Shortly after that the first tomato ripened in the garden and they all went crazy about that tomato. It was a most incredible tomato, big, red, juicy; they watched it for days and waited till the sun cooked it to perfection.
“Is it ready?” asked Hank.
“I think so,” said Patrick. “What do you think, Maggie?”
“I think it is.” She felt the tomato’s warm skin; it was firm but not hard.
“I’m gonna pick it,” said Hank. He touched the tomato and jerked his arm back like it was hot.
“What’s the matter?” asked Patrick.
“It’s perfect,” said Hank. “Touch it. God, it’s an incredible tomato.”
Patrick cupped the tomato in his hand and smiled.
“Yeah, it’s some tomato alright.” He looked at her and smiled.
“Okay you guys, pick it,” she ordered.
“I don’t know,” said Hank. “It’s such an awesome tomato. And we grew it. I hate to pick it. Come here.” She slid up next to him and he put his arm around her, pulling her to the side away from Patrick.
“It’ll taste great,” Maggie said. “And there are more. Look, there’s a bunch of ’em.”
“Yeah,” said Hank. “But this is the first one. This one means something.” Hank twisted the tomato off the plant, but kept his arm tight around her, and took a bite; red juice ran down his beard and a squirt escaped the firm skin. The ranch had given birth. They’d grown something and the simple pleasure felt good. Hank handed the tomato to Patrick; he sucked the warm red flesh.
“Fantastic.”
“Shall we tell him, Maggie?” Hank asked. “Maggie and I are going to get married.”
Patrick wiped the tomato off his mouth and looked at Hank. “You’re kidding, of course. You just met.”
“I’d never kid about Maggie.”
“Maggie?” He turned to her.
“Well, we’ve talked about it,” she said.
Patrick walked over to the fence and looked over the ranch. After a few minutes he turned around with a big smile. “Okay, if that’s how it’s gonna be. Okay. If you think its okay.”
“Yes,” she said uncomfortably. She was happy enough, but marriage seemed large to Maggie. Enormous.
“Then I’m happy too.” Patrick reached his arm back and threw the rest of the tomato into the desert. “There’s lots a tomatoes,” Patrick said. “I’ll pick you another.” He bent over the plant and picked a larger fruit and handed it to Maggie. “There you go.”
“So what about me?” Hank asked.
“You’ve already had yours,” he said.
Hank walked up and put his arm around Patrick. “You’re a rotten friend. You know this.”
“I’m a smart friend.” Patrick said and he leaned over and picked another tomato.
Sitting on top of the World …
CHAPTER 8
Omaha, Nebraska 1945
THE LAWN IN FRONT OF THE BRICK HOUSE needed mowing, but Captain Robert Fairchild hadn’t the time. He checked his uniform in the mirror, brushed off his shoulder, straightened himself and headed for the hospital where his son Patrick curled in a small crib. His wife’s labor had been easy, and Fairchild was lucky he was on leave at the right time. On the way down the sidewalk, he waved happily to Blake Johnson who was out mowing the yard.
“You could do mine too,” Robert said.
“Might just do that,” answered Blake. “A present for that new baby.”
“Sure. If you want,” said Robert moving decidedly down the walk and then stopping by the bed of zinnias. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Take as many as you want,” said Blake. “Take them all. Not every day you become a dad.”
“Thanks,” said Robert. He bent and snapped five zinnias from their stems and scooted on down the walkway waving backwards to Blake who was pulling the lawnmower over to the Fairchild lawn.
At the hospital, Robert stopped to see the baby before he went in to see his wife. The infant was crying so he tapped on the window anxiously to catch the nurse’s attention who had her back turned to the child. As if she could not hear the baby cry. The woman turned and smiled and waved and went back to checking the contents of the medicine cabinet, engrossed in her task and ignoring the child. Robert tapped on the window again and pointed to the infant. The nurse came to the door.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“My baby is crying,” he said worriedly.
“Oh, is that your child?”
