Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  Or maybe he was dead. Killed in an accident.

  That was the kind of thought a mother tended to have when a son didn’t come home all night. But the truth was that it was a small county, and everyone knew her and knew Larry Joe was her son, and if he’d been in a wreck, someone would have called her. He was eighteen and out all night, that was all.

  Eighteen! That was enough reason to think the very worst. Maybe he’d gone wild and crashed his truck somewhere no one would see. Or maybe he was knocked out, attacked by someone he picked up. An eighteen-year-old didn’t know fear. Maybe someone had led him astray or had slipped him drugs. Joey should be home with her. Maybe she should call him and tell him to come right home. Maybe she should call him and tell him to get out there and find their son.

  She reached for the telephone, and at that very moment it rang, scaring her so badly she almost dropped it. She said hello before she got the button pushed.

  “What is it, Mom?” Her son’s voice was groggy.

  “Where are you?” She was just below screaming, and she didn’t wait for an answer but jumped in, demanding to know why he wasn’t home and what did he think he was doing and he could have at least called.

  “Mom…”

  “I’ve been so worried. How could you do this to me now, Larry Joe? This is no way to behave.”

  “Mom…”

  “You could have called. I don’t have to know what you’re doin’. I’m not tryin’ to butt into your business, but you could have called, Larry Joe.” She was in tears now and shaking all over.

  “I did call, Mom.”

  “What?”

  “I called and left a message. Didn’t you check the recorder?”

  “No…” She sniffed and wiped beneath her nose with her fingers. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I guess you and Aunt Rainey were still out. I called you a little bit after you came by the station, and I left a message that I was going to stay with Randy tonight. Or last night.”

  She walked into the dining room where the recorder sat on the sideboard. The green message light was blinking.

  With a great sigh, she apologized the best she possibly could. In his normally patient way, he said it was okay. She saw him in her mind’s eye, stretching and grinning at her foolishness. He said he was going back to sleep and would be home late in the morning.

  After breaking the connection, Charlene pressed the button on the recorder and listened to her son’s voice. Well, thank you, God, that he’s okay.

  She poured a cup of coffee and stepped out the back door and sat on the concrete step, where she watched the golden sun come up on another day of her messed up life. It was Sunday. For a moment she had a panic, thinking about having to make dinner, but then she remembered it wasn’t her Sunday. She thanked God quite literally.

  Eight

  The City Hall thermometer reads 82°

  At breakfast Rainey suggested horseback riding before the day got any hotter. Charlene didn’t bring up the matter of church; she wasn’t certain she would ever again be able to leave the house. It was all she could do to drum up enough gumption to go out and face the barn and help her children get mounted. Needing to be with them and be a part of what they were doing prodded her into this action. Once there, she was relieved to find that she could face the barn, knowing Joey wasn’t there, and not have a heart attack.

  “Up you go,” she said, boosting Jojo into the saddle. Then she made certain Jojo’s little feet got tucked into each stirrup. The paint pony had become quite stout, so that Jojo’s short nine-year-old legs sort of stuck out like sticks on each side.

  Charlene’s hand was lingering on Jojo’s small leg when Jojo whopped the pony’s sides and took off, galloping away.

  A caution leaped to Charlene’s tongue, but she bit her bottom lip, holding herself and her breath as she watched her daughter race to the pasture, where Danny J. had gone already and was struggling to put the red barrels into their triangle pattern.

  “Rainey, don’t you dare go galloping. I don’t care what you say, you’ll give me heart failure.”

  Rainey sort of jumped, as if attacked. Then she said, “I have not come off a horse in fifteen years.” At Charlene’s look, she added, “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  Rainey rode her horse slowly out to join the children, leaving Charlene at the barn opening, squinting in the bright morning, the warming breeze tugging her hair.

  She stood there a long time, arm raised against the sun, and watched her children and her sister exercise their horses in circles. Coming out of a circle, Jojo directed her pony toward the barrels, pounding her little legs and showing daylight between her little fanny and the saddle. Danny J. gave a whoop and took off after her, the both of them riding wild and free as only children devoid of fear and sense can…and then there went pregnant Rainey doing the same.

