by Lynn Pruett
“I ain’t never had a wife who worked before, so these obligations seem a little funny to me.” He squatted, digging too deep a hole in the furrow. Hattie settled back, cupping the dirt ball at the base of the plant’s stalk to keep it from drying.
“It all started last night when I had to go down to the bank’s banquet they have every year. First, I had to get on my suit and my tie and my alligator boots.”
“Melanie made you wear a suit?”
“I said a suit is only for marrying or burying, some occasion where you got a preacher up front. And Melanie says Reverend Peterson is on the board of the bank and he’ll be at the head table, so she won that little skirmish. Anyway, we get there and first they call up the gray gooses that have been at the same position for twenty-five years. The gray gooses wobble up and get their pats on the back. Why, I bet if they give them a pat on the ass they’d work thirty more years at the same position, but then I ain’t running the bank. I wish I was, though.”
Across the field, the dogwood trees flared, white and pink, in the shadowy woods. Hattie stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Then comes the sneak announcement of the evening. Melanie has been promoted to branch manager of their sister bank down in Opp. She gets so excited but it is all I can do to keep from going up and saying Melanie is not going to South Alabama. Her family and her husband is right here and this is where she belongs. I stewed for hours and that sorry stuff they serve for punch didn’t help the situation. You would think that the boys at the bank could spring for shots, but no. They dump all the liquor in the punch and then make it puke-green with lime Kool-aid and pineapple juice. Blech. I had one glass and Melanie had many. So I put this silly look on my face and waited until we finally got out to the truck, where World War Three breaks out.”
The small tomato plant had dried out and the sun seemed hotter than it had all day. Hattie wanted to touch her brother but he sat so still, as if in mild shock.
“Melanie decides she will go and spend the night with her mother, and I have already turned up the old bird’s street when Melanie remembers that her mother doesn’t believe ladies smoke, drink, or screw, even after they’re married. So we go on home. This morning I figure things will be worked out so I go to get my breakfast, and thank goodness I put on my shorts because there in our living room was Melanie’s mother. I took my bowl and my cereal and pretended the old bird was a piece of our everyday furniture. Melanie must have eat early, knowing this fright to the appetite was coming over.
“So I’m sitting there eating my cereal when Melanie’s mother starts looking familiar. Then she makes these loud sniffs, like this.” Troy Clyde inhaled three doses of pungent air. “So I say to her, ‘Miz Killian, what is your real name?’ And she says, ‘It’s Rhuhanna Polk Killian.’”
“I just about snorted my cereal. You know who she is? Remember Pudge Polk from back in school? She was in my class for about two weeks, sniffing the whole time.”
“I don’t remember her,” Hattie said.
“I said, ‘Pudge Polk! You sure have changed from our school-days!’ Back then her fat red face and body put you in mind of the heap of raw clay next to the brickworks. You should see her now, skinny as a birch twig. She works out at that gym downtown. I’ve always said some women need to have a good amount of weight on them or they’re about as peachy as a block of chalk. Melanie’s got this stuff she puts on her face called a mask, supposed to prevent wrinkles, she says. Looks like her mother forgot to wash her mask off. And her eyes that used to be sunk in, now they wobble like egg yolks on her hard cheekbones. You look at her eyes and you think they’re going to slide off her face and make a mess on your floor.”
“So you kicked Melanie out because of her mother?”
“Naw. When Melanie came into the room I told her to go on down to Opp, meet the people at the bank, check out the housing situation, find out what cultural events might be to her liking, and when she comes back we’d sit down and have a mature conversation and I might reconsider my position.”
“Troy Clyde, you didn’t!” Hattie crushed the tomato plant. Its leaves broke in a sickening squish.
“Yeah. Melanie gave me the most dumbfounded look I’ve ever seen on her face, but Egg Yolk Polk sniffed a little higher up on the sniff scale, so I figure she approved.”
“Troy Clyde, you can’t move to Opp. You can’t leave all your kids. Or your farm. You have to stay here.” She stood up and slung sticky hair from her forehead. “Troy Clyde. You can’t leave me.”
