Mr. Right Next Door

by Arlene James

  He put his hands in his pockets and started walking toward the house, telling himself that Denise’s dislike of him was not genuine, that it was fueled by the strength of their attraction, that she was merely frightened. She had been hurt so badly, but why couldn’t she see that what she needed to heal that wound completely was a committed, loyal, loving man? What she needed was him. He knew it at the bottom of his soul.

  As he stepped up onto the porch and Reiver came to meet him, he reached down automatically and ruffled the dog’s ears. Reiver fell into step with him, his nails clicking on the floorboards of the porch at twice the rate of Morgan’s own thumping footfalls as they walked toward the door. Both slipped inside, and both in his own way shook off the cold, Reiver plopping down on his rump and yawning so widely that the muscles of his sleek body seemed to roll with it, while Morgan shivered, jaws locked, and rubbed his hands together briskly.

  “Bet we have snow by Thanksgiving,” he said aloud, wondering if his father could endure another winter on the mountain. He hadn’t stretched it too thin when he’d told Denise that he’d welcome her perspective. Yet he couldn’t see himself forcing old Ben into a retirement home. He’d welcome his father right here into his own house, but Ben was as set against that as any other plan that caused him to leave behind his beloved mountain cabin, and Morgan’s instinctive reaction was to let the old man be. Each and every man bought his own happiness at his own price, provided that he was wise enough to find happiness in the first place, and if Ben’s happiness was sustained by that old cabin, well, who was Morgan to tell him that the price was too high? Especially as he knew himself what love of one’s home was all about.

  He ran a hand lovingly over the flowered paper above the wainscoting and sighed. He’d made this house into a home all by himself. He’d practically rebuilt it board by board over months and months. He’d chosen every stick of furniture and piece of bric-a-brac. It wasn’t authentic in the way historians and restorationists demanded. Much of what he had here were reproductions, but each and every item meant something special to him. Every nail had been set with a sense of true accomplishment. Why now did it seem so empty? Why couldn’t he stop seeing Denise here, snuggled against him, her bare feet tucked beneath his thigh? Oh, he would warm her so. Heck, he’d set them both on fire. All he needed was a chance, and Sunday at two, his chance would begin.

  Chapter Five

  Privately Denise had to admit that repeating at least a portion of the drive they had first taken in the dark was an interesting experience. What the view lost in nighttime whimsy, it made up for in perception and color. The hillsides were ablaze with autumn reds and golds, and it struck her suddenly that Thanksgiving was less than six weeks away. She didn’t want to think about the holidays. They had been the most difficult times for her since—She shifted in her seat, pushing away thoughts of old losses and unending pain.

  “Almost there,” Morgan said, misinterpreting her moodiness for restlessness.

  She gave him a wan smile and threaded her fingers through her hair. She’d decided to wear it down today, telling herself that she didn’t have the energy to put it up. It felt good lying on her shoulders, free from the slightest tug on her scalp. Her old jeans were softly snug against her thighs and calves. The big old sweater that she wore over a sleeveless undershirt was as comfy as a pair of pajamas, even when the stretched-out-vee neckline slid partway off one shoulder. She knew, out of respect for Morgan’s father if not Morgan himself, that she ought to have dressed with more care, but she’d felt defiant enough-and depressed enough—not to bother. Morgan, blast him, had swept his gaze over her and said, “Delicious.” She hadn’t been able to keep still since.

  The pickup truck that Morgan used for everyday transportation slowed and made a left turn onto what amounted to little more than a rutted path, despite the rusty mailbox that clung tenaciously to a crooked fence pole beside it. He gunned the gas pedal, propelling the pickup truck up the slope and over some pretty rough gullies and trenches carved in the “road” by water runoff. Denise looked back in concern as Reiver’s claws made scrabbling sounds on the bed of the truck.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Morgan said lightly. “He’s made this drive hundreds of times. He loves it up here. I don’t know how he knows when it’s time to come up here, but most Sundays he’s waiting in the back of the truck when I get to it, and today was no exception.”

  “Your father doesn’t mind that you bring him along?”

