by Robbi McCoy
“What about you?” Pat asked Stef. “How was it in your high school? Were you out?”
“Yes. It was a big school. There were other gay kids, and I didn’t feel like I had to hide. I even took my girlfriend to the junior prom.”
“No kidding?” Jackie remarked. “Did you wear a prom dress?”
Stef laughed. “What do you think?” She gave Jackie a meaningful look.
Jackie shook her head. “No.”
“Right. A spiffy maroon tux.”
“We went to very different high schools!”
After Gail and Pat dropped them off at Jackie’s house and said goodbye, Jackie invited Stef in.
“I need to get home,” she said, moving toward her bike. “Deuce has been alone all day, and I’m beat. A shower and sleep is about all I’m good for tonight.”
Jackie nodded. She too was beat. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. You can come by about four o’clock, after rehearsal.”
“Okay,” said Stef slowly, still clearly ambivalent.
Jackie followed her to her bike. “You were great today. Thanks for all your help.”
She was sure she conveyed the look of a woman waiting for a kiss, but Stef pretended not to notice and merely nodded with an uneasy smile before slipping on her helmet and riding off.
Jackie didn’t know what to think about this woman who held her cards so close to her chest. Almost everything about her remained a mystery. The one thing Jackie was sure of was how thoroughly Stef had invaded her consciousness. She couldn’t stop thinking about her. Ever since that day Stef had kissed her, Jackie’s mind had lingered on the way those few moments had stirred her up inside. She wanted to feel that again, but wanted Stef to feel it too. She didn’t know if that was possible but she dreamed about it anyway, about being taken with passionate desperation by that troubled, fascinating woman who had captured her heart and mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Stef made sure she didn’t arrive too early. She hoped everyone would be gone when she got there, but a red Honda Accord was parked in front of the house next to Jackie’s pickup. As Stef took off her jacket and stored it in one of her saddlebags, Jackie came around the side of the house with another young woman carrying a guitar case. She was taller than Jackie, thin and shapeless, with blonde shoulder-length hair and pale, freckled cheeks. Their guitar player, Stef remembered, was Jackie’s sister Rebecca.
“I’m not telling her,” Rebecca said resentfully. “You call her and tell her yourself. She’ll blame me if I tell her.”
Jackie and Rebecca both saw Stef at the same time. Jackie’s face broke into a wide smile.
“Stef!” Jackie called, rushing over to her and giving her a familiar hug. “This is my sister Rebecca.”
“Hi,” Rebecca said, holding out her hand to shake, then she turned to Jackie and said, “I’ve got to get home if I’m going to get Sean and Adam ready in time.” She hugged Jackie goodbye. “See you Wednesday for another practice.” She waved toward Stef. “Nice to meet you, Stef.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Jackie said warmly. “Are you ready to go catch some mudbugs?”
“Sure.”
“Just let me make a call first. I have to let my mother know I’m not coming to Sunday dinner.”
Jackie ran into the house, and Stef leaned against the side of the pickup bed. Inside was a wire cage with a yellow nylon rope tied to its handle. The crawdad trap, she surmised. She found herself smiling at the idea of catching crawdads.
It seemed like every time lately she’d been with Jackie, she’d spent a lot of time smiling and a lot less time thinking about the personal drama that had consumed her thoughts for the last three months. In the last few days, particularly, whenever she had even a thought of Jackie, she could feel her lips turn up in an involuntary smile. Was it possible there was something significant going on here? Was it possible this kind of life—Jackie’s life—might suit her? It was a strange idea to consider. This place, so small and personal, wasn’t the kind of place she had ever considered calling home. Even thinking these thoughts made her nervous, but somewhere in the back of her mind, it also made her excited. It was like looking through an open door into a foreign, almost inconceivable, but wondrous and alluring land, feeling that all she needed to do was step through to be in the midst of it.
Tri-Tip appeared, rubbing against her legs. She reached down and scooped him up, petting him until he purred.
“Nothing wrong with you, is there?” she said. “Not that you care about anyway. Who needs four legs? We do just fine with two. You’ve got three, so you’re already ahead.”
