A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

  I scooped my body against her and draped my arm around her tiny waist. I could feel the steady rhythm of her pulse in the base of her stomach. We laid there together in the quiet of the night hearing only the faint chirp of the misplaced phone receiver.

  Regardless of the unpleasantness of my premature wake-up call, the touch of her skin made me feel all was well. In times like these she was my baby girl. My special project. The one I would clear a different path for. I wanted to squeeze her and keep her body from changing. I wanted to hang on to the little girl inside her.

  Twilight was just settling back in my mind when I heard her mumble, “Pop didn’t do right by us.”

  It hurt my gut that she knew she was deserted by the man who was both the only father and grandfather she had known. I wanted to say nothing. I wanted to squeeze her against my chest, to stroke her hair.

  “Did he?” She leaned up ever so slightly and then fell back down on the mattress. We were alike in that way. The easy way was never our way.

  “No, I guess not. He loves you in his way. I think at one time he even loved me. But then he just…”

  “Good night,” she said and squeezed my hand tighter.

  Cher never did like excuses. At least now she won’t go around telling folks her daddy would be coming for visits. I suspected now she’d tell Laurel and Kasi that he’d been killed in some bad accident where she’d sketch him out to be a hero or maybe announce he moved away to drill for oil in Argentina. Either way, I’d back up whatever lie she settled on. My baby had enough hurt to last for a while.

  As she clasped her hand in mine, I wished her sweet dreams. Dreams of riding a black horse down a country dirt road. Dreams a thirteen-year-old girl should have, not fantasies of a make-believe family that only lived in her mind.

  I would not allow myself to park Miss Claudia’s big Lincoln in my regular spot at school. I couldn’t have Sammy and the ladies in the lunchroom looking at me and making jokes about my fancy transportation. I settled for a remote parking spot, across the street in a field used by the kids for soccer games after school.

  “You got a phone call, foxy grandma. And it’s a man. You been holding out on us?” Sammy raised an eyebrow at me.

  I dried my hands on a dish towel, hoping that it would not be a rerun of Bozo. A sober Bozo crying and asking for another chance. A depressed Bozo telling me how much he loved me and that he wanted his grandbaby back home.

  “It’s ready to go anytime.”

  Between the shrill drill I heard on the other end of the line and the clanging of metal pots in the deep sink near the phone, I had to put my finger in the free ear to make out a word he said.

  “What? My car?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s Gerald Peterson. We got it ready for you.”

  Ma’am. I repeated his words in my mind and cleared my throat. Cher must’ve been right about my black rubber-soled shoes looking like something from the Depression. “Well, how much you think it’ll be?”

  I heard another voice in the background and some papers ruffling. Then the shrill drill again. He’s bracing me for the worst. My pulse throbbed against the base of my neck. The light bill was due next week, and Cher’s birthday was right around the corner.

  “Somers around fifty dollars. You need a ride out to get it?”

  I cleared my throat again and tried to make my voice sound higher, younger. “That’d be real nice of you, Mr. Peterson.”

  “Now you sit still,” Miss Claudia said, hobbling to the door with her cane. I knew most she wanted to throw that cane across the room and welcome the gentleman caller in a way Scarlet would be proud of. She had been looking through the sheer living-room curtains for the past twenty minutes waiting for Gerald to appear.

  “Well, Gerald Peterson. I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays. You getting along okay?” She swept her arm, welcoming him into the home.

  He took off his cap and planted both thumbs on the waist of his jeans. With smooshed-down hat hair, he stood there in the foyer shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He must’ve felt as uncomfortable as I had the first time I entered Elm Drive. “Yes, ma’am, doing good.”

  That was it. He called Miss Claudia ma’am too. He put me in the category with an eighty-year-old. I scooped up my purse and cussed my white polyester cafeteria uniform.

  The long fingers were busy creasing the insides of his cap. He stuttered as if regaining his train of thought. “And you? That leg acting up on you?”

