A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

  But since the day I first started with Miss Claudia, I realized she needed me more than she probably admitted. Her need wasn’t merely because of the many orange prescription bottles I moved from her marble bathroom counter in order to clean up. Those pills and her trusty cane, which she claimed was temporary, were the only two reminders she was not my age.

  Her sign of dependence on me was detected more in her inability to get out. She kept her faith by attending church, even the Wednesday evening services, and kept her aging in chains by making the two-mile trek across town to her beauty shop, Cut Ups. But other than that, she sat a lot with her leg propped up on one of her cloth ottomans. I even took the weekly grocery list and made the run to Winn-Dixie. So when I found her that Friday dressed in a yellow dress and wearing a straw hat with a plastic sunflower on the side, I was stunned.

  “We’re adding some beauty to this place. I got a mind for flowers.”

  I helped her in the car like I imagined a polite Wade Tyler doing on his first date with her, and we made the rounds of all her favorite nurseries in Wiregrass. The garden-center owners knew her by name and seemed excited that she was at their door. Most likely because they know she could run up a big bill and pay cash, I decided. I knew I wouldn’t get that treatment all by myself. I liked the way she would include me in her decisions as we created a rainbow of petunias, impatiens, and crepe myrtle out of the plastic containers. She even had me pick out a flat of petunias for my own place.

  I got so carried away, I just slipped up without thinking. “Petunias are my daughter’s favorite. When she first moved into her own place, I bought a big tray and helped her plant them around the front door.” By my light tone, you would’ve thought Suzette and me traded Hallmark cards with each other on a weekly basis. What I didn’t tell her was that the only reason I bought the flowers was an attempt to put some sort of beauty into Suzette’s dark existence.

  Miss Claudia, sipping from her Wendy’s cup, revisited the subject I had raised earlier at the nursery. “You and your daughter close? I mean, I didn’t know if she was able to have visitors with her nerve condition?”

  I looked down and removed the plastic lid from my cup. This was my own fault. I should have never agreed to even stop at Wendy’s. Who ever heard of stopping at a restaurant just for a cup of sweet tea anyway? “No, they got her in solitary confinement.” At least that was half true. In prison, Suzette was confined.

  Miss Claudia just smiled with her usual childlike innocence and held the cup away from the table like she was afraid of damaging the pepper-strewn tabletop. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Having a child with an affliction like that.” She sighed and shook her head. “I lost one child, and I swear I refuse to lose another one. If it takes my last breath to see after Richard, I’ll do it.”

  All I could think of was Richard’s liquored-up state at the fish fry and hoped Patricia had not passed on the gossip.

  “Patricia doesn’t see Richard’s problems the way I do. She’s so impatient. I stay on my knees many a night, praying for the Lord to protect him.”

  “They say it’s hard, losing a child like you did.” I wondered who I thought I was—acting like I had mine. Suzette was locked up in a prison behind steel bars, and I could count on my left hand the number of times my son had written me since hooking up with the Marines.

  “It just tears your guts out. I hate to be so vulgar, but it’s the gospel truth.” She propped her chin in her hand and looked far off as if searching for meaning. “Then, I sometimes wonder if the Lord didn’t take Beth to spare her the hell on earth I had born her into. In her two years of life, she saw enough meanness from her daddy. He never beat on her. I’d kill him first, and he knew it. When she’d cry too loud, I’d run with her out the door before he’d yell. It was a house with Luther’s needles all over the floor. I had to be careful where I stepped.”

  I tried to laugh and ease the tension. “I think you and me had the same builder.”

  She took my hand and squeezed it. “Kindred spirits, me and you. I just thank the Lord you came here.”

  Those needles Miss Claudia spoke of felt like they were in the seat of my chair. As my legs and arms twitched, I looked down and wiped the leftover pepper off the tabletop. “You ’bout ready? I need to get on home to Cher.”

