Night Moves

by Thea Devine

  “So don’t go back. If they ask you.”

  That thought was inconceivable. If they asked her?

  When.

  “Maybe,” Carrie said as they got ready to leave.

  Never.

  THE BEAN-HOLE BEAN FESTIVAL was an annual event, always held on the last weekend in July. It was a combination of crafts fair, carnival and competition. There was music all weekend long in the picnic grounds where the beans, which had been baking underground for a week under the eye of the bean master, were served with hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs and steaks.

  In the barn, local crafts and cakes and pies, were up for judging on the first and last days of the festival, and nearby, local artists and artisans set up booths selling their wares. Friday afternoon, the carnival and sideshow opened; Saturday, there were the horse trials, pig scrambles, truck and tractor pulls, cow-chip bingo, and beans, beans and more beans.

  Friday night was family night as well. Everyone went to the carnival. Everyone took a chance on a prize.

  Saturday things got more serious.

  “Even Eddie participates in the truck pull. Most of the guys do,” Jeannie told her as they drove toward the fairgrounds which were spread out over a dozen acres behind the old Paradise shopping center. ‘Well, here you go. This is why you have to come early. Everybody’s here.”

  It was nine o’clock in the morning and crowded as a city street. Music was going, and the amusement-park rides were packed. Everywhere you looked there were families, children carrying stuffed animals and cotton candy, and their parents trying to keep up and keep an eye on them.

  “Truck’s going on at ten,” Jeannie said. “He’s doing the truck pull, second heat.”

  Why don’t I know that? Carrie thought. Why couldn’t I have known that?

  They strolled down the midway, stopping here and there to watch someone try to win a prize. It was a portable amusement park with rides and stalls that had been set up practically overnight. But it was no less exciting and alluring to this crowd who had come to have fun.

  Jeannie bought her some cotton candy. “Have you ever had this since you were six?”

  “I don’t think so.” Carrie closed her mouth over a sugar puff of it. “Oh my God. I’m going to have a sugar fit.”

  “Just shut up and don’t analyze it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They went on, and Carrie noticed people looking at Jeannie. And why not? The bodysuit fit her like a glove and, paired with the long, seemingly demure skirt and the big bold jewelry, gave her both an appealing and a seductive air.

  Men were noticing.

  They followed the crowd toward the bandstand.

  “I don’t suppose you’re up for beans this early in the morning,” Jeannie asked.

  “Oh, I could stand to eat a bowl, I suppose.”

  “And we can get some to take home, too.”

  They queued up opposite the kettle, which was still buried in the ground, and the line inched forward as the bean master doled out endless bowls and containers.

  They got two quarts to take home besides, and settled at a picnic table close to the stage to eat

  “Oh, look, there’s Truck.”

  Words to make Carrie feel like an anxious seventeen-year-old.

  Truck vaulted off the stage to join them, and Carrie had a flashing vision of him with his jeans sinking downward over his...before his voice broke in and startled her.

  “How’re you doing, Carrie?”

  “I’m okay,” she murmured.

  “Did you know Carrie started working over at Longford’s?” Jeannie put in.

  “Actually I did,” Truck said, holding Carrie’s gaze. “Old Man told me.”

  Why couldn’t I tell you?

  “Have you tried these beans? They’re great this year. Taste them. I bet you didn’t eat anything this morning.” Jeannie held her spoon to his lips and he flicked out his tongue.

  Carrie felt an unexpected spiral of arousal. Why should Jeannie get to do that for you?

  “I think you’re right,” Truck said. “They’re really good this year.”

  Jeannie licked her spoon and slanted a glance at Carrie. “Do you like ’em?”

  “Delicious,” she murmured. What were they really talking about?

  But Truck wasn’t talking to her at all.

  “When are you on?” Jeannie asked him.

  “In about ten minutes,” he said, looking at his watch, then looking over at Carrie. “I’d better go.”