She could see why some people wouldn’t want a damaged animal, but for others, like Jackie, the damaged ones might be more appealing. Their need was greater. The greater the need, the more valuable the aid.
Jackie ran back out, breathless, and Stef put the cat down and got in the truck. Once they were on the road, she asked, “You were supposed to be at your parents’ tonight?”
Jackie sputtered. “Naw. It’s a standing thing. Every Sunday. Unless something else comes up.”
Stef noticed a slight, clever smile on Jackie’s lips. She understood that she was the something else that had come up. She relished that thought for a moment before asking, “How was practice?”
“Good. We’ve got a lively set lined up for the festival. Granny’s a little off these days, but it doesn’t matter. It’s mostly for fun. Everybody in the family plays something and not always well. Even my father, who’s tone-deaf. He plays a jug when he joins us.”
“A jug?” Stef laughed. “What about Pat? How did she end up in your family band?”
“Her family and mine were neighbors when we were kids. Her grandfather was one of the original residents here. He came over from China and helped build the levees. I’ve known her all my life, and we were in band together in high school.”
“And Gail? Is she from here too?”
“No. I met her five years ago when she and Pat got together. And that pretty much accounts for all the lesbians in Stillwater Bay.” Jackie laughed self-consciously. “Unless you count the Kelly sisters.”
“Kelly sisters?”
“Brenda and Malvia Kelly. An older couple. They moved here about ten years ago when they retired. Teachers, both of them. They’re not really sisters.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“They got married in Canada and Brenda changed her last name to Kelly, so when they came here, at first people assumed they were sisters. They never bothered to correct anybody. Most everybody knows now they’re a couple, but we all still call them the Kelly sisters. I guess we shouldn’t, but it’s an old habit. No point in changing, really, because we all know what it means.”
“No other lesbians around?”
“A few, sure. Couples, mainly, and some very young ones. There’s a tiny gay club in the high school now.”
“So if I lived here and wanted to date a local girl, I may as well forget it.”
Jackie looked at her with a goofy, surprised look. “There’s me! I’m single.”
“True. There’s you. That’s it, though. I’d have a choice of one.”
“One’s enough,” Jackie stated without taking her eyes off the road. “If she’s the right one.”
Stef smiled to herself and realized she felt completely comfortable to be riding in Jackie’s truck on the way to a crawdad fishing hole. The anticipation of what the evening had in store played on the fringes of her consciousness. Lingering tauntingly just out of reach. There was no mystery about Jackie’s interest in romance. She’d been giving off every signal possible almost since the day they met. Stef had been receiving but resisting. This was so unexpected and potentially complicated. But tonight, she knew, they were on a date. She would let Jackie set the pace. Stef didn’t want to plan anything or expect anything. She didn’t want to know ahead of time how it would happen. She just wanted it, whatever it was, to happen on its own, in a natural and spontaneous way.
On their way out of town, they passed the marina on the left and Rudy’s Bait Shop on the right.
“How long has your family had that place?” Stef asked.
“Forty-five years. Since it opened. My grandfather started it.”
“You’ve got some serious roots in this town.”
“I do. It was a great place to grow up. I think it’s important to live with a sense of place. Everywhere we’re driving through, each place reminds me of memories from my life. I could tell you a story about every one of them. Don’t worry, I won’t.” Jackie turned to smile at her, a radiant smile full of innocence and undiluted joy.
In some ways, Jackie seemed naïve. She was a small-town girl who had no experience of the dark side of life. Or if she did, it didn’t seem to have left a mark on her. She was cheerful and open and trusting. She seemed unscarred by life. Stef wasn’t used to people like that. Where she came from, there were a lot of hard, cynical people. Maybe it was just the business she’d been in more than the city. You’re bound to get around a different crowd selling bait than you did running down drug lords. Thinking about Rudy’s Bait Shop and Jackie’s idyllic life in this lazy Delta town, Stef was envious.