He reached toward her shoulder but dropped his hand as if great stones had moved between them. “Look at them two crows. I wonder what they’re doing.”
A pair of tangled crows tumbled over the bean hills.
“Troy Clyde, I can’t go on if you move.” Her breath came fast, almost white.
“Oh, I ain’t worried one bit. Opp’s the hometown of the Annual Rattlesnake Rodeo. Melanie’s scared to death of snakes.”
Hattie threw the wadded tomato plant at him. It unfolded its bent fibers and clung pathetically to the fine ridges of his undershirt. “I could kill you.”
“That’s the surest way I know of my leaving here.” He kicked a clod of dirt loose and fired it at the squawking crows, who winged swiftly to opposite sides of the field. “Naw, I ain’t worried one bit about Melanie. It’s the snakes at the bank we got to look out for.”
“Tell Melanie their new computer program keeps bouncing my checks by accident. She needs to ride herd until they learn the system.” She buried her hands in the dirt. “We better get the roses in or I may never want to go home. It’s so pretty out here.” In the twilight, the caterpillar tents looked like iridescent diamonds.
“Hattie, I may be married, but you’re the only family I got,” said Troy Clyde.
“Thanks, bubba,” Hattie said. The rose sprig she selected stuck her thumb but good. On second glance, she noticed it held its single thorn out proudly, hooked, green, ready for battle.
JESSAMINE BOHANNON
As Jessamine left the house, Mama and Heather were settling down for homework. The scent of bacon followed her, like perfume sprayed on her wrists and neck. Well, no one was going to get that close to her, and in a bar everyone wore a wrapper of smoke. Smoked sausage. She giggled. Richard Reynolds, the Smokin’ Sausage. He always came to mind these days. She took care where she placed her open-toed heels. No dirt ring on her toes, please.
Her white VW looked lonesome at the edge of the parking lot, a marshmallow forgotten at the bottom of the bag while the fire dwindled to embers. She was ready to jump in the fire. Mama must have wondered at her going out tonight, like she had a date, not an illict rendezvous. Richard had not called. Not once. His loss. She reached across the passenger seat and rolled down the window. Let the fresh air blow over her body. In and out of honeysuckle clouds wove the VW on its way to Bigbees across the Georgia line. She’d known as she pulled on her sleeveless maroon dress that this was where she would go. As she draped her necklace of large blue glass beads around her neck, she knew the bar of ill repute was her destination. She figured out why she was going there too, although she didn’t dwell on it. Richard the chickenheart would not dare show his face away from home.
Bigbees promised ugliness, the kind of place she might have endured for years if she’d continued as Richard’s mistress. For years, she thought. I could have gone on for years. Thank God I called his bluff. She felt relief now. At Bigbees there was no way she’d find anyone interesting, because—well, she really wasn’t interested in meeting anyone. Not yet. This time she would be selective, let her mind lead the way.
She slammed on her brakes. The VW slid sideways, halting as a heavy-duty garbage bag flew by her window and split on the tire hump. She hadn’t seen the old pickup truck lumbering up the hill. Its shape was visible for a second against the sky, a floppy hat appearing at the peak, before the dark trees obscured it. She heard a loud squish, the rattle of cans, and the spine-chilling shatter of glas
s as yet another bag hit the road.
She rolled up her window. A putrid mix of rotted eggs and sweet vegetables permeated the car. She reached over and rolled up the other window but felt like she’d trapped the smell in with her. The VW lurched toward the lip of the ditch before Jessamine remembered she was not straight on the road. I could have hit that ditch easy as pie. She roared off, then slowed, looking for the next garbage heap. She yanked down the window. It’s got to be nicer out there. Gradually, she increased her speed.
The entrance to Bigbees from the back road was an old lane. It didn’t have the gigantic billboard touting a winking woman or a path of lanterns made out of plastic cups advertising the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Auburn Tigers, like the highway entrance did. Jessamine eased the VW around a waterhole that looked big enough to swallow the car. A hand-painted sign said CARS and TRUCKS, with arrows pointing in opposite directions. Lined up like a barrier between the bar and a weedy field were half a dozen tractor trailers. The car lot was three-quarters full. She picked a lighted space between two Chevys.
