Pie Town (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

T
rina folded her clothes and stuffed them in a duffel bag she’d gotten from Hector, the dishwasher at the diner. She sat down on the sofa, pulled off her shoes, and rubbed her swollen feet. She had just returned from work, a lunch shift on a Saturday, and she was tired. Her ride, Frank Twinhorse, was driving down to Texas to go to his son Raymond’s boot camp graduation ceremony, and she knew that he would be there to pick her up in a couple of hours.

Trina glanced around her apartment, still deciding what she was taking and what she was leaving. In her few months living there, she had accumulated quite a few things, and she was having a difficult time letting some of her stuff go. It wasn’t like her to be sentimental about pictures and knickknacks, coffee mugs and books, but as she glanced around she realized that she had started to make herself a home there in that garage apartment. Noticing the way she had decorated, she was surprised to realize that she had built a little nest for herself.

Since leaving home at sixteen, Trina had never been one to stay too long in a place, had never attached herself to a house, so feeling this way about an apartment—a couple of rooms and the things she had bought at yard sales and thrift shops—was not anything she had ever really experienced before. It never dawned on her that she had made a home for herself in Pie Town and that she would feel a little sad to leave it.

The truth was that Trina didn’t usually make herself at home in the places she stayed, but she was also usually not one ever to be run off. When she was six and all the other children ganged up against her one afternoon at the playground, claiming she was half-breed, part Indian and part white trash, unfit to come near them, she had simply pushed them aside and taken her place on the swing set and refused to leave. They all stood around her, boys and girls, yelling at her, spitting on her, throwing clods of dirt, but she was unflappable, keeping them at bay because she kept swinging, higher and higher, threatening anyone to come too close or they’d be pummeled by her feet, up and back, up and back. One boy tried to catch the swing as she pressed past him, but when she noticed what he was doing, she kicked backward hard and fast, catching him in the throat and knocking him down. And even then, even with the other kids saying she had killed Ricky Daughtry, she kept swinging. They rolled the boy away from her, and he eventually caught his breath and got up. Finally, Ricky leading the pack, they all walked off, leaving her alone, leaving her to her swing and her resolve never to be pushed away from a place she had chosen to be.

Over and over that kind of thing would happen to Trina. Classmates, especially the girls, teachers, coaches, pastors, parents, every season there was somebody telling her she didn’t belong somewhere. And she refused to bow down or cower like a dog with its tail stuck between its legs and leave. It wasn’t pride or some desire to be included that taught her to stand her ground; she usually left those unwelcoming groups eventually. It was something else, something her mother had passed along to her daughter before losing herself to the bottle and the addiction she wrapped herself in.

It was some notion that Trina learned before she even knew she was learning survival skills. It was the instinct she was given that she was always going to have to fight, going to have to make a place for herself. She knew before she could walk and talk that her life was going to be a battle, and she never entered a place, joined a gathering, walked into a classroom, or ran onto a soccer field expecting to be received. So that when she was bullied or rejected, she didn’t run off and pout or get her feelings hurt, she just assumed that was the price for being a part of a group. She accepted that bad behavior and unwelcoming gestures were just a part of the initiation rites of any party or company. She wasn’t turned off or turned away by how the other kids acted toward her. So, while others called her obstinate or mulish, she just thought she was playing by the rules that somebody put in place long before she had anything to say about it, and the only time she was ever surprised or taken aback was when she was accepted, when she was welcomed.

Trina had built her life on a set of beliefs that said she was different but deserving, social but wary, friendly but decidedly not in need of friends. She had made her way through childhood and adolescence, middle school and a year of high school, Parkway Baptist Assembly and two Presbyterian churches, parties, Girl Scouts, soccer teams, after-school activities, and even a stint on student council—after being told she would have to be elected and ultimately she was—fighting to be included, refusing to be pushed out. And she stayed counted as a member in good standing of those groups until she was bored or restless.

She left when the others had given up trying to bully her or dismiss her or overlook her. It was only when she had defeated their hostility and won some kind of acceptance, though always with a measure of resistance, that she decided to quit, to walk away and leave. Trina prided herself on never, ever being told when to leave. Until now. Until Pie Town, this place she thought had received her, this place she had thought she would call home.

She glanced over at the small table she had covered with a brightly colored tablecloth. Bea had given it to her when Trina commented on how much she liked it. It was a sample for the diner, one that Bea had not chosen. So instead of packaging it up and mailing it back to the restaurant supply store, she gave it to Trina. And Trina, never having owned a tablecloth, never having had her own table, washed it with dish soap and made sure it was dry before spreading it over the old table in the apartment, then added a small vase of flowers and a set of salt and pepper shakers. She loved that table with its bright colors dancing across the top. She got up from the sofa and sat down at the table, smoothing down the cloth and following the floral design with her finger, a gesture of good-bye.

She wasn’t sure if it was being pregnant that had somehow made her sentimental about her decorations, a tablecloth and knickknacks, and if it was also the reason she had become sensitive for the first time to how she was being treated. She didn’t know if she was already experiencing some kind of maternal drive to protect somebody else and create a homelike atmosphere, or if she was just tired of not being received.

Maybe, she thought, having finally experienced friendship in her life, the real sense of family she enjoyed in Amarillo with Dusty and Jolene and Lester, she was spoiled now, needy in some way she had never known. Once she got a taste of full acceptance, genuine love, sincere hospitality, and a place she looked forward to coming to after a day’s work, maybe it had broken her, forced a crack in that hard thick wall around her heart. She wasn’t sure where the feeling came from or how it happened, but Pie Town had hurt her.