  “Oh, me,” she drawled, thicker than usual. “Gerald, I might need you to take me in and rework me but good. You got any new hips you can tack on?” She giggled, and soon he laughed too. I made the first move towards the door.

  Sitting in the cab of his truck, I watched while Miss Claudia stood behind the half-closed door, waving good-bye. Suddenly, I felt like we were two high-schoolers going on a date. I cussed myself for telling Miss Claudia too much of my business.

  The forgotten knots in my stomach prevented me from saying much on the drive to his shop. We just sat in the pickup in a sea of air-conditioned air and soft country music.

  “Solenoid switch give out on you.”

  I flipped my ponytail around my neck and leaned forward, afraid the butterflies in my stomach were affecting my hearing.

  “I had to replace the switch in your car,” he said, looking at me. He was probably trying to determine if I was some kind of idiot who couldn’t talk.

  “Oh, okay. Well, I’m glad it wasn’t much worse,” I said, not knowing if this was something damaging or not. For fifty bucks I figured it could be worse.

  His hands were large and tan. The grime of honest work gathered around his cuticles. His sideburns were short and doused with gray. What really made my insides tingle were his eyes. They were blue, heavy, and deep-set. The small scar right above his eyebrow kept him from being a pretty boy. I couldn’t help but wonder if I went to his mama’s house and found a picture from high school, if his eyes would’ve been that heavy and set back in his head. Or were the hollows caused by the loss he lived with?

  “Where you from?” He turned to look at me.

  I quickly turned my head and looked out at the field of watermelons we were passing. I knew I had held my stare on him too long. “Cross City. It’s in Louisiana.”

  “There’s an old boy I know works up there during a plant shutdown. Don’t they got a plant?”

  I could only nod my head. I knew my luck would run out and there would be someone who had a connection to my past. Of all people, it had to be him, I thought.

  “You like it here?”

  “It’s growing on me. You’re from here, right?” I shouldn’t have asked it like that. Like I already had the answer. Now he would know I’d been asking questions about him.

  “Born and raised. Live in the same house my great-grand-daddy built.” He seemed to talk more when he looked straight ahead and didn’t look at me. “You got any kids?”

  “A boy and a girl.” Please don’t ask me to give their locations, I begged.

  Russ I could handle. The boy was making good by himself. After a string of DUIs and constant pestering from the principal’s office, Russ had finally given in and joined the Marines. For the past year or so, he’d been doing a hardship tour in Korea. I have to give credit to the Marines for undoing a good portion of the damage his daddy’d done.

  But Suzette. I would have to lie about Suzette, and I didn’t want to lie to him.

  “That your girl I seen the other night?”

  “Actually she’s my granddaughter. I got custody of her.” Shut your mouth before you tell it all, I scolded myself.

  He just nodded his head, and we stared at faded black asphalt for another mile.

  “You got any kids?” I finally produced the words after debating whether it seemed too forward.

  “Marcie’s my daughter. She’s twenty-five. Got a boy, Donnie. He’s seventeen.”

  We pulled into his sand driveway, and I tried not to look big-ey
ed with wonder. My first thought was how odd it looked with that garage shop and its rusting tin roof placed next to the white two-story house with black shutters. With a paint job and new porch steps, his house could be something off Gone with the Wind. On the other side of the house a horse and a dozen cattle grazed in a bright green field.

  A massive oak tree and a row of automobiles separated the yard of the home from his mechanic garage. A separation of the old way of life from the new. In my mind I sketched a black-and-white of a gentleman farmer raising peanuts and tobacco. His great-grandson, for the sake of paying bills, tossing that life to work on horseless carriages.

  I pointed at the horse, which was biting a fence post with its front teeth. “Cher, uhh…that’s my granddaughter I told you about. She’d love that horse. She’s the craziest thing over horses.”

  He carefully got out of the truck and squinted his eyes towards the field. “That’s my son’s doings.”

