by Cameron Judd
AS PROMISED, THERE WAS a rollaway bed folded up inside the closet of Room Seven. Emmie was glad for it. Dale would sleep on the rollaway, leaving the more comfortable twin bed to her.
Emmie turned on the small television and fumbled with the antenna in a failing attempt to bring in a picture. Her mother was draining yet another beer as Donnie and son busied themselves with getting the family’s meager luggage indoors, Donnie all the while muttering about the need to get back to that garage before it got any later.
Within minutes Lorene was passed out and snoring on the larger bed, her hand loosely gripping the empty beer bottle. The bathroom door opened and Donnie emerged, just in time to catch his son sneaking a cigarette from Lorene’s pack of menthols on the bedside table. “Put it back, boy! Ain’t good for you. Makes you short of wind, gives you bad breath. Girls don’t like bad breath. Runs ’em right off.” He looked at his unconscious wife sprawled on her back across the bed, mouth flopped open. “On the other hand, maybe running ’em off ain’t always the worst thing you can do.”
Dale slid the cigarette back into the pack. Donnie, going out the door, said over his shoulder, “You kids stay here with Mama. If she wakes up, tell her I’ve gone back to that garage to work on the car, like we talked about.” Then he was gone and the boy took the cigarette again, and a second for good measure. He’d be outside smoking in minutes.
The Mercury’s engine, cooled now, started with a rumble. Tires slung gravel as Donnie left the parking lot.
YOUNG EMMIE STOOD IN the door of Room Seven and watched her father’s car make a right turn onto the road. Despite his talk of car repair, she had expected him merely to pull around and park nearer the motel office and sneak in to rejoin Amber the desk clerk.
The precocious little girl developed an instant suspicion. She turned to her brother, who was filching a matchbook from the bedside table.
“I’m going to take a walk,” Emmie said. “If Mama wakes up tell her I’ll be right back.”
“Where you going?”
“Got to see if I’m right about something,” she said, and darted out the door and across the gravel parking lot before Dale could ask any more questions.
THE BIG LIVER-SPOTTED MAN on the porch was sixty years old, looked seventy-five, and could have been a waxwork figure dumped in a sun-warmed metal porch chair to soften. His belly and sides bulged beneath his dirty v-neck tee-shirt, pressing the arms of the chair. He watched Donnie walking toward him from the garage.
“Hello, young fellow,” the man said in a gravelly voice. “Did you get your car-fixing done?”
“I did, sir, and I ’preciate you and your sons letting me use your place and your tools.”
“Just one’s my son. The other’s a nephew. Thermostat, was it?”
“Yep. Easy repair, except for having forgot to bring my tools with me. You folks saved my bacon. And didn’t charge me a penny for use of the space and tools. Mighty nice.”
“We’re neighborly folk. Name’s Millard,” the big man said, and put out a big hand. First name or last, he didn’t say.
“I’m Donnie. Good to meet you, sir.” Donnie shook Millard’s hand as his eyes darted over to the other person on the porch, a teenaged girl in a thin white frock, standing beside a porch support to which she was literally leashed by the neck. Just like Emmie had said. Donnie also had noticed the girl as they drove past, though he’d not been sure about the leash until now. It was the girl on the porch, much more than the garage and tools, that had drawn him back to this place.
“What can I do for you, son?” Millard asked.
Donnie glanced over toward the girl and gave a nervous, flickering grin. “It ain’t what you can do for me, sir, but maybe what this here young lady can. I seen her over here and it got to wondering if … well, if maybe there was more than the use of garage space that a man could get for himself around here. And I thought maybe you were her … uh, uh, business manager, you might say. If I’ve got the right idea about the situation.”
Millard cocked a brow. “Just what are you saying to me, young man?”
Donnie wondered if he’d blundered. Nothing to do now but play it out. “I think you probably know what I’m talking about. I hope so, anyway. But if I’m reading all this the wrong way, there’s no disrespect or harm intended by it, and I’ll just ask your pardon and move on.”
