Sugar Run: A Novel

by Mesha Maren

  “Happy birthday,” he says.

  August 2007

  Route 3 wound in from the south end of the county toward Lewisville, where the ridges dropped back and the Milk River valley opened wide, the jagged paths of ancient icebergs visible in the huge boulders, tipped as if still in midmotion. Jodi drove up from Render in the late afternoon. Trailers and two-bedroom ranches gave way to three-story Greek Revivals with Suburbans in every drive and nausea bloomed inside her at the sight of all that wealth. Lewisville was at least twice as large as Render. It was the county seat and had been the local Union headquarters during the War between the States, a strange pocket of liberal ease.

  Just past the redbrick courthouse, she parked and found the young lawyer, pacing and staring down at his phone.

  “I thought we could grab a cup of coffee at the Milk Mermaid,” he said, pumping Jodi’s hand. “You been there?”

  Jodi shook her head.

  “You live over near Render?”

  “Bethlehem Mountain.”

  “I guess that end of the county doesn’t have quite as many cafes, huh?” The lawyer walked ahead of Jodi, his sandy ponytail bobbing against the back of his pink neck, blue dress shirt working its way up and out of his chinos.

  “It’s a little weird, maybe,” he said, turning down a side street, “but it’s also kind of cool that you can get a hand-dripped cup of organic free-trade Guatemalan here in this little town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.”

  This man, Jodi thought, carried with him a nearly visible halo of money-education-confidence-ease, a gauzy light of protection, and even as he spoke kindly to her she could barely stand to listen.

  “When we visit my family they’re always remarking on how deprived we must be. But it’s not really so true anymore. I mean, in this day and age, where else could I live where I would feel safe letting my kids walk home from school?”

  They passed the Moon Goddess Yoga Studio and a boutique selling hand-dyed silk scarves. At the red light a pickup idled, the bed filled with garbage bags and the windows open, leaking out the chorus of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” A tiny brunette woman holding a purple yoga mat glanced up timidly at the truck before crossing the street.

  “It can be just a little claustrophobic at times, though, I guess, especially down your way.” The lawyer looked back over his shoulder. “I imagine that growing up here must really set your way of looking at the world. A little like an island, huh? Safe but probably also stifling.”

  Ahead of them the sidewalk was blocked by a teenage boy stapling glossy posters onto a telephone pole. The lawyer stepped out into the street and passed around him.

  The teenager moved on up the sidewalk and Jodi stared at the poster.

  THE ONE AND ONLY

  —THE GOLDEN LEE—

  Live at the Roanoke Coliseum on September 10.

  Buy your tickets NOW.

  Box office opens August 1 at 8 a.m.

  Lee’s face leered at her, the crisp blue and white of his eyes glowing above his leather-tan cheeks. Jodi reached out and touched the poster, her heart speeding. The paper felt smooth under her fingers. She glanced at the lawyer, half a block up the street. She gripped the corner of the poster and ripped it off the pole.

  The Milk Mermaid Cafe smelled strange, a mixture of farts and old flowers, and the music was up so loud it pulsed the floor. The lawyer sat close to Jodi, balancing his coffee and file of papers on a tiny round table but she couldn’t pay attention to anything he was saying, distracted as she was by the posters and the thought of Lee coming so close.

  “As it turns out, Ron Leonards has your piece of land listed with Davis and Davis Realty for forty grand.” The lawyer flicked his eyes up to Jodi’s face.

  She looked past a dread-headed man and out the back windows to the parking lot where a couple of kids practiced kick flips. She felt herself falling, sinking backward toward despair and the snaking certainty that victim was the only role she was ever really meant to play. She closed her eyes. Ron Leonards’s polo shirt was as green as the lawn that flowed out behind his house, as green as the chlorine-tinged hair of his white-blond children.

  “Looks like he bought up a bunch of plots at auction back in the early nineties.”

  Ron Leonards touched his toupee constantly, checking the positioning with his fingertips, his pinky ring glinting in the noon-high sun.

