Small Town Girl

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “She didn’t sock me. Carl did.”

  “But she caused it. That’s Kate. Always in the middle of any trouble.”

  “People have trouble here in Rosey Corner?” Jay laughed and tried to lighten the conversation. “Mike told me everything came up roses here.”

  “Oh well, that’s what preachers are supposed to say.”

  “Really? I thought they were supposed to tell you what you were doing wrong and straighten you out. Get you back on the right track and all that kind of thing.” He looked up. Graham was painting away, as industrious as he’d seen him all week.

  “Well, some people are harder to keep on the right track than others.” She leaned up against the ladder. “People like Kate.”

  Jay was letting go of the ladder to step back just as several large splatters of paint came raining down from above. Alice shrieked a little when a big blob of paint hit her right on the top of her head.

  “Oops. Sorry, Alice,” Graham called down to her. “I must’ve dipped out too much paint.”

  Alice gingerly touched the top of her head and then stared at the white tips of her fingers. It was all Jay could do to keep from laughing as he rubbed a splatter of paint off his own cheek onto his shoulder. “You better go on home and try to get that out, Alice.”

  Graham clambered down the ladder. He stopped on the second rung and peered at Alice’s head. “Now don’t you be worrying about that none, Alice. White hair looks right pretty. Mine’s been that way for years.” He stepped down to the ground and ran his hand through his hair. That made it stick up in even odder angles than usual and added a few streaks of white.

  “Don’t you have some kerosene here?” Alice asked.

  “Nope.” Graham lied with no hesitation. “Not a bit. Me and the boy here, we don’t mind being polka-dotted. We’ll take a bath afore church on Sunday and get to looking respectable again.” Graham glanced over at Jay. “Right, Jay?”

  “Not much sense cleaning up while there’s more painting to do.” Jay picked up the paint can and brush and stepped away from the ladder. He wanted plenty of space between him and Alice.

  “You could at least offer to wipe it out of my hair since you let the paint hit me.” She directed her words over toward Jay.

  “Well now, it wasn’t the boy’s fault. I was the one who spilled the paint on you,” Graham said. “I can give it a try cleaning it off your head if you want me to.” He jerked a handkerchief out of his pocket that looked like it might have been in that same pocket since last summer. He shook it a little, but it stayed bunched up, the cloth stuck together by who knew what.

  Turning a little pale as he stepped toward her, Alice held up her hand to stop him. “That’s all right. I’ll run on home and let Mother help me.” She peered around Graham to waggle paint-covered fingers at Jay. “I’ll see you around, Jay.”

  “Sure thing.” Jay gave her a quick look and went back to painting.

  “You tell your mama how sorry I am,” Graham called after her.

  Jay waited until Alice was out of sight before he looked around at Graham. “You shouldn’t ought to tell her to lie to her mother like that. You aren’t one bit sorry.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I am sorry. Truly sorry I missed her nose. That’s what I was aiming for.”

  “That wasn’t very nice of you.” Jay swallowed his smile.

  “I’d heard all I wanted to hear of her nonsense.” His voice was almost a growl as he went on. “Talking about our Kate like that.”

  Jay didn’t say anything as he kept brushing on paint. Obviously Kate was good at getting people fired up. Thinking about her got him a little fired up too. But he didn’t think he could claim her as his Kate the way Graham was doing.

  “Come on over and take a break.” Graham took a swig from the water jug and settled down in the shade next to his dog. “Maybe no more Rosey Corner hopefuls will be dropping by to make eyes at you for a spell.”

  “Mrs. Harrelson may come out to make eyes at you.” Jay laid the brush on the top of the paint can.

  “Nope. She’s gone to Edgeville for more paint.”

  Jay took a drink and dropped down in the shade beside the old man. He looked back at the house. “How long you been painting on this house?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I ain’t one to count days. A job takes however long a job takes.”

  Jay squinted his eyes to count the unpainted planks. Most of them in the full sun. The other side and the front were finished, but the back hadn’t felt the first brush of paint yet. “How much longer you think this one might take?”