  He laughed at that. “Pop will be waiting with a ham bone and a good ear scratching. I’ll get my hug second.” He shot a look out of the corner of his eye and amended, “Third, most likely, today.”

  They trundled up into a narrow yard, half of which seemed to be slowly sliding down the face of what had once been a sheer cliff but was now eroded into a tricky fall of loose dirt, clumps of stubborn plants and sharp, scary outcroppings of gray rock. Morgan brought the truck to a halt just feet away from the low porch of a rough cabin cobbled together from logs, stone, planks and tin sheeting. A tendril of wood smoke curled up from the chimney, adding its scent to the pungent aromas of fall leaves, pine mingled with loam and...apple?

  The door opened and a stooped gentleman in overalls, flannel shirt, jean jacket and billed cap stepped out onto the porch. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a week, his beard a coarse mottle of white, gray and silver with a touch or two of black mixed in. Blue, blue eyes sparkled in the shadow beneath the hat brim.

  “Morg,” he called out in a voice like the rasp of a file, and then he bent and clapped his hands together at about knee height. “Hey, boy.” Reiver bounded out of the back of the truck and nearly knocked the old man off his feet. Morgan’s father went down on one knee, laughing and ruffling the dog’s fur with hard, rugged hands. Reiver’s tail was working at high speed, and he laved the old man’s face with his tongue, knocking back his cap. The predicted bone was produced from a coat pocket and snatched with a toothy chomp before being carried to a far corner of the porch and greedily gnawed.

  Laughing, the old man pushed himself up, with some effort, to standing again. By that time Morgan had gotten out of the truck and walked around to the passenger side door to help Denise do the same. Morgan led her the few steps to the porch, her hand in his, and said, “Pop, I’d like you to meet Denise Jenkins. Denise, this is my father, Ben.”

  Ben Holt’s eyes, which were a paler version of his son’s, flicked over his unexpected guest with obvious interest. “Denise is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His face suddenly split into a wide, denture-white grin. “Welcome, Denise.” He stepped down and threw both arms around her, pounding one hand in the center of her back. Almost before she could respond he stepped aside and engulfed Morgan in an even more exuberant embrace. Morgan shot Denise an I-told-you-so smile and wrapped his arms around his father. The affection between them was palpable. After several seconds they pulled apart, and Ben waved a hand to include Denise. “Come on in. I got some cider simmerin’ on the stove.”

  “Ooh.” Morgan rubbed his hands together, then slid one of them into the small of her back. “Pop’s apple cider is the best around. He used to sell it, but these days he just produces enough for family and friends. You’re in for a treat.”

  “It smells wonderful.”

  Just then Ben’s boots clumped into the doorway. “Well, come on. What ye waitin’ fer?”

  They hurried up onto the porch and into the house. Denise stopped just inside the door to look around. It was like something out of a movie. The furniture, what there was of it, was roughly hewn and strictly utilitarian. Braided rag rugs covered the rough floor planking. Various animal hides had been tacked up on the walls, along with an impressive set of deer antlers and the hideously ugly, tusked head of a wild boar. A potbellied stove stood across the room from a rock fireplace that looked as though it could come tumbling down at any moment; yet the fire that crackled there seemed especially inviting. At one end of the room,
a narrow, open staircase led up through a hole in the ceiling, and beneath it sat a neatly made bed surrounded by pegs in the wall with odds and ends of clothing hanging from them. A single. electric light burned overhead, but several old-fashioned glass kerosene lamps sat about the room, one on a small table beside a rocking chair, another next to the bed, and a third in the center of the kitchen stove, a massive wrought-iron affair connected to a propane bottle. Most amazing of all was the water pump that stood proudly on the end of the kitchen counter at the edge of the sink. “Rustic” was an understatement, and though the place was thoroughly ramshackle, it exuded a sense of place and permanence so strong that it literally pulled at her, as if it would draw her in and make her an integral part of the room and the cabin and the mountain itself.

