Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

by Jackie Lynn

  But why would she say such a thing?” Rose wanted to know. She and Thomas were sitting side by side at a picnic table near her travel trailer. They were enjoying lunch by the river.

  Thomas had walked over to the office about 11:00 A.M. and suggested that she meet him at their favorite spot. He often fixed her lunch when she worked Mary’s weekday shift.

  “You know how crazy she is,” Thomas replied, eating his sandwich in slow, thoughtful bites. “She talked you into going shopping,” he added. “I never thought I’d ever see that day.”

  Rose elbowed him in the side. “I shop,” she said.

  “Right.” Tom made a face, trying to humor his girlfriend. “That’s your favorite activity to do. Shopping and going to a community dance.”

  Rose shook her head. She had already told Thomas that she had purchased tickets for the Spring Fling. He had not been so pleased about that.

  “Okay, both of those things are surprises, too. But taking me shopping to buy a dress to go dancing and telling me that I’m going to get pregnant are two completely different agendas,” Rose said.

  She took a bite of her sandwich. “I mean, why would she say that?” she asked, her mouth full of bread and pimento cheese.

  Tom reached over and wiped her mouth. He smiled at her because he loved to watch her eat. He said that he had never seen a woman who could leave more of her food on her clothes than what she took into her stomach.

  “How did it come up?” he asked.

  “The new camper,” Rose explained. “She guessed the girl was pregnant.”

  Thomas considered this clue. He had already heard about the girl that was in trouble and who had called looking for Rhonda.

  “Was she reading her charts?” he asked. He knew about Ms. Lou Ellen’s recent obsession with astrology. She had already found out from him the exact date, time, and place of his birth and was researching his chart.

  “Yes,” Rose replied.

  Thomas nodded. Ms. Lou Ellen’s comments were starting to make sense to him. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she say a couple of months ago that you were coming into a lot of money, based on the readings she had done?”

  Rose thought about that prior prediction. She recognized what Thomas was getting at. “Yes, but later she said she had misread the part about Jupiter and that the foretelling just meant I was coming into good luck, not so much money.”

  “And did you, in fact, suddenly have good luck?” he pressed. He ate the last of his sandwich and folded up the plastic bag.

  “Well, I guess that depends on the way you look at things,” she responded. “I didn’t have any bad luck,” she added.

  Thomas smiled. “I love Lou Ellen; don’t get me wrong. But, Rose, you’ve been here long enough to know that she gets sort of obsessed with things. She tends to go overboard. That’s why she was such a good addict.”

  Rose looked at Thomas. She knew that he and Ms. Lou Ellen shared a lot of history, including a recovery program. They were both alcoholics.

  Thomas turned to his girlfriend and studied her. “Or is there something more to this?” he asked.

  Rose waited for the rest.

  “Is it that you want to get pregnant?” he asked, his voice quiet. In the midst of discussing what Ms. Lou Ellen had blurted out in a morning conversation to Rose, Thomas realized that the two of them had never really had this discussion.

  He knew that Rose and her ex-husband had never felt like it was the right time to be parents, and based upon that, he had always just assumed that Rose had made up her mind about the subject. He thought she did not want to be a mother. He understood at that moment with that questioning look in her eyes, that strange expression that appeared like hope or possibility, that he may have made a false assumption.

  Rose shrugged. In fairness to her boyfriend’s assumption, she thought she had made that decision a while back and that it would remain unchanged. She had not wanted to have children, not with Rip, and not alone. Once in West Memphis, she had not really expected to fall in love again and she had not had time to think about the possibility of Thomas and her having a family. After all, they hadn’t been together that long. And yet, somehow with her friend’s crazy prediction, it seemed to bring up those considerations all over again.

  A barge passed by them on the river. A low horn sounded and the splashing of the waves increased along the banks. Thomas and Rose stopped to listen. She took the last bite of her sandwich. Thomas waited for her response.

  “I thought I was done thinking about motherhood. But I guess finding you, being in love, makes me think about it again,” she confessed. She took the napkin and wiped off her mouth. She reached across the table and got the bag of cookies. She held it up to Thomas as an offer and he shook his head. He never cared much for sweets. He had brought the small bag of cookies for her.

  “I guess it’s a bigger deal than what I expected,” she said. She took a bite of a cookie and breathed out a long breath.

  “I always thought that turning forty really marked the end of having the opportunity to change my mind about this. I always said if I was going to get pregnant it had to happen before I turned forty. But I don’t know. Lots of women my age are still having children.” She leaned back, away from the table.

  Thomas didn’t respond. He realized in the two years’ time that they had been together it had never occurred to him that Rose might want to have children. He hadn’t considered this would ever be an issue that they would discuss.

  “What about you?” she asked. “You ever think about having children?”

  Thomas ate a few chips and waited before answering. “Early on, I thought I did,” he replied. “But I haven’t thought about it for a long time. Just didn’t seem the path for me.”

  Rose looked over at this man she loved. She slid her hand into his. “Well, maybe that was before a moon entered into your house of Saturn.”