  I come in the depths of the night so you don’t have to seen with me, you don’t have to talk to me...

  He meant it, she thought. He really meant it.

  She clenched her hands. She had never felt such a volatile jealousy before. And all over Jeannie and her cleavage and her friend’s long friendship with Truck.

  Carrie settled back at the table, trying to keep her emotions in check. She wondered, what if she whistled...?

  They sat through two sets, watching him play, and Carrie felt every movement of his hands right down in her vitals. There was something inordinately sexy about the way he bent over his fiddle with such intensity. Something so vitally erotic and electric in the way he played.

  And the crowd’s response. Women and girls particularly.

  Or maybe she was overstating the case.

  He hasn’t gone out of town recently...

  Afterward, they walked to the back field together, and Truck got ready for the competition while Carrie and Jeannie found a seat in the crowded noisy grandstand.

  Dust flew everywhere as the trucks roared up to the starting line.

  “They’re truckin’ about a thousand pounds back there,” Jeannie said. “They go two by two, whoever moves it over there wins.” She pointed to a pole fifty yards away.

  “And guys ruin their engines competing in this?”

  Jeannie looked taken aback. “I guess they do. Oh look, there’s Eddie. He’s going off in the second round. And Truck is right behind him.”

  It was, Carrie supposed, a fascinating male contest: to be the one to drive the machine that moved the most weight in the least amount of time with the least damage to the drive shaft and engine.

  The crowd was really getting into it. Clearly, they had their favorites, and there was wild applause as Eddie Gerardo and his opponent drove up to the starting line and the pallets of bar weights were attached to the underside of their trucks.

  “Ed-die, Ed-die—” The chant started, steady and rhythmic. The starter popped his gun. Eddie and his opponent gunned their engines, and slowly, slowly, they each moved off the starting line, churning up dirt and dust everywhere. It must have taken a full ten minutes for either truck to move forward, and then it was all about the driver’s skill in handling his vehicle, and getting the advantage. Another ten minutes, and it was over, and Eddie had lost the round.

  “Poor Eddie,” Jeannie murmured. “He was in the finals last year. So was Truck—there he is.”

  It was a different story, Carrie found, when you were rooting for someone. Of course, there were three dozen others who wanted him to win just as ferociously as she, and they chanted loudly behind her: “Truck, Truck, Truck...” as he rolled up to the starting line, the pallet was attached, and the gun went off.

  Truck was determined. Jeannie told her he’d won with it last year, and sure enough, as he and his opponent plowed through the dust and grass, he inched ahead and over the finish line.

  “Finals tomorrow,” Jeannie said to Carrie over the applause. “Seen enough?”

  Truck joined them a few minutes later, beating the dust from his shirt and hair. “I have to check on Old Man. Want to come?”

  Old Man was in the adjunct barn playing bingo. It was one of his enduring pleasures, whether he went into town to the Masonic Hall, or just milled around with a group of fair-goers he didn’t know. By the time the session was over, he got to know them pretty well.

  He was deep in a game when Truck touched his elbow.

/>   “Hey, son.”

  “Think you can afford to drop a game? Carrie and Jeannie are here.”

  “Oh sure.” Old Man wheeled around to see them standing in the doorway. A moment later, he was grasping Carrie’s hands, stunning her with his strength and vitality, and his resemblance to Truck.

  “Carrie. Welcome home, my dear.”

  It was the eyes, she thought. No, the mouth. The voice. Definitely the voice. There was nothing infirm about Old Man, nor did his wheelchair seem to limit him. If anything, you hardly noticed it once you were captivated by his voice.

  “I was so sorry about your mother. So sorry. She was so brave, Carrie. I hope that’s some comfort to you. It’s s good to see you, good to have you here. Tell me, did Truck invite you up for dinner?”

  She felt a wash of shame. “I think he tried.”

  Old Man gave her a sharp look. “But now you’ll come, won’t you?”

  “I will,” she whispered. How could she deny him when it had nothing to do with Truck at all.