  While I watched her sip the last remaining drops of tea, I wished I was good with words. In the past four months, she told me she loved me more than my own blood mother had in the past twenty years. But all I could do was jingle her car keys and feel stupid by getting so embarrassed over her affection.

  “You ready for this?” He asked like we were about to take a journey to Mars.

  “I reckon I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” I laughed at Gerald’s nervousness.

  I bounced and tried to hold on to the passenger door without him seeing. I didn’t want Gerald to think I was scared each time his truck dipped and leaned down the sand embankment behind his house. I watched him hold the black steering wheel with both hands. The veins in his forearms bulged, and the muscles strained to keep the steering wheel under control.

  Just as fast as the bouncing began, I looked out of his dusty windshield and saw a creek with currents of water cutting over large rocks. Tire tracks, which after hundreds of treks had cut out a road that ran parallel to the creek.

  Gerald leaned over the steering wheel, grinning at the ripple of water running over two rocks and down the little stream. It was only knee deep at best, but the way he studied it you would’ve thought it was the mouth of the Mississippi.

  “It sure is pretty,” I said, hoping that was what he expected me to say.

  As he drove up the path that ran alongside the creek, the branches of oaks screeched across the metal of his truck. I couldn’t really enjoy the beauty of the land without worrying he’d have a thousand scratches on his truck when we got back to the house.

  “This is my piece of paradise,” he said, still looking straight ahead.

  “It’s beautiful all right.”

  “Not many people even been back here.” He glanced at me.

  I wondered if he thought I wasn’t acting excited enough. “This piece of land is just about the prettiest thing I’ve seen.”

  Soon we passed the clearing of trees and drove up onto a clear parcel of land. Nothing but bright grass and the creek that ran down the middle of the land. It looked so bizarre, so set apart from his home, which rested just beyond the thick treetops.

  “My goodness,” I said and moved towards the edge of the truck seat.

  “Told you,” he said, grinning broadly. “This place is my sanity. When I get too much going on inside my brain, I come out here and drive it away.” He suddenly turned the steering wheel to the right, and we were off the path and onto the bumpy, untamed part of the field. Oak trees stood at a distance on either side. He pressed down on the gas pedal, and soon it felt like we were soaring over the rough terrain.

  We rolled the windows down and opened the back window of the cab. The ends of my ponytail fluttered from the teasing of the wind. I considered giving into the wind and letting all my hair free to the whips of current, but decided against it after picturing myself looking ridiculous.

  Gerald drove the length of the meadow, and when he pulled up so close to the creek that I thought he would drive through it, he hit the brakes. We sat there still and silent with swirls of grass particles and dust floating over the vehicle. The water trickling over rocks was the only sound for a long time. Not the awkward type of silence I first felt with him. A silence that let us know we didn’t have to think of words. The words spoke for us within the ripple of the stream.

  “How’d you find this place?” I finally asked.

  “Since I was a boy, I used to come down here and mess around. But then I got busy with life, you know.” He continued to stare through the windshield and into the steady stream of water.

  I pictured him as a boy with a head full of blond curls, flying a kite out in the field, climbin
g up an oak tree, target-practicing with his first rifle. I was proud he was sharing this with me. “Well, when did you start coming out here again?”

  He looked down at the floorboard of the truck and pushed a half-crushed 7–11 cup with the toe of his boot. “Last year,” he said, drumming his thumb on the steering wheel. He quickly looked up. “Look yonder, two quails across the creek,” he said with the first hint of animation.

  The silence told me not to say any more. This was his place. I was meant to be a spectator.

  The trickle of the water called me out of the truck, and without saying a word I got out and walked to the edge of the bank. I leaned down, pushing the edge of grass back enough to see the steady stream. The clean currents looked like running glass. I reached out my hand to break the smooth slickness.

  “Careful for moccasins,” he said behind me.

