The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (9 page)

I have mentioned that my mother was a realtor.  Although she sold the business soon after she moved out to the farm, she had kept a wooden filing cabinet full of the records of her old clients.  All those papers and file folders were scattered on the floor.  I straightened her mattress, made up her bed, and sat down with a large plastic garbage bag.  I looked carefully at each paper and each folder I picked up.  It was difficult sometimes to tell whether the papers had to do with property she owned or property she had sold either to or for someone else in her professional capacity.  And, of course, there were other papers having to do with her taxes, her horses, and other things in her personal life.  It took a couple of hours, four cups of coffee and another Vicodin before I had sorted them out into several piles.  The ones dealing strictly with her realty records went into the trash bag.  The others I would have to go through more carefully later.  Luckily, Cindy (there—I had to refer to her again, and this time it wasn’t so difficult) was very meticulous and very neat.  There was a folder for every piece of paper in the room, which would make it quicker to refile the ones I didn’t toss in the trash.

The pile that interested me most was the one that contained papers about Cindy’s horses and competition results, including a loose-leaf notebook filled with aphorisms on dressage that she had scribbled down over the years.  There were certificates, membership papers to various equine organizations, letters from humane societies, registration papers and health certificates for each horse, and correspondence, including emails she had printed out.  Some of these would be needed by the horses’ new owners, but by the time I had finished my initial sorting, my eyes were too blurry and my head ached too much for me to continue.  So I stripped naked and lay back on Cindy’s bed.

Minutes—or hours, I’m not sure—later, someone knocking on the front door woke me up.  Wondering if it might be Gina, I threw on one of Cindy’s wraps and went to the door.

It wasn’t Gina.

It was Donny.

He came inside before I could tell him not to and looked at me with a worried expression.

“What happened to you, Sue-Ann?” Donny asked.  His voice sounded tired and I could tell he had just gotten off work because his shirt and hands carried fresh grease stains—he drives a truck for Harrison Towing Service.

“Nothing; I’m fine,” I told him.  “What are you doing here, Donny?  Came back to get your bottle of tequila?”

“Somebody told me you were in an accident,” he said.

“News travels fast in this here small town,” I said.  “Know anything about a goat?”

“Don’t know nothin bout no goat, no,” he said, puzzled.

“Been talking to Dilly?” I asked.

“I saw him, yeah.  He told me your house got broken into and that you went out and got yourself in a car wreck.”

I didn’t feel like going through the whole thing again, so I let the accident theory stand.  “I didn’t get hurt much but thanks for your concern.”

“I
was
a little concerned.  But that’s not why I came over.”

“Why, then?” I asked.

“I wanted to make sure that you know I didn’t do it.”

“Sit down if you want.  I’ll be back in a minute.”  Actually, it took more like five minutes for me to go into my bedroom, straighten my bandage, and throw on the long dress I sometimes lounged around the house in.  I’ll use that five minutes here to describe my relationship with Donny Brasswell.

I met him in a bar in Forester—there are no bars in Pine Oak or Timberlake, so everyone has to drive twenty miles in (Forester is the hub of a radial county) to party.  I don’t know why I was there that night; I don’t know why I did much back in those days.  I had just quit my dream job as an international journalist, left what my acquaintances in Richmond thought of as a successful relationship, and moved back to a family home devoid of everything except a few memories.  I had been employed by
The Pine Oak Courier
for only a few weeks and I had just finished an interview with a school board member who was creating quite a local controversy by suggesting that Hanson’s Quarry High School be closed and the students bussed into Pine Oak.  The interview had gone on longer than I had expected so I dropped into a place called Eat Now: The Home of Food, which had a bar off to the side, and ordered a cheeseburger and a Coors.

It was a Friday evening and the place was pretty full, mostly of young blue-collar types—ranchers, heavy-equipment operators, guards who worked at the prison a couple of miles north.  Donny was sitting by himself at a corner table, drinking one Miller Lite after another.  I noticed him because, except for me, he was the only one there alone.  I knew who he was because he grew up in Pine Oak.  And, although he’s a couple of years younger than me, I knew that he had gone to Pine Oak High and had been a good athlete of some kind.  He looked it.