  “The people over at Davis and Davis said he’s from around here originally, living down in Florida now. Eye on development.”

  Ron Leonards’s green polo shirt hugged his distended gut. Bun in the oven? his wife teased. How many months? The girls at the Fox Den ignored his stomach. They dipped their sleek skin close, grinding hips and asses into his crotch, their eyes skimming but never really landing on him. He closed his own eyes, breathed in the smell of them, a heady, synthetic coconut beach party.

  “Even at those prices, some of them have sold.” The lawyer shook his head and stirred his coffee, spinning the spoon three times in one direction and then three times in the other. Jodi watched the precise movements of his spoon, trying to narrow and calm her mind. She should never have come here; now she had the Lee poster and further knowledge of the hopelessness of the land. At least up on Bethlehem she had not known.

  “Can’t we explain that I was in prison?” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “I could start to pay off the taxes now.”

  The lawyer’s face pinched as if Jodi’s words had hurt him physically.

  “The notice was sent,” he said, “in September of 1989 to the address listed for Andy McCarty.”

  She could feel him waiting for her reaction.

  “No, but—”

  She pushed herself upright in her chair, forcing back the self-pity.

  “I can pay him the amount he bought it for. You said he only paid thirty-five hundred. I can save up and pay that.”

  The lawyer tapped his pen against his notepad and ignored her illogical plea. “There’s a fracking operation on the western end of Bethlehem Mountain, right?”

  Jodi nodded.

  “Fracking is a pretty hot ticket around here, pretty divisive.” The lawyer stirred his coffee again. “You know much about it?”

  “I saw that piece of land down near Render. Looked like they tore it up pretty good.”

  “Yeah, it’s big money for some folks but it’s also pretty clear that those operations contaminate local drinking water, among other things. There’s a woman here in town, Lynn Bower, she runs a group, Don’t Frack with Us, I think she calls it. Anyway, they’ve been trying to buy up land before the gas companies can get to it. If there’s enough Marcellus shale under your acreage, I think she might help.”

  Jodi stared down at her cup of coffee and ran her tongue along the back of her teeth. “Help how?”

  “Well, the conservation group would own the land and—”

  “Own my land?”

  “Maybe you could buy them out eventually or pay it back or—”

  “How’s that supposed to help me? I’ll never have that kind of money.”

  The lawyer’s phone beeped and lit up on the table between them, the screen flashing a photograph of a blonde woman, her face squished between two plump, pink-cheeked kids.

  “Sorry,” he said, pulling the phone closer to him. “Deirdre keeps messaging me, they’re down at Virginia Beach this week.”

  “We’d have an agreement?”

  The lawyer was already piling his papers back into his bag. “Agreement?”

  “That the land really belongs to me? That I’ll just pay it off, like a loan?”

  The lawyer wrinkled his eyebrows and smiled a little as if Jodi had just performed a small, mildly amusing trick. “Well, of course the land would not belong to you legally any more than it does right now but”—he lifted his cup and swirled the coffee, tipping it to his mouth—“we’re putting the horse far before the cart anyhow. I’ll contact Lynn, and if she’s interested, she’ll give you a c
all and will probably want to meet with you.”

  Walking back to the car, Jodi tore down every Lee Golden poster that she could see, as if this would somehow stop him from coming near. When she reached the Chevette she dumped the pile of them onto the passenger’s seat and drove out of Lewisville.

  Hot wind roared through the open windows and as she picked up speed the posters fluttered, Lee’s gleaming face flapping around the stick shift and down by her feet. Well, he mocked her, of course the land would not belong to you legally.

  Along the edge of Route 3, just past Cold Creek, a row of red-and-white signs, now hiring: cashiers, were stabbed into the earthen embankment. Jodi slowed the Chevette and looked at them, buckling under the wind of the passing cars, and then up the hill at Harry’s Superette, flanked by an abandoned Biscuit World and the River’s Edge Motel. She wanted badly to return home with something more than just Lee’s grotesque face and the news about the land.

