Bea pointed and laughed. "Lacy you are dropping all your blackberries."
Lacy stopped looking very cross and jammed her hand on her hip. "I am not. You are just jealous that I got more berries than you!"
Bea held out her basket that was full of berries. Lacy looked from Bea's basket to her own. With sagging lips Lacy marched back to the dispelled blackberries, trampling some while gathering up a few that had dropped. Oliver and Finnegan were already licking up the lost berries. Lacy abandoned her basket to chase after them, not considering the diminished value of dog-chewed berries.
It was a long hot summer by anyone's standards. Jolene smiled to herself as she watched Bea move over to Lacy's basket and grab a handful to put into her own basket.
"Hey! Stop that Bea!" Lacy ran back tripping over her too-long flowered dress.
Jolene shook her head. "Girls, let's not fight. We have plenty of berries for two pies and a little bit of canning. It is hot. Let us go get some of Mata's sweet tea."
Jolene's memory tripped over her own blackberry picking trips with her mother. Every year they endured the vicious spikes of those wild blackberry plants to obtain the delicious fruit for pies and to put up for jam. Jolene had found her mother's Ball jars in the cabinet just as they were the last time she and her mother had cleaned them and put them away. She purchased new tops for them to make sure of the seal.
When the jars got too old they used them for iced tea glasses. And her father used them for beer mugs. The fond memories washed over her leaving the taste of bittersweet recollections.
Hot summers. Cold ice tea. Watermelon. Blackberries.
And fireflies. They lit the night sky like small stars that fell from heaven.
In the evenings she and her father would try to capture them in jars. Her father said they were magic and that is why they lit up the night sky with little miniature bulbs in their tails.
Jolene reached Patrick's back porch with the girls flitting behind her and playing with the dogs along the way. Leona was standing at the top of the steps at the back porch of Patrick's house, looking fresh in her peach colored polo shirt and white shorts. "Mata will be preparing something special tonight when she returns so keep the girls out of her kitchen. Patrick and I are having important, intimate guests over. I didn't think you would want to come."
Why did Leona have to be so blonde and pretty?
Tanned legs that she would never possess because of her fair skin and freckles.
Jolene brushed by her without a smile and went inside to fetch the flour and sugar that Mata had purchased and left for her to use for the pies and blackberry preserves. "I wasn't planning on baking here with the girls nor was I planning to come to dinner."
Bea poured the tea into plastic cups and then pulled her sister out of the back door with the tea sloshing over the sides of their cups.
The baking items sat on the large marble counter waiting for her. Kind Mata. The kitchen was clean, cool and sat in air-conditioned shadows despite the heat that blazed through the long scenic windows that overlooked the pastures.
"Well, good. I need to go up and do my nails for tonight so I trust that those girls will be sent home after they leave your place and not be over here pestering Patrick before our dinner party."
"You can certainly trust they will be at my house with me."
Leona turned on her sandaled heel and left the kitchen.
The kitchen was cold and empty without Mata who left in the late afternoons to pick up her grandson and spend a few hours with him before her daughter came home from work.
Jolene never cooked here in Patrick's house because this was Mata's kitchen and Jolene preferred her own kitchen.
But she need not tell nasty old Leona that…let her think what she wanted.
Leona… the new intruder to their lives, could not know that all of Jolene's kitchen creations happened in her own house in her mother's kitchen.
Leona didn't cook and she went out of her way to keep Jolene out of Patrick's house all the time anyway, not just out of his kitchen. Even a chipmunk or squirrel could figure that out.
Leona had even demanded that Patrick stop calling her Red.
Which was okay with Jolene anyway because she wanted to be more than a Red to Patrick. She was certain now that the touching he did that time was because he was attracted to her.
Except he already had Leona so she would never be more to him than Red.
"I lost the whole basket because Finnegan tipped it over and stomped all over it and Oliver ate most of them!" Lacy wailed from the doorway, her eyes filled with tears and her face streaked with blackberries.