  In the bright light, Charlene’s eyes started watering. She had ridden as a girl; she and Rainey would ride just like that. What had happened to her?

  She was fairly certain it had begun the day she had Larry Joe. When a woman has a child, she is never again fearless. Her heart is walking around outside her body, at the mercy of every threat in the world.

  Turning, she strode across the dried-up yard to the house, up the stairs and into the shade of the kitchen.

  The phone rang just as she entered. Joey? She raced to pick up the receiver and say a breathless hello.

  “Hello, Daughter.”

  It was her father. He asked if she and Rainey and the kids might want to drive up to Oklahoma City for Sunday dinner.

  “Oklahoma City? Daddy, isn’t that a long way to go just for dinner?”

  “We could shop,” he said.

  “Oh, Daddy, I really need to rest around the house today. Do you want to drive that far?” She was thinking that she would have to run out there and get Rainey to drive their father.

  But he said he and Mildred and Ruthanne would go on the senior bus that was going up to the City.

  “Well, good. You all have a good time, Daddy. And thanks for thinkin’ of me.”

  Hanging up, she wondered what in the world she was going to feed Rainey and the kids later for dinner.

  She began to clear the breakfast dishes from the table, stacking plates along her arm and depositing them into the sink. The picture and low sound on the tiny television on the counter caught her eye. Reba MacIntire on the Country Music Television channel. Rainey watched a lot of CMT now that she had quit work to be full-time pregnant.

  Charlene picked up the remote to punch up the volume. She loved to hear Reba’s songs. They seemed to tell little stories about women. Well, goodness, Reba had gone and cut her beautiful red hair. Wonder what shade of hair color that is?

  Reba faded, and another woman took her place. A really pretty young woman with short bouncy hair and a slim, sexy body, singing dynamically about John Wayne walking away. All the female country music singers these days looked young and beautiful, even those like Reba who weren’t all that young didn’t look over thirty years old, year after year, all of them with bright hair and perfect bodies and knockout glamour. Not like Patsy or Tammy or Loretta, who in their day had all been beautiful, but in a normal manner that was not so different than any average woman in America dressing up for a Friday night. How could any average woman these days keep up?

  Flipping channels, Charlene stopped when the picture came on black and white. It was Father Knows Best, just coming on.

  The introduction faded, and there was Margaret vacuuming her living room. Margaret had never had gray hair, although the show was in black and white, so you couldn’t know exactly what color her hair was. Right now she had a scarf tied around her head, but Charlene recalled how her hair was short and sort of sophisticated looking. She wore a dress while cleaning because only her daughters Betty and Kathy could wear jeans in those days, although Charlene seemed to recall seeing Margaret in slacks. And there came Father, sneaking up behind Margaret to grab her and g
ive her a kiss. Margaret gave a little cry; then she smiled, slipped the scarf from her hair and melted right at him, both of them smiling as if they’d just made love.

  The scene cut to a commercial for paper towels, and Charlene poured the last of the steamy coffee into her cup. Pulling a chair over in front of the television, she sat to watch the rest of the show.

  After it was over and all the Andersons were perfect and happy, Charlene went to the laundry room, dug a red bandana out of a drawer and tied it around her hair, fastening it at the back of her neck. It did keep the hair out of her face while she washed dishes and wiped every inch of counter space and every appliance with vinegar water spritzed from a spray bottle, so everything sparkled and shined and was fit for a television commercial. From there she moved on through the house, working over the lamps and television screens and mirrors until they all about knocked the eyes out. She thought that Sheila Arnett probably didn’t know anything about the uses of vinegar. And probably Margaret Anderson would shine her stuff to perfection like this, and Father never left her.

  It was in her own bathroom, shining the mirror that stretched across the double sinks, that Charlene paused and looked at herself. Her complexion was flushed, her eyes shimmered spring green. She looked pretty, or on the edge of insanity.