She leaned her head back against the headrest and decided to live in Jackie’s world for a while, to enjoy it and let it envelop her. To live in the present, in a warm spring day in a beautiful natural setting with an incredible girl. How could anybody not enjoy that? Just a matter of pushing those other things out of her mind for a while.
When she opened her eyes, she turned to look at Jackie, who was looking straight ahead at the road. She was awfully cute. Her body exuded a warm glow of golden browns, from her tanned caramel-colored legs and arms to her hair with its tones of maple syrup, sleek and shining with amber highlights. Her eyes were the same—rich bronze depths punctuated with golden light.
She glanced at Stef and accused, “You’re staring at me.”
“Yep. Nice view.”
All those hues of gold and brown turned a slight shade redder as Jackie self-consciously turned off the main road onto a two-lane country road. Stef didn’t mind a bit that she’d embarrassed Jackie.
“I’ve been coming out here since I was four years old,” Jackie said. “It was our family fishing hole. One of them. We had a few.”
“You did a lot of fishing, I guess, being in that business.”
“Sure. That’s why my grandfather started it. Love of the sport, which he passed on to his kids and grandkids. You’ve really never been fishing?”
“No, never.”
“Your dad didn’t fish?”
“My dad wasn’t around. He and my mom split up when I was little. He wasn’t a part of our life after that. I have no idea if he liked to fish or not. My mother never liked the outdoors. We didn’t go camping or anything like that. When we did go somewhere, it was the zoo or a museum or ice skating. Places where nature was thoroughly controlled. I think she’s afraid of nature. It’s so unpredictable.”
Jackie laughed. “She’s got a point. Nature is dangerous. When my sister and I were kids, we had a lot of close calls. We ran wild around here, really. We had a couple of friends who drowned. My best friend got thrown off her horse and into a cinder block wall. Killed instantly.”
Stef winced. “That’s tough. How old was she?”
“Nineteen. By then, we were in college together, both of us planning to be vets.” Jackie looked ahead at the road, not at Stef. “Her name was Leslie. She was crazy about horses. She wanted to be a large animal vet. She was an experienced horsewoman. She’d been thrown lots of times before. It was such a sad, shocking thing for everyone. Her father had the horse put down. Leslie wouldn’t have wanted that. He was just an inexperienced colt who got spooked. But her parents were thoroughly devastated and it was something they could do, some sort of response. You feel so helpless when something like that happens. In the blink of an eye, everything changes and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Jackie’s voice broke, revealing the emotion she clearly still felt over this tragedy. She quit speaking. Maybe she wasn’t unscarred by life after all, Stef thought. Maybe she was just one of those people who could bounce back from hardship without letting it harden her. That was an admirable quality.
In the blink of an eye, Stef thought, looking out the window, everything changes and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
She reached over and laid a comforting hand on Jackie’s shoulder. “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Only in my fantasies. She was straight. She was dating a boy at the time. They would have gotten married, had she lived. I was dating a boy too, actually, and was engaged to him for a while. But I was in love with Leslie. For years.”
“Did you ever tell her?”
“Not exactly. The subject of lesbians came up now and then. Other lesbians. The idea seemed to disgust her, actually. I tried to kiss her once when we were sixteen.”
“How’d that go?”
“She pushed me off. Told me to stop. I told her I was just kidding and she said, ‘You’d better be.’ I didn’t try it again. I couldn’t risk another move. I was afraid of losing her friendship. It was better than nothing. That’s what I thought at the time anyway.”
“I’m sorry you lost her.”
Jackie glanced over with a thankful smile, then took Stef’s hand in hers and held it between them on the seat. Stef closed her fingers over Jackie’s, enjoying this spontaneous gesture of affection.
At the end of a cow pasture, they reached a levee and climbed the dirt road to the top where Jackie took her hand back to maneuver the sharp turn. They suddenly had a wide-open view of an expansive waterway flanked by the grassy interior slope of the levee and the occasional scrub oak. The water was grayish green and murky like most of the Delta sloughs. There was a fisherman in a small aluminum boat on the opposite bank in the shade of a tree. Other than that, the road and the water were deserted.