  “It depends.” Graham plucked up a broad piece of grass and put the end of it between his lips.

  “On what?”

  “Lots of things. The weather. If Mrs. Harrelson can afford to keep buying paint. You.”

  “Me?”

  “How long you intend on sticking around. Whether you’re one of those boys who ain’t got no finish to him.”

  “No finish?” Jay turned to stare at Graham. “What are you talking about?”

  Graham didn’t seem bothered at all by Jay’s frown. “How many jobs you quit in the last couple of years?”

  “None that mattered whether I kept on with them or not. Anybody can dig a ditch or sling hash.”

  “Or paint a house.”

  “Or paint a house,” Jay agreed.

  “Never doing anything important gives a man a certain freedom. That’s for sure. ’Cepting any job can be of some importance to somebody. Even painting a house. Mrs. Harrelson is right proud of the way it’s looking, and in spite of myself, I’m admiring the job some too. Especially now that you’re here to paint the eaves where the wasps hide out.” He looked over at the house and chewed on his grass stem a minute before he went on. “I had a house. Bigger than this one here. Painted it once. Back before my folks passed. Didn’t take me but a few weeks. I was young then. Younger even than you.”

  “Where is it? Here in Rosey Corner?”

  “It was. It burned up some years back. When the woods over yonder burned.” Graham waved toward the west. “The trees are coming back, but the house, it’s gone forever.”

  “Tough luck for you,” Jay said.

  “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. My memories didn’t burn up. I worried some that might happen, but it didn’t. And I made it out with the girls. Thanks to Poe here.” Graham reached over and touched the dog’s head. The dog opened his eyes and flapped his tail a couple of times against the dirt.

  “The girls?”

  “Kate and little Lorena. Maybe I’ll tell you the story someday if you stick around long enough.”

  Jay wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirttail and then stretched out on the ground with his hands under his head. “You could tell me now. While we’re cooling off and watching the paint dry.” Graham was an entertaining storyteller.

  “Naw, you haven’t earned that story yet.”

  “I have to earn stories?” Jay rose up a little to give Graham the eye. “I think we might have a problem here. I thought I was working for cash.”

  Graham waved his hand. “I told you I’d give you half what I got. The stories are bonus. For both of us. Everybody round here has heard my stories way too many times. They’re done tired of hearing how far Aunt Hattie’s boy could hit a baseball or how me and Nadine were about the onliest ones not to get the flu back in ’18. We about wore ourselves out tending to the sick. ’Course Victor was over there in France then, fighting the war.”

  Jay relaxed back down on the grass. He might never get the first dollar for this job, but sometimes it was good to simply stop awhile. “But what about Kate and the little sister?”

  Graham didn’t answer his question. Instead he took the stem of grass out of his mouth and fastened his eyes tight on Jay. “You seem awful interested in Kate. Egging on that gossipy Alice to talk about her.”

  “I was just trying to stop her thinking about stepping closer to me. Let me tell you, the next time she co
mes, I’m the one up the ladder.”

  Graham laughed. “You do seem to be drawing the female attention.”

  “Maybe it’s you. Not me.”

  “That’s a thought,” Graham said.

  An easy silence fell between them as a bee buzzed past and a mockingbird started running through his repertoire. Jay had almost dozed off when Graham spoke up again. “Thing is, the only girl who used to come around to make conversation while I was painting hasn’t come near me all week.”

  “You mean Kate.” Jay kept staring at the leaves above him. One shook loose in the breeze and floated down to land on his stomach.

  “The two of you seemed plenty friendly at the wedding, but now she don’t seem to want to let her eyes fall on you.” Graham leaned forward and plucked up a new piece of grass. “You know any reason for that to be so?”

  Jay chose his words carefully. He could move on down the road, but he liked Graham. He didn’t want to part on bad terms, and it was easy to see he was Kate’s champion. “Maybe she doesn’t like looking at shiners.”

