by Pamela Morsi
When the full basket finally passed muster, Jesse followed Aunt Will through the remains of her garden.
“Keep this gate locked secure,” the older woman warned her. “We don’t want them pigs in here hogging it down until we’ve got everything for our own table.”
They walked down the rows, each of them carrying a bucket. The gourds or beans that still looked good, Aunt Will put in her bucket. The ones rotting or infested she handed to Jesse. At the end of the row was the wheelbarrow where Jesse was to unload the one row’s leavings.
Jesse followed her aunt Will’s footsteps. The space between the rows of vegetables was lined with old pieces of heavy paper and grocery sacks, held in place by stones on the corners. The old woman stepped carefully, utilizing her stick not only for balance, but to brush back the leafy foliage in her search for the produce below.
“What’s all this paper for?” Jesse asked her.
“It keeps the weeds down,” Aunt Will told her. “At my age I can’t spend near as much time bending and pulling as I used to.”
That made sense.
Gardening was not something that Jesse had spent a lot of time doing. Her father had always had his little vegetable patch. An engineer for the Department of Agriculture, he’d always joked that his little plot of tomatoes and peas was like a 12-step program for a farming addiction.
Her mother had always had houseplants, so between the two, Jesse had done some weeding, potting and watering. But the growing part of the flower beds had never attracted her like the stones that surrounded it. Her mother had joked that Jesse had been collecting rocks since the days when her first impulse was to carry them around in her mouth. Jesse didn’t remember that, of course. But she certainly recalled tucking them into the bib of her My Little Pony overalls at the day-care center. By the time the three rock types were taught in kindergarten class, she was already hooked.
“What a strange thing for a woman to be interested in,” Greg said to her early in their relationship. “You are a person so full of life, why would you be interested in something as dead as rocks?”
They didn’t seem dead to her. Well, of course they weren’t alive, although a lot of bacteria inside them were. But they were solid and practical and just plain interesting.
Her mother hadn’t thought it a particularly “feminine” hobby, but her father seemed to delight in the uniqueness of his daughter’s mind.
McNees Winsloe had been, in his daughter’s eyes, the perfect dad. He’d laughed at her jokes, been amazed at her insights and had never failed to notice even her most mundane achievements.
“If you like rocks, baby-girl,” he’d said, “then you study rocks. This place we’re living is just one big rock in an infinite universe. If you come to understand it, you’ll know more than most.”
Jesse had come to understand a lot about the layers of the earth’s crust, the movement of tectonic plates, the eons of the upthrust and erosion cycle. But she never understood how on a perfectly normal, ordinary morning her father could have laughingly kissed her goodbye as he dropped her off at school, and been dead only a little more than an hour later.
Ahead of her, she watched Aunt Will making slow, steady progress, her ancient, muddy work boots stepping lightly in the narrow path between the rows. It was amazing how good she was at spotting a gourd hiding in the dirt or an undersized melon completely obscured by foliage.
They worked through a good portion of the garden, filling up a bucket of food for the table and a wheelbarrow full of rotting or ruined produce destined for the hog trough.
After a short break for lunch, Aunt Will took what she described to Jesse as her “afternoon beauty rest.” She seated herself in the slat-back rocker on the porch, resting her feet on the spine of the ugly hound, Lilly June, and dozed off almost immediately.
At first Jesse wasn’t sure what to do with the free time. There was no cell reception or Wi-Fi, so she couldn’t check her email. There were no magazines. And the old books on the shelf were mostly collections of sermons or something to do with farming. The poetry available was The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. After a couple of moments staring out the dirty window, Jesse rounded up a bucket, a brush, some rags and a ladder to get a better view of the outside world.
Simultaneously battling grime and spiders turned out to be hard work. And by the end of the day, Jesse was ravenously hungry. Sitting down to dinner with Aunt Will, she found herself eating like a lumberjack.
“You can tell I’m not used to farm work,” she told Aunt Will. “I’ve really worked up an appetite.”
The old woman shook her head. “It’s the poultice,” Aunt Will told her. “It’s drawing all that hurt out of your insides. That always leave a person with a kind of empty feeling.”
Jesse was certain that it was the day’s exertions rather than the oozy, sticky home remedy that made her eager to eat. Just the smell of the poultice was enough to turn her stomach off food for a lifetime. She did not say that, however.
“Thank you, Aunt Will. I know you’re worried about me. And I really appreciate that you want to help me.”
The old woman nodded. “I’ll be stirring up another smear to put on you before bed.”
“Again?” Jesse was dismayed. All of her gratitude from the moment earlier disappeared completely. “I don’t think I need it again.”
“DuJess, the cure takes six nights to perfect and it’s best done now, in the waning moon. Don’t you worry for nothing,” Aunt Will said. “Next week at this time, that man will be out of your heart for good.”
5
Mondays at Marrying Stone Community Clinic were always busy. The minute the doors opened, the weekend’s walking wounded began showing up in droves. Through Saturday and Sunday, the sick and injured stoically waited until the clinic’s regular hours. They waited as they got sicker and their injuries got infected. They waited until all the children were sharing the symptoms. Although a sign on the door urged people to call Doc Piney on his cell phone or knock on the door upstairs, many Ozarkers would have to be on death’s doorstep to make a bother of themselves on somebody’s free time.
