Palmetto Moon (18 page)

“I already told you, Frank. I want to go slow.”

It’s Saturday night and nearly dark, but the boys are finally asleep. From the lace curtains, Claire watches Vada get out of Tiny Medford’s truck, which isn’t unusual. Claire’s been doing that a lot lately, living through little bits and pieces of Vada’s romance with Frank.

Most of the time, it feels like she’s browsing a store, running her hand over fine fabrics she knows she’ll make into Sunday clothes for someone else and never have herself. It hurts on those days, to see the blush on Vada’s face, the way her eyes light up and her breath quickens when she talks about Frank. But the worst is watching Vada remember Claire’s heart is irreparably broken. She always cuts her stories short, leaving out the most intimate details, because she feels sorry for Claire, making the pill all the more bitter to swallow.

Claire didn’t buy the story Vada told at the supper table a few days ago any more than Miss Mamie did, and she’d bet this and next month’s rent it was a cover for a romantic rendezvous with Frank. Claire lets the lace curtains fall back into place and smiles at her boys draped across each other like latticework on a sweet pie. It’s been a long time since she’s had any news that was good news. Her life has been the same since Bobby was killed, never moving forward, and, thankfully, not moving backward into the darkness that enveloped her after his death. She couldn’t afford that, not with three boys. They saved her from dying of a broken heart, and for that she is grateful.

The front door opens and closes. Claire knows everyone in the house by their footsteps, knows Vada is padding up the stairs in her expensive shoes.

There’s a soft knock at Claire’s door, but she doesn’t answer. Even though she’s only known Vada a few short weeks, she loves her like a sister, because it’s impossible to know Vada Hadley and not love her. Part of Claire wants to fling open the door and squeal and shout that luck has finally nodded Claire’s way. But as good as the news that she and the boys are moving is, she’ll wait until tomorrow, at the breakfast table, to make the announcement, just to keep a bit of something wonderful for herself.

For years, getting out of bed at four thirty in the morning has been automatic. Frank’s eyes would open, his brain would already be ticking off the to-do list of things to get ready for the breakfast crowd. Lots of days, trucks roll through in the middle of the night. Sometimes, there are as many as a dozen parked in the seashell gravel between his house and the diner, their drivers catching a little shut-eye before they eat. On good mornings, Frank takes the coffeepot out there to give them a hit of go-juice to get their morning started, talk about the weather, listen to their stories. But he doesn’t have to open his front door to know there are no trucks in the parking lot, because he was up all night trying to figure out how his life got back to where it was before he met Vada Hadley.

The clock in his body tells him to get the hell up soon or Tiny Medford will be banging on his door to see if he’s dead or brokenhearted. The moment his feet hit the floor, he is back to hating the sameness in his life. He dresses. Using a comb seems like too much effort, so he runs his hands through his hair and sighs like an old man. He passes the mirror without looking at himself, which isn’t unusual. This morning, he can’t. He doesn’t want to see the face of the man who was stupid enough to lose the perfect girl.

The screen door slams behind him as he starts across the parking lot, which needs to be scraped again. The big divots from a gully washer say it rained while he and Vada were gone. It must have been some storm; he bets the creek is high and beautiful. A note sticks out of the screen door that connects the general store and post office. His heart sinks. It’s probably from Vada, thanking him for opening her eyes to the fact that he is a huge asshole.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he recognizes Miss Oda Johnson’s scrawl. Miss Oda lives about two miles past the creek road and is the nicest person Frank has ever known. Except Vada. Miss Oda is one of those people who always passes out compliments, but they’re never phony, and, even to a crusty bastard like Frank, they’re always appreciated.

Dear Frank,

I woke up this Independence Day with your store on my mind. With so many youngins leaving Round O after they’re grown, I am so grateful that you cared enough to stay and keep this place open. I know you wanted to go into the service and the government didn’t have the good sense to take you. But I wanted you to know that you do us a great service by being faithful to our community six days a week. And I wouldn’t worry one bit about Reverend Smudge. Bitsey, the little gal who keeps house for me, told me what he did to you, and I don’t mind telling you it made me grateful that I’m unchurched. Bitsey was so mad at Smudge, she put one of those Gullah voodoo spells on him good and proper. With a dead chicken to boot. So please know that your service to our community is highly appreciated.

With a grateful heart,

Oda Mae Johnson

Frank almost smiles, then shoves the note in his pocket. He goes around back to the kitchen and unlocks the door. The key is jiggling in the lock when he hears a low growl. Ben Ferguson’s bird dog is out by the trash pile, nosing around in the ashes like there’s something there. Frank almost laughs at the sight of him, muscles twitching in excitement, tail so straight, you could use it as a level. “There’s nothing there, Coot. Go on home now.” But the dog claws at the trash, whining with excitement at the prospect of finding a mouse or some poor animal to torment.

“Go on home.” Just as Frank pushes the door open, the dog yanks a long, fat black snake out from the bottom of the pile.

“Damn it, Coot, don’t you kill that thing.” Frank runs and grabs the water hose, but it doesn’t come close to reaching Coot, so he ratchets his thumb over the end and turns it on full blast to try to shoo the dog away. The poor snake is coiled up. Frank’s pretty sure it’s the same one that’s been keeping the field mice and rats away from the diner for over a year now. The snake is shaking the end of his tail, pretending to be a rattler, striking at the dog, but the dog knows the snake’s about as vicious as he is. “Go do your job, Coot, and let the snake do his. Go on now.” The dog looks at Frank for a split second, and Frank blasts him good with the hose. Before Coot can shake the water off, the black racer lives up to his name and slithers under the pump house.