  Old Man smiled, and it was Truck’s smile, Truck’s face, thirty years older. How could anyone not love him? she thought.

  How could anyone not love Truck—

  Oh no, she didn’t want to go there, she couldn’t.

  “Good,” Old Man was saying. “And soon, Carrie.”

  “I will,” she promised. What was she promising?

  “You know we’ve been talking on a regular basis recently?”

  “How so?”

  “Longford’s my local supplier.”

  “Ah—” that explained that. But it didn’t explain Old Man, and how warm and secure he made her feel. How she was falling for him already and she’d barely spoken to him for five minutes.

  But everyone loved Old Man, and as he took Jeannie’s hand, Carrie saw why.

  Old Man saw everything.

  “How you doing, Jeannie?” he murmured. “You look beautiful today. Don’t know about you, but I like the change. And it’s about time, too.”

  “I know,” Jeannie said, tears edging around her eyes.

  Old Man saw them. “You did the right thing, Jeannie. You know it. Everyone knows it. Now it’s about time for me to get back to my game,” he added, to spare Jeannie, who was surreptitiously wiping away her tears.

  “Excuse me, won’t you? Carrie, we’ll see you soon?”

  “Isn’t he something,” Jeannie said as Truck wheeled him away. “And you know what he did after the accident, after the diagnosis? He just went on ahead. Truck moved the business to the house, and Old Man took over the office. He does all the paperwork, the cost specs, the pricing, the ordering. He learned to use a computer and everything.”

  “Truck is very devoted.”

  “Yeah, well, Old Man was mom and dad to Truck. I don’t know if you ever heard the story, but his mom went away. Fell for the man, but not for the life. Didn’t want to live in some backwater town. But I tell you, Old Man must have been something back then, if he attracted a woman like that.”

  Jeannie slanted a considering look at her. “Kind of like you, actually.”

  Carrie froze. No, nothing like her; she’d been raised in Paradise. It wasn’t the same thing at all. “What happened to her?” She could barely get the words out.

  “She died, oh, a year or two later, I think. A car accident in Europe. Which was the kind of high life she led. I always thought she married Old Man to escape something but I guess it caught up with her in the end.”

  Why didn’t she know this? Carrie wondered. It was one of those tragic stories that people fed on for years that became part of the town folklore. And she hadn’t ever known.

  “So Truck had to have been a baby when she died,” she murmured, thinking how similar his loss was to her own circumstances. But that was way before she and her mother had come to Paradise.

  “Five, I think.”

  “How do you know all this?” Carrie asked.

  “Oh, people talk,” Jeannie said airily.

  Everyone knows...

  I wonder what they’re saying about me...

  9

  CARRIE AND JEANNIE ended up spending the entire weekend at the festival, not that it was planned. But they both wanted to see Truck run the finals and the judging of the crafts fair. Besides, there was some jewelry Jeannie wanted to look at, and some other odds and ends she wanted to buy. All those were in addition to attending the winddown of the live performances, which always featured a fairly well-known country star.

  To get good seats close to the stage, they arrived long before the performance was scheduled to begin. By this time, Jeannie was loaded with packages, more containers of beans and no energy at all to do anything more than put up her feet and relax. Carrie was feeling pretty mellow herself. The final round of the truck pull held at noon had been exciting, exhausting and extremely hot. At least today, she’d been smart and brought a hat, a thermos of ice and bandannas for both her and Jeannie to tie around their necks. And now she was dribbling the last of the ice water onto her bandanna so she could mop her face with it while Jeannie roused herself to buy some sodas.

  A body dropped down beside her. “Well, aren’t you the cutest thing?” Eddie Gerardo said.

  Carrie suppressed a shudder. “Hi, Eddie. Sorry you lost.”

  “Sure you are. Sure. But that damn race isn’t the only thing I lost Since you got back here, I lost my wife. I want to know what kind of voodoo you’re working on her, and I want you to stop it.”

