Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  When he turned around to the small table, there was Coweta, sitting there, roses in her hair and wearing a rosy sort of dress. He blinked.

  “You’re in a mood this morning, aren’t you, Winston?” she said.

  “Yes, I am.” He plunked his coffee cup on the table and sat himself down heavily. “I haven’t seen you in a while. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “You haven’t missed me,” she said, lifting a knowing eyebrow.

  “I knew you weren’t here.” He felt a little guilty because it was true that he had not missed her so much. He wondered at that, at what it said about him.

  “You’ve been getting on with things. Having fun with your flag. You haven’t thought about me hardly at all.”

  “I never stop thinking about you, Coweta,” he said and meant it, in his own way.

  “Well, I’ve come to say goodbye.” She whipped a rose out of her hair and laid it on the table. It was bright red against the creamy tablecloth.

  “You said goodbye a year and a half ago, when you dropped dead,” Winston said. He still got irritated at her for leaving him like that.

  “I mean that the time has come for me to move on. Freddy has rallied and made a necessary change in his life, Charlene has made her difficult decision and is starting down a new road, and Rainey has finally found herself and all she needs. You have your flag and your purpose with these old women. Just as all of you are getting on with your lives, I have to get on with mine.” She looked at him solemnly. “I mean that I won’t be back, Winston.”

  He gazed into her eyes for a long moment. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Yes,” she smiled lovingly. “I’ll greet you when you come over, my love.”

  She blew him a kiss, and then it seemed like he blinked and she was gone. Winston’s gaze dropped to the rose, still lying on the table. He swallowed and wished a thousand things that could never be, such as to be a young man again and to hold his wife in his arms and time in his hands. He felt, for an instant, great anger at having to grow old and lose the life he loved.

  With heavy muscles, he got up, retrieved the jelly glass and brought it to the table and plopped the red rose in with the pink and white ones. He gazed at the blossoms for along minute, resignation coming slowly but as inevitably as his hair going white and his skin getting blotchy. He knew this was life and was glad to be a part of it.

  Then he snapped open the Sunday Voice and sat with the roses’ scent around him to read the headline, which stated: Mayor Rips Out Clock-Thermometer. It appeared the thermometer had gone haywire again, and Kaye Upchurch, the mayor’s wife, had just about gotten run down by somebody who was distracted by the false reading of 58°. Calls had been flooding the City Hall office, and the mayor had gotten so aggravated, probably at his demanding wife, Winston thought, that he had torn out the wires to the computer. The city council had agreed to take the sign down permanently.

  Joey, on his way to Houston, stopped at the tiny post office of a small town. It was closed on a Sunday, of course, but he knew the lobby would be open, and he could get stamps for his letter from the machine.

  He pulled his rig into the gravel lot next to a two-tone Chevy that had the hood up and steam coming out of the engine.

  As Joey got out of his own truck, the fellow bending over the engine came up, and Joey, surprised, saw that the fellow was really a young woman.

  “Hey, cowboy,” she said, brushing hair out of her eyes with the back of her grease-smudged hand. “I don’t suppose you carry a spare radiator hose around with you.”

  He stopped and then walked over. “No, ’fraid not. I don’t know a thing about engines. That’d be my son’s department, but he isn’t with me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She wiped her hands on a rag in a way that said she knew a little something about what she was doing. Then she was looking at Joey with golden eyes that caused him to stare at her, while she gave him a going-over in a way that made him both pleased and nervous. Young women these days were bolder than he was comfortable with.

  Shifting his gaze to the steaming engine, he said, “I saw a station open a little ways back. I could give you a lift.”

  “How ’bout the other way?” She cocked her head. “Could you give me a lift home? On down this road another five miles and then east three. I probably got parts at home. I save a junk car just for parts for this one.”

  “Well, sure,” he said. He couldn’t just leave her there. Then he remembered why he had stopped and pulled the envelope out of his jacket. “Let me just drop this in the mail.”

