Cottonwood Whispers

by Jennifer Erin Valent

  “You know, Miss Cleta would like to see you, I’m sure. You want to come back with me to see her?” I asked.

  But Mae was unaware of my words; she just kept rambling on. “Callie loved near about all sweets. But then, she liked near about everything. She was such a happy girl. . . .”

  Her voice quavered, and she dropped off into a swell of tears. I jumped up, nearly upsetting the tray of cookies at my feet, and rushed to her side.

  “Mae, I’m sorry,” I told her, my own voice breaking with emotion. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She was inconsolable, her shoulders heaving. I ran out of the house to fetch Miss Cleta, but I ran square into Nate Colby before I reached the sidewalk.

  “What’re you screechin’ around here for, Jessilyn?” he asked. “You got fire under your feet?”

  I looked up into a face worn with creases just like Mae’s and shook my head. “It’s Mae.”

  “What about Mae?” he asked, his tone more serious now. “She sick or somethin’?”

  “She’s all upset,” I said though my throat was choked with unspent tears. “I done said somethin’ that reminded her of Callie and she got all upset.”

  He turned quickly to head up the steps. “Ain’t people got enough to do in their lives that they ain’t got to go sayin’ things to upset grievin’ folks?” he muttered as he left me behind. Over the sound of Mae’s wails that had begun to float out through the window screens, he said, “Maybe you best not come around right now, Jessilyn. Mae’s got enough troubles.”

  The door slammed behind him and he left me there on the sidewalk with a lump in my throat that wouldn’t budge. It was all I could do to trudge back to Miss Cleta’s house without losing every bit of composure I had left.

  “Oh, baby, it ain’t your fault,” Miss Cleta said once I’d managed to tell her about my tragic visit with Mae. She untied the apron at her waist and wiped my tears with it. “Our Mae’s been cryin’ nearly all the time since the sad event. I should’ve warned you.”

  “I shouldn’t have said nothin’,” I nearly wailed. “I’m always sayin’ things that ain’t right.”

  “Now, don’t you go puttin’ blame on your small shoulders, Jessilyn. Ain’t nobody can talk to Mae without her thinkin’ about her baby girl. Ain’t nothin’ but time that’s goin’ to remedy that.” She gave me a plate covered in tinfoil. “You go on and take this cake home with you and tell your daddy he’ll get some fine gingersnaps tomorrow. I ain’t had time to make them yet.”

  “But I ain’t even done no work for you today.”

  “Honey, you had a right bad time of it, and I feel responsible since I sent you over there. You just go on and take the day off and take your pay with you.”

  “I can’t take no pay for work I ain’t done,” I argued.

  “Every job gives paid days off every now and again,” she rallied back. “At least any job that’s worth workin’. Now I’m the boss, and I say you get a paid day off, and that’s all there is to it, you hear?”

  I looked at her face and knew I’d never win this argument. “Yes’m,” I said with a slight nod. “Sure is good of you.”

  “Ain’t nothin’. Now you head on home and get some rest and stop thinkin’ so much about troubles. A girl your age shouldn’t be carryin’ around so many. You read a good book or somethin’. And make sure it’s a book about people who ain’t got no troubles.”

  “Yes’m.”

  I walked down the porch steps and left her behind, and though I knew she meant every consoling word she had said to me, I still felt like a child and a failure. I didn’t know how to help Mae or anyone like her and I wondered if I ever would.

  As I walked home, the cake icing was melting in the heat, dripping down the side of the plate to stick on my fingers, and I was grateful for it because the stickiness was a distraction from my anxious thoughts. All I wanted from life then was a way out. I felt helpless and hopeless, surrounded by events I couldn’t handle or control, and I felt alone in the midst of it.

  Daddy was resting on the front steps when I came up the walk, and he tossed me one of his worn but loving smiles. “Miss Cleta sendin’ goodies home again?” he asked eagerly.

  “Coconut cake.” I slumped down on the step beside him and set the cake on the porch behind me, ignoring the melting icing. I licked my fingers and shook my head. “She’s always makin’ somethin’.”