Behind her Finnegan and Oliver stood looking guilty and forlorn. Oliver's tongue slid along his purple mouth. "Oliver you cannot hide the evidence…you naughty pups." Jolene wagged her fingers at the pups and they slunk away back down the back porch steps.
Jolene smiled at Lacy. "Don't worry dearest, we can pick some more. Let me just put our baking items into a bag and take them to my house then we will go get your basket filled again."
Lacy immediately brightened and together they left, meeting up with Bea who had already deposited her berries into a bowl in Jolene's house and was working diligently on her leaking kitchen faucet. "I have fixed this…it just needed to be tightened." Bea smiled large revealing her missing front tooth. Her big pretty brown eyes were wide with pleasure from her handiwork.
Jolene turned the faucet on and off. "Bea you are really excellent with the repairs!"
Bea beamed.
Jolene pulled her father's ladder from behind the pantry door and rested it against the pantry shelves. "Now let me get the rest of the jars down and get them to a boil."
Lacy started dancing in the doorway. "Come on we have to get more berries!"
Patrick walked up to the porch smiling, his eyes glowing dark blue. "Now what is this I heard about the dogs getting into our berries?" Jolene's heart skipped a beat then lunged to full cantor.
"Patrick!" Lacy and Bea ran to him fighting each other for a better hug.
Lacy stepped back and puffed out her lower lip. "Finnegan knocked over the basket and Oliver ate them."
The accused dogs sat on the front porch panting and smiling under floppy ears. Patrick turned to them. "Did you now? Fine pair you are." He turned back to Jolene and the girls with laughing eyes. "Well, I guess I need to step in and help with the picking to protect our baskets from these fiends or we will never get Jolene to bake us some pies."
Lacy ran to the pantry through the open door and ran around the ladder. "Yaaaay!"
Jolene stepped down with an armful of jars that Patrick took from her. "Don't go under the ladder, it is bad luck!"
Patrick set the jars on the counter then put the ladder away. "What kind of bad luck?"
"I don't actually know. I think it is just general bad luck."
Patrick laughed. "You sure have a lot of superstitions Jolene, I thought the Irish were bad for it, but I see the country folk here are even worse than us."
Jolene glared at him. "At least we don't believe in leprechauns!"
Patrick ruffled Bea's hair. "Maybe there are some out in the berry patch and we will find them when we go pick our berries!"
The girls screamed and grabbed Patrick's hand and drug him through the screened door and out to the berry patch in the back of the pasture. Jolene followed watching, them her mouth twitching to a smile.
Patrick would make a really great father.
As soon as the thought hit her, Jolene sent it over a cliff and stifled the pang of sadness that went with it. He would be the father of Leona's children.
The girls chattered with Patrick while they picked. A berry flew into the back of Jolene's head and she turned to find Patrick grinning. "T'was a bad one," he offered as an explanation.
Jolene laughed. A few minutes later she spied a berry that looked half eaten and picked it and several others that looked deformed or half eaten by bugs. She gathered them and sent them sail
ing into the back of Patrick's head, back and rump.
He turned around laughing. "Hey now that means war!"
Jolene lobbed a berry right into his face giggling at his surprised expression. The girls pointed to him and laughed loud then fell to the ground rolling for the added measure of drama.
Lacy plucked a few berries from her basket and threw them at Patrick. "I think it is time for me to attack!"
Patrick curled his arms and snarled, stomping his feat like a monster. The girls squealed and jumped to their feat bolting past Jolene. Patrick bellowed a loud growl, lunging for Jolene. "I've got one victim left." The girls screamed and continued running through the pasture. Jolene was laughing too hard to run very far before she found herself being tumbled to the ground. "Now that will teach you."
Patrick tickled her ribs sending Jolene into a frenzy of laughter and wiggles.
"Patrick! Really!"