“Yeah. Isn’t he swell. I think he might be hungry, don’t you?” The new father peered anxiously into the nursery at the squirming child.
“I just fed him twenty minutes ago,” she said. “He’s fine.”
“Maybe he’s hungry again.”
“No. He gets fed every four hours, exactly.”
“Maybe you should pick him up anyway. Is he wet?”
“I’ve just checked him,” she said now indignantly. “The babies get fed every four hours and he is not wet.”
The new father wanted to push past this woman and pick up the child but she stood at the door of the nursery like a guard, obviously in command of her post. The young Captain bowed his head, looked worriedly at the baby, and nervously squeezed the zinnias as he moved away and down the hallway to his wife’s room. He sheepishly opened the door.
“Hi,” he said. Light shone in the venetian blinds over the freshly made bed. Susan smiled back at him.
“Have you seen your son this morning?” she asked.
“Just now, he was crying.” Captain Fairchild moved into the room shyly and handed his wife the flowers and bent over and kissed her. Susan Fairchild kissed her husband back and moved the flowers to the table next to the bed.
Life is just a bowl of cherries …
CHAPTER 9
San Bernardino, California 1946
SYLVIA MERCHANT LEANED AGAINST THE wall and grimaced as the contraction almost buckled her knees. A woman on the bench next to her breathed heavily and let out a low growl, bewildered and sweating. Sylvia watched her husband make his way back through the line of swollen stomachs; women were standing, sitting, some squatting in the halls of Saint Bernadine’s hospital waiting to deliver their babies. It was sometime in November of 1946, nine months and fifteen minutes after thousands of men returned from war theatres over Europe and the Philippines. The war babies were making their debut. The delivery room bulged with women in various stages of dilation, the halls crowded with women in various stages of contraction, and assignments were made to doctors by the amount of time between contractions, some women in labor for over ten hours were still designated to the hallway because the labor pains were still far apart.
“How close are they?” he asked. Harry Merchant was decked out in civilian clothing, thinking he would be more comfortable, at this moment, in fatigues and back at war. He did not know how to deal with this sea of swollen bellies.
“About seven minutes still,” she said tiredly, wishing to sit but not wanting to sit on the floor. The woman sitting next to her screamed this time, and Sylvia bent over asking to help, and the woman started to cry, saying the baby was here, please, please, help, and she screamed again, and a nurse finally came down the hall, and helped her up, and said, yes, they would take her now, and come along, and the woman’s husband was under one arm and the nurse around the other, and they scooted through the crowd of women, who watched sympathetically, jealously, while the woman was escorted to the delivery room, passing other groaning women, and one not groaning, but laughing, at the absurdity, at the sea of bellies, the nervous husbands, stacked beside the wives, sweating too, in this new jungle, this new existence that they had fought so hard for and won.