  He peeked under the tinfoil, dipped a finger in a puddle of icing, and said, “And God bless her for it. This’ll be a fine endin’ to what’s sure to be a fine supper by your momma.”

  I smiled and laid my head on his shoulder. “You takin’ a dinner break?”

  “Already had my dinner break. I was just sittin’ out here thinkin’ about you.”

  “Me?” I asked, raising my head to look at him. “What for?”

  “Just wonderin’ what’s on that mind of yours these days. Seems we ain’t done much talkin’ of late.”

  “What’d you want to talk about?” I asked, though I was afraid of his answer.

  “Oh . . .” He leaned back and peered at the sky for a moment. “Guess I was just thinkin’ about my baby girl and how she used to be full of smiles and how now she seems all troubled and lonely.”

  I looked away from him and swallowed hard. “I ain’t troubled and lonely, Daddy,” I lied badly.

  “Baby, you think I’m a stupid man?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Then how come you think I’ll fall for talk like that when I can see trouble written all over your face?”

  I had no answer for that, so I just looked off into the distance at the tops of the trees as they swayed in the breeze. We had never gotten the rain I’d been so sure we’d get just days earlier; the weather had been cloudy and threatening without giving us any measure of relief. Today was no different, and the unrelenting wind seemed to tease us all by tossing the dry dirt up into clouds that would never produce the rain we needed.

  “You want to tell me about it, baby?”

  I sat there for a while longer and then shook my head slowly. “Can’t” was all I said.

  “Since when is there somethin’ you can’t tell me?” he asked. “Sure you don’t just mean you won’t?”

  I whipped my head around to look him square in the eye. “No, Daddy. That ain’t what I mean. I mean just what I say. I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  His face twisted up in worry, and he furrowed his brow when he met my gaze. “Jessilyn, I’m your daddy. I can’t just set by and not know what’s troublin’ my baby girl. Now, you done this once before when that Blevins boy was botherin’ you, and I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do it again.”

  “Daddy, I got reasons that I can’t tell you. I don’t want to do it. I want to tell you, but you got to understand, I can’t.”

  There was no doubt my daddy was miserable at the idea of not prying more, but I knew he could see the sincerity in my words.

  “You can trust me, Daddy,” I told him. “I ain’t in no trouble myself. It’s just somethin’ I got to hold on to right now, but it ain’t me who’s in trouble.”

  “Then who is it?” he tried one last time. “Is it Gemma?”

  I sat there, tight-lipped, and knew my silence would tip him off. “Can’t say nothin’, Daddy,” I repeated.

  He scratched the bridge of his nose, though I figured it didn’t really itch, and I could see him thinking things through for a minute. Then he looked at me and said, “Well now, baby, I figure I got to respect your feelin’s.” He put his arm around me and gave my shoulders a good squeeze, and though we sat on that porch for another fifteen minutes in silence, I knew better than to believe that was the end of the conversation. My daddy had enough clues to go on, and he wasn’t the stupid man he’d accused me of thinking he was. There may have been a lot of doubts in my mind just then, but there was one thing I had no doubts about at all. My daddy would pick and prod until he found out my troubles all on his own.

 
When it came to his girls, my daddy would stop at nothing to make things right.

  Chapter 15

  By the time I turned seventeen, there were some things I’d figured out I couldn’t change. Like the way I was too young for Luke to fall in love with yet, or how Gemma would always think she was the boss of me, or how those freckles ran across my nose like footprints. But there were some things I could change, the way I figured it, and I woke up that Saturday morning on Independence Day, determined there was one thing I could do something about. I rolled off the bed and stepped on the sheet that had puddled beside me on the floor since nobody wanted anything unnecessary touching their body in heat like this.

  Gemma was already gone, and I knew she’d be heading into town to check on Mr. Poe just like she did most early mornings. It flashed across my mind that I wished she had asked me to go to town with her like she would have when she liked me better, but I knew she just couldn’t be happy with me right now. The thought broke my heart, so I pushed it out of my mind and hurried about the room getting dressed.

