by Karen White
Sugar turned her head, wishing she had her own sunglasses to block the glare from the window. “I was nineteen. And the first time I saw him, I thought that if I could ever fall in love, it would be with him.”
“What about Tom? Did he feel the same way?”
A small smile lifted her mouth. “Oh, no. The first time he saw me, I was trying to kill someone. I suppose you can say he saved two lives that day.” She looked up at the bright blue sky, and remembered.
Fourteen
SUGAR
1942
I looked down at the top of Jimmy’s head as he sat in his wheelchair, taking a moment to catch my breath. His beautiful reddish blond hair was a total waste on a boy, but beautiful to look at from where I was usually standing behind him. It was just like our mama’s, which was why she probably pretended he didn’t exist. Nobody wanted a mirror image of themselves that was less than perfect.
I was panting from pushing the wheelchair toward the granite Goliath known as Stone Mountain. Some people actually drove their automobiles up the gentle slope all the way to the summit, but all the pleading from Jimmy and bullying from Harry couldn’t get me to do something so foolish. Instead, I parked at the bottom of the trailhead and began walking, planning to continue until the path got too rocky or I ran out of steam.
It was cold for April, and my breath made smoky puffs as I exhaled; the sky had started out with timid clouds, but they now seemed to be gaining confidence as they grew in size and color, nearly obliterating the sun as we climbed. I’d never been to Stone Mountain before. Only the carving of General Robert E. Lee had been finished since the entire idea had begun back in the twenties, and I had enough to keep me busy rather than spending my day looking at what happened when people didn’t have the wherewithal to finish what they started.
Today was supposed to be just Jimmy and me on account of Lamar being sick. It was just a little cough, but he said he felt poorly enough to stay home. He was now living with another family of tenant farmers, the Scotts, who didn’t have children and treated him like a son. They’d moved into the house he’d once shared with Rufus, and it all worked out since now he had a family again.
I suspected that Jimmy might have caught whatever Lamar had, but he was too stubborn to admit it. That was how people could always tell we came from the same family. I saw him shivering and made him put on a sweater, and he didn’t fight it, which should have told me to make him stay home. But that would have been like making a cow stop producing milk just by talking to it.
We heard the whoops and hollers from Harry and Curtis behind us, and I started pushing again, not wanting them to catch up. They’d not been invited, but Harry had said it wasn’t fitting that a girl should be driving all by herself (even though we both knew I was a better driver than he was) and I would more than likely wreck Daddy’s Plymouth because I was a girl. I knew they were both looking for a place to smoke where Daddy wouldn’t find out—Daddy could not abide tobacco, most likely on account that his tobacco crop had failed ten years ago and set him back in a bad way. But even Harry knew that Daddy wouldn’t have let him take the car if I hadn’t been with them.
It was our big family embarrassment that Harry and Will were of age yet not in uniform. They’d managed to avoid the draft so far, but after Pearl Harbor, when just about every able-bodied man had voluntarily enlisted, they remained civilians. Even Bobby, my quiet, smart brother, whose favorite thing to do was read, had signed up. Bobby promised he’d come back, but I didn’t see how he could promise such a thing. Three boys from the county had been lost in France already, and they thought they’d be coming home, too. Mama took it hard when Bobby enlisted and hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since.
“Go faster,” Jimmy said, leaning forward. “I want to stop up there and look through my binoculars.”
Granddaddy’s field glasses hung around his neck, the strap fraying now. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought he still slept with them. Harry and Will teased him, saying he was a baby because he still slept with a toy. Jimmy never defended himself because we both knew he did it so Harry or Will wouldn’t steal them while he slept.
With a quick glance behind me, I started moving as fast as I could. The path at the base was wide and mostly smooth, so I didn’t have to struggle too much, although the muscles in my calves had already begun to burn. I passed a young man—not too much older than Harry—in uniform who turned to look at us, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence owing to Jimmy’s bright hair and my running like I was being chased.
He didn’t look away as we passed, and I felt like I had to turn my head to look, too. The first thing I noticed was his eyes. They were dark brown, almost black, but they were turned up a little bit at the corners like he’d smiled so much that they got stuck there. He wore a khaki navy uniform, which wasn’t a rare sight because of the nearby Naval Air Station in Chamblee. Willa Faye was always swooning over a man in uniform, which I told her was silly because they were still just boys under the uniform, and there was nothing special there from what I could tell. Maybe I saw things differently because I was raised with so many brothers and she just had one sister.
But it wasn’t his eyes or his uniform that made me take a second look. It was the way he looked at me. Not like he wanted to whistle at my backside, but like he wanted to know my story.
I suddenly felt self-conscious that I wore saddle shoes and bobby socks that made me look younger than my nineteen years. Willa Faye sometimes painted a line on the backs of her legs when she went out dancing so people would think she wore nylons, but only after she left her house so her mama wouldn’t see. There wasn’t enough privacy at my house to do such a thing, plus I didn’t have the patience. But at that one moment, when his eyes met mine, I wished I’d given a thought to what I looked like.
I kept going, pushing Jimmy to the point where he wanted to stop, then waited while he put his binoculars to his eyes. “Do you see anything?”