  Slowly she slipped the bandana from her head and shook out her hair. It fell softly, longer on her shoulders than she had realized.

  Opening a drawer, she pulled out hair-clipping scissors.

  She looked at herself again in the mirror. Then she took a breath, combed up a section of hair and proceeded to cut it off, at first slowly, but then faster and faster, chopping and whacking with great abandon and tossing the tresses heedlessly to the floor.

  “Hey, Mace!”

  With some surprise, Mason saw his brother wave at him from his own back porch.

  “Hey!” He gave a wave from out at the back fence, where he was feeding his old gelding and mule. He watched his brother, his tie blowing in the wind, come striding across the sun-browned yard in the purposeful manner in which he always walked. Even with his eyes shaded by his beat-up old Stetson, Mason squinted not only from the sunlight, but from the brightness of Adam’s crisp white shirt and pale blue summer slacks.

  “Good mornin’,” Mason said and reached over to flip on the spigot above the water tank.

  Adam mopped his balding head with a handkerchief, then gestured with it. “Why do you keep these old critters? That gelding doesn’t even have any teeth left. Cost you an arm and a leg in feed. You could get five hundred or better for both of them over at the sale barn,” he added, stuffing his handkerchief into his back pocket.

  “I imagine I could. But this gelding was a damn good roping horse for me, and I’m not turnin’ him into dog food now. Especially not when I own a share in a feed store.”

  Adam frowned, just as he always did when Mason mentioned his partnership in the store. Then he said, “Iris and I are on our way to church, and I thought I’d drop these papers by. Before you jump the gun in turnin’ this deal down, I want you to see what they’re offerin’ for this place. I want you to see it written out—twice what it is worth, Mace. Twice.”

  For the first time Mason noticed the papers in his brother’s hand; Adam unrolled them and held them up, tapping a figure in black ink with his finger. Mason couldn’t quite read the figure, although he knew what it was, since Adam had kept hammering it home to him yesterday evening on the phone.

  “They didn’t have to make such a generous offer,” Adam said. “They can get a good piece of land Freddy Valentine owns north of town a lot cheaper. The thing that’s held them up there is Freddy being in the nuthouse. But his wife can and will sell it, if we don’t snatch up their offer pretty quick.”

  “I told you I don’t want to sell, Adam. I haven’t changed my mind.”

  Adam put his hand on his belt, and his expensive watch and big pinky ring glimmered in the sunlight. “Here is a good deal, Mace.” Adam paused for emphasis. “Now, I want you to take a look at this. This came out of the blue to you—and to me. It isn’t only you in this, you know. I could make enough from my share of the sale to send Ellie to two years of college.”

  “You already can send Ellie to two years of college and more.”

  Adam snorted. “You don’t know the prices these days. Gonna cost two arms and a leg by the time she’s done. She wants to be a dadgum doctor. And furthermore, this community could use the jobs a juvenile detention center built right here would bring. Seventy jobs right off the bat…seventy people won’t have to go up to Lawton to work. They can work right here where they live.”

  “Half of that forty will be people movin’ in here from outside,” Mason said, turning off the spigot.

  “So? So twenty people here get jobs. That’s progress. You’re standin’ in the way of progress. And those juveniles—they’re gonna be buyin’ for those kids right here in Valentine. It’s a good deal all the way around.”

  Mason started toward the house, thinking that they might as well argue out of the sun. Adam’s face was getting awfully red. “A lot of people in this town may not want a juvenile detention center here, Adam. What if we sell this place, and the people veto the idea?”

  “That won’t happen,” Adam said in the manner of a man who was set to arrange life as he saw it.

  They stepped up on the porch. Mason looked at Adam. “I don’t want to sell this place.”

  “Why don’t you want to sell? Because this place was Grandaddy’s? It’s just an old house and an old barn, that’s all. Grandaddy never was what you thought he was. I never knew what you saw in him, but he is gone. Stayin’ here doesn’t bring him back, and you could get a really nice place anywhere you want. A new brick ranch with central air, big fireplace instead of some old stove. Room for those old critters, too, if that’s what’s botherin’ you.”