  “That could be it,” Graham said. “It ain’t a very pretty sight. Colorful and all as it is. But I’m thinking it might be something that happened before the black eye. What’d you do to scare that girl?”

  Jay decided to be honest. “I asked her if I could kiss the sister of the bride, but then I got socked in the eye instead of kissed.”

  “But not by Kate.”

  “No, not by Kate.”

  “And now she’s avoiding you like the plague.” Graham’s voice was low, almost like he was talking to himself.

  “You could say that.” Jay stared at the sun slipping through the leaves. If they didn’t get up and start painting again soon, the day was going to be gone. But then Graham was the boss of this job, and if he wanted to talk about Kate, that was okay with Jay. He wanted to know more about Kate. That’s why he was still in Rosey Corner. “Maybe she thinks I’m the one who’s scary.”

  “Could be. Could be. Kate likes to think she can handle things.” Graham looked over at Jay. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think I should do?” Another leaf came floating down to land on his chest. If he kept lying there doing nothing long enough, he might get covered up.

  “Maybe nothing. According to whether you have honorable intentions.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about marriage. Just a movie and maybe another slice of her mother’s brown sugar pie.”

  “Nadine’s pie is worth the trouble of taking a bath for Sunday dinner. That’s for sure.” Graham pushed himself up off the ground. “Guess we’d better paint another plank or two.”

  “Right.” Jay stood up too, but before he could pick up his paintbrush, Graham stepped in front of him.

  “Kate’s one of a kind. You keep that in mind and don’t be doing nothing I’m going to regret.”

  “You?”

  “For making you this business deal. Seemed the thing to do at the time, but that was before I knew you might be a guy with no finish to you.”

  “I’ll finish this job with you.”

  “Maybe you will.” Graham gave him a hard stare, then he pointed up over their heads. “I lack some up there. Had to come down when I spilled that paint.”

  10

  So, Victoria tells me you threw over Carl.” Evie smoothed out the skirt of the green dress she’d just unfolded and hung up on the hook behind the bedroom door. The dress was new. She looked around at Kate and snapped her fingers. “Just like that, she says. And look what that got you. Nowhere to go on a Saturday night.”

  It was the first time Evie had been home since the wedding. Now the house was in a stir as they figured out where Kate, Tori, and Lorena were going to sleep since they were giving over their bedroom to Evie and Mike. Mike had spent a lot of nights at the Merritt house, but he’d always slept on the couch—a visitor. He said he would again, but Evie stamped her foot and said absolutely not. Mama agreed with her. Even if it did cause an uproar.

  Some things didn’t change and Evie getting her way seemed to be one of them. Being married only made her a kind of honored guest with even more than her normal privileges. Next weekend Kate would take Lorena and go spend Saturday night with Aunt Gertie. Let Evie take over the house again. But tonight, Kate had been anxious to see her, to find out if she liked being married. To find out how it felt to be married. To find out if she herself was going to feel different.

  She wanted to feel different. Mike was her sister’s husband, a friend, her preacher. That was all. She’d been telling herself that for months, and this last week it seemed to finally be taking root in her head. When Mike’s car had rolled into the yard that afternoon and he and Evie climbed out, Kate had simply looked at him with a weird kind of regret that she’d never find a man as good as Evie had.

  That was Evie. Using her looks, claiming things to be her right as oldest daughter, demanding the best of whatever was up for grabs. Sometimes they fought about it, but Kate generally gave in. Life had always been easier that way. Besides, Kate was the middle sister—the one who had to make sure everybody got along.

  But she had expected Evie to be different after she was married. Easier. Gentler. Not so ready to poke Kate with barbed words. To maybe be the one person besides Mama who understood about Carl. All week at the store, people had been giving Kate the eye and stepping a little back from her like she might have something contagious.