  I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and found my hair had popped up into uneven waves from the humidity, but I’d long ago given up on it. I ran my comb through it quickly and avoided looking at my sun-touched face too long. I didn’t much care for my pert little freckled nose or my green cat eyes. They were nothing like the women I’d seen in magazines and motion pictures, so I avoided looking at them altogether.

  Once I’d finished readying myself, I ran downstairs, grabbed a piece of corn bread, and scurried out the door.

  By the time I reached the edge of Luke’s property, I’d started questioning my decision to come, but there was no way I was turning back. Even if I had to drag him out of bed, I was going to find out why he’d been staying away from our house. I hadn’t seen him since he’d yelled at me in his house, and I was done wondering. Come hell or high water, he was going to tell me what was wrong.

  His back door was hanging open, and I could hear water splashing around the other side of the house. When I stepped around the corner, I saw him there in the sun, his suspenders hanging to his sides, his top half covered only by a white undershirt that didn’t have any sleeves. He was standing in front of a table with a big steel tub full of water on it, washing up.

  The second he saw me, his blue eyes flashed with surprise and embarrassment. “Jessilyn!” he hollered, yanking his suspenders up like they would keep me from seeing his undershirt. “What’re you doin’ around here this time of the mornin’?”

  “I want to talk to you,” I said with no uncertainty. “Right now.”

  “I ain’t even dressed.”

  “You got pants on, ain’t you?”

  “I ain’t got no shirt on.”

  “Don’t go makin’ excuses to me. I’ve seen you in only your swimmin’ bottoms before. You ain’t no more naked than that right now. You’re just tryin’ to avoid me like you’ve been avoidin’ me all week.”

  He turned his head away from me and went back to scrubbing his hands. “I’m busy, anyhow.”

  “Not busy enough.” I crossed over to where he stood, ignoring the droplets of water that splashed onto my cropped pants. “You ain’t never gonna be busy enough to avoid hearin’ what I’ve got to say to you.”

  He didn’t look up from the water, but he stopped scrubbing and splashing, and I took that as a sign he was ready to listen.

  “I came over here that night to talk to you,” I began. “You know that? I was in trouble, and you told me you wanted to help when I was in trouble, so I came on over to talk to you and all I got was more trouble.”

  He let out a long, worn-out sigh but never lifted his eyes from the bucket. He just leaned his elbows on it like he needed support. “I didn’t mean to give you no trouble, Jessie. Honest, I didn’t.”

  “Then why’d you yell at me like that? You were mean as a hornet.”

  “I was havin’ a bad time of it, is all.”

  “I told you I’d help.”

  “I didn’t want no help, Jessie,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Sometimes a man’s just got to care for things himself.”

  “You sound like my daddy now.”

  “That so bad?”

  “No, but you ain’t my daddy. My daddy’s my daddy. But you . . .”

  He pushed his arms up straight so his hands rested on the water tub, his arms tensed so that every muscle showed through, and gave me a look that made my knees weak. “But I’m what?” he asked slowly.

  My heart was pounding, my mouth was dry, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to answer his question much less take a breath. “Well . . . ,” I finally managed to murmur, “you’re . . . you’re Luke.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you ain’t my daddy. I don’t expect you to treat me the same way he does.”

  Luke let go of the tub and stood up straight, grabbed a nearby towel, and wiped his hands. “And how do you expect me to treat you, Jessilyn?”

  “What do you mean, how do I expect you to treat me? I expect you to treat me like a friend. Like someone you can trust. That’s what I mean. You been stayin’ away from us, and I figure there’s somethin’ botherin’ you, but if you can’t trust me enough to tell me what it is, then what kind of friendship do we got?”

  “Seems to me you’re all balled up in knots these days too, but you ain’t told me nothin’ about it, neither.”