  She pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car in front of Harry’s. A teenage boy pushed a line of shopping carts past her window, his head thrown back and face tilted up. The light was beginning to leave the sky and jet trails stood out like scars against the deepening blue. Two girls came out of a motel room wearing boxer shorts and worn-out bras, a mustard-colored towel thrown over one shoulder. They crossed the parking lot and headed toward the river, passing between them a single cigarette.

  Jodi stood and lit her own cigarette. Maybe, she thought, walking slowly toward Harry’s, maybe because it wasn’t a chain store, they wouldn’t have the same policies as Walmart and Kmart. The RC Cola vending machines blinked in the growing dusk and beyond them the store shone with a bright fluorescent hopefulness, full of bold primary colors of encouragement: red cashier aprons, blue plastic sacks, the yellow of a dish detergent display.

  A girl with leopard print pants handed Jodi an application and led her to a back room.

  “You can fill it out here,” she said, motioning to the break room table, scattered with Styrofoam cups and ketchup packets.

  Jodi thanked her but the girl did not leave. Jodi stared at the blank lines on the paper. The girl poured a cup of coffee and stood in the corner picking at her fingernails. Jodi filled in her name and parents’ address. She wished the girl would leave. Walking in here, she hadn’t realized just how embarrassingly unprepared she was for this moment, having arrived at age thirty-five without ever applying for a job.

  Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” came on over the loudspeakers.

  Jodi moved down to the next line.

  Educational Background and Degrees: ___________________________

  She scratched GED in small letters.

  Driver’s License Number: ______________________________________

  Work Experience: _____________________________________________

  Her pen hovered. The only possible thing she could ink in was “janitorial labor at Jaxton Federal Correctional Facility.” Or what? The six months she spent washing dishes at a diner in Render back in 1988?

  Professional References: _______________________________________

  Her hand froze.

  “I’ll go fetch the manager,” the girl said, and Jodi startled.

  The room shifted and closed in. How did it get to this? How the fuck had she become someone whose hopes were all pinned on landing a grocery store cashier position?

  She flipped the paper over.

  Have you ever been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor? __________

  Jodi stood. All around her was the ticking fluorescence and windowless concrete block of an interrogation room. Not enough air. No exit.

  There were footsteps in the hallway.

  She balled up the application and walked out fast, head down and eyes averted as she crashed past the manager.

  When she arrived at the cabin, a truck was parked in the yard. A dust-covered black pickup. Jodi sat there, squinting at it until slowly she began to recognize: Dennis’s. She twisted the Chevette’s keys and jerked the car door open, all her focus thrown forward toward the cabin.

  She rushed the front-porch steps but the house was empty, matchbox cars strewn across the floorboards, the pitcher pump dripping. She stepped back onto the porch. The evening air was full of movement, a cooler wind sluicing under the dry heat and crows massing in noisy bunches in the black oak trees.

  “Miranda?” she called, making her way around to the side steps, splintered porch boards aching loudly under her feet.

  In the powdered dust of the woodlot she found them: Miranda, standing, arms crossed, watching Dennis as he stalked about under the shed roof, a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Dennis,” Jodi said, and when he and Miranda both turned to look at her Jodi’s heart slammed up between her lungs.

  “Hey,” Miranda said, her mouth teasing into a smile at the corners.

  Dennis set down the bag and stared straight at Jodi, moving his right hand around inside his pocket until he found a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  “What are you doing?” Jodi said, but even as she pronounced the words she knew the balance had long ago been tipped and whatever kind of older-sibling authority she might have once had was gone.

  “I was thinking up in the woodshed rafters might be an all right place,” Dennis said, the orange end of his cigarette neon in the gloaming light.

  Jodi closed her eyes. She felt a tug inside her and wanted to run, not so much from Dennis as from herself, the self that seemed, recently, to be increasingly thin and weightless, ill equipped for any choice or decision. She sensed that something hung before her now that she ought to grab ahold of but her mind just spun.