There was a juke box playing CDs, with a trash basket to the side, above which was a hand-written sign saying, “SMASH THE DIXIE CHICKS.”  Inside the trash basket were a few dozen CDs, in and out of their jewel cases.  There was a buzz in the room, the same kind of a buzz that is in all rooms where people of opposite sexes gather.  I wasn’t there for a good time; just to eat and wind down.  I think I had just begun to realize that I might have a real illness, so I was feeling a little more blue, a little more scared and run down than usual.  In fact, the gaiety in the room was depressing me and as soon as I finished my burger and beer, I walked up to the counter to pay.  I nodded and said a few words to the woman at the cash register as I was paying.  The woman’s name was Linda Christian, who will come back later to play a more important part in this narrative.  She was the one we always called Linda C in high school to differentiate her from Linda DiLorenzo, who we called Linda D.  Although Linda D left the county before we graduated, everyone continued to call Linda Christian Linda C—even after she married and changed her name to Zimmer.  I remembered that she had once been one of Gina’s crowd, but more of a hanger-on than an equal.  Working the cash register in a popular hangout was about the best she could hope for herself.

Linda C was babbling something about having a kid that went to Pine Oak when I heard a commotion coming from the corner where Donny was sitting.  Two other men had appeared and were standing at his elbow.  They were bigger than him, both in height and bulk, and they both had hair the same dark shade of red.  I heard the words “back home” and saw Donny shake his handsome mane of brown hair vigorously.  One of the men grabbed him by the elbow but Donny suddenly stood up and shoved both men hard in the chest, sending them both sprawling backwards.  “Fuck both of y’all!” he shouted and stormed from the room.

I looked at Linda C with a question.

She shrugged.  “His older brothers,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Half brothers, I guess I should say.”

I walked outside to my car to discover that Donny had parked right next to me and was fumbling with his car key.  He was obviously too drunk to drive.

So I drove him home that night.  And the next afternoon, I drove him back to get his car. 

And my five minutes are up.

Dressed in my house gown, I came back into the room to see Donny sitting on the couch and smoking a Kool light.  He held the pack toward me but I shook my head.  “I can’t find that bottle of tequila,” I told him.  I figured that Gina had put it away in a cupboard somewhere and I would find it later.  I sat down on the chair near the couch.

“Forget the damn bottle of tequila,” he said.  “Do you think I would have broken into this house to get a bottle of tequila?”  As always, clean or dirty, Donny was darkly handsome, his tanned face lightly pocked, his shirt just a mite too small.  He set his cigarette in the ashtray and I saw the familiar dark fingerprints on the butt.  But when your boyfriend works in grease, you and grease get to be friends.

“I hadn’t figured you’d broken in for any reason,” I told him.

“You hadn’t?”

“You never had any reason to.  You know I would have given you anything I have except my bows, and I probably would have given you half of
them
if you’d asked.”

“Did they get your bows?” he asked.

“No.  Thankfully, they didn’t think to go in the barn.”

“What about the stash from the semi that turned over?”

“I . . . forgot about that,” I admitted.  “But except for a couple of pinches I never took it out of my truck.”

“If you’re not goin to smoke it, you should get rid of it.”

“Give me time.  You don’t want it, do you?”

“Naw, you know that stuff makes me sick. But thanks for askin.  Listen, I’m sorry I was so mad the last time I left here.”

“Were you mad?” I asked.  “Is that why you called me a fucking bitch, drove over the plants I had just put in the front yard, and took a couple of shots at my mailbox?”

Donny leaned over tiredly and put his head between his hands—a gesture I was familiar with.  “I don’t know why I do stuff like that,” he said.

I
did
know, but didn’t want to go there right then.  Instead, I changed the subject.  “Linda C still at Eat Now?” I asked.

“Last I heard,” he said guardedly.

“Still seein each other?” I asked.  He looked up, meeting my glance.  “Small towns, Donny,” I told him.