  My eyes wandered awkwardly around the yard like I thought I’d find a good rebuttal hiding behind a tree, but I knew he’d pegged me good. “That’s . . . different,” I answered feebly.

  He dropped the towel on the ground and took a step toward me. “How’s that different?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It just is.”

  He stepped directly in front of me, blocking the early morning sun so he looked like a dark shadow. “Ain’t nothin’ I don’t want to help you with, Jessilyn. Even if I was actin’ mean as a hornet the other day.”

  “You sure?”

  “I was upset when you found me then; that’s all.”

  “Then why are you stayin’ away from us?”

  His eyes flitted around the yard at anything but my face, and I took the chance to study his expression for anything that would give away his thoughts. “I ain’t been stayin’ away from you,” he said slowly. “I’ve just been . . . busy.”

  “Busy with what?”

  “Just busy, is all. I wasn’t meanin’ to be rude or nothin’.”

  I didn’t like or accept his excuse, and I told him as much. “Seems to me you oughtn’t be too busy for friends if you want to keep them.”

  He studied my face for a minute and then said, “Sure enough, I ain’t interested in losin’ them.”

  “Well then,” I murmured, “I guess we’ll be seein’ you for supper most nights again.”

  A smile touched one corner of his mouth. “Reckon you will.”

  I instinctively took a step toward him, but I immediately regretted it because it broke the spell that had settled between us. He suddenly jerked away to retrieve the towel he’d tossed to the ground, leaving me to stand awkwardly alone. But I wasn’t willing to let the moment pass so quickly.

  I reached into my bag of womanly tricks and came out with a handful of jealousy. “I saw Buddy Pernell the other day. He sure was sweet to me. Asked after me and all.”

  “Buddy Pernell. What’s he up to these days? Nearly drown any more girls lately?”

  “You know good and well Buddy’s done some fine growin’ up these past years. He’s turned into a real gentleman.”

  “That so?” Luke murmured those words and went back to that water tub to dunk his whole head in. Soaking his head didn’t seem like much of a romantic gesture, and I could see his attention turning away from me quick as a wink, so the second his head came back up, I said the first thing that came to mind.

  “I’m goin’ to the Independence Day dance with him tonight.”

>   Now, I knew I hadn’t done anything but turn tail and run when Buddy asked me to that dance. My first thoughts when I let those words out were how I hoped Buddy hadn’t gotten himself another date and how quick I’d have to hunt him down and take him up on his offer. But it was the best weapon I had, and I used it.

  Luke bobbed his head to check for water in his ear and then furrowed his brow at me, his wet hair standing up in peaks. “You say you’re goin’ to the dance with him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your daddy know about this?”

  “What difference does that make? Buddy Pernell’s respectable. Ain’t no reason my daddy would say I can’t go to the dance with him.”

  “Maybe so, but maybe he don’t like you goin’ places with boys nohow.”

  I put my hands on my hips just like Gemma does when she gets sassy and squared up to him like an angry bull. “I ain’t no little girl, Luke Talley, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself of that. I’m full grown, and I can go to a dance with a boy if I want to.”

  “That’s right; he’s a boy. He ain’t no man.” Then he cocked his head to the side and added, “And you sure as sunshine ain’t no woman.”

  Those words were a slap in my face, and my cheeks felt hot like they really had caught a good backhand. “You’re just jealous,” I shot back.

  “Jealous?” he cried out vehemently. “Me?”

  “That’s right. Because I found someone else to spend time with, that’s why.”

  “Buddy Pernell!” he grunted. “I ain’t never been jealous of Buddy Pernell a day in my life.”

  “I didn’t say you was jealous of Buddy Pernell,” I said, stepping closer to him just to make sure he heard me good and clear. “I said you was jealous of me spendin’ time with someone else.”

  “That’s plain stupid.”

  “Maybe so. But you’re the one who’s jealous. Not me.”

  “You know what, Jessie? You go ahead and go on a million dates with Buddy Pernell, and you see how much I care. I can guarantee you I won’t spend more’n two seconds thinkin’ about it.”