  I used the hood of his truck to prop my checkbook and write out the fifty-dollar check. Every time I wrote a check, I always tossed figures in my mind, verifying it wouldn’t bounce. Before I signed my name, I estimated the check to Peterson and Son was safe. That’s nice, I thought. He must have named the business so his boy would have a permanent job. The idea made him that much more appealing to the ounce of dreamer still left in me.

  A shrill drill like the one I heard on the phone echoed from the garage. A young man, either chewing tobacco or a wad of bubble gum, glanced our way, then returned to his assignment.

  “Thanks,” I said and turned towards my car parked under the oak tree.

  “We appreciate the business. Let us know if we can help any way.” He cocked his head sideways and smiled.

  “Okay, then.” I looked down at the crushed acorns on the dirt. Right before I turned to walk away, I saw him look at the length of my body and wipe the side of his chin with his thumb. For a minute I forgot the polyester uniform and the no-nonsense shoes. I forgot the bruises, cut eye, and broken arm that were long healed, but still glowed in my mind against a black light of revelation. During the bumpy ride down the sand driveway away from the shop and the old-timey home, I forgot the past and tried hard to let that ounce of dreamer in me grow.

  Eight

  While Cher washed Miss Claudia’s car for its proper return to Elm Drive, I walked to the mailbox. I wanted to spin around when I saw Miss Trellis. One hand held the edge of her glasses while the other was propped on the side of her red polka-dotted tent dress. Her stance and complaints to an older man with gray whiskers on his chin made her seem every bit the authoritative figure I knew she wanted to be.

  Just as I walked up, the old man looked mercifully at me and smiled. “Have a good one,” he said and hobbled off towards his cream-colored trailer.

  “Hey. I seen a new car yonder in your lot.” She hadn’t even waited long enough for me to get my key in my mailbox.

  “Mine was tore up.” I snatched the mail and tried to think of an excuse to skip away.

  “You and Claudia must be regular Mutt and Jeff. I sure wouldn’t let any of my help ride off with my vehicle.”

  “She’s a fine woman.” This time I shot Miss Trellis one of my looks and hammered down on the word fine.

  “Oh, yeah. Bless her heart. And I seen that Peterson boy haul your car off last Tuesday evening.”

  I actually felt a little sorry for the poor old thing. I saw Miss Trellis every evening when I drove into the trailer park. You couldn’t help but see her, sitting in the small block apartment tacked on next to her office. Her blinds were always wide open, and the knobs behind her TV stuck out under the blinds. She probably kept a journal next to her easy chair and, in between orders on QVC, noted each entrance and exit of her kingdom.

  Miss Trellis rested both hands at the base of her back and stuck her round stomach out. “You talk of another poor old soul. That Peterson boy had it something awful. His wife getting killed on the road like that. They tell me after that drunk hit her, the Peterson boy laid in bed three weeks, not eating, not speaking. Nothing.”

  When a black truck jacked up with big tires and a loud muffler idled past us, I moved closer to Miss Trellis. For once, I did not want to miss a single word.

  “A great big man like him, I had an idear he’d go beat the tar out of the trashy thing that killed her. And, honey, he was trash. He was a Driggers, the whole outfit just public nothings. Anyway, the Peterson boy just stayed there in bed, staring at the ceiling. They tell me the doctor had him so high on nerve pills he looked plumb scary at the funeral.”

  “Did you know his wife?” I regretted asking her, but the nosy side of me won out.

  “I just can’t talk about her or I’ll go to crying.” She looked down at the ground and shook her head.

  Why was I so stupid to take the bait? I thought of Kasi’s warning about Miss Trellis.

  “Poor, poor thing.” She looked sideways and then glanced at me. “You might near say we was kin. Her mama was my husband’s brother-in-law’s cousin.”

  Before Miss Trellis could suck in enough air to renew momentum, I fled back towards the sound of spraying water hitting car metal.

  “You gonna let me go skating if I clean the inside out too?” Cher asked as I flipped through bills and money-saver coupons.

  “I thought riding you around in that fancy Lincoln would be payment enough.”