Zihuatanejo
After Maggie went to her room, she put the orange down and decided to take a shower. She was bored. She was going crazy waiting. She decided she hated Felipe. Unreliable. She squiggled out of her shorts, did a toe, toe, two step, pulled off her white blouse, slipped her little cot
ton panties with butterflies down over her hips, her thighs, her knees, her ankles, to puddle on the floor. She turned on the shower. The shower was nice, all tiled in red. She looked at her skinny naked body in the mirror, and it was the same as always: tiny fried egg boobs with giant eraser nipples, neck bones, clavicles hanging her ribs up like a coat hanger, hip bones slinging skin down to a muff of hair, blonde and curly, then legs, not great legs, bony knees, too skinny calves. She’d always wanted great calves and legs, but they hadn’t changed for Mexico. Not at all. And a great ass. She wanted one of those, instead of the pear blossom thing. She turned and looked. The same, the same. Everything was still the same. She wondered if her nipples could erase anything, if they could what would it be? Would they erase her? Had she come with her own built-in self-destructive device ready to erase herself in a heartbeat—nipples, erect and attentive—honing in on babies, men, searching the air like curious antennas, alert and anxious and curious for man lips, baby lips, the things that sucked her right out of herself, meant to suck her right out of herself, the things she wanted, needed, desired, the things of her that make her who she was and who she wants to be and will be, must be, the things she must be because the other selves of her have failed, but have they? They’re all spun in this Maggie, this good juicy her of her, like a tiny yellow spidery web, one gossamer thready pube dissolving into another, webbed sometimes from groin to groin, spinning and turning to yellow skin tangled with freckles and nipples and then up over her pale face and bluest eyes to yellow hair. Her nipples hardened as she thought those things and she put her hand over her soft left breast to feel how it felt when she felt it, when someone else did. She used to do that a lot before a man ever felt her, to see how she would feel when they did, he did, the hes that had; she liked the soft feel of it, the hard nipple under her palm, erect, attentive, curious, always curious, hardening with her touch and dissolving into soft again. She had very curious boobs. Clever and curious. She stuck her hand in the shower; the water was warm now so she stepped in and turned her back to the warmth and it dribbled over and down her. She soaped with her own Dr. Bonner’s Peppermint. She hated hotel soap. She only used it in a pinch and she just wasn’t pinched right then. Dr. Bonner’s smelled so good. Fresh. She always felt really fresh after washing that way. She had a habit of freshness. She liked to smell that way, to eat that way, she liked fresh juice and fruit and oranges and soap and clothes. She liked all those citrusy kinds of things. The fresh soap bubbled over her, over her shoulders, down her neck bones, her curiously foaming boobs, and tummy, and legs, slippery and fresh now. She hated dead things. Like the dead cells in her lungs from smoking. She liked things alive and growing and fresh. She soaped her hair with Dr. Bonner’s and thought about how long she hadn’t smoked a cigarette. An hour? Two? Maybe two. That was pretty good. She wanted to quit. Really. But she couldn’t right then. Maybe later. She squirted more Dr. Bonner’s in her hair, too much, but it took too much to work up a lather. She piled her hair up and squirted again. Ummm. She scrunched her hair around and washed and washed. She leaned her head way back and let the warm water rinse over her and her hair and her soapy pepperminty skin was slithery and slippy and bubbly, clumps of bubbly sweetness, scrubbing herself into a frenzy of freshness, stirring to something delightfully new. Ummmmm.
Goodday, sunshine …
CHAPTER 10
MAGGIE LIKED THE WAY THE HOUSE smelled with yeast in it; she liked stirring the flours and water and honey with the starter and waiting for it to bubble and ferment; she liked the sour smell of dough, the way it puffed to cloudy white or the textured brown of heavy mottled ryes. She liked the day-by-day pleasantries of cooking and baking; it was a private time when memories rose and burst across her consciousness, time fermenting the yeasty moments, puffing to smokey grainy gray, bubbling through her, bursting through what has soured to freshly bake in her brain. The smell of fermenting wheats and honey filled the house, and fresh baked loaves of bread settled side by side against the red-formica counter like rows of brown pregnant bellies.
She’d taken some bread out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. She could see the truck climbing slowly up the dirt driveway. It was shortly past noon, and the bread was just done. She took a pot of lentil soup from the refrigerator, set it on the stove to warm over a low heat, and walked to the bedroom and pulled off her sweatshirt. Hank opened the door, and both Hank and Patrick clopped onto the back porch, their heavy Redwing boots smearing mud on the floor.
“Maggie, where are you?” Hank yelled.
“In the bedroom.”
“Stay there. Close your eyes.”
“Now what?” She closed one eye, sighed, closed both. She waited. Hank and Patrick were laughing. “Are your eyes closed?”
“What are you two up to?”
“Put your hands out. No,” he instructed, “together, put them out together.”
She stood with her arms in front of her, something squirmed, into her arms. Soft and fuzzy. A white puppy wiggled in her arms, its eyes barely visible.
“He’s beautiful. Where did you find him?”