  He strode into the lobby of the post office. At the machine, he deposited coins, pushed the button, and a little packet of stamps came out. He put one on the letter and stepped over to the mail slot.

  For long seconds he gazed at the letter, at Charlene’s name. He pictured her at home in her kitchen, the kids around her. The well of loneliness inside him seemed to get deeper.

  Then, quickly, he dropped the letter in the box and strode back out to find the young woman already sitting in his truck, a move that caused him a little shock. The way the sun hit her face, he thought maybe she wasn’t as young as he had first estimated. This made him feel a little better.

  As he pulled out on the road, she asked him where he was headed, and he told her Houston. She asked where he was working, and he said he hoped to get a job in Houston.

  “We’re lookin’ for help at our place right now,” she said. “There’s just my grandmother and me. We run some cattle and put up hay. My grandmother broke her leg, and I have two sections of hay to get baled and loaded on a flatbed, and cattle to get moved. Why don’t you stop and have a look around? I can offer you Sunday supper, and my grandmother is the best cook in the county.”

  He glanced over to see her regarding him with those golden eyes, steady and inviting.

  “All right,” he said. “If you have a corral for my two horses.”

  “We have a couple of corrals just sittin’ there waitin’ to be used,” she said, smiling.

  Joey focused out the windshield, squinting a little in the sunlight, staring down the blacktopped road ahead.

  Mason displayed the seat covers he had purchased for his Grandpap’s old car, and Larry Joe, finishing tightening the last nuts and bolts on the engine that was once more set in the car, gave them a skeptical look.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Mason wanted to know.

  “Nothin’, I guess. If you like ugly.”

  “Hey, I ordered these from a hot rod catalog. This is what was popular back when this car was made.”

  “That’s the problem, then,” Larry Joe said and returned his attention to the engine.

  Mason looked at the young man stretched under the yawning hood and grinned softly. He had sure enjoyed Larry Joe working with him on the old vehicle. He was almost a little sad that the car was about ready to run, he thought, as he stretched the cover over the front seat. He thought he would drive it for a while, and likely he would have to have Larry Joe work on it from time to time. He intended to find things like this that they could do together.

  “Y’all want to take a break for somethin’ cold to drink?” said a feminine voice. Mason recognized his sister-in-law Iris’s tone at the same instant that he straightened up to see her standing in the wide doorway of the garage. He saw Larry Joe come up from the engine so fast that he bumped his head against the hood.

  “Hello, Iris,” Mason said.

  “Hello.”

  She came forward. Dressed in a silky blouse and short skirt and heels, she came forward on tiptoe, carrying a tray and glasses. She barely glanced at Mason. She was grinning at Larry Joe, who mumbled, “Hello, Mrs. MacCoy.”

  “I took the liberty of goin’ into your kitchen and gettin’ us all somethin’,” she said, stating the obvious as she set the tray on a corner of the battered work bench. “Adam’s showin’ a buyer over the pasture, but I was still in my church clothes and wasn’t about to go trompin’ through al
l those weeds.”

  “A buyer? For his half of the land?”

  “Yep. Some housing developer. He lost the juvenile delinquent center to Freddy Valentine. Now here, hon, have a glass of tea.”

  She passed Larry Joe a cold glass, leaving Mason to pick up his own. Mason downed half of his and then decided to go see Adam and the buyer. “You can keep workin’,” he told Larry Joe, who dove back beneath the car hood.

  Adam was out in the middle of the big pasture with a rotund man. He gestured this way and that. When Mason reached the two, he was struck by how much the men resembled each other. He thought it had to do with a shared expression of wheeling-dealing. Adam’s cordiality to him and eager introductions let Mason know that this sale would be very profitable to his brother.

  “Mr. Wrigley is thinkin’ of building a housing development here,” Adam said. “Three- and five-acre tracts.”

  “Ah.” Mason watched the developer look over the land like he was placing his houses. “Think there’s a good market for that way out here?”

  Wrigley’s eyes stopped on him for a second. “Depends. Could be.” Then, “And you own that house and how many acres over there?”