Millard’s meaty face broke into a grin and he winked slyly. “You’re a man with an eye for reading a situation, I can see. You betcha you can get more than garage space here. But it’s only the garage space that you get for free.”
Donnie glanced at the girl again and nodded. “No problem. I figured that was the way it’d be. Who is she?”
Millard chuckled and leaned forward in the chair, eyes glittering, elbows resting on his broad knees. “Who?”
“Who you reckon? This pretty little gal right here.”
“Son, that there gal don’t exist!”
Donnie took out a cigarette, lit it and wondered if he’d stumbled upon some sort of insane clan of rednecks. He offered a smoke to the old man, who declined, declaring that, while his son over in the garage loved his cigarettes, he himself had never smoked.
Donnie took a long, filtered drag and blew the smoke upward toward the porch ceiling. “She ‘don’t exist,’ you tell me. Hell, old man, I can see her right there! I’m close enough to touch her. Don’t play games with me.”
Millard laughed wheezingly, then said, “I’m messing with you, son, just messing with you. What I mean is, Junie there don’t exist in no ’ficial way. No sosha-scurity number, no birth certificate, never set foot in a doctor’s office or health department, never had a shot, never been to school a day and never will.”
“Can she talk?”
“She can talk – hell, we even taught her to read – but she’s been taught to stay quiet most all the time. Smart as a whip, though. I know it for a fact.”
“Where’d she come from?”
“Her mama, gal name of Sadie, was my older son Roger’s woman for a time. They never got married, just kind of cohabertated or whatever that word is – and Sadie birthed Junie here. Roger wasn’t Junie’s father, though. Sadie wasn’t showing yet when Roger met her, and never really showed much even later on, being a big fat gal, but she was knocked up with Junie already and likely had no sure notion who the father was. Sadie was loosey-goosey for anything wearing pants, y’see. Other than that, she was a good old gal. Tough as nails, too. She never even let on to anybody that she was expecting, so Roger was pretty much the only one who knew it, Sadie looking big as a house even when she wasn’t pregnant. Junie here come into this world in a barn, just like baby Jesus, which I figure makes her special. That very barn over yonder, matter of fact.” He pointed. “Sadie got hit with her birthing cramps while she was setting on a stool in that barn milking a cow. No doctor, no midwife, nobody at all around. Sadie whelped that baby girl out of herself with not a lick of help. Cut the cord with a rusty paring knife that was lying on the barn floor. She held her baby in her arms and laid there for a spell in her own birthing mess, cleaned up her baby with a stray rag and puddle water, then got up and carried baby Junie up to the house when she heard Roger driving in from his road department job with the county. She walked through the kitchen door after him, handed him the baby, and headed for the stove, saying she’d cook up something for supper. That’s what I mean by Sadie being tough. But she never cooked no supper … she kind of give out and fell down instead. Nothing serious, just fainted. Roger took Junie to the crib they had bought for the baby, then carried Sadie to the bathtub – even though she weighed a right smart more than he did – and washed her up and revived her. He was good to that woman, Roger was. A good boy, Roger was.”
“Nobody ever brought in a doctor or nothing?”
“Never. Not for neither one of them, mother or baby. No need for it. Junie was fine, and Sadie was too. They never announced about Junie being born … Sadie’s family, over in Hawkins County, d
on’t know about Junie to this day.”
“Why so secret?”
Millard shrugged. “That was just their way, Roger and Sadie. Didn’t ask about nobody else’s business and wouldn’t share none of their own. Besides, Sadie had some kin who would have been mighty hard on her for having give birth to a baby without being married. Easier just to keep the old lip zipped.”
“Where are Roger and Sadie now?”
“Dead and gone, sad to say. Both of them kilt ’bout a year after Junie was born when they was out honky-tonking and driving the back roads one night. Hit a big oak tree off the north side of Mountcastle Road and went right through the windshield. Me and Maude, my wife, was babysitting baby Junie the night it happened. Junie’s not left this property since. Maude and me took over raising her, in secret. Maudie and me kept quiet just like Roger and Sadie had done, figuring they’d have wanted it that way, and we kept Junie out of sight as she growed. We made a special room for her down in the cellar … good, snug, clean place, and she was comfortable. I even put in a bathroom down there just for her. We taught her to not speak unless we spoke to her first, and to only say what we told her to. Never to holler out or make noise unless the house was afire or something.