  She walked across the woodlot without looking at Miranda, then knelt beside the black bag and unzipped it. The smell bit her nostrils, a dense, oiled, almost animal scent. It reminded Jodi of the hide odor of a horse after a long run, that hard musk, so different from the simple stink of cows. She lifted one of the plastic packages out and fingered the buds, miniature Christmas trees furred over with long red-brown hair.

  “You make a lot of money with this stuff?”

  Dennis stomped his cigarette out and shrugged.

  “I need more than just a few hundred dollars if I’m agreeing to keep this shit here on a regular basis,” Jodi said, her voice trembling a little.

  Dennis’s face cracked open with a look that might have been sympathy.

  “I’ll give you some up front and then we’ll see what all I get for it,” he said, grabbing the bag and walking past the bow saw and a cobwebbed posthole digger into the back corner of the shed.

  Rain came that night in a great enveloping movement. Jodi heard it arrive just as she and Miranda were getting into bed, raindrops on the tin roof like so many spilled marbles, rattling the trees against one another, stripping the leaves. She sat up and pushed the blankets aside to go check that the windows were closed but Miranda pulled her back in. The warmth of the blankets and the heat of Miranda’s body had no edges to them. She pooled across the bed, smelling of whiskey, her hair tangling among the pillows as she slid her hand up Jodi’s chest, under her T-shirt, to find her nipples. All evening Jodi had been waiting for the boys to go to bed so she could tell Miranda about the Lee Golden posters but now she felt nervous to bring it up. She’d drunk too much again and everything was slipping. Miranda kissed Jodi’s ribs one by one and pressed her face into the dip of her stomach.

  “Hey,” Jodi said. “I meant to tell you, I saw the weirdest thing when I was in town earlier.”

  Miranda lifted her head, her hair falling down into her eyes.

  “There was posters all over Lewisville for Lee.” She whispered the name as if to say it out loud might conjure him.

  Miranda nodded but did not say anything.

  “Like advertising for him playing a concert, just over the border in Virginia.”

  “Okay.” Miranda sat up. “So?”

  Jodi looked away. A flash of frustration pulsed across her brain. A
pparently no one took her seriously. Dennis showed up and left drugs at her house without permission and now Miranda looked at her like she wasn’t making any sense.

  She took a deep breath. “Don’t you think it’s a bad sign, him coming so close to here?”

  “He plays concerts all over the place.”

  “But we haven’t been doing such a good job of hiding. I mean, we’re driving around with a Georgia license plate. We gotta get rid of that. What if there are missing-persons papers out on the boys? Anybody around here could put two and two together.”

  “You’re just paranoid.” Miranda shook her hair out of her eyes and stared at Jodi, her face looking placid and stupid.

  “Paranoid?”

  “Him playing near here doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Oh, really? I bet you miss him, is that it?” The words seemed to have launched themselves from Jodi’s lips before she had even conceived of them. “I bet it was real nice being with him, huh? He gave you money and drugs? Is that it?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “You want somebody that’ll take care of you like that? You hate it here, don’t you?” The muddied force of all Jodi’s worries seemed determined to flow straight out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, I can’t provide for you like that, you know, I really am. But all you care about is yourself, you know, sometimes I think I care more about those boys than you do. You wouldn’t really mind if Lee found the boys, would you?”

  Miranda’s eyes snapped into focus. “What the fuck?”

  Jodi thought for a moment that Miranda might hit her but she just rolled off the bed and stood, shaking, in the doorway, looking back, her eyes wet. “You have no fucking right to say that.”

  Jodi saw then that she had reached her, she had truly hurt her, and this ability to cause her pain opened something in Jodi, a gushing return of love, and as Miranda walked out of the room she looked suddenly ineffably beautiful again.

  Two days later, Dennis came back, his truck grinding slowly up the dirt road toward the cabin. At the sound of his rusted tailpipe, Jodi came out onto the porch and watched him leap from the cab and dart through the rain around to the passenger’s side. He pulled the door open and stood there, dripping, as a dark-haired woman stepped down and turned to gather her things.