Adding to the Monday burden was the Tuesday schedule. Piney, as the physician’s assistant, ran the clinic and treated whatever came in the door, regular appointments as well as emergencies. On Tuesdays however, Doc Mo, the clinic’s M.D. physician, was on the mountain in person. There were cases that Piney wanted the doctor to examine and there were patients that decided on their own that a face-to-face with “the real doc” was in order. Those people tended to show up on Monday to get Piney to work them in on Tuesday.
So with the typical chaos all around, Piney started his workweek. In the downstairs of the building that had once been his family’s country grocery store, the floor space had been walled to create a waiting area, two examination rooms, a procedure space, laboratory, X-ray area, storage and offices for both himself and Dr. Mo. In the center of the space, within a curving counter area that accentuated the ringmaster quality of her job, Viola Ramsgate was receptionist, office manager, nurse aide and janitor rolled into one big-boned, big-haired, energetic, fifty-something dynamo.
She’d also been best friend to Piney’s mom and considered him a sort of add-on offspring to her own six grown children. He appreciated the pies and zucchini bread she brought him. He was not so crazy about the relentless attempts at matchmaking.
“Lorelei Trace is in One,” she told him. “She is a right pretty girl, healthy. She makes her own clothes and is an excellent cook. A fellow could go a long way and not find a better deal.”
Piney leaned forward, feigning a whispered confidence. “Vi, she’s eight months pregnant.”
“And not a baby-daddy in sight,” the receptionist pointed out. “You just crook your finger at her and that gal will flop over like a wormy hog and be grateful to you for the rest of her life.”
“Ah…you paint such a romantic picture, but no, thanks.”
“Just trying to help,�
�� Viola told him. “The bible says, ‘It’s not good for man to be alone.’”
“I’m not alone,” Piney pointed out. “I’m a single dad and I have enough problems without taking on somebody else’s.”
Viola raised her hands in a gesture of giving up, but Piney knew from experience that wasn’t at all likely. He glanced into the waiting room area. Nearly every seat was full and there were children playing on the floor.
“I’m putting Monroe Broody in Two,” Piney said. “I know that’s out of turn, but he insists on wearing his dress shoes for his appointments and they are so bad on the neuropathy in his feet.”
He didn’t wait for Viola’s comment but went directly to the old man.
“How are you today, Mr. Broody?” he asked the old man in the clean plaid shirt and gray suspenders.
Rheumy-eyed through bifocals, the man squinted up at him. “Right puny, Doc Piney,” he answered. “I’m a little off my feed and feeling right puny.”
He fumbled with his walker a minute before rising to his feet. Piney glanced around toward the patients still waiting. He gave them a deliberately broad smile.
“Sorry about Mondays,” he said in general. “We’re going to get everybody in as quick as we can.”
This was the chance for any angry complaints to be directed to him. Nobody looked particularly happy, but no one spoke up.
He led the old man into the second exam room and helped him up on the table.
Piney nodded as he quickly reacquainted himself with the specifics of the chart.
“Well, let’s see what we can do to help.”
That was how Piney spent his day; it was how he spent most. Looking down sore throats, into aching ears, stitching up minor injuries and evaluating symptoms for the worst kind of news. When Viola left just a few minutes after five, it was his turn to sit down at the computer, upload the day’s notes to the charts and interact online with Doc Mo. It was after six-thirty when he finally logged off, locked up and climbed the steep path next to the building that led to the second-floor entrance at the back where he’d grown up and now lived with his son.
He could smell the food before he even set a foot on the porch. Tree couldn’t have been more than a few minutes home from basketball practice, but he always walked in the door hungry. And sometimes he couldn’t wait for his dad to show up and cook.
Piney found his son seated at the kitchen table. Only the crusts were left of what had once been a frozen pizza, advertised as capable of feeding a family of four. He’d moved on to eating a bowl of canned tamales smothered in ketchup and beside him was a bag of corn chips that was nearly empty. It had been unopened that morning.
“All that stuff is loaded with salt,” he told his son.
Tree nodded with the absent unconcern of the youthful, physically fit.
“Thank you for your wisdom, O Ancient One,” he said with a teasing smirk. “I’ll drink extra water.”
Piney knew that wasn’t exactly a fix, but kept the rest of his unwelcome ancient wisdom to himself. Instead he opened the refrigerator. He was hungry, too. Nothing in there jumped out at him as the answer to his empty belly. Finally, with a sigh, he decided to make himself a cup of rice. As the water boiled, he ate Tree’s leftover crusts.
“How was school?” he asked, as he did every day.
“Fine.”
“Did you learn anything interesting?”
“No.”
“How are your buddies?”
“Okay.”
“Basketball practice?”
“Good.”
“Do you imagine that as the universe expands, we become less significant or more exceptional?”
Tree looked up and grinned. “Whoa! Ancient One, too deep.”
“I’m trying not to live here by myself,” Piney answered wryly. “At least not for another year.”