  Her mother told her not to worry about that. She said people were just surprised. That sometimes people got the wrong ideas in their heads about what ought to happen. Even though her mother understood and agreed that Kate couldn’t marry Carl just because everybody in Rosey Corner thought she should, it was easy to see she was feeling sorry for him too. Everybody was feeling sorry for Carl.

  Kate thought somebody should feel sorry for her. But it wasn’t looking as if she was going to get any sympathy from Evie either. They were alone in the bedroom. Mike had gone to check on one of the elderly deacons, Mr. Blackwell, who’d been feeling poorly for a few weeks. Lorena and Tori were in the kitchen helping Mama get supper on the table. Kate had wanted these alone minutes with Evie to talk, but not to talk about Carl.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and ran her hands over the quilted spread. Aunt Gertie had cut the pieces out of old dresses and shirts. Kate’s finger paused on a square of faded red. All that was left of a favorite dress when she was Lorena’s age. She’d worn it until there were holes under the sleeves. But it had been Evie’s dress first. Everything was Evie’s first.

  Kate held in a sigh as she said, “Carl wanted me to marry him.” Evie would have to hear the whole story and then tell her how she should have done it better.

  “No surprise there. The two of you have been dating for years.” Evie unclipped her earrings and dropped them in a dish on the dresser. She peered into the mirror, then picked up a brush to smooth out the ridges her hat had left in her hair.

  “We’ve been friends for years. I never thought we were dating.”

  Evie paused in her brushing to stare at Kate’s reflection in the mirror. “Come on, Kate. You knew he didn’t think that. The boy’s been crazy about you forever.”

  “You’re right. I should have told him sooner. But I like Carl. It was fun doing stuff with him.”

  “Kissing stuff?” Evie raised her eyebrows at Kate in the mirror.

  “No, of course not.” Kate frowned back at her.

  “You’re almost twenty, Kate. Surely you’ve done some kissing.” Evie started pushing little waves into her hair with her fingers.

  “I’ve never met anybody I wanted to kiss.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she couldn’t very well tell her sister how most of her teenage dreams of kissing starred her new husband. Then again there was that moment of temptation with Jay Tanner, but no way was she going to let Evie know about that. Everybody had a weak moment now and again that meant nothing.

  “Oh, but
kissing is so divine.” Evie sighed and hugged the brush up against her chest. She spun around in a circle before plopping down on the bed beside Kate. “It is all so divine.” She lay back on the bed and stretched her arms over her head with a blissful look on her face.

  “So your wedding night was all right? You weren’t scared?” Kate looked at her. “When Mama gave us the talk, you acted a little nervous.”

  “I know. It all sounds so . . .” Evie hesitated, a flush coloring her cheeks as she sat back up. “I don’t know, so something when you talk about it. But when you’re with someone you love, it turns into something divine. Two becoming one like the Bible says.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re happy, Evie.” Kate reached over for Evie’s hand. “Really glad.”

  “You’re not jealous?” Evie leaned in front of Kate to look straight into her eyes.

  “No. Why would I be jealous?” Kate frowned a little.

  “Because I’m in love and you’re not. Because I found out about all this first.”

  “You’re oldest. You were supposed to get married first.”

  “Because there’s only one Mike.”

  “You’re right there.” Kate kept her voice even. “Mike is a great guy and I may never find anybody half as nice as him, but can you really see me as a preacher’s wife?”

  Evie giggled. “Or me either, for that matter.”

  “But that’s what you are now. Mama says it won’t be an easy spot for you, and she should know. Being a preacher’s daughter like she was.”

  “I know, but I’ll figure it out. With Mike’s help and Mama’s.” Evie squeezed Kate’s hand. “And yours. If those church ladies give me trouble, I’ll let you straighten them out.”

  “I can do it.”

  They both laughed then, sharing unspoken memories of all the times Kate had been in hot water with the church ladies for being too ready to speak her mind. Kate’s laugh faded away. “The church ladies aren’t too happy with me now. They were all set to eat wedding cake again with Carl and me. Now he’s going off to the Navy and everybody thinks I’m heartless.”