  They both laughed. Neither of them knew anything about horoscopes or astrology. They usually only humored their friend when she started talking the language of the stars.

  “You know, you would make a good father,” she announced.

  He smiled and squeezed her hand. “I think I would have done okay,” he agreed.

  “Done,” she repeated. “As in the past tense,” she added.

  Thomas didn’t speak for a few minutes. He could tell that this was important to Rose and he didn’t want to say anything that would hurt her. He really hadn’t thought about fathering a child in a long time and he surely hadn’t thought about it as a part of the relationship he was in. If they came to different conclusions about the issue of parenting, he understood what they had could be over.

  “I haven’t seen my charts,” he finally said. “But I don’t really think my planet is meant to revolve in a group of little planets.” He was just teasing and he knew he needed to be a bit more serious. “I don’t know, Rose,” he said. “I haven’t thought about this in a long time. I hadn’t considered starting a family at this late date in my life. I’m quite a bit older than you, remember?”

  Rose nodded. Thomas was already fifty.

  “Is this something you really want?” he asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, changing her mind. “Ms. Lou Ellen just surprised me is all, put strange thoughts in my head. It’s a question I can’t answer right now.”

  They stopped talking when they heard the motorcycles rolling into the campground.

  “They’re back!” Rose announced, referring to Rhonda and Lucas. She was glad to change the subject. “And in exactly the amount of time she said it would take.”

  “Where were they?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “Mississippi,” Rose replied.

  “How is it that she knew this camper from South Dakota?” he asked.

  “Met her at the bike rally,” Rose responded. “Rhonda said she has a history.”

  “What kind of history?” Thomas asked.

  “A
history of trouble,” Rose noted. “That’s all I know.” She took a drink from her can of soda and then returned it to the table. “Maybe we’ll know a little more now,” she added.

  “She’s over at number fourteen, right?”

  Rose nodded. “She wanted to be hidden,” she recalled.

  “Well, that sounds like a mystery right there,” Thomas said. He pinched Rose on the arm. He knew how curious she could be about the guests at Shady Grove.

  “Hey, that reminds me. That couple from Texas in the fifth wheel?”

  Thomas shrugged. He didn’t keep up with the campers as well as Rose and he learned most of his information from her. He rarely met anyone at the campground since he lived in a small trailer almost a half a mile away.

  “There”—she pointed behind them—“that one,” she noted.

  Thomas turned and looked in the direction she was pointing. “Oh, okay,” he replied.

  “The man was in the office this morning, he’s with his wife.”

  Thomas nodded. He waited for the rest of the story.

  “They’re looking for her birth family—” Rose stopped. “She was adopted,” she explained.

  “Okay,” Thomas said.

  “He was going to the courthouse to find out about the adoption laws in Arkansas, but I told him I would find out the answer to his question.”

  “What’s the question?” Thomas asked.

  “He wanted to know if the adopted person could get information about the birth parents from the adoption agency.” Rose was remembering the man’s question and her promise to find out the information for him. With all of the commotion around the new troubled camper from South Dakota and the odd prediction from Ms. Lou Ellen, she had forgotten what she had said that she would do.

  “Don’t know the answer to that one,” he said. “But I’m sure that you can call social services and they could tell you,” he suggested.

  Rose nodded. She had already thought of that.

  “Although I imagine that they don’t give out that kind of information.”

  “Why not?” Rose asked.

  “Some folks would say that it could discourage a woman from choosing adoption. If she knows that in ten or twenty years a person could come calling and come blaming her for what she did, she might decide on an abortion instead. Some folks are real touchy about private information like that.”

  Rose didn’t respond. She thought what Thomas said made perfect sense. “What if both parties say it’s okay?” she asked. She had heard of lots of adopted children finding their birth parents. The news was full of those stories.

  Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I figure if they’ve made a law against reporting the information, it would be binding in all situations.”

  Rose thought about the man from Texas and his wife. She guessed that even if it were possible to get the name and address of a birth parent, it would be highly unlikely that a seventy-year-old person would be able to find a parent still alive. She decided that she would call the appropriate state office that afternoon. She would still keep her promise to the man.

  Both Thomas and Rose listened as the motorcycles pulled down the driveway into the campground and as the engines shut off.

  “They probably stopped at Ms. Lou Ellen’s,” Rose commented. “She’ll tell Rhonda where the girl is camped.”

  Thomas looked over in the direction of where the newest camper had been assigned. “I saw her putting up her tent when I walked over to the office. I offered my help, but she seemed determined to get it done by herself.”

  “Yeah, I offered, too,” Rose responded.

  “Do you know her story?” he asked. He guessed that Rose and Ms. Lou Ellen had gotten some details about the girl. He knew that both of them could ask a lot of questions.

  “She wouldn’t really tell us much. She started to and then she got cold feet,” Rose replied. She took off her sunglasses and cleaned them off with her shirt. “She just said that she was in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Thomas asked. “What sort of trouble?”

  Rose shook her head. “Didn’t explain,” she said.

  Thomas scratched his chin thoughtfully. “And Lou Ellen figures it means she’s pregnant?” he asked, recalling the earlier conversation they had.