It was Leona. Patrick released Jolene and stood, up his eyes going grim. He turned to Leona who was already dressed in an elegant black silk jumper. She glared hard at Patrick then turned to Jolene who stood up and brushed herself off. Her hair had pulled out of her pony tail.
"I am sorry Leona. I was just having fun with the girls."
"Jolene is not a girl Patrick. She is a grown woman even though she hasn't got much of a shape and her hair is a mess all the time."
Patrick turned back and looked at Jolene from head to toe. Jolene felt the heat of Patrick's gaze for an instant before he smothered his thoughts. "You are right, I should not be wrestling her to the ground and well I know it."
Jolene wanted to sink into the ground…but first she wished she could find just the right come back to put Leona in her place.
Instead she looked down at her cut off shorts and a t-shirt from her college. Her legs were sprinkled with a light dusting of freckles on her fair skin. Her fingertips were blue and she completed her look with little scratches on her arms and legs from the blackberry bushes. Next to Leona she looked like a complete bum.
Leona's voice dropped husky and she walked to Patrick and pressed into his arms. "You can't help it if she throws herself at you. After all, she has a crush on you. What a joke that is. And very embarrassing for all of us. We really need to find her a boyfriend."
Jolene could have died right then. She felt her face go hot with humiliation. Patrick turned his gaze sharply back to her and looked into her eyes with confusion and a question hanging in the air.
"Jolene, you don't have a crush on me do yer?"
Jolene could not believe this complete humiliation. "You liar Leona! I hate you!""
Jolene turned and sped toward where the girls were now playing and thankfully distracted by the dogs.
Leona's laugher chased her steps.
Jolene could hear Leona's low murmur of persuasion to Patrick. "She is so immature Patrick. We should have left her at school during the summer so she could gain some maturity and take some extra classes."
"Let us not talk of that just now Leona…you have hurt her feelings...made her embarrassed."
Jolene stopped running and walked several steps catching her breath.
"Jolene, come back. Leona didn't mean it the way it sounded," Patrick called to her back.
Jolene stopped and turned around holding up her hand, anger and humiliation saturating her to her soul. "Talk to the hand Patrick because I am not listening."
****
Later that night Jolene and the girls got their jars out to capture fireflies while Patrick and Leona had their dinner party.
Patrick walked out on the front porch several times to watch them.
Finally he called out. "Jolene, I am sorry."
"Sorry about what Patrick?"
"About what Leona said."
Jolene tried to look passive and indifferent in the shadows of the evening. "Don't feel sorry Patrick, she doesn't know anything. I don't have a crush on you. As if I ever would!"
"Then don't be mad or hurt. She is right that I shouldna' be wrestling you to the ground. You are a grown woman."
"Don't be mad at Patrick!" Lacy demanded as she chased a firefly and whisked him into her jar.
Jolene chased her own firefly. "Am I a grown woman Patrick?"
Bea stopped and looked at her quizzically from behind her glasses. "Of course you are a grown woman."
"Araah woman, of course you are grown."
"Really? I didn't think you noticed."
"Jolene." Patrick was too far away and standing up on the lighted porch so she could not be sure of his expression but she figured his eyes had gone dark like they always did when he scolded her.
The screen door slammed and Leona stepped outside. "Come on Patrick, it is time for dessert."
"Oh, that sounds great. I've been waiting to try some of the blackberry pie," he said.
They moved toward the door together. Leona laughed. "We are not having blackberry pie. I was not going to serve our guests something so provincial as pie, Patrick, really! I asked Mata to make a chocolate soufflé."
The screen door slammed leaving Jolene standing there with her jar filled with fireflies and humiliated again. "What is a soufflé?"
Bea looked up at her. "I would rather have a blackberry pie than a soufflé…it doesn't sound very good, except the chocolate part."
"Aaand with marshmellows." Lacy chimed in lifting her jar filled with fireflies for Jolene to inspect.
"I say girls, why don't we go and have some of that pie before I send you home. Your mom will be calling you back soon and I will walk you to the creek because it is dark now."