  Ben Holt pulled a chair out from the small rectangular table placed just slightly to the left of the center of the room and waved her into it. Then he moved off to bustle around the corner that contained his kitchen, taking out cups and spoons, bowls and small plates and napkins. All the while he talked, the words slow and raspy, as if it had been a long time since he’d spoken aloud.

  “You from around these parts, Denise?”

  “Originally? No, sir.”

  “Folks don’t stay in one place much no more. Me, I was born right here, and right here is where I aim to die. Morg, now, he ain’t wandered too far. But his sister, she’s another tale to be told. She might never have lived up on this old mountain, for all the connection she’s got to it. And Radley, he’s the first generation of Holts to be raised somewheres else, not that he ain’t a good boy for all that. A might confused, I s’pose, but a good un. Yer people, now, where from are they?”

  “I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.”

  “Missouri, eh? I was up in Missouri once back in ‘48 after the war. Purty country, some of it. Always meant to take Ma up that way for a look-see, but she wasn’t much of one for leaving the home place. Won’t never leave it now, God rest her, and I’m of the same mind meself. Ever’thing I ever needed to see I could see from this here mountain anyhow.” He sighed as he poured steaming cider into the cups. “Lately, all I been seeing on the horizon is Heaven, and I figure I’m closest to it here, so this is where I’m stayin’.”

  As he said that last, he carried steaming cups to the table and carefully distributed them. Then he sat a small bowl of real butter on the table and spooned a dollop into each cup, ignoring Denise’s protest that she really didn’t need the extra fat. He chuckled and winked at Morgan. “Never met a man who didn’t like a good armful.”

  Morgan grinned at her over the top of his cup and sipped, closing his eyes to savor the experience. “Ah, Pop, what will I ever do for cider when you’re gone?”

  Ben smacked his lips appreciatively and shook his head, setting down his own cup. “Some things don’t last, son. You and yer sister never had the time to learn the old ways of doing things. My cider, Ma’s corn pone, they’ll be sweet memories yer life long, just as my own pa’s special blend of chew and my ma’s mouth harp playin’ have stayed sweet for me my whole time. Things that’re gone is sometimes the sweetest things of all.”

  Morgan sipped from his cup and said sadly, “I wonder what sweet things Rad will remember. His mother and I arguing sure won’t make for sweet memories.” Morgan sighed and stared into his cup as if he might find the answer there. Ben nodded sagely, saying nothing for some time, only to look up at Denise and stagger her with a question she probably should have expected.

  “You got children, Denise?”

  Her heart dropped like a stone. Suddenly tears blurred her eyes, and she gasped against the sob building in her chest. At once Morgan’s hand came across the table and grasped hers. For some reason that gave her the strength and poise to swallow down the lump in her throat and blink back the tears. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t reacted so badly in a long time. Shaking her head, she managed a quavering “No.” Morgan squeezed her hand, and she stumbled on. “I...I had a son. He died.”

  Unbearable pain seized her, as fresh as that very day she had first watched Jeremy and his friends set out for the park and then heard them tell her that he was dead. The room shrank to the rim of her cup for several long, torturous seconds. She heard Morgan’s whisper but knew instinctively that he was not speaking to her. Gradually a war seeped into her, along with a certain presence of min She realized then that Morgan was not the only one holding her hand. Ben’s gnarled, hoof-tough fingers were curled around one hand, Morgan’s strong, firm ones held the other. It was Ben who brought her all the way back, saying in his rough, husky drawl, “I thank God Ma didn’t outline our own younguns, and I pray I won’t, either.”

  It made Denise laugh, not because it was funny, but because she was happy for him and for Morgan’s mother, because life had held to its natural rhythm, because they would never know what it meant to lose a life more precious to them than their own. And she prayed—forcefully, silently, wordlessly—that Morgan would never know such loss hunself, though he had already had much more time with his son than she had had with hers. That thought brought another, however. She really knew very little about Morgan’s son. This seemed the moment to learn.

  She cleared her throat and said, “Tell me about Radley. That’s your son’s name, isn’t it, Radley?”