  Rose nodded.

  “I suppose that’s a jump you can make,” he surmised.

  “She did mention that she thought she had been a witness to something.” Rose was remembering what had been shared by the visitor. “But when she started to elaborate, she just shut down, said that maybe she hadn’t seen anything after all.”

  “It’s odd that she would call that trouble,” Thomas noted as he cleaned the space around him on the table. He placed the sandwich bag and napkins inside a larger bag.

  “What do you mean?” Rose handed him her trash and he added it to the bag and then placed the bag in the picnic basket.

  “I mean, if you saw something, if you were witness to something, that might put you in danger, but I don’t see how that would put you in trouble.”

  Rose thought about his rationale. She put her sunglasses back on, drank the last from her soda, handed Thomas the can, and looked at her watch. She had left a sign on the office door that she would return in thirty minutes. She had already been away for twenty. She stood up to return to work.

  Thomas stood up beside her, pulling the basket over toward him. “Trouble implies that she’s done something, participated in something, but if she only saw something, I don’t know why that automatically means trouble,” he explained further.

  “Maybe she saw something illegal and because she didn’t report it, she’s in trouble.” Rose stretched. “Do you want to walk with me?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I suppose you’re right about not reporting something,” Thomas agreed.

  “If you witnessed something that could be classified as illegal, would you say you were in trouble?” Rose asked.

  They started walking toward the office.

  “I guess it depends on who else knew what I saw,” he replied.

  They passed a couple walking down to the river and they both smiled and waved at them.

  “I bet that’s it then,” Rose said. “I bet somebody saw her at the thing she witnessed and now she knows that they know and, probably, they’re after her. She’s running scared.”

  Thomas reached out and took her by the hand and they continued in the direction of the office.

  “Ah, if only all of life’s great questions could be answered over a pimento cheese sandwich sitting on the river with the one you love,” she said with a sigh.

  Thomas laughed, but he knew that both of them understood that she was referring to more than just the immediate questions surrounding the latest camper to join them at Shady Grove.

  SEVEN

  Well, she’s not pregnant,” Rhonda announced when she returned to the office. She had gone to visit with Chariot as soon as they had arrived back at Shady Grove. Lucas had stayed with his mother-in-law and then had gone over to the office when Rose returned from lunch.

  Lucas, Ms. Lou Ellen, and Rose were sitting at the table trying to figure out a sudoku puzzle that had been in a newspaper that was placed in the campground’s recycling bin located next to the office sometime earlier that day. Rose had taken out a stack of papers to search for puzzles before leaving for lunch.

  Sudoku had become the latest form of entertainment for the management team at Shady Grove and they always searched for puzzles in any of the newspapers that campers brought with them into Shady Grove. Lucas and Ms. Lou Ellen were particularly big fans of the number puzzles.

  Thomas had left them a bit earlier to go into town to buy groceries. He was planning to cook for Rose later in the evening. She had requested pot roast and new potatoes. Ms. Lou Ellen had teased Thomas for spoiling his girlfriend and had also made sure to give a passing comment about marriage and growing a family. Both Thomas and Rose had pretended not to hear.

>   Rhonda closed the door behind her and stood by the counter. She leaned her hip against the door, pulled her hair out of the ponytail it had been in, and then swept it back up, combing the loose hairs with her fingers. She gave a sigh.

  “So, let’s not plan a baby shower just yet, shall we?” She was speaking to her mother, who simply waved away the comment.

  “So, what’s her trouble?” Rose asked. She slid the paper closer to Lucas. Unlike the other two at the table, she could never seem to grasp how to solve the number puzzles. She was a crossword person herself, preferring word answers since she never considered herself to be very good with any kind of math equation.

  “She left Pierre in a hurry,” Rhonda replied. She went around the counter and sat down at the desk. “She said she saw something,” she added.

  Rose got up and went over to where Rhonda was sitting. She sat down in the chair across from the desk. She folded her arms across her chest and slumped down, waiting for more of the story.

  “That’s old news,” Ms. Lou Ellen stated. “She already confessed to that.” She paused. “Son, you can’t use an eight, there’s already the number eight on that line,” she said to Lucas. She was pointing to a line in the puzzle.

  “Well, Mother dear, I can’t pay attention to what numbers have been used if you keep moving the puzzle away from me.” Lucas was a portrait of patience. “Why don’t you finish this one and I’ll do the one in the magazine?” he asked.

  He reached over and got a local magazine that always featured a sudoku puzzle in the back. He opened it and folded back the pages and started working. His reading glasses fell down the bridge of his nose.

  “Well,” Rose waited, paying no attention to what was going on at the table behind her. “What did she see?”

  There was a deliberate pause.

  “A murder,” Rhonda finally replied. “Early Monday morning.”

  The three others in the room all snapped up their heads and turned in her direction.

  “Murder?” Ms. Lou Ellen asked, shaking her head. “And having a baby?” she added. Then she looked down again to study her puzzle. “It’s a six!” she shouted and clapped her hands together.