Trina got up from the table and removed the salt and pepper shakers, setting them on the back of the stove, pulled off the tablecloth, and folded it, having decided that she would find room for it in her duffel bag. She laid it on the table and looked around at the other stuff she wanted to take with her. She walked over to the three built-in shelves by the old television that was in the apartment when she arrived. She picked up the picture of her with Alex at his birthday party, but took it out of the small frame she had bought from the thrift store in Quemado when she went shopping with Malene. She took the tiny ceramic horse Hector had brought her from Phoenix, a thank-you gift for working his shifts, wrapped it in a piece of newspaper, and placed it in a zippered compartment of the bag. She removed the picture of the Rio Grande River that Roger had brought her from his house to hang on the empty west wall and then put it back, realizing she would have no way to carry it.

She flipped through the pages of a few books, old pocket-size Tony Hillerman mysteries she had been reading, a Bible that, like the television, had been there when she moved in, a phone book, and was returning the last paperback to the shelf when a piece of paper slipped out and fell to her feet. She picked it up and walked back to the sofa. As soon as she saw it she realized what it was. That piece of paper had been the final push for her to get out of town.

The day she found the paper stuck in the screen door had not been an unusual day. She was helping Fred and Bea clean the diner, working a few hours after the lunch shift, so that they would pass the upcoming state inspection. Hector and Francine had gone home. Even though more than a few customers had asked them about their newest employee and what role she had played in the fire at the church, and even though Francine had complained that a pregnant waitress got better tips than an old barren one, Fred and Bea had not asked Trina about her involvement in the fire, nor had they mentioned her pregnancy. They had participated in the whispers behind her back, made their own speculations about what she was doing at the church late at night and who the father was, but they had primarily stayed out of the town gossip. In fact, they had given Trina more hours of work, not because they could afford her and needed the extra help, but because they felt sorry for the young woman they had come to like.

Trina had hardly noticed the harassment from the folks in Pie Town. She didn’t even flinch when Bernie brought up the fact that he had seen her in the field the night of the fire and asked her in front of more than a few people what she was doing out there. She had answered him honestly and without hesitation. “I went to the church to pray,” she had replied loud enough for everyone to hear. “The last time I heard, that was not a crime. And when I found that the church doors were locked, I prayed in the field, talked to God right out in the moonlight. He seemed okay with that, even if you aren’t.” And then she had taken his empty dishes from the table in front of him, dropped them in the container she was using to bus the tables, smiled, and walked back to the kitchen.

She had confronted a group of high school kids sitting at the counter one afternoon. They had stopped at the diner for sodas and ice cream but then couldn’t let an opportunity to harass the new girl pass them by. Two of them were friends with Rob’s girlfriend Katie; Trina had already run into them once downtown and endured their attacks. One of the girls, plump and angry, pushed her ice cream across the counter back to Trina, complaining that she didn’t want her sundae made by a pregnant fire-starter. The other girls had giggled, hiding their faces behind their hands, and Trina, standing behind the counter directly in front of the girl, took the sundae and ate it herself. Then she patted her belly and said, “It might be a good thing for you to lay off the ice cream. Otherwise people might start to think you’re in the same boat as me.”

That had made the girl so mad that she got up and left her friends sitting there, face-to-face with Trina and without nearly the same amount of bravado and meanness. They paid their bill and left.

Trina had found the boxes of matches on her landing, told Malene about that, and had even caught a couple of teenagers planning to leave a can of gasoline at her front door. She had heard them creep up the steps, and she opened the door as soon as she knew they were there. One of them jumped off the landing, and the other slipped and fell, tumbling down the stairs and taking quite a beating. Even though all of these incidents had troubled Trina a bit, it was that piece of paper, finding it stuck inside her door, watching the young woman she had never seen before walking down the street putting fliers in all the doors of all the houses around her, that was the final straw.

Trina opened it and read:

She folded the paper and held it.

When she found it and read it the first time, she hadn’t understood what it meant. She thought that maybe it was some kind of community-organizing prompt. She thought maybe somebody was hoping to have a church service. She even considered that Father George was trying to rally the town for Mass. But then she remembered that the priest was leaving town, and when she asked Fred and Bea about the flier and they explained that they hadn’t heard who was responsible, only that everyone had gotten one, Trina suddenly understood that this was her demise. The people of Pie Town were finally being organized to bring her down. It was a lynching party, she was sure of it. And even though she didn’t know who the woman was leaving the fliers, gathering the townsfolk together, Trina figured she was some messenger from the Catholic church, some member of Rob Chavez’s family, or some relative of his girlfriend. Trina didn’t really know who was behind this idea to run her out or have her arrested or cause her some harm, but she knew that it was about to happen and that the people of Pie Town would easily turn into a mob and come for her.

Trina was not so much concerned for herself, since she knew what she was capable of handling. But she was concerned for Roger, the sheriff who had given her a place to stay and never taken a rent check from her, who had stood up for her after the fire, telling people she was not responsible and to leave her alone. She was concerned for Fred and Bea, the couple who had given her work and not bothered her about her pregnancy and who had already experienced a decline in business since the fire. She was concerned about Malene and Alex and that the townspeople might distance themselves from them when they needed their friends the most. And she was concerned about the baby. She didn’t know how she would be received in Amarillo—she hadn’t been able to contact Jolene or the others—but she thought it couldn’t be worse than what she was facing in Pie Town. So Trina had quit her job at the diner and written two letters she planned to give to Roger and Alex. She was leaving, pushed out, bullied, forced to exit before she was ready.

She put the paper in her duffel bag, a sort of sick memento to remind her not to get attached to another new town, and wiped her eyes. She was trying to zip up the top of the bag when she heard the knock on the door.