“For a time when she was still a little girl I had a high wood fence around the back yard so she could go back there and get fresh air without nobody seeing her. That fence is gone now: tree fell on it in a storm and busted most of it all to splinters. The point of all this is that we tried to do right by Junie in how we raised her, me and Maudie. Why, when she was small, I would sit with Junie on my lap and read her stories out of a book, like she was my own child, and I’ve never been one for reading. We taught her to read some when she was old enough … well, that was mostly Maudie who done that. I ain’t much of a teacher. But I did read to her … sang to her, too … I got a better voice for singing than you’d think from hearing me talk. I put a TV down in her room to keep her occupied. We always have tried to be good to Junie, long as she behaves herself. We just settled natural-like into the habit of keeping her secret, and then years went by and she commenced to, well, blossoming toward her womanhood, like they say. You know what I mean. You can look at her – hell, you been looking at her – and see that she blossomed early, and just right. She’s … ripe. Ripe as a young gal can be. Wouldn’t you say?”
Donnie nodded, grinning. “Like a summer peach. I won’t lie to you, Millard: I drove by earlier with my family in the car, looked over and seen Junie up here like this, that light from the door there behind her … Lord have mercy! It was a sight to race a man’s heart.”
“Son, I’ve seen men near drive off into the ditch just from catching sight of her up here. A right lot of them end up pulling in the driveway and coming up to ask about her just like you’ve done just now. She’s her own advertisement, y’see, and brings in a lot of cash money to this here old man. Y’know, for my ‘business manager’ duties.”
“I come close to driving into the ditch myself.”
Millard drew in a long, wheezing breath. “Know what I like about you, Mr. Donnie? You seem a man who don’t stand in judgment, and that’s the kind of man who can be trusted. So I’m going to tell you something I don’t share with just everybody. The truth is, it ain’t just men passing by who stop by and have … well, special times with Junie. I ain’t immune to such kind of temptation no more than any other man.” He winked and chuckled. The girl, Donnie noticed, looked away from the old man as he said this, and seemed to tense very slightly.
Donnie was a man of few scruples, but Millard’s words prompted an atypical burst of moral shock. “Are you telling me you done that, and her being your own granddaughter?”
Millard firmly shook his round head and looked annoyed. “You ain’t listening as good as I thought, friend. Remember what I told you: my boy Roger wasn’t her father. Her mama was already carrying her even before she and Roger met each other. Not a drop of my blood runs in Junie’s veins, not one drop. Just because I raised her like my own blood kin don’t mean she is.”
“All I can say is, Maudie must be a mighty open-minded wife.”
“Maudie’s dead, rest her soul. Two-and-a-half year now. And while she was living I never laid a hand on Junie. Wouldn’t have seemed fitting, with her being young as she was, and Maudie still being around besides.”
“Sorry to hear Maudie’s passed on.”
“I miss her, but I ain’t left alone. My youngest boy, Roy, he’s here with me. He’s the one you met …”
“…. In the garage. Yeah.”
“And Junie’s here, of course. I ain’t lonely.”
Donnie got over his sudden scruples and grinned. “I got a question … if Junie here’s a secret, if she don’t exist, as you put it, how is it you can have her right out on your porch where folks can see her? Don’t sheriff deputies and such drive up this road sometimes?”
“Oh, most of the lawmen around here know about Junie. And every one of them ….” Millard pursed his lips and made a side-to-side zipping motion across them with thumb and forefinger.
“What keeps them quiet?”
