by Peggy Webb
“Need any help?”
She knew it was Russ even before she saw him. The unmistakable deep bass timbre made her feel flushed all over. Still she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing what he did to her.
“No, thank you. I can manage just fine on my own.”
Ignoring that, he stepped out of the shadows, took her suitcase in one hand and her elbow in the other then led her to a row of plastic chairs. They sat down together, side by side, facing forward. It was the way they had traveled together, not touching, both looking off into the distance as if they were straining to see around the next bend.
She was acutely aware of him, his thigh barely brushing against the side of her skirt, the way his python boots looked against the dusty floor, the even tenor of his breathing, the sprinkling of hair along the backs of his hands.
“When I left Florence, I thought I’d said goodbye to you, Bea.” He turned to face her then. His eyes were as vivid as the bright blue ribbons used to tie bouquets sent to mothers of newborn boys. It was going to be hard to look at them and tell a lie.
“You did say goodbye, Russ. It was best all around.”
“Did you miss me, Bea?”
“No, I didn’t miss you. But I missed your boots. Do they make them in my size?”
He laughed aloud. Several weary travelers paused on their way to the door to turn their heads and stare at him. Then, seeing nothing except a big man with a beard, they shook their heads and walked away.
“That’s a start,” he said. “In fact, it might be wonderful.”
“I fail to see the wonder of it.”
“I don’t remember anybody ever missing me, Bea.”
She was a sucker for a sob story. Her heart was doing flip flops and she didn’t want to even think about what her Virginia was doing. But she refused to decide her future on the basis of a soft heart and a runaway libido.
“What are you doing in Pearcy, Russ?”
“I came back to be sure your car was ready to travel.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Russ, but I don’t need your help.”
“Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I just couldn’t stand the thought of you having to ask a stranger for help.”
“If I have another breakdown, maybe I’ll send up a smoke signal.” She stood up and held out her hand. “So long, Russ.”
He not only held onto her, but started a little erotic massage of her palm.
“I wasn’t going to see you again, Bea. I was going to check on your car and leave.”
“And go where, Russ? California? Texas? Wyoming?”
“Florida. I’m going back to LaBelle to get another grove, Bea. Start all over.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I wanted you to know.”
“Why?”
His silence said it all. Here was a man who had no intention of chasing her till she caught him, no matter what kind of advice she got from her friends.
“Come with me, Bea,” Russ said suddenly.
The thing about unexpected hope is that it makes you do crazy things like throw your arms around somebody’s neck and agree to any old thing they say. Bea caught herself just short of agreeing to hop into his truck and go to Florida or Texas or even to the moon.
“My vacation’s nearly over, Russ. I have to be back at work in less than a week.”
“I’m not dead set on Florida, Bea. If you don’t like Florida, I could live in Texas or Alabama just as well.”
“I just got back from a vacation in Alabama, Russ.” She chose her words carefully, afraid to hope for things he wasn’t offering. “If this is an invitation to come and visit you, I’ll be happy to visit wherever you go. Just let me know when you get settled, and I’ll try to pop in sometime and say hi.”
“I’m not talking about an extended vacation or an invitation to visit.”
“Send me your address, then, and I’ll to remember to mail you a Christmas card.”
She reached for her suitcase and headed toward the door. Suddenly the space between Russ and front door seemed as huge as the Sahara. With her boots making a sharp staccato rhythm on the dingy tiles and the dead silence behind her, Bea held herself straight and tall. When she made an exit, it would be one to remember.
Each step she took sounded like doom. The door was only four feet away, then three. Another few steps and she’d be out the door and out of Russ’s life, permanently.
She could do this. There would be other fish in sea. Maybe not a gorgeous blond one with eyes the color of summer and a heart as big as Texas, but Bea was not about to look back.
“Bea!”
Still she didn’t turn, didn’t even stop. If he wanted her, he’d have to come to her. All the way. The Dixie Virgins would be proud. She held her breath for a heartbeat and then two. There was not a sound behind her. Sweat collected in her hair and rolled down the side of her face.
Then suddenly his boots were pounding on the floor. Russ caught her shoulders and spun her around, right into his arms.
“I’m talking about marriage, Bea.” Russ held her so close she nearly lost her breath. “I never dreamed it would be like this. I never thought I’d find somebody to love. And I certainly never pictured myself proposing in a dingy bus station in Pearcy, Arkansas.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
“Yes, I want to marry you, Bea.”
She thought about their journey together—the night in the tent on Quachita Mountain, the hours in his truck cab, closed off from the rest of the world by the storm, the meeting in the grove behind her house. Her trip had been more than an odyssey home: it had been an odyssey to love.
Still, she didn’t say anything. Something was missing, here. And hell would freeze over before she’d agree to a marriage without it.
“Bea? Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.” The hardest thing she’d ever done was pull out of his arms. “My answer is no.”
Before she could change her mind, she grabbed her suitcase and slammed through the door. Shoot, she was going to cry, and then how would she ever see which way to go to find her car?