  “Forty.”

  “Maybe we could build a little lake over there,” Wrigley said, pointing east.

  “My creek,” Mason said.

  “I imagine we could work somethin’ out,” Adam said, shooting Mason a fiery glance. Then he led Wrigley away to find the surveyors’ stakes and just where the property lines ran.

  Mason walked back across the pasture. At the gate he turned and watched Adam and the developer. Then he looked at his house. Suddenly it looked very small and old, even shabby. There sure wouldn’t be room for a woman and her kids here.

  The thought struck him hard. He had not realized he was moving along those lines with Charlene, but he supposed he was. Quite suddenly he was imagining marrying her, and he realized, without ever consciously knowing, he had been fantasizing about this for some time.

  When he walked into the garage, it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust, and then he saw Iris bending over the fender, displaying her cleavage while talking to Larry Joe, who was pretty much trying to crawl into the engine.

  “Iris, Adam would like you to drive over to the pasture gate and pick them up,” Mason told her.

  “Pick him up?” Iris said, then sighed. “Oh, all right. It was nice to see you boys.” She touched Larry Joe’s arm as she left.

  When she was out of sight, Mason said to Larry Joe, “Just enjoy what that woman is bestowing upon you, son.”

  Larry Joe looked embarrassed. Mason winked at him, and Larry Joe grinned sheepishly. “I don’t think I could do anything else with her,” Larry Joe said, causing Mason to laugh.

  Then he said, “The tires I put on are old, but they appear to be holdin’. If you can start this thing, let’s see if we can drive it out of here. Adam never said for Iris to go get him, and I imagine she’ll be back.”

  Larry Joe told him to get behind the wheel, while he dove into the engine for another few adjustments. Then he called, “Fire her up.”

  Mason, his heart actually picking up tempo, turned the key. The engine chugged and sputtered. Larry Joe hollered at him to give it gas. Mason pumped the accelerator and tried again. The engine chugged and sputtered harder, almost caught, then died.

  “Let me do it,” Larry Joe said, motioning impatiently for Mason to get out of the way.

  “I can do it,” Mason said, adding, “It is my car.” He felt like a kid, and Larry Joe’s doubtful expression made him all the more determined.

  He turned the key, pumped the accelerator and willed the engine to turn over. It did, with a sudden great roar.

  “Aw-riight!” Larry Joe shouted, slammed the hood and ran around to jump into the passenger seat.

  With a “Yahoo!” Mason revved the engine and then put it in gear. As he started out of the garage, the engine threatened to die, but then it caught and they went shooting out into the sunlight. As he turned onto the road, Mason pulled out the bills he had ready in his pocket and handed them over to the young man, who repeated, “Aw-riight!”

  They got two miles down the road to town, and the engine quit. They had run out of gas. They were arguing about who was going to walk in to the gas station when Adam and Iris came by and gave them a ride. Adam talked to Mason about selling his property to the developer, while Iris smiled and showed her stuff to Larry Joe.

  Thirty-One

  When Oralee drove up in front of the elementary school, children were bursting out. “Looks like a swarm of wild bees,” she said to Charlene, who had one foot out of the car. “Don’t get stung.”

  Charlene carefully made her way through the racing children, some who called hello, and entered the school. It was already empty, and her footsteps echoed in the hallway. She felt self-conscious of her footsteps, almost like a child being where she was not supposed to be.

  Jojo waited at the doorway of her classroom and raced forward to greet her, taking her hand and walking her into the room to present her to her teacher, Mrs. Norwood. The teacher rose from behind her desk with a smile and extended her hand for a firm shake, saying, “Very nice to meet you.”

  Mrs. Norwood was around thirty, so she had some experience, and was quite attractive, with frank brown eyes, hair cut in an easy-care bob, and comfortable cotton clothes. Charlene was sufficiently impressed with the woman. She immediately formed the opinion that children would adore this teacher and possibly learn something, too.

  “Honey, Oralee is out front,” Charlene said to Jojo. “Would you go out and keep her company while Mrs. Norwood and I chat?”