The truck bounced on the rutted road as Jackie took it slowly for less than a mile to a spot where a smaller slough forked off from the main channel. They pulled off at a wide dirt pull-out and parked.
Stef stepped out of the truck and stood on the bank of the slough, listening to a red-winged blackbird singing. The sky was clear except for some wisps of stringy clouds. On the other side of the levee were fields planted with rows of corn and occasional, well-spaced houses. There was a warm breeze and an odd odor, vaguely familiar, in the air.
“What’s that smell?” Stef asked.
Jackie sniffed the air. “Anise. It grows wild around here.”
Stef took a deep breath, recognizing the licorice aroma.
Jackie took the trap and a can of dog food out of the back of the truck.
“This is a nice spot,” Stef said. “Hardly anybody around.”
“By boat, we’re quite a few miles from the river, more than you’d think based on how short a drive it was, so not a lot of boat traffic. There are a lot of spots like this in the backwaters of the Delta. Lots of others you can only reach by boat.”
She started down a narrow dirt path to the water’s edge, then punched several holes in the bottom of the dog food can with a can opener. “You don’t want to open the can so they can get the food out. Just let them smell it.”
“What do crawdads normally eat?” Stef asked. “In the wild where dog food and hot dogs don’t normally show up?”
“They’ll eat most things. Little fish, dead fish, worms, insects.”
She put the dog food can in the cage, then Jackie waded a short distance into the water and lowered it behind a submerged log. She tied the cord to the log, then returned to shore.
“By tomorrow morning,” she said, shading her eyes from the western sun with her hand, “that would be full of mudbugs if we left it overnight. Like twenty or thirty. That’s all there is to it.”
“Seems pretty straightforward,” Stef said.
“We’ll check it in a little while. We might catch
a couple if they’re close by and smell the bait.” Jackie sat on a boulder and anchored her heels in the sand.
The fishing boat across the way suddenly roared to life and headed upstream. The sound of its motor gradually faded away.
“Tide’s coming in,” Jackie observed. “There’s a full moon tonight so it’ll be a spring tide.”
“What’s a spring tide?”
“That’s the highest tide. Because of the full moon. It’s the best time to catch fish.”
“Why?”
“Fishing is about two things. Where and when. You learn with experience how to read the water and find where the fish hang out. But when is even more important. Like most things, being in the right place at the right time is often the key. Fish feed when the tide’s moving in or out. The movement stirs things up, like shrimp and worms and whatever lives in the mud. During a spring tide, things get shook up more than usual and the fish get excited.”
Stef laughed shortly. “Sorry. That struck me as funny, the idea of excited fish. I guess there’s more to fishing than I would have thought.”
Jackie nodded. “Some people can talk your leg off about technique, the right equipment and all that. There are as many techniques as there are old fishermen. And women. Granny swears by the cows.”
“Cows?”
“When the cows are up and eating grass, the fish are biting. When they’re lying down being lazy, you won’t catch anything.”
“Is it true?”
“It’s worked for her. Some people have a fishing pole for each type of fish they go after, all rigged up differently. But, you know, there still has to be a fish there to catch, and luck plays a part too. You don’t have to know much to catch a fish.” Jackie pointed to the west. “It was right down the road I caught my first fish. I was just a toddler and obviously knew nothing about it. My dad gave me his pole to hold while he went to the car to get a beer. When he came back, he just left me holding this huge fishing pole while he talked to my mom. After a while, I thought it felt funny, kind of jumpy, but I just sat there holding it like I’d been told to do. Finally, he looked at the pole and said, ‘You got a strike!’ He told me to reel. I tried. It took a long time, not because there was such a monster fish on the line, but just because I was awkward and didn’t know what I was doing. I finally got it reeled in and there were two striped bass on the line, one on each hook. He always fished with two hooks, but normally people reel the thing in after the first hit, so they don’t get two fish at once. I was so excited I threw the pole down and jumped around screaming. I don’t remember it very well, but this story’s been told to me many times.”