  “Yeah, and now I’m back in that piece of junk,” Cher said and propped her cut-off jeans hip out. “When we gonna get a new car like…”

  I never looked up from the mail and walked past her. “When you go to college and get a good job. Then you’ll buy us whatever you want.”

  Once inside, the kitchen counter served as my makeshift desk. I sorted the mail and ripped check after check out of my wallet to meet the collectors’ due dates. Giggles and squeals vibrated against the door. Laurel had come over under the pretense of helping wash Miss Claudia’s car. The only help she offered was luring Cher into a water fight.

  I looked out the kitchen window and shook my head in amusement at the sight of them running around Miss Claudia’s Lincoln with Laurel holding the water hose. When I opened the phone bill I lost my grin.

  That girl, I cussed. Another bill over seventy dollars. On top of the unexpected car repair and the monthly payment to the divorce lawyer, I didn’t know how I was going to pay it. I tried to teach her a lesson last month by having her work off the charges. “I have had it,” I yelled.

  And who in the world did she even know in Shreveport anyway? I quickly ran my finger down all the charges to the 8774 number. All the calls were made after three o’clock in the afternoon and before I got home of an evening. Those evenings I had opened the door and saw the phone cord bouncing, she told me she had been talking to Laurel. All I could think was that she had gotten connected with some pervert off that Internet she worked on at school. I had seen all sorts of horrible stories on TV about how weirdos seduce kids.

  I hammered my finger on the phone numbers and waited. It took six rings for him to pick up. By the time he said hello the second time, I knew it was him. The worst monster I could imagine. Much more corrupt than any pervert off the Internet. This couldn’t be LaRue. He is supposed to be locked away, I reminded myself. I slammed the phone down. You only thought it was his voice.

  The second time I called, he answered the phone all smart-alecky, like he was part of the prank phone call. No doubt it was him. The worst piece of trash that I could ever imagine. My heart began to pound, and my breath grew shorter. I wanted to scream obscenities at this unwelcome intruder; to tell him he had no claim on Cher. The words bubbled at the base of my throat.

  I slammed the receiver down and leaned against the wall, wishing this day had never happened. I always thought she would be older when I would face this. Let this be a bad dream, I wished, but her laughter rolled in tides from outside the door to remind me what I had to face. I had successfully hid her from LaRue and his seedy life for twelve y
ears. Now Cher had found him. Pages from the phone bill shook in my hand, and my first instinct was to whip Cher and then flee again. Atlanta. That was a city big enough to hide from LaRue. Cher had disrupted our new life. She had turned over a rock and discovered the very slime that shared his seed to create her.

  Nine

  “What’s the matter with you?” Cher seldom saw me idle, and for a second I was touched that she thought I might be sick. Sick all right, but not from any ailment of a physical nature.

  I looked up from the couch and saw drops of water falling on the plastic green welcome mat. Normally, I would have chased her with towels and told her she would catch cold coming into the air-conditioned trailer all wet. Her sopping gray T-shirt clung tightly to her flesh, reminding me once again of her development into womanhood.

  I could only manage to hold up the telephone bill.

  “What’s that?” She stepped closer, drops of water landing at her feet.

  “I want to talk to you.” I patted the couch, knowing full well her cut-off jeans were too wet for her to sit on furniture.

  She sat on the edge of the checkered couch like she was at a tea party instead of the courtroom I hoped to create. “Is something the matter with Pop?”

  I shook my head. Part of me wanted to knock her beside the head and scream words like disgusting and stupid to her. Instead, I silently counted to ten like some head doctor had recommended on a radio talk show.

  “Whose number is this?” I tossed the pages of the phone bill at her, and two pages floated to the floor.

  She examined the pages and sniffed a couple of times. I wasn’t sure if she was crying or if it was the cold I’d failed to warn her about now settling into her system. “Oh, that’s Becky Pitts.”

  “No, not the Cross City number. The numbers for Shreveport.”

  She closely studied the page and wrinkled her brow. She shrugged her shoulders and got up. My mouth dropped as she prissed down the hallway.