  “I know,” Jojo said, taking up her school bag. “So you two can talk about me.”

  “Yes, that is the idea.” Charlene hugged her quickly.

  Jojo gave a roll of the eyes and walked out the door, which Mrs. Norwood closed behind her.

  Charlene sat in a chair beside the teacher’s desk, and the woman said, “I’m very glad you took the time to come in,” while the two of them further sized each other up.

  Charlene said, “Jojo is my daughter. I want to make certain she is getting the best attention.”

  That made the woman sit back a bit. Charlene then launched into her view of Jojo’s difficulties with lessons and questioned the woman for her understanding of the situation. The woman knew, of course, of the breakup of Jojo’s parents.

  Her observation was that Jojo’s reactions to the circumstances were of a fairly normal nature. “She’s having a little trouble concentrating,” Mrs. Norwood said. “She doodles and gazes out the window a lot. When she is outside on the playground, rather than take part, she keeps to herself. I did speak to our student counselor, and she agrees that this is a way of coping by losing herself in daydream fantasies, and that this is fairly usual. It can be an effective way of coping with stressful situations, if not taken to an extreme.

  “Although…” the teacher’s eyebrows came together in a puzzled frown as her gaze shifted “…I have to admit that I can’t explain away this rose as a fantasy.”

  Following the teacher’s gaze, Charlene saw a red rose in a bud vase.

  Mrs. Norwood said, “I was glad to know you were coming this afternoon, because Jojo may be developing more serious problems. She brought that rose to me this morning and told me an angel gave it to her.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. She asked to go to the girls’ room, and she was gone some time. Actually, I didn’t really realize how long she was gone because I got distracted by two of my students getting into an argument. When she came in the door, she had this rose, and wanted me to put it into water and keep it on my desk. I asked her where she got it between here and the girls’ room, and she made up this story about an angel, who stopped to speak to her in the hallway and gave her the rose.

  “I’ve asked all the teachers, and no one has been given any roses. I’m certain she must have gone out of the building and ne
ar the street. She knows that is not allowed, so of course she would lie about it. But that’s the only way she could meet with some woman. At first I thought she must have gotten the rose from someone’s bush, but no houses nearby have rosebushes.”

  While the teacher had been talking, Charlene picked up the rose and held it beneath her nose. Then she said, “Jojo doesn’t lie.”

  Mrs. Norwood blinked. “Well, I don’t know where she got it.”

  “I imagine she got it exactly how she said, from a woman with roses in her white hair. Just because no one saw this woman doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”

  “Jojo didn’t mention roses in the woman’s hair, or that it was white.” Mrs. Norwood stared at Charlene, who inhaled the scent of the rose again.

  “I just imagined an angel would have that,” Charlene said. “It’s not uncommon for young children to report seeing angels, you know. I’ve seen and read a number of reports about this, haven’t you?”

  Mrs. Norwood stared at her in a manner that indicated her thoughts: And the pecan doesn’t fall far from the tree. “I am aware of the phenomenon of children reporting seeing angels, but this usually stops by the time they are five, when they get more aware of reality. I could have the county counselor speak with her. She comes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she is a qualified child psychologist.”

  “Many people report seeing angels. I do take Jojo to church and have read many a Bible story to her, so I don’t think her belief in angels is so far-fetched.” Charlene, suddenly feeling much better about her daughter, set the rose back on the teacher’s desk. “And only a few weeks ago she spent a great deal of time with her uncle, who is a physician and psychiatrist, and he finds she’s doing just fine.”

  “Well…that’s good.”

  “Please be assured that I will contact him, should I grow concerned with Jojo’s ability to cope.” She rose. “Enjoy the rose. It smells lovely.”

  She thanked Mrs. Norwood for her time and then left. All the way down the wide hallway, her footsteps again echoing on the tile, she listened and kept an eye out for the white-haired woman. At the front doors, she paused and wistfully looked back down the quiet, shadowy hallway, but no one was there.