  There was no arguing with Eddie, Carrie thought, and she wasn’t even going to try. He was as predictable as the sun, and just as hot right now.

  “You tell Jeannie to get rid of all that trashy stuff she’s been flaunting around town, you hear me? That’s not my wife in those tight clothes. That’s some big-city tar—”

  “Eddie.” Jeannie arrived, like the cavalry, just in the nick of time. “I thought you had an appointment with the Howell sisters.”

  “Well, I did, that’s for damn sure. But how am I going to sell them on a house in a country town if my wife won’t advertise those plain country values?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Jeannie said. “I thought you were a better salesman than that.”

  Eddie gave her a dirty look and stalked off.

  “He sure doesn’t like my new look,” Jeannie said, an understatement if ever Carrie heard one.

  “How far are you going to push it?” she asked curiously.

  “I’m in for the duration. I wouldn’t go back to being frumpy if you paid me.”

  The concert started soon after that; it was packed, even with extra seating, but everyone could hear the music from anywhere on the fairgrounds. The singer was a homegrown talent who had been considered a one-hit wonder, and was now making a comeback by playing local and state fairs to rebuild his audience.

  He was charmisatic, and generous too, calling on local musicians to come on stage and jam, so that his set turned into an evening of extraordinary music. Truck and his band were up there with them, and that, as much as anything, kept Carrie glued to her seat He played with unbelievable passion and power, and the give-and-take between him and the singer had the audience on its feet.

  Afterward, there were autographs and interviews, and side groups making music, the milling crowd surging back to the midway for one last ride, and teenagers making plans for later on that night.

  “We used to do that,” Jeannie said with a laugh.

  Carrie smiled. “You remember that far back?”

  “Nothing changes,” Jeannie said, and Carrie remembered having believed that the day she rode into town. But things did change: people, circumstances, the landscape of your dreams.

  And the things you thought you wanted fell like dominoes before the things you could realistically have.

  Carrie didn’t look back once as she and Jeannie exited the fairgrounds.

  TRUCK HAD the warrior princess imprisoned in the tower and so confused she didn’t quite know what to do.

 
But she was coming around, Truck thought as he got up the next morning. The job at Longford’s was the first step, and she’d taken it all on her own. She wasn’t going anywhere any too soon except into his bed. And into his life.

  Every time he saw her, it was like adding fuel to the fire. Yesterday, tonight, he wanted to be with her, and instead he had been held up by a group of admiring musicians and he’d played the damn night long with a bunch of guys he’d never see again in this lifetime.

  The choices a man had to make...

  But Carrie was going to have to make choices too whether she wanted to or not. This thing between them was escalating by the minute, and it wasn’t just about desire. There was something more, something deeper, and he was damned if he was the only one feeling it.

  Carrie had to be feeling it too, or she wouldn’t be responding to him the way she was. That was the thing he was counting on. That deeper connection, the one she wouldn’t acknowledge, the one she refused to let into the light of the day. Well, it didn’t matter what she called it. Or what she thought was happening between them, deep in the night. He knew the truth, he knew what it was, and he knew eventually she would fall.

  Over breakfast, Old Man told him, “Longford says she’s given the place some class. Makes him look good. And she’s gettin’ through the mess, he says. Gettin’ everything on spreadsheets and databases. He can finally see the desk, he says.”

  “All that in a week?” Truck said admiringly. “She’s a wonder.” But maybe it was more than that. Maybe Carrie was just someone who got things done. She’d worked under pressure and deadlines, and it could be said that her job had been to solve problems. Overhauling someone’s office system probably wasn’t much different, and a damn sight easier, than dealing with jittery clients.

  Now all she had to learn to do was overhaul her life.

  “Get her up to dinner.” Old Man said. “Listen to me, son. Don’t lose her.”

  “Soon,” Truck promised. “Soon.”

  WORK, Carrie thought. You couldn’t depend on a phantom lover, but you could always depend on work.