He shook his head. “Not many birds—no trees up on the mountain, so I wasn’t expecting to. But you can see pretty far—I think that’s the road we drove up on.”
He handed me the glasses and I took them, aware of the man in the uniform still watching me, his hands in his pockets, his hat at an angle that made him look mysterious as well as handsome.
It took me a while to get anything to come into focus, my fingers clumsy as I attempted to adjust the binoculars. I just saw lots of blue sky and then, lowering the glasses, a road and a single car moving slowly across a background of green grass.
“See it?”
I nodded, following the progress of the car, seeing how I could make out the occupants of the front seat even from this distance.
“I like the way things look through my binoculars,” Jimmy said. “No matter how different something looks from up close or far away, objects don’t change. They’re still the same. Just like people.” He tugged on my arm and I relinquished the binoculars.
“Jimmy!”
Curtis suddenly appeared beside me, taking hold of the wheelchair while Harry grabbed me around the waist and pulled me backward. They smelled of cigarettes and alcohol and I turned my head in disgust while quickly grabbing for the handgrips of the wheelchair.
Harry pulled me back. “It’s not fair that Jimmy gets a free ride up the mountain, so we’re going to take turns rolling him back down.”
“Stop it, Harry. Don’t be like that. He might get hurt.”
Curtis pretended to be upset. “What about us? Don’t you care about what happens to us?”
Ever since Jimmy’s accident, I had avoided being in Curtis’s company. It was a sin to hate, but I thought God would make an exception for Curtis. The boy was pure evil, and if I was Catholic like Willa Faye, I would have found some holy water to sprinkle on him.
“No, I really don’t. Now, give me back the wheelchair.”
Jimmy looked at me with wide,
terrified eyes behind smudged glasses. “Come on, Harry. Quit it.”
Curtis grinned, then sat down on Jimmy’s lap. “Come on, Harry. Give me a push and climb on.”
“No!” I shouted, trying again to reach the handles, but Harry held me back, laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world, which just made me madder.
I stomped on his foot with the heel of my shoe—grateful now that I had on my saddle shoes—and he let go just as the wheelchair started to roll slowly back down the path, heading too close to the edge. I grabbed hold of one of the wheelchair handles and brought it to a stop. I launched myself at Curtis, grabbing at his face, his hair, anything to give me the grip I needed to cause damage. I wanted him to roll to the ground and slide off the mountain, not that we were high enough to do much damage, but maybe I’d get lucky and he’d hit his head. I wouldn’t care if I went to jail for murder if it meant that he was dead.
I felt strong hands on my shoulders, and then the man in uniform yanked Curtis to his feet. Without even a how-de-do, he punched Curtis in the face, knocking him to the ground. Kneeling down, the man looked up at Jimmy, who was shaking from fever and fear, his face an awful chalk color.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Jimmy and I both nodded.
The man stood, rubbing his knuckle, and I saw that he still had a boy’s face, the uniform making him appear older. “I’m sorry about that, but I was afraid things were getting out of hand and you needed assistance.” He surveyed the scene, eyeing Harry, who looked like a bull refused by a cow, and Curtis, stumbling with his hand to his face. Turning back to me, he said, “May I escort you back down? I brought my Jeep, and I’d be honored if you’d let me bring you home.”
“Yes, please,” I said, not caring that I didn’t know this man and I’d just agreed to let a stranger take Jimmy and me home. But I trusted him. There was something in his face that made me think I’d known him my whole life.
The man slipped off his cap, showing shortly cropped, thick brown hair, and tucked it under his arm. “Lieutenant Tom Bates, ma’am. I’m currently training pilots at the Naval Air Station, but my home is Dothan, Alabama.” He smiled, and all of a sudden I felt much calmer.
I introduced Jimmy and me, then began walking back down the path. I turned at the sound of footsteps, no longer afraid with Tom there. Harry called to me with the belligerent tone he used when he knew he’d already lost a fight. “You can’t leave with a stranger, Sugar. You ain’t too old for Daddy to tan your hide.”
Tom stood between Harry and me, and I saw how he was taller than Harry, making my big brother seem puny. “I’ve introduced myself to her, so we’re not strangers. And I’d say she’s in better hands with me than she’d be with you and your friend.” We all looked over at Curtis, who was squatting down now while blood poured from his nose and painted the dusty trail with red.
“I forbid you to go, Sugar.” Harry tried to look tough, but I could see the worry in his eyes, probably remembering how Daddy had sent him to Cairo and how he’d hated every minute, only returning after he’d promised Daddy he’d do better and not be so mean and hateful to everyone.
We turned our backs on him and I allowed Tom to guide Jimmy’s wheelchair as we made our slow way down the mountain. We told Tom about the farm and our family, and he told us about his own family back in Dothan. He was an only child, and his parents were much older than ours. His daddy owned the general store downtown, and his mama loved his daddy so much that she went to the store every day to help him. It said a lot about Tom, I thought, that his parents loved each other enough to want to spend all their time together, and then poured all that love into their son.