Blindly, she turned right and headed in what she hoped was the direction of the garage. She’d gone less than a half a block when Russ caught up with her.
“I asked you to marry me.” He held onto her arm. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you, Bea?”
“I’m stubborn and bossy and opinionated, and in your own words, a woman worth twenty-seven dollars and six cents. I fail to see how that’s the basis for marriage.”
“You’d drive a sober man to drink.”
“Precisely.” She tried to shake off his hand. “Let go of me.”
“Not until you hear me out.”
“I’ve been listening for quite some time, Russ, and so far, I’ve heard nothing that interests me.”
Sighing, Russ ran his hand through his beard. He was silent for so long, Bea considered jerking away and storming off, this time for good. But something in his eyes held her still, something so deep and beautiful she trembled to look at it.
“Bea, I don’t know when I started loving you,” he said, and there it was, the key to everything. “Maybe it was the minute I saw you on that mountain road pretending you knew how to fix your car.”
Finally, she could do what she’d wanted to all along, reach up and touch the face she could see even in her dreams.
“I think it was those python boots that did me in.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes.
“At first I didn’t even recognize it,” he said. “I was sitting on a sagging bed at the Paradise, telling myself I needed to get into my truck and head south to Florida when I knew I couldn’t go without you.” He squeezed her hand. “I love you. Do you love me, Bea?”
“Yes. God knows, I didn’t want to.” She pressed one hand against his cheek. “I guess love is one of those things we can’t plan.”
“Will you marry me?”
She studied his face as the thought of marriage and all its complications played through her mind.
“You’re thinking about Taylor Adams, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t pledge my love lightly, Bea. You’re the first person I’ve ever really loved—except my parents, and I hardly remember them. This is not a letting-go kind of love; this is not the kind of thing I shared with Lurlene. If you marry me, it will be forever. You will be my home and I will be yours—till death do us part.”
Suddenly he was on his knees in front of her.
“Russ.” She laughed. “What in the world are you doing?”
“This is an old-fashioned proposal, Bea. I wish I had moonlight and soft music and wine, but I guess all this grandeur will have to do.” His eyes swept around the dinky town, taking in the dilapidated bus stations, the dusty sidewalks, the hardware store across the street with its peeling yellow paint.
“I want you to be my wife. I want to love you and cherish you and protect you for now and forever. I want you to wear my ring and bear my children. I want to wake up in the morning with you at my side. I want your face to be the last thing I see before I go to sleep each night.”
His eyes were as bright and vivid as a summer day, and Bea knew it was a forever kind of love.
“Say yes, Bea.”
“Yes, Russ. Now, get off your knees and feed me. I’m starving.”
Russ grabbed her bag and they raced to his pickup. When they were inside the cab, they grinned at each other for a while, pleased with themselves and the world.
“I guess you’ll want a big wedding in Florence with all your family?”
That was exactly what Bea had been thinking, but when Russ asked her, he looked so lonesome, she couldn’t bear the thought of waiting all the months it would take to plan a big family wedding.
“Let’s get married here, Russ.”
“Here?”
“Right here in the mountains where we found each other. Just the two of us. We can have a big celebration with my family later.”
“Why don’t we start right now?” he said.
“Start what?”
“Celebrating.” He pulled her into his arms for kiss and that lasted so long the windows got fogged. Laughing, he wiped them with his handkerchief so he could see to drive. Then they went to Freddy’s General Store for a private celebration dinner.
Freddy joined in the festivities by spreading a piece of oilcloth on the cracker barrel and decorating the makeshift table with a birthday candle stuffed into a beer bottle. He served his specialty, fried catfish and hushpuppies. Bea and Russ declared it was the best meal they’d ever had, and they meant it.
“Now I’ve got a special treat for the bride-to-be,” Freddy said. He disappeared behind a counter piled high with yard goods, assorted cheese cut in hunks and wrapped with plastic, spools of thread in every color of the rainbow, and a few selected brands of chewing tobacco. When he emerged, he was holding high a Cracker Jack box.
“Dessert.” Freddy put the box on the table with a flourish.
Laughing, Bea and Russ opened the box and began to feed each other the caramel-coated popcorn. They ate to the bottom of the box, with Freddy standing by grinning. When they had finished eating, Russ started to crumple the box.
“Wait,” Freddy said. “You missed something.”
Russ reached into the box and pulled out a small plastic-wrapped trinket.
“I forgot about the prize,” he said, tearing off the wrapper. A make-believe engagement ring lay in the palm of his hand, its glass “diamond” winking in the light of the candle.
He got down on his knees and took Bea’s left hand in his.
“Every woman should have an engagement ring.” He slipped the ring on her finger.
“Every woman should have a man like you.”
He closed her left hand into a small fist and clasped it between his hands. Then he smiled up at her.
“Bea, this will have to do until I can buy you the real thing.”
“This is the real thing, a gift of love. What more could a woman want?”
Russ laughed and looked up at Freddy.
“I think I’ll marry this woman,” he joked. “Do you know where I can find a justice of the peace?”
