.”

I crossed my arms to protect myself from whatever he might be insinuating, but when peace settled across my shoulders, I dropped my hands back to my sides. “Maybe.”

The low rumble of a car coming to a slow stop beside us caused my mood to collapse like a wad of tinfoil.

It was the blue- and gray-haired sisters.

“You having car trouble, Lynda?” Blue rode in the passenger seat and leaned her head out the window, but she was so small, her bluish hair touched the door lock.

I bent to look in at them. “Just getting a little exercise.”

Gray braced one hand on the seat so she could lean across and scowl at Clyde, but her skin smoothed when she shifted her gaze to me. “You sure everything's all right, hon?”

Blue didn't wait for me to answer her sister's question. “What you doing exercising on the highway?”

“Sounds suspicious to me.” Gray muttered the words, but they were loud enough that Clyde and I could easily hear them.

“Actually, we came out here to look at the windmills.” I fluttered my hand, indicating the army surrounding us, but the two women only stared at me.

Gray's eyes scrunched until they were nothing more than a tangle of wrinkles. “Why would you do
that
? Those things are eyesores.”

“It's peaceful out here.” Clyde shifted his weight, and his boot ground a pebble into the asphalt.

Both women startled when he spoke, and Gray's foot slipped off the brake, causing the car to jerk forward before she caught herself.

He bobbed his head politely. “We'll see you ladies back in town, I'm sure.”

When he turned his back and continued strolling down the highway, I followed him. “Thanks for stopping to check,” I called over my shoulder.

As the sisters' car eased away from us, the passenger window slowly slid up again, and my worries cranked up from the pit of my stomach to my throat. “I can't believe Blue and Gray saw us together.”

Clyde glanced down as though he might find his clothes covered with soot.

“I mean, I don't mind walking with you …” Or maybe I did. I scrambled to finish my explanation. “They just tend to blow things out of proportion.”

He squinted at the taillights fifty yards down the road. “You call them Blue and Gray?”

“Ruth Ann does. She can never remember their names, and neither can I.”

“Hmm.” Clyde's face was expressionless. “I don't have a problem remembering their names. The older one—Gray as you call her—her name is Algerita. Algerita Parker. And the younger one …” He chuckled. “You know what I mean. Younger than Algerita, but not young. Her name is O'Della.”

“No wonder I can never remember.”

“Tricky ones, for sure.”

The taillights shrunk to tiny red dots. “How is it that you know their names? Do you talk to them?”

“Can't say I've ever talked to them—until today.” He shrugged, looking smaller than normal once again. “But they talk about me so much, they're on my mind pretty often.”

I stared at the spot where the Parker sisters' lights had disappeared, and the gentle giants on either side of the highway no longer comforted me. I stopped walking, and when Clyde looked back at me, I tilted my head toward the hatchback.

His eyes turned to slits. “You're not going to hide in your house.”

“It's tempting.”

“Lyn, you don't know what they're going to tell people.”

My eyes blinked slowly, and in the momentary blackness, I felt the all-too-familiar dread of truth. “It doesn't matter, Clyde. They saw us together, and they'll make up the rest.”