They started toward Jolene's house. "I don't like Leona," Bea said.
Jolene sighed and pulled back her instinctive ugly response. "Maybe we will all grow to like her in time."
Chapter 16
Daddy was not a heavy drinker and that moonshine is powerful stuff. He must have thought spending ten dollars on moonshine was a wise investment at the time. But when Mother found out, she was fit to be tied. You did not want my mother mad at you.
Somehow she found out where they had bought the whiskey. It was at a neighbor’s house just out of sight. She marched down that dirt road like a soldier going to war. Charles Junior and I followed her. We were afraid for her because we had heard moonshiners were easily riled. Besides, they had guns. Didn’t everyone?
We were careful to keep out of her sight as we did not want her wrath visited upon us. She didn’t go into the house. She called them out. We were surprised to see they looked like ordinary people. There were two men, two women and several children. There were also lots of hound dogs.
We were not close enough to hear all that was said but we could see Mother had her hands on her hips and she was really holding forth. I guess all those years of playing the organ or the piano and singing in the Church really came in handy. Mary Margarette Donnelley Hill - From her vignettes "Moonshine, Mountains and Memories of my Grandmother."
Jolene woke early and went to ride Storm as she always did before the heat came in. There was supposed to be a terrible thunderstorm later in the afternoon and she wanted him out and back in before the clouds even gathered. If she was lucky she would be sitting on her front porch watching the rain come in with a glass of ice tea in a Ball jar.
Leona was having another one of her stupid dinner parties.
So Jolene would just keep to herself today, sit on the porch with some iced tea…some lemon-sun tea.
Oh and a good book. A glass of tea in a Ball jar with a romantic novel. She could avoid Patrick and Leona completely while enjoying her porch..and the rain coming in. They needed rain. Even though you could see Patrick's house well from the porch, it faced out to the pasture hills.
She had taken to cooking for herself even though Mata always made enough for a small army…but she wanted to avoid going to Patrick's and seeing him and the cooing Leona. Besides, Leona was a vegetarian.
Egg plant…ugh!
Veggie lasagna?
Wh
o ever heard of something so horrible?
Mata couldn't stand her either. She had to learn a whole new set of recipes and go to special stores to get food that was particularly processed, or not processed. If one could tolerate the food she could not tolerate the nasal voice of Leona explaining why people should only eat vegetables.
Leona was not just a pain in the backside she was fake and just so horrible. Could Patrick not see this? Did he actually like eating veggie burgers?
No…but he liked her perfect blonde hair and pretty spa-tanned legs.
Leona didn't have freckles either.
After riding Storm, Jolene spent the day cleaning and putting down more seeds since some of her tomatoes had fallen to the bugs. They needed more Guinea to cut down the bugs.
She put her mind to plotting her revenge because Patrick had not even come over to say hello for two days.
Leona didn't like it much when he came to see Jolene so he only did that when Leona went shopping….which was nearly every day ….but not today or yesterday.
The threatened thunderstorm had not arrived yet though the clouds and wind were gathering.
So, this evening she was going to grill outside with her daddy's big grill. She could finish before the rain. She would use her daddy's special BBQ sauce with beer in it because she was old enough to buy beer now. She was going to pop a beer top right on her porch and see what Patrick thought of that, if he could even hear that far away.
Her father said he learned to barbeque from a black private in Vietnam. They got big drums and cut them in half and had a barbeque right there in Vietnam during the war. Her daddy said soldiers could get beer in that war too. When he told the story her father would get misty-eyed and relay the story about how they would go negotiate with the locals about buying a pig.
She was going to have a big barbeque before the rain came and visit her daddy's memories again.
And hope the wind sent the smoke to choke Leona…
Menu…baby back ribs.
Patrick loved baby back ribs almost as much as she did. He might even love them more than Leona…if she was lucky.
Once Upon a Misty Bluegrass Hill Page 12