  I jumped up so fast he had to catch me by one arm to keep me from falling on my tail. When I saw the smirk on his face, I gave him a quick jab in his side. My hand touched the soft portion of his belly against the denim shirt. A flush of blood rushed through my chest, and for a second I had half a mind to touch him again.

  Gerald threw his head back towards the cloudless sky and showed me just how hard he could laugh. It was more high-pitched than I imagined a man his size capable of. I got tickled just watching this six-foot-something man squealing like one of the eight-year-old boys in the cafeteria line.

  For the next two hours, we sat close to each other on the edge of the bank and just listened. The chirps of birds and streaming water created reverence. For most people, it was probably a place more ideal for being alone than together.

  “I came out here after the funeral.” He slapped the toe of his boot with the end of a long green weed.

  His words struck me while I was staring at the gray-and-black-streaked rocks in the stream. Thank goodness I didn’t jump and say, “Excuse me.” He just assumed I knew the details leading up to his life as a widower. Even though my feet were beginning to fall asleep, I didn’t move. I wouldn’t even have breathed if I didn’t just have to. Part of me wanted to hear about this part of his life, and another part wanted to find the pair of quail to point out.

  “Everybody kept worrying me. All I wanted to do was run off someplace. I’d lie in bed and picture my truck heading down I–10. Texas, maybe. Heck, I didn’t know where. And me a grown man with two kids.” He half chuckled like he thought I’d think he was a fool.

  “I want to run off lots of times.”

  He looked up at me with his mouth slightly open and continued slapping the tip of his boot with the weed.

  All I could think of was Miss Trellis and the picture she painted of Gerald, a man half crazy with grief. I wanted to get right up, brush the leftover grass off the seat of my jeans, and get on with our time together. All this talk of depression would ruin our day. But the seat of my jeans was a magnet to the patch of dirt I sat on. His patch of dirt.

  “Somers around the third week, I dreamed about this place. I done forgot what this meadow looked like back then. In the dream it sort of reminded me of what heaven might be like.”

  The slowed beat of my heart echoed inside my ears. I worried about him crying. Would I hold him and stroke his hair and run my hands over the base of his neck? Or would I ignore it and hope that pair of quail would reappear?

  Gerald broke the weed and put the broken end in the corner of his mouth. “I ain’t told nobody none of this. But I wanted to kill that piece of crap who…”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I even wanted that trash Miss Trellis called “a public nothing” dead. He deserved it for putting this man through torment. That drunk probably had a suspended license when he drove to the bar that Wednesday night. Suddenly I wondered what Leslie must have thought the minute before that slime hit her on the highway. What would she think now with me sitting so close to her husband?

  “But I don’t know, when I come out here I just forgot all that. It was like the good Lord gave me an understanding about that thing. I found this creek when I was full of hate. And when I left, I don’t know…I was all still inside. You know, sort of like a lake right at sunset?”

  He turned to look at me. I smiled and slightly nodded a lie. Gerald was talking in an unknown tongue. I certainly never felt settled like any lake. But I did feel a tingle of peace when he reached over and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. The roughness of his fingers slid over my skin. The touch made me want to reach over and kiss him. I wanted to kiss this man before he realized he had a lack in judgment concerning me. How could I compare with this man? All I had was a mixed-up world of tidal waves.

  “You’re easy to talk to, you know that?” His green eyes ran the length of my naked face. I turned my head slightly away, squinting towards the overpowering rays of sun.

  The roughness of his palm was again on my cheek. Gerald softly pulled my face towards him. And before I could ask him if he was about ready to go, he leaned over and kissed me. Not the kind of hard kissing Bozo taught me. His lips were light as a feather’s brush, and before it was over I reached out and ran my hand through his coarse blonde hair.

  Fourteen

  The phone rang just as Patricia pulled out the brochure of the fancy resort she and Doctor Tom would stay at during the Dental Association Convention. When I told her I had never heard of Marco Island, she fluttered her hand like a little bird flying beside her head. “Down in Florida, somewhere. It’s just nice is all I know. Now Mama, look at this place we’ll be staying,” she said, unfolding the brochure on Miss Claudia’s kitchen table.