  “Grandpap,” Mason said. “His name was Grandpap. And I am not tryin’ to bring him back. All I want is to live here. I like it here. I like the big apple tree in the front yard, and I know all the creaks in the house. I’m perfectly content here, and I don’t see the need to move off.”

  “Why do you always have to be so dadgum difficult about everything?” The veins stuck out in Adam’s neck. “Tell me. I want to hear it.

  “You always have to take the hard way. And you act like you just don’t want to touch money. Like it is contaminated. You’ve always acted like Daddy and me makin’ money was just too low for you, and that Grand-pap was some special god. What did that old man ever do but run a car around a dirt track some? He had to have his daughter’s husband dole out to him. Now, those are the facts of the case, and I’ll tell you somethin’ else—it was me and Daddy buildin’ that feed store up that gave you a place to work when you come out of the pen. Now, isn’t that true? You wouldn’t have had anything. Ex-cons don’t get to be made partners of businesses when they come out. They don’t hardly make it, but you had a partnership just waitin’, so don’t go lookin’ down your nose at me wantin’ to do business. No, sir.”

  That last set Mason on fire. Adam always had to bring up the penitentiary. “Why am I the one who’s difficult, just because I don’t want to sell? Maybe you are the one who’s difficult.”

  Adam shook his head in clear aggravation.

  Just then there came the insistent beep of a car horn from the front yard.

  “I want you to think about this,” Adam said, holding up the rolled sheaf of papers. “I want you to think about the fact that you’ll keep a lot of people from jobs and me from sellin’ and makin’ some money. They don’t want just my side. It’s got to be all of it.”

  It struck Mason that the old man Adam claimed hadn’t achieved anything had managed to leave Adam something he valued highly. He was about to say this, but the car horn sounded again.

  Adam jerked open the screen door. “Think about it, Mason. That’s all. Just think it over.”

  Adam entered the house, tossed the pa
pers on the kitchen table as he passed on through the room, down the hall and out the front screen door, letting it slam behind him. Gazing down the long, dim hallway, Mason caught sight of the red Cadillac through the front screen before it drove away toward town.

  He looked over at the papers lying in a loose curl on the vinyl tablecloth beside the well-worn copy of The Screw-tape Letters that he’d propped open with a little tack hammer.

  Larry Joe looked up and saw the big red Cadillac pulling out from the yard up ahead. Recognizing it and knowing how Adam MacCoy drove, he stepped off the rough black-top onto the grassy shoulder. He wished he hadn’t been so stubborn about walking it, because he felt foolish walking along the side of the road, the way a teenager who is used to driving everywhere in his own vehicle usually does.

  The Cadillac came flying past him, and he saw Iris MacCoy on the passenger side staring at him. He quickly looked back down at the ground. That woman looked at him when she came into the Texaco, too. At first he’d thought it was his imagination, but Randy had mentioned noticing it, and teased him about it. Larry Joe finally admitted to himself that Iris MacCoy looked at him pretty boldly, and so did a number of other older women who came into the Texaco. Ignoring the looks seemed the safest course.

  Joey, driving along the same road, looked ahead and saw a figure walking on the shoulder. He wondered who it could be, but then he had to jerk his attention back to the road as a red Cadillac came rolling at him. Adam MacCoy. Adam always drove like he owned the road, and right then he had aimed that car at Joey in his big Dodge towing a twenty-five-foot horse trailer like the rig could just get out of the way. Joey downshifted and moved over to the edge of the one-lane road as far as possible. He saw Iris MacCoy’s wide eyes on him as they passed.

  The Cadillac passed, and Joey got back in the middle of the road. The figure was still walking along the side of the road up ahead. A young man.

  Recognition of the stride and shape of the shoulders dawned on him with great surprise. Larry Joe. His own son. And then, What was Larry Joe doing out here?