It wasn’t until much later, after I’d put Jimmy to bed and given him something to bring his fever down, that I lay in bed thinking about Tom Bates, and the way he’d smiled at me, remembering something I’d promised myself a long time ago, a promise that I would never love anything again that I couldn’t bear to lose.
A mockingbird cried out into the cold spring night, and I wondered if Jimmy had heard it and was sitting up in his bed by the window with the binoculars. I rolled over, my back to the full yellow moon, and closed my eyes, wondering if it was already too late.
Fifteen
MERILEE
Merilee parked her minivan in front of the cottage, embarrassed at the little jolt of excitement she felt at the sight of Wade’s truck. Another club member had already planned to drive Sugar home after the AWC meeting, so after dropping Sugar off at the Wimbish House on Peachtree Street—Sugar having declined her offer of assistance to walk her to the front door—Merilee drove straight home, relishing the idea of the rare peace and quiet of an empty house for at least another hour.
She found Wade in the kitchen, kneeling in front of one of the cabinets and unscrewing the hinge. He smiled at her when she walked in, and she hoped the blood rush in her chest didn’t mean she was having a heart attack.
He stood, brushing his hands on his jeans. “The cellar door has been replaced—I’ll have to show you how the new lock works. I thought you might need help moving all those books onto the shelves, so I figured I’d make myself useful until you got back. These kitchen cabinets are pretty warped, so I’ve been making some adjustments to make them easier to open and close.”
“Wow, thanks. I’m really not used to having things in good repair. My husband wasn’t very good with his tools.”
“Really?” Wade said, his mouth widening to a grin.
“Oh,” Merilee said, feeling the blood rush to her face. “I meant, he wasn’t, you know, handy . . .”
Wade held up his hand. “I know. I’m just teasing. You’re so serious that I couldn’t resist.”
She frowned. “No, I’m not. I just have a lot on my plate and have to be in charge all the time . . .” She stopped when she saw he was still grinning. “What?”
“I see where Lily gets her frown.”
“Oh.” She raised her hand without thinking, using her forefinger to massage the crease so it wouldn’t stay. Just as her mother had shown her when she was a teenager.
He moved to the back door. “Come on—let me show you the cellar.” He held the door for her and as she passed him she wondered if she’d only imagined the crackle of electricity that seemed to spark between them. She smoothed her hair with her hands, imagining it shooting up in all directions.
They walked to the side of the house, where two large wooden doors covered what looked like a giant slice of pie glued to the house’s foundation. “These doors are pretty heavy, so make sure you give them a good yank—you should probably practice, so if there ever is a tornado and you need to get in here in a hurry, you won’t panic.”
She nodded, hoping she’d never have to use it for real. She was petrified of dark spaces and spiders, having somehow inherited those fears from David after he died. She’d always been the one to comfort and pretend bravery when he was alive. After he died, she found she couldn’t bear to be inside small, dark places, David’s death ramming home the fact that monsters really did exist in the dark spots right outside the edge of the light.
He squatted down. “I’ve attached a few new sliding bolts on the outside, but I also gave you an easy four-digit combo lock as a deterrent to keep people out of it—you don’t really need anything more secure unless you’re putting valuables in there.”
He raised his eyebrows in question and she shook her head.
“This way, nobody has to hunt for a key in an emergency. I would make it easy to remember—and suggest making it the same code as your cell phone access. I’ll even program it for you if you’d like—or show you how to do it yourself.”
She smiled hesitantly. “I don’t even have a pass code on my phone.”
Wade frowned. “Still? That’s not a good idea, but you probably already know that. But it’s your decision.” He indicated the cellar door again. �
�I’ve installed several secure bolt locks on the other side of the doors to keep them shut in strong winds, but they can only be locked and unlocked by hand from the inside.” He stood back. “You want to give it a try?”
She shook her head. “Not particularly. I’m not a fan of . . . cellars.”
He nodded sympathetically, which made her like him a little more. “Is it the critters or the dark?”
“Both.”
“Hm. Well, maybe this particular cellar won’t be so scary to you if it’s familiar. And if you go down with someone you trust. But it would be a good idea to do it before you have to go here in an emergency and your kids need you to be calm.”
She knew he was right, and even appreciated his offer of help, but she couldn’t bring herself to say yes.
“Here, I’ll open it the first time—you have the rest of the summer to practice. And then we’ll just go down there to poke around for a few minutes, see if there’re any supplies you might want to store down there, like bottled water and blankets, and then we’ll come right back up in the sunshine. I’ve got a flashlight in my tool belt that I’ll leave down there for you. I could even hold your hand if that would make you feel better.”
Zing. She swallowed. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. I’ve survived childbirth twice, after all.”
He chuckled, the sound low and rumbly in his chest, the chest that was currently covered by a close-fitting T-shirt that showed off a rather impressive outline of muscles. She looked away.
“Let’s get this over with. I still have to move the books and start dinner before the kids get home.”
Wade leaned down and yanked on the metal handle of each door, swinging them open so that she could look down a short set of rocky steps that led to absolute darkness. As promised, he pulled a flashlight from his tool belt and flipped it on, the triangular slice of light illuminating a low ceiling covered with dark wooden beams and thick cobwebs. “You ready?” Wade asked, holding out his hand.