“Fellow where we were cutting wood had the litter and the mom in a box in the back of his truck. He’s neat, huh? The pick of the litter.” She set the pup down on the carpet and the three of them watched him nose his way across new territory. Hank watched her watching the pup.
Hank squatted down next to her, running his calloused hand over the pup.
He kissed her on the cheek. “Are you happy?” he asked.
“Yes. Very.” She turned and kissed him on the mouth.
“Well, maybe you’ll get another puppy tomorrow.”
“I think this one will do just fine. Are you hungry? There’s some soup warming on the stove if you are. And some bread just out of the oven.”
“I’m starved,” he said. “We’ve cut two cords already, but I wanted to bring this little guy home. I think we’ll call it a day. What do you say, Patrick? I’ll call the Johnson’s house and see if they want these two cords tonight and we can start again tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. I’m hungry, too.” They went to the kitchen for food while she stayed on the floor with the puppy.
Patrick came back into the living room and placed the buttered bread on the table along with a bowl of soup. The puppy had fallen asleep and they heard a car coming up the driveway.
“Someone’s here,” said Hank. He carried his bowl of soup to the window, taking a spoonful of soup as he walked.
“Just Lucy,” he said walking back to the couch. He laid his hand on her head.
“She’ll love the puppy. I’ll never get anything done now. He’ll probably sleep in my lap all afternoon.”
“No way. You’ll have to put him down every now and then, Maggie,” Hank teased.
“The soup’s great,” Patrick reached over and petted the puppy and then squeezed her arm affectionately. Hank put his bowl on the table, and got up and started outside.
Maggie jumped up and grabbed the tail of his shirt, pulled him back and kissed him. He glanced outside and back to Patrick. She put the puppy up to his cheek and he nuzzled it.
“I’ve got to clean the saws,” he said. “Patrick, you gonna come down and help sharpen the McCulloughs for tomorrow?” He picked up his leather gloves and slapped them together.
“Sure. I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Don’t wait till all the work is done. We’ve got to unload that wood this afternoon to get another load tomorrow.” He slapped a singular glove against the glass patio door.
“I know, Hank,” he said. He picked the bowl up from the table. “I’m gonna have another bowl of soup. I’ll be down after that.”
Hank slid the glass door open and headed out. Maggie still had hold of his shirttail and tugged it. He turned and kissed her before he headed to the workshop.
Lucy got out of her truck and walked up the grade as Hank went to the barn; they passed each other, going different ways.
The pup
py’s belly was pink and clean and he smelled the sweet puppy smell Maggie loved so much.
Lucy and Maggie took the new pup for a walk, tucked inside Maggie’s flannel shirt. Clouds were building to the East, higher in the mountains; a storm was building.
“How much longer are you going to stay in Crestline?” Maggie asked. Lucy shook her head and her long turquoise earrings clinked. She was wearing a silver concho belt slung low on her hips and three bracelets on her left arm. Her fingers were covered with rings. She seemed indifferent and remote.
“Oh, I wish I knew. Gary and I can’t get along anymore. He’s bummed out about painting. He destroyed two good canvases yesterday. Really good ones. At least I liked them. He said they were shit. Nothing. Nothing is good enough for him anymore. I can’t figure it out.” The breeze blew her dark hair around her face and tangled it. She pushed it back over her ears.
“That’ll pass,” Maggie said. “Maybe he’s not happy with himself.” She slipped the puppy out of her shirt and kissed its tiny black nose.
“Or me,” Lucy said.
“Well, you can move in here.”
“It might be too intense to live with you guys even for a little while. Especially now. I don’t think so.” They’d climbed to the top of the hill and sat on a large boulder jutting out of the dried earth.
“But if you need a place for a short time you can think about it, right?”
“Yes. Yes, I promise. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll let you hold the puppy if you give him back.”
Maggie handed Lucy the puppy and he yelped so she handed him back. The wind came up again in a crisp gust.
“I think we should go back. Those clouds are building. I don’t want to get stuck in a storm.”
The Orange Blossom Express Page 10