Jessamine combed her hair. Inside, the bar looked like a bar. Tables. An empty dance floor. Men’s haunches hugging bar stools. No one even looked at her when she walked in. Good, she told herself, but she felt like a kid gawking at the circus. She should take a table. One out of the way. Her chair wobbled on uneven feet. She ordered a beer from a waitress wearing a tight gauze shirt. The woman’s large brown nipples showed through the sheer material. What’s the big deal? Jessamine wondered, although the thought of bare breasts made her a little ill. Yet this was her cure. She forced herself to look at the other waitresses who were similarly covered.
For a long time her eyes made little forays into the room, noticing people but not looking closely enough to identify anyone. After her beer came and she’d drunk most of it, probably too quickly, she spotted Sheriff Dodd at a corner table. She stared. He was talking quietly to a waitress in a very serious manner, the way Richard used to when he told her his mournful life stories.
Jessamine pretended to be impressed by the wall covered with license plates. Apparently truckers left them as tokens of appreciation. She counted the states she saw, trying in her mind to think of something she knew about each one. Virginia—Is for Lovers, Robert E. Lee, Elizabeth Taylor. Dela-where?—must be in Canada. California—Hollywood, Clint Eastwood.
“Howdy.” Sheriff Dodd swung his leg over the empty chair and sat down. In one hand was a cold pitcher of beer, in the other several napkins shaped like figure eights. They were pink and she realized what they were—breasts—in his large fingers. He put one down in front of him and placed the pitcher on the warped table. The beer rocked close to the edge but didn’t spill. He picked up her empty glass and waved it over his shoulder. A waitress appeared immediately with two iced glasses. He took them both in one hand. He spread a napkin in front of her, making sure the edges were flat before setting the cold glass down on the middle. Jessamine shivered self-consciously but he didn’t notice. He filled his glass. Then he tipped the pitcher. A gold stream leapt and crashed against the bottom of her glass, finally subsiding as foam stood on top like icing.
“You get to know a lot of people when you’re sheriff,” Sheriff Dodd said. “I like to come up here every now and then to relax.”
To hide her nervousness, Jessamine drank. Sheriff Dodd’s blabbing mouth surprised her. He was so cool and silent at the truck stop. She ought to say something, but everything she thought of drew attention to the fact that she was sitting in this bar alone, which made her think of Richard. She hoped Sheriff Dodd wouldn’t tell Mama he’d seen her. She clutched her beer as his questions got more boring.
“It’s not a bad place,” he was saying. “Relax. Enjoy yourself.”
Jessamine sighed.
“You like Eddie Rabbitt or Alabama? I’ll tell them to play you a song.”
“I don’t like them. John Anderson’s good.”
Sheriff Dodd grinned. There was a slight gap between his top front teeth. “I’ll be dogged. You know a real artist, all right. I was afraid you’d like those slick fellas.” He called to the waitress and gave her some quarters for the jukebox. He finished his beer and filled both glasses.
The first bars of Anderson’s “Swingin’” swept into the club, lifting her expectations.
Sheriff Dodd shouted, “Are you waiting on somebody?”
She signaled him to hush. He sank back in his chair, happy to listen to the music. Jessamine grew sadder as the song played out. It was about cheery love, something so impossible for her now, it made her throat ache. Her fingers kept time on the tabletop. As the song ended and “Long Black Veil” began, Jessamine noticed Sheriff Dodd looking at her with interest.
He reached over and wiped her cheek with his thumb. “You had a smudge.”
Her cheek burned. His eyes were a burning blue. Feeling his eyes, her body tingled. She missed Richard. “Thank you.” She blushed.
He held out his hand. “Let’s dance.”