“Yeah, I guess.  Off and on.  She’s okay.  A lot different from you, but she has a good heart.”

“What’s it like dating someone with kids?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Hmm?  It’s okay, I guess.  Adam mostly lives with his dad, but comes over weekends.  He can be a pain—doesn’t really like anything the way it is and complains about it.”

“Isn’t that the way all kids are?” I wondered aloud.  “That’s how I was.  I couldn’t wait to get out of here and now look at me.”

“Look at yourself,” he answered.  “I told Adam a few things about you.  How you left and got a good education and traveled all over.  I showed him a couple of things you wrote in
The Courier. 
Thought it might inspire him or something.”

“Did it?” I asked.

“Mebbe it did.  At least he asked more questions than he usually asks.”

“It’s funny that you should wind up with Linda C after the way we met,” I mused.

“That was at Eat, wasn’t it?  Was Linda working there that night?”

“Sure.  That was the night that you had that ruckus with your brothers, but I see that you’re still working at Harrison’s.”  I was looking at his hands, but he glanced at the nametag on his work shirt.

“I’m not going back to those damn cornfields!” he said.  “They can have every kernel, every husk, and every grain of sand.”

“Listen, Donny,” I began, realizing that I was falling into my old habits with him but unable to stop myself.  “Someday your dad won’t be around any more.”
“Sooner the damn better,” he said in a low voice.

“But stop.  Listen to me.  Take what’s yours.  You don’t have to grow corn, you don’t have to grow anything.  Start a ranch.  Raise bulldogs, do whatever you want.  Build a nice house and live in it instead of renting that leaky room you’ve got.”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” he said.  “I better go.”

“Yeah.”

“How have you been feeling?  I don’t mean the head, but that other thing?”

“Some days are better than others, but I just met this doctor who thinks he knows what’s wrong.  We’ll see.”

“That’s good.  Well . . .” Donny got up to go but instead of walking toward the door, he leaned over, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me.  I struggled a little, but then forgot what I was struggling for.  I experienced his mentholated breath, his whiskery rasp on my cheek, his pressure on my lips.  Then his hands were under my dress, where he found my breasts uncovered and ready for his touch.  Then the dress was up around my waist and I had unzipped his pants and there we were—at it again, him, gripping my breasts with both hands, kissing me hard and groaning the same way he might have if he’d had a broken arm.  It took him less than three minutes to finish, then lay panting over me and running his fingers through the part of my hair not covered by the bandage.

As he was lying there, I heard a soft tap, then the front door opened and Gina stood in the doorway.  When she saw us, her face went from bright to blank and her eyes became hooded.  “Mah bad,” she said.  “Here ah am walkin into people’s houses ah don’ even know.”  Then she turned and went out, not bothering to close the door.

I pushed Donny off me and pulled my dress back down. 

“What the fuck?”  Donny said, bewildered.  He turned around, but Gina was gone.  I heard the wheels of her car spin in the dirt as she sped out the driveway.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“Wrong number,” I told him, but my stomach had grown so icy I thought I was going to pass out.  “Donny, you’ve got to get out,” I said.  “And we can’t do this again.”

“But Sue-Ann,” he said.  “You—”

“Never mind about that.  It was my fault, I should have said no, but it’s not going to be my fault again.  Go back to Linda C.  But take a shower first.  No, not here.  And remember what I said about the land.”

As soon as I had shooed Donny out the door, I took a shower and put on clothes fresh from the dryer.  I knew that something definitive had just happened but I couldn’t put a name to it.  Whatever it was, it made me queasy-sick and very nervous.  Without totally realizing what I was doing, I looked up Gina’s address in the phonebook.  The street name was only vaguely familiar but I wrote it down thinking I might need it some day.  I discovered I was almost out of cigarettes and cat food so I left the house and started up the truck.  As I drove I took a local map from the door pocket and glanced at the index, which was difficult because the red dirt road was even more of a washboard than it had been a couple of days earlier.  I happened to locate Gina’s street on the map in case, you know, I ever needed to go there.