  I was put out to have to answer the phone. I wanted to see this fancy resort that Patricia had been going on about for the past twenty minutes.

  “Mrs. Jacobs?” The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar and nasal.

  I quickly inhaled, knowing that if the call was for me at Miss Claudia’s house, it could only be bad news. I closed my eyes, hoping Bozo had not reared his liquored head again. “This’s her.”

  “I’m Rachel Baxter, guidance counselor at Houston County Junior High. It appears Cher had a little altercation this afternoon. Unfortunately, she’s suspended for two days.”

  Patricia’s words of hot tubs, tennis lessons, and massages drifted through the phone receiver while I stood frozen. This is a lie, I thought. Not my honor-roll Cher. This part of my life was over. This was the life of raising a bobcat son and a delinquent daughter. Not Cher.

  “Mrs. Jacobs?”

  I wanted to scream liar and slam the phone down, but the background noise of described luxury kept me calm. I had two bosses in the room and had to keep my wits, however loosely strung together they may be. “I’m on my way.”

  “Now, Mama, I want you to look at this. Doctor Tom got us one of these bungalows right on the beach.” Patricia towered over Miss Claudia such that when I told them I had to go pick up a sick Cher, I only saw Miss Claudia peep over Patricia’s arm.

  Walking down the concrete sidewalk towards the red brick principal’s office of Houston County Junior High, I could only think that there was some explanation. Some mistake. Or was it another tidal wave to remind me that, no matter how enjoyable my Saturday afternoon with Gerald was, my life was not a lake of stillness?

  I listened as Ms. Baxter, the guidance counselor, sat behind her gray metal desk and read from a manila folder. Normally I would have been struck by how young this Ms. Rachel Baxter was, but I had to concentrate on every detail to find the slipup. The missing piece this young lady could not figure out. The responsibility must fall elsewhere.

  “It happened in the lunchroom line when Cher evidently began clawing Lacretia Hightower. Of course Lacretia said she did nothing wrong.”

  “Umm-humm,” I mumbled in a sassy tone.

  Ms. Baxter glanced up from her file. I’m sure she was calculating just how much trouble this redneck grandmother would cause. Raising a grandchild was a special type of discrimination. I learned long ago
whenever teachers found out I was the grandmother, not the real mother, they immediately expected problems from Cher. They had tested Cher from the first grade on to make sure there were no emotional problems. Until now, all they got back were the highest marks.

  “Cher proceeded to then hit Lacretia in the head with her shoe until a teacher’s assistant pulled her off.”

  “Give me a break,” I said, slapping my pocketbook. “And just what started all this?”

  “Kids in their class said Lacretia had been making fun of Cher’s name for a few weeks now.” The young counselor put down the file and took a sip out of her apple-shaped coffee mug.

  “There’s more to it than that,” I said a touch too loudly.

  “With a name like hers, I taught Cher from first grade to laugh off any teasing about her name.” I settled back against my wooden seat and racked my brain to think of other incidents when having the name of an entertainer proved embarrassing. All I could come up with was Mama’s protest at the hospital when Suzette announced the name, which had been permanently placed on her birth certificate. I considered changing it when me and Bozo got legal guardianship, but decided changing the first and last name both would be too much of a jolt, even for a two-year-old.

  “You know, at this age kids can be so cruel.” She smiled and batted her long eyelashes.

  “Huh. She’s seen cruel,” I yelled and then quickly changed emotional gears, fearing Cher would be forced to take more mental testing. “Look, Miss Baxter, all I’m saying is that the girl has never give me one ounce of trouble.”

  “New names are an adjustment. Especially at this age.”

  “Well, like I told you, I always…What?” I was getting irritated at this young educator’s poor listening skills. “I told you Cher was her name the first day she started school.”