More Sweet Tea
Page 19
“I’m prayin’ for us, honey,” Patsy whispered. “Granny McGee always said I got no common sense. But who wants to have something that’s ‘common?’ Just low and ordinary and boring—is that what common sense is? Just makin’ do with the mud hole God stuck you in? If God didn’t want me to meet your daddy, then how come I did? If God didn’t want me to be a mermaid, then how come God gave me the dream? If God didn’t want me to have you, how come you’re here? No, baby boy, God didn’t set me up to take a dive. I know the world is low and mean and common and dry as a bone, but I intend to swim for glory, anyhow.” She hesitated, fighting tears. “But God better hurry up and give me a sign that we’re not up a creek without a paddle.”
Patsy guided the Studebaker around a wooded curve. An odd pink light winked at her through the pines ahead. She leaned forward, squinting. A light in the darkness.
The woods opened up a little. A dirt lane curled off to the right beside a white mailbox on a leaning wooden post. Beneath a pink light bulb covered by a rusting tin shade hung a pink metal sign in the shape of a cow. The cow’s tail pointed down the lane.
Cow Pie Springs Motor Court And Diner.
Air Conditioned Rooms
Fresh Ice
Home Cooking
See The Most Beautiful Spring In These Parts
Patsy sucked in a long breath. A motel with a spring. Wonderful! Even if it was named for cow manure.
She downshifted and woozily stuck out one hand to signal the turn for any phantom cars. Slowly she swung the Studebaker down the lane beside the pointing cow. Steadying Paul’s tomato-basket bassinet with one hand, Patsy clutched the car’s steering wheel as it bounced and bumped. Pines leaned inward over the lane, curious and watching. Yet the road was prettily lined by daisies amidst the sharp fans of palmetto shrubs.
After about a minute the woods opened up. A dimly lit oasis of pink stucco cottages rose like an island from the earthy loneliness of soft, sweaty forest. To one side sat a little pink cottage with a pink-lighted OFFICE sign in the window. Huge oaks trailed Spanish moss above a graveled parking lot lined with big rocks painted pink with white tops like craggy nipples. Other than an ancient red truck parked beside the cottage, there were no other vehicles in sight. The Cow Pie Springs Motor Court wasn’t exactly a hotspot on the east-west tourist route.
Patsy didn’t care. Her eyes were riveted to the silver gleam of a large pond beyond the parking lot. A ramshackle picket fence surrounded it, tilting and wandering, a carefree whitewashed ribbon following the soft, grassy shore with no serious intent to keeping cows or any other creature from reaching the water. An oak dipped one gnarled arm into the pond, the bend of the oak’s elbow forming a natural bench out over the water.
“It’s beautiful. It’s magic,” Patsy whispered.
Cow Pie Spring. It was no Weeki Wachee—maybe only half that size, meaning any football game played on its surface would start at one goalpost and end at the fifty-yard line. A pretty creek flowed from the spring and ran beneath the road before disappearing into the forest. Patsy, barely breathing, eased the Studebaker over a narrow bridge made of coquina stone, as if carved from pale coral. Like driving over a tiny reef that separated the outside world from the watery kingdom of the Cow Pies.
“Oh, honey, oh sweetie,” she crooned to the spring and her baby. She pulled Paul’s tomato basket closer. “Come to Mama.”
Patsy parked the car with its headlights turned on the spring. Carrying Paul, she stumbled to the ribbon of knee-high picket fence, clambered over it, kicked off her loafers, then sank down on the muddy shore and thrust her bare feet so deep into the water it soaked the calf-high hems of her pedal pushers.
“Revival,” she moaned.
She laid the yawning baby on her thighs. Moaning and rocking, Patsy scooped a hand into the spring. “I’m gonna christen us. First, me.” Patsy splashed water on her face. “I’m Patsy Darlene McGee Hampenstein. Even if I can never tell anybody. I’ll never forget.” Crying just a little, Patsy scooped up another handful of water, let most of it dribble through her fingers, then gently smoothed the moisture on their son’s forehead, cheeks, and lips.
“I christen you Paul Patrick Hampenstein. The fifth. But I can’t ever tell you that. You’ll just have to be happy bein’ plain Paul McGee. We gotta be what we’re meant to be, sweetie, and a name’s just a name. I can’t let the Hampensteins find you. I’m so sorry I can’t ever tell you I named you after your daddy. Paul. And Patrick, after me. Sort of. Patsy. Patrick. It’s as close as I can get.”
Paul Patrick Hampenstein the fifth yawned and gurgled, unimpressed. Patsy leaned back, eyes shut, letting the spring wash away her fear, worry, humiliation. Head up, she sighed a long breath of release, then opened her eyes. The Studebaker’s high beams cast a misty spotlight all the way to the spring’s far edge. There, near the grand oak with its arm bent over the water, stood a big, bright, hand-painted sign.
FOR SALE
THIS MOTOR COURT AND OWNER’S HOUSE ON 52 ACRES
INCLUDING THIS PRETTY SPRING—NONE OTHER LIKE IT!
ALL YOURS, FOR ONLY $6,000
Patsy’s mouth opened in a silent gape of awe, a voiceless, mermaid-underwater prayer of homecoming and gratitude.
“Girl, are you and your youngun’ okay?” a gnarled old-man voice twanged behind her. “Y’all cain’t sit here at night. We got gators that might getcha.”
“Leave her be, old man,” an equally gnarled old-woman voice scolded. “Cain’t you see she needs to sit in the spring more’n she needs to worry about a couple of piddly gators?”
Hypnotized by fate, Patsy twisted slowly. As if in a dream she looked up into a pair of kind, sunburned faces. Backwoods folks. Her sort of people. The sort of folks who understood the love of hidden water. The spring’s guardian angels. And hers.
Finally she came up for air.
“I’m the mermaid of Cow Pie Springs,” she told them calmly. “I’m goin’ to buy this place and make it famous.”
And she did.