“You’re looking at him.” Freddy chuckled. “In a town like Pearcy, a man has to wear many hats. I also fill in for the barber, in case you want a haircut... or that beard shaved off.”
“Don’t you dare.” Bea cupped Russ’s face. “I don’t want a hair on his head changed.”
They all laughed and took turns admiring Bea’s ring. Freddy brought out a bottle of his favorite wine, muscadine, made in his kitchen using his secret recipe. Bea and Russ declared it was the best wine they’d ever had. They meant that, too.
Finally, warmed by laughter and love and wine, they made their way back to the Paradise. Sitting in the truck, holding hands, they looked at the neon sign blinking orange and green. Both of them were thinking of all the sign promised.
“I have a room,” Russ said.
“I guessed you might.”
“I want you there, Bea. More than anything.”
“I know.”
Then and there she decided to break Rule Four. Janet would lecture and Clemmie would get teary-eyed. Belinda and Molly might approve, and Cat could go either way. Joanna would want details.
Suddenly he pulled her into his arms and she laced her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his thick hair.
“Bea.” His voice was muffled against her cheek.
“Hmm?” Hers was smothered in his neck.
“Would you mind terribly if we waited? I know it seems pointless and old-fashioned, but I want everything about our marriage to be perfect. I want us to start our life together as husband and wife in a marriage bed that will be sacred.”
She had to mentally pinch herself to keep from laughing. That wouldn’t do. He might think she was laughing at him, and then she’d have to tell him about Rule Four, and it would rob him of every bit of his chivalry.
“Russ, that’s the sweetest, most chivalrous thing any man has ever done for me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“It will just be a few days, Bea, until we get the blood tests and license.”
o0o
They were married in Pearcy at the back of Freddy’s General Store. He had decorated it for the occasion. Pine boughs and Christmas tinsel were strung around the ceiling. Two life-size angels, borrowed from the Baptist church’s Nativity set, stood guard beside the potbellied stove. Twenty-five birthday candles, assorted colors, stuck in brown beer bottles were lit and glowing on the counter.
Bea wore her a yellow dress with a short skirt and her favorite black boots with the high heels.
Freddy’s wife, Miss Honey June, stood up as witness, wearing her best girdle and her Sunday hat with the artificial roses. Her sister, who usually stood up with her, was in bed with flu; so the local sheriff had been pulled in to witness. In deference to the occasion, he wore a plastic lily of the valley in his gun holster. The gun was hidden in his boot.
Russ and Bea pledged their vows and then stayed for a brief reception, hosted by Freddy and Miss Honey June. Everybody in town came, including the cats and dogs. The men bore Russ off to give him some friendly advice, and the women took charge of Bea.
Usually she didn’t like being taken charge of, but the women were so cute and gave such funny advice, such as feed your man redeye gravy if you want boys, that she had a wonderful time.
After the reception, they honeymooned at the Paradise. Russ carried his bride over the threshold of Room Two and kicked the door shut behind them.
“Do you know how much I wanted you that night I came to this room with wine and cheese?” he asked.
“Do you know how much I wanted you to want me?”
“It didn’t show.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck
and pulled his face close to hers. “Does it show now?”
“You’ll have to convince me, Mrs. Hammond.”
She spent a very, very long time doing just that.
Chapter Eleven
From: Molly
To: Bea, Janet, Belinda, Catherine, Clemmie, Joanna
Re: Worried about you
Bea, I haven’t heard from you in DAYS! It’s not like you to mope. If you’re back in Dallas feeling blue without calling me, I’m going to whip your butt.
Molly
From: Janet
To: Bea, Molly, Belinda, Catherine, Clemmie, Joanna
Re: Regrouping
I hope you’re regrouping! I’m certain if that man had shown up again, you’d let us know. Good riddance, Bea. He didn’t even have a job! Charge forward and don’t look back.
Janet
From: Clemmie
To: Bea, Molly, Janet, Catherine, Belinda, Joanna
Re: Hope
Oh, I did so hope Russ would change his mind! I’m making a batch of fudge with pecans to send to you. Chocolate always helps.
Clemmie
From: Belinda
To: Bea, Molly, Clemmie, Catherine, Janet, Joanna
Re: Love
I hope you’re not holed up somewhere crying, Bea. Listen, if this man truly loved you, he’d have come after you. With your killer looks and your big personality, you’ll have somebody else before you know it. Just please email so we will know you’re all right! I can’t even have sex without wondering where you are!!!
Belinda
From: Catherine
To: Bea, Belinda, Janet, Joanna, Clemmie, Molly
Re: Phone
Is your phone out of order? I’ve been calling and calling! I had the weekend off, but now I’ve missed you and there’s no telling when I can get loose again. Vet school is no picnic in the park! If you don’t get in touch soon, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown and have to drop out of school and it will be all your fault!
Cat
From: Joanna
To: Bea, Catherine, Janet, Molly, Belinda, Clemmie
Re: Stuff