His son smiled up at him. “Gee, Dad, maybe you need a hobby.”
“Anybody who works hours as long as I do doesn’t need a hobby.”
“Okay, then get a life,” Tree said. “Even around here most guys get a life.”
“Hey, I’d say I’ve got a life. Extra-long hours at work. A son who eats me out of house and home. And all the basketball that a man can live to enjoy.”
Tree grinned. “Does that mean you’ll make it to the game tomorrow?”
Being at the game was important. Piney remembered that from his own youth. Friends were there, teachers were there, the whole community might be there, but if a guy’s parents weren’t in the stands, somehow there was a hollowness to it.
“You know how Tuesdays can get,” Piney warned his son. “But I’ll do my darnedest to be there, even if I’m late.”
Tree nodded. His phone made a burping sound and the teenager picked it up to check on his latest text. Undoubtedly it was Camryn announcing that she was finished eating or finished washing dishes or sitting in front of her favorite TV show. From Piney’s perspective, his son’s girlfriend could hardly make a trip to the bathroom without keeping his son in the loop. But he was wise enough not to state that opinion.
When water was boiled down on Piney’s cup of rice, he lowered the fire and covered it with a lid. Shifting through the cabinet, he found a jar of Crowder peas. He twisted off the lid and poured it into another pot to heat.
He stood watching the pots boil as he leaned against the crux of the counter corner. The room was basically retro. His father had updated and remodeled it when Piney was a kid. Magically turning the solid oak shelves that his great-grandfather had built into imitations of the cheap prefab cabinetry so easily available in big box home improvement stores. The counters were covered in pale green laminate. Piney was fairly certain that the wood beneath it was the infinitely superior hardrock maple. But his mother had wanted her home to look like suburban houses she saw on TV. And his dad had done his best to comply.
It had been Piney’s plan to fix up the entire house when he’d moved in. He had managed to get it structurally sound and to remodel the ground floor into an attractive and functional clinic. But somehow the living space, with its tired wallpaper and thirty-year-old curtains, lingered on.
“The place needs a woman’s touch,” Viola had told him more than once.
He snorted at the idea of that. Shauna certainly would never have shown any interest in it. A woman who couldn’t manage to stir up enough interest to care for her own child would never give a flip about a house. His ex-wife had been completely unsuited for the warmth of hearth and home. And Piney had been unsuccessful in convincing her to change.
The rice was cooked through and the peas were boiling when Piney reached for a plate.
“You gonna eat all of that?” Tree asked him.
He’d already anticipated the question and dutifully split the rice onto two plates, covered each white hill with a serving of peas and shook on some Tabasco sauce to make it worth eating. He set the plates on the table and watched as Tree dug into the fare as if he’d not had a meal all day.
“I remember when four ounces of formula would hold you for half the night,” Piney told him.
His son grinned at him. “I guess those were the good old days,” he said. “Except for all the dirty diapers.”
Piney shrugged. “I think your smelly gym clothes are at least as bad as the diapers ever were.”
“Hey, Ancient One, you’re going to miss me when I’m gone.”
That was the truth. And Piney knew it in a way his son couldn’t imagine.
6
Jesse began Tuesday morning a bit better than Monday. She’d already experienced Aunt Will’s solution for removing the dried poultice from her chest and was determined to find a better way on her own. She used the nipple cream her aunt had given her to loosen up the edges of the hard, dried cloth and then she’d squeezed warm water between the gauze and the skin until the paste got gooey again and she could get it off. It took a lot longer, but it was a lot less painful. Nothing, however, could be done about the smell. The poult
ice had a sour stink that bothered her nose even after it was gone.
She gathered the morning eggs more quickly and efficiently, now that she had a better clue where the peckish old hens were hiding them. Biscuits were not something that she actually knew how to bake. But she knew how to make a great omelet and she found some bread in the freezer that she attempted to toast in the oven. She set the meal on the table in front of the recently cleaned window with the lovely view of the path to the valley and the squarish mountain in the distance.
Her aunt seemed surprised that Jesse would attempt cooking, but praised her efforts.
“Now what all is in these eggs?”
“Just some onion and pepper and a little bit of ham.”
“It’s not half-bad, DuJess,” she said. “Not half-bad at all.”
After breakfast, Jesse helped Aunt Will with chores. She followed her through the garden again, cleaned up after the cow and even took direction on mixing a barrel of swill. The work was unfamiliar and a bit more physically demanding than she was used to. But she found that she liked it. It kept her occupied in body and mind, which she decided was a big improvement over the useless rehashing of her relationship with Greg.
What if she had said this? What if she had done that? She should never have agreed to a long engagement. If they couldn’t move in together, then they should have married right away. She could have kept him on a shorter leash. With her closer by his side, he would never have even noticed Sarah. And if he hadn’t noticed her, none of this would have ever happened.
But it had happened. The reality of the situation would be brought home to her like a weight against her chest. Greg obviously didn’t love her. They had both thought that he did, but they’d both been wrong. If they had married two years ago and then he’d met Sarah and fallen in love, how much worse, how terribly much worse, it would have been.