  Within moments the mood had shifted a full 180 dogrees. Ben got up to pull out a photograph album, while Morgan told her again that Rad was a student at his own alma mater, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Then the stories began, how he’d been terrorized by a curious opossum during one summer sleepover with his grandparents, how he’d used that experience to frighten the pants off the friends whom he frequently brought up the mountain with him. On a certain hunting trip those same friends had turned the tables on him by secretly capturing an opossum and zipping the poor thing into Radley’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night. The stories went on. Ben spoke proudly of how eleven-year-old Rad had shot the boar, whose head decorated his wall, after it had chased Ben himself up a tree. They laughed about fish that got away and baseballs that didn’t, about first dates and proms. In the end Morgan spoke of the way the breakup of his marriage had affected his only child, of his own regrets and the confidence he felt about the rightness of the ultimate decisions Radley still had to make about his life. Dusk had settled over the mountain before the subject was in any way exhausted.

  “We’re going to have to think about going,” Morgan said regretfully.

  “Here now, who’s gonna read me my chapters?” Ben protested, and he got up to fetch a worn, yellowed Bible with a number of the pages now lying loose between the cracked leather covers. With it, he placed a kerosene lamp on the table. Morgan lit the lamp and adjusted the wick, explaining that Ben had read a chapter from each of the Old and the New Testament of the Bible every Sunday for over forty years. Now that his eyes had gotten too bad for him to read the words for himself, Morgan read them aloud to him. As he began on the New Testament chapter, Ben refilled their cups with steaming cider and settled down to listen. The thirteenth chapter of Romans was not a long one, but the third chapter of Numbers contained fifty-one verses listing the families of the Levites and instructions to Moses concerning setting them aside for the priesthood. Halfway through the Numbers reading, Ben interrupted and suggested that Denise finish up while Morgan went out to the smokehouse before it got any darker out and brought in a couple pieces of meat for the week ahead.

  “Do you mind?” Morgan asked her, sliding the book toward her side of the table. She shook her head and picked up the Bible. Morgan clapped a hand on his father’s shoulder as he moved toward the door, and Ben told him in detail which pieces of meat he wanted brought inside.

  After Morgan went out to do as he was requested and Denise had begun reading the verses from the Bible, Ben laid a hand on her wrist to silence her. “I wanted a moment alone with you,” he admitted gruffly. “I want you to know, I’ll be restin’ easier tonight for havin’
met you. My Morg ain’t never brought no woman up here before, not since his divorce, so I know yer somethin’ special to him, and I want you to know, too, that he’s a good son, a’ways was. He’ll comfort you, if you let ‘im. Seemed fer a while that he sorta forgot what was important, but them times’re gone, an’ now all he needs is someone to love, someone to comfort him in his hurtin’, cause hurtin’ comes t’ all of us, and there’s no help for it, no help at all. Morg, he knows how to love, he surely does, and I don’t mind tellin’ it. Fact is, I’m proud of ’im, and I’m purely pleased, I am, about the two of you.”

  Morgan’s footsteps clumped on the porch then, but instead of coming in he called the dog until, far in the distance, Denise could hear Reiver barking. Only then did Morgan come inside to lay two brownish, wrinkled pieces of meat on the table.

  “Are these the ones you wanted, Pop?”

  “’Zactly the two,” Ben declared, smiling up at Morgan.

  “Reiver’s on his way in,” Morgan said, looking at Denise. “We’d best be loading up.”

  Denise got up and started to carry her cup to the counter, but Ben stopped her with his own hands. “Naw, comp‘ny don’t wash up. Besides, I got me nothin’ better to do on a Sunday evenin’.”

  Leaving the cup on the table, Denise smiled at the old man. “Thank you, Ben, for the cider and the welcome.”

  He patted her shoulders and scratched her cheek with a dry kiss. “You come on back now, hear?”

  “I—I’ll try,” Denise whispered uncertainly. “You take care.”

  “Honey, all the care’s already been taken. There ain’t nothin’ left for me now but Heaven, an’ I’m sure ready.” He said it joyfully, shaming her for the grief she felt at the thought of his dying. He hugged and kissed Morgan then, saying, “I love ye, son.”