“My boy Roy, he’s always liked pitcher-taking and has him a camera and a darkroom in the basement. When certain men paid call on Junie when we first got started with all this, we had made us a little closet Roger could hide in and snap some right detailed pitchers of the, uh, festivities. Insurance policy, sort of. We got pitchers of Junie being mighty friendly with half the law officers in Kincheloe County, and quite a few of the Tylerville town cops. She was only fourteen year old in some of them. The pitchers Roy took ain’t the kind a good Sunday-go-to-meeting deputy sheriff wants his sweet Christian wife to find in the mailbox come Monday morning. And it ain’t just deputies and such; we’ve even got pictures of some mighty prominent citizens, uh … fraternizing with Junie here. Police, firemen, lawyers, even some social worker fellow. Some fine elders and deacons and a preacher or two. In a county like this it’s easier than you’d think to keep secrets … if you got the right folks gripped where it counts.” He put his hand out, palm up, clenched his fist, and made a twisting, pulling motion. Donnie winced and grinned at the same time, then suddenly grew serious.
“Hey, Millard, Roy wouldn’t take no pictures of me with Junie this evening, would he?”
“You carry a badge? Work with the law? Do private detective work?”
“Not me. I don’t even live around here. I work in a mechanic shop in Grainger County. I’m only in Kincheloe County to visit with my wife’s relatives.” He made a face of distaste and Millard chuckled.
“No pitchers, then. You got old Millard’s word on it. No pitchers. And Roy’s still over there in the garage, anyway.”
Donnie looked closer at Junie’s blank face. “How old is she?”
“Old enough for what you’re wanting.”
“But maybe not according to the law?”
“Let’s just say that the law’s got nothing to do with what happens in this house, or with you and Junie.”
“Nobody’s going to know. Right? You swear?”
“You worry way too much, son. Not a soul beyond us here right now will ever know. That’s the Millard guarantee.”
Donnie was smart enough to see that Millard’s notion of Junie as a secure local secret was blatantly unfounded. Given how she was displayed on this porch in view of a public road, plenty of people had to have seen her, including many whom Millard was in no position to blackmail into silence. This was as precarious a house of cards as Donnie had ever run across, one bound to collapse at any moment. Donnie, though, found himself willing to play the odds that the collapse would not happen tonight. “Good enough for me,” he said, and shook Millard’s hand.
“Let’s go inside, son. You can unhitch Junie from that post, but you hold on tight. She tried once to pull loose and run once when there was a man she didn’t like the smell of. Couldn’t much blame her … that old boy did stink like an SOB. But she got through it. She’s a tough one
and a trouper, this girl. Right, Junie?”
Junie gave no reaction, verbally or bodily. She was a blank and empty vessel, her eyes devoid of light.
Donnie gently patted the side of Junie’s face and smiled into her expressionless visage. “Junie ain’t going to run from old Donnie. Nothing wrong with the way I smell. I take showers and use shaving lotion, good stuff. Buy it at the drug store. Me and Junie are going to be real fine friends. Ain’t that right, sweet thing?” He made a small kissing noise at Junie.
She stared back at Donnie with an expression fit for a corpse. Her dirty-blonde hair was long unwashed and hung like limp, straw-colored mop-strings to her shoulders. Her frock was worn and filthy, and she smelled of dried perspiration. Junie was either very unintelligent or very drugged, or both. She had not spoken a word.
Millard grunted and freed himself from the confines of his chair’s pinching arm rests. He stood, so wobbly Donnie reached out to steady him.
“You ready, son? We got a back bedroom where Junie does her receiving of guests, as we call it around here.”
Donnie grinned. “I’m ready as I can be. Yes sir.”
DONNIE WAS STILL FINISHING his work on the thermostat replacement when Emmie reached the Millard property. Staying outside the reach of the garage light, she knelt in the shadows near the mailbox at the end of the driveway and watched her father work, hoping that maybe a legitimate car repair was all he was up to after all. She could see the girl on the porch, just as she’d been when they’d passed earlier. A greasy-looking fat man was seated nearby the girl.
Donnie’s work hadn’t taken long. When he was done, he had lighted a cigarette and paced about a little in the garage while he smoked, talking briefly to the two younger men working under the hood of an old pickup truck. Emmie was watching when her father made his way toward the house and started talking to the big man in the chair, while casting blatant stares at the restrained girl. Emmie was too far away to catch the actual conversation, but was sure it was the girl they were talking about.