Jessamine followed him to the small stage where a few couples hugged under the guise of dancing. The music was incredibly slow. He stepped close and rested his fingers on her lower back where her muscles flowed gently into her buttocks. Her face rested on his shoulder. She inhaled his aroma, the khaki of the law.
The warmth she’d felt at the table became a slow hot fire. He kept them from moving. He kept them slow. He dropped his head to her neck and breathed. A warm stream whistled down to the back of her knees, each fine hair along the way rippling with electricity. His breath continued to brush her as if he were a stablehand with a curry comb, intent on making her shine. I could love this man, she thought.
The music stopped. She opened her eyes. They were alone on the dance floor. She smiled at him and settled her head on his shoulder. He didn’t sway but stood straight. Then, as the thought crept across her mind, a stinky smoke seemed to fill the bar. I could sleep with this man. My mother’s boyfriend. She felt drunk. The room swirled. She clutched at his shirt as she tripped over her feet. “Oh, God. Oh, God. What am I?”
Sheriff Dodd said, “It’s okay. You’re at Bigbees, with me. The sheriff.”
“The law,” she moaned. “The law.”
“I’m not going to arrest you,” he said. “I need to get you home.”
She let him lead her to the door. Again his presence overwhelmed her. She hung on to his arm, leaned heavily against it. Oh, God, she thought. It is going to happen. I’ll leave with him. Her body was not listening to her. The little voice was drowned by a slow-spreading sweet sea that reached the very top of her head.
He pushed the door open.
“No!”
Sheriff Dodd let the door bang shut. He sat her in a chair. “Do you have your keys?”
“Yes. Here.” They jangled in her hand.
He reached for them but she drew them against her chest. “You can’t drive me home.”
“I am not drunk like some of us,” he said. “Do you want to end up dead in a ditch?”
“Dead would be safer.”
“You are a morbid drunk, little girl.”
“I won’t go with you.” She wrapped her legs around the chair and gripped the table.
Sheriff Dodd disappeared through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. In a minute Ash Lee came out the door, buttoning up a hunting shirt that Jessamine recognized as the sheriff’s.
“Come on.” Ash Lee kicked open the door. Sheriff Dodd took Jessamine’s arm and helped her to the car.
“I’ll be around to get you,” Sheriff Dodd told Ash Lee. “Don’t go inside the truck stop. I’ll be right behind you.”
Jessamine slumped in the passenger seat. Both windows were down. The air felt nice, just the thing she needed to cool off.
“The lady who owns the truck stop, she’s your mama?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
Jessamine didn’t know what Ash Lee was cussing about, the jerky way she was changing gears, or what Jessa
mine had just said. Her head was spinning. The car whined as it was forced to pick up speed. It swerved suddenly.
“Damn sack of shit in the road,” said Ash Lee.
Jessamine felt scared by the power of her body’s raw hunger. It was beyond her control. She grabbed the dash and pressed her fingers hard into the vinyl. She wondered if Ash Lee’s skinny body had a burning desire like hers did and if Ash Lee got satisfaction all the time and if being satisfied made you want less or more. Jessamine compared hair—light and dark; faces—round and lean; bodies—both slim, fingernails painted in pink shades; shoes—sandals and sneakers. She wondered if anyone could tell which of them was the prostitute.
Ash Lee relaxed once they got on the interstate and had the VW humming like normal. “I was hoping you were going to work at Bigbees. I was real happy when Dodd took a liking to you. Keep him off my back. He makes me work there so I don’t contaminate your Mama’s place. All the girls used to work that lot, but he busted us and made us work the bar. But I ain’t going to stay. Being a waitress you got to punch the clock. I like keeping my own hours. But seeing as your mama’s his girlfriend, I guess you ain’t gonna be his waitress and still be alive when you get home.”
“I have a job,” said Jessamine.
“He is a real piece of shit. Pawing all over you and dating your mama.”
For the first time Jessamine considered that Sheriff Dodd could take some blame. “God, no. It was me. Dancing with my mother’s boyfriend. What am I?”
“You got problems? Go to church. That’s what they always say to me. Jesus will save your soul. But what about my ass?”