The dog noses around the pile desperately, growling. He follows the scent to the pump house and starts digging. Frank gives him another squirt, and Coot decides to go on about his day, just like Frank.

The biscuits are just out of the oven when Tiny saunters through the door with a sly grin like she’s hung the moon all by herself this morning. “When’s the wedding?”

“Coffee’s ready.”

Her face drops because she knows Frank well enough to know the moon has fallen out of the sky altogether. “Frank, I know you don’t talk about things such as this, so just shut up and listen. I’m real sorry. You’re a good man, and if she can’t see that, I’ll spit in her eye.”

The bell on the front door jangles, and a couple of truckers lumber in. “Hey, y’all.” Tiny puts her waitress face back on. “Coffee?” They nod and settle into the booth toward the back of the restaurant, closest to the store.

Tiny puts the first orders up and Frank gets busy. The kitchen racket and commotion are salve as the diner begins to fill up. Much like Coot, Frank’s body seems to know what to do. Everything is instinctual, moving about, snatching orders off the wheel, barking at Tiny. It feels really good until he looks down at the next ticket. Crab cakes and grits. He shoves the ticket back across the counter at Tiny as she makes a pass to refill the coffee cups.

“No crab cakes.”

She looks at Frank like he just shot the dog out back. “What do you mean no crab cakes? We got the blue crab. I saw it myself in the refrigerator.” She puts the ticket back on the wheel and gives it a defiant whirl. “You’ve lost your mind. I’ve been working here thirty years and there hasn’t been a day gone by that there weren’t any.”

He’s lost much more than his mind. “I said no crab cakes, damn it.”

“Today? Or ever?” Her hands are on her hips, her jaw jutted out. If she had a butcher knife in her hand, she’d be dangerous. Hell, she might be dangerous without one, but Frank refuses to answer her.

She hustles back to the offending customer, a stranger who won’t know that the world has ended, for Frank anyway. He’ll just think the diner is out of blue crab. Tiny tells him his coffee is on the house. “We got salmon croquettes. The sausage is real good, and the bacon is smoked out back twice a year with oak and hickory.”

Frank nods as Tiny puts the order back on the wheel with a good hard look that says he’d better snap out of this right now. “Special with grits.” He shoves a plate of liver pudding and grits through the window at Tiny and stops for just a second. The look on her face says she’s about to light into him to make him change things back the way they were, and he’d give anything if he could.

There’s enough diner noise to cover what he has to say. “Just shut the hell up, Tiny, and let me be.” He means for the words to come out gruff, but they sound more like a prayer.

“Do all you can, shug, and let the rough end drag.” She nods at him, gets a piece of paper off of the tablet she keeps beside the register, and makes a sign that she scotch-tapes to the outside of the screen door.
NO CRAB CAKES
.

She still looks as bowed up as a Halloween cat. It’s clear she’s demanding Frank get himself right again, and soon. He nods at her and cracks a pair of eggs, without breaking the yolks. Most everybody in the diner is a stranger. The regulars have seen the sign on the door and turned around and gone home. But it’s a good crowd, so good Frank has to bake biscuits twice.

Frank plops a half dozen sausage patties on the griddle and nods at Hank Bodette as he makes his way to the lunch counter. The old man’s steps are small, like he’s afraid to move any faster, for fear his brittle body will turn to dust. Eventually, he gets to the counter and shoves his mug Tiny’s way for free coffee. “With the post office closed for the holiday last week, there’ll be a fair amount of mail today. Reckon I’ll be right busy.” Hank blushes when Tiny smiles at him. “You’re looking mighty pretty today, young lady.”

Frank laughs out loud at the idea of anybody calling Tiny Medford young. Her head snaps around at him, and he laughs again because Hank has actually made her blush.

“Thanks, handsome,” she says to Hank. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Hank shuffles back to the store with his coffee and the compliment he was fishing for.

Just after ten, the last customers leave the diner, and Frank wants to go with them. Tiny has wiped down the lunch counter a million times, biding her time until they are alone, with the exception of Hank, who can’t hear them from all the way in the back of the store. The parking lot is empty. She throws the slop towel on the counter and wheels around. “Franklin James Darling, you are the best man I know. Hell, that I’ve ever known—”

“I’m not talking about this to you or to anybody, Tiny. Besides, there’s no point in beating a dead horse.”

She puts her hand on his shoulder. “But it can’t hurt, either. I haven’t seen you this low since—” He was rejected by every possible branch of the military. “What happened, Frank?”

He turns his back, refusing to answer her. He digs the scraper across the griddle until it glows with a dull black sheen. If Coot isn’t still out by the trash pile, Frank will walk through the peanut patch behind the diner until he gets to the woods and leave the scraps for Coot there. The dog will find them eventually, or he’ll find the other animals that do. Maybe they’ll keep Coot busy, so he won’t bother the snake. Makes more sense than calling Ben Ferguson; he won’t keep that dog penned up like he ought to.

Setting out across the field, the slop bucket seems heavier than usual, but Frank knows it’s not. His good sense tells him this probably won’t work, that it’s an awful lot of trouble to go to, to save a black snake. Maybe. But even a snake deserves some peace.