The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  Lee smiled in spite of her best efforts to stay distant. Tommy called out to the other fireman, “Verle, we’re gonna take Lee to the doc.”

  Verle rested on his shovel, panting. “Righto,” he said. “We’re pretty much done here.”

  Lee tried to sit but became light-headed once more and lay back on the ground. “For goodness sake, let me help you,” said Tommy. “Put your arms around my neck.” She did as he said and he scooped underneath her, holding her like they were newlyweds entering the honeymoon suite. Further adding to her mortification, he carried her that way over to the truck. This day kept getting worse and worse, she thought, as Tommy put her gently into the cab of the truck.

  Ellen and Verle gathered around the cab. Verle bowed to Ellen. “Thank you, madam, for your help. Tommy, this lady’s a pistol. We should get her to join the department.”

  Ellen sniffed but it lacked bluster. “I’m much too busy to help you boys, though I’m sure you could use it.” She poked her head in the cab of the truck. “Lee, I’ll follow you in my car.”

  Lee nodded and rested her head on the back of the seat, staring at the ceiling of the cab. Tommy hopped up and settled behind the wheel. Verle hooked the shovel onto the side of the truck and, after two attempts, swung into the cab. They pulled out of the driveway and onto the paved road that led to the highway. The truck bounced. She winced as her breasts bobbed and her tender nipples rubbed against the rayon material of the tight bra. She placed her arms over her chest but the smell of smoke on her clothes made her pregnancy nausea worse. She put her head in her hands and took deep breaths.

  “You alright?” said Tommy. “Do I need to pull over?”

  “I’m really nauseous. All the time, actually.” For some reason, out of nowhere, she felt as if she might cry. An ache started at the back of her throat as she tried to get control of herself. An image of the unformed person inside her, perhaps an acorn-sized fist balled against an ambush of smoke and fumes, flashed across her mind. It was her fault, she thought. She shouldn’t have been messing with fire and now she might have hurt the baby.

  Tommy reached out as if to pat her hand, but pulled back at the last second. “Don’t worry, our doc is really good.”

  Verle snorted and then snored, head back, mouth ajar.

  She glanced at Tommy and to her dismay a high-pitched giggle escaped from her throat. Tommy’s lips twitched and he covered his mouth with his hand. “Verle could fall asleep anywhere, I swear. Once he slept through an entire outdoor concert of mine, plus fireworks after.” Out of the corner of her eye, she examined Tommy. He was tall and his energy so profuse that in spite of his slim frame he appeared to fill the entire cab. Lee felt petite and feminine sitting next to him.

  His hand fidgeted with the top button of his shirt. “Would it help to chat or would you like quiet?”

  “Chat.”

  “Where’d you move from?”

  “Seattle.” She looked out the front window and hoped he wouldn’t ask any specific questions.

  He tapped the steering wheel with his long fingers like he was playing a tune. “I’m from Enumclaw.” His voice was low pitched and melodic. Lee felt her shoulders relax, her eyes heavy with strain, smoke, and lack of sleep. She shocked herself by wondering what it would feel like to rest her head on his shoulder.

  Tommy ran his hand over the top of his dark wavy hair. “You know where that is?”

  Her lips were numb. “Sure.”

  “It’s only a little bigger than this town.”

  “They’re all the same.”

  “Small towns, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We used to go to Seattle sometimes when I was a kid.” He glanced at her and then back at the road. “You know what our favorite thing was?”

  “No.”

  “Going to Dick’s.”

  “Right, Dick’s.”

  “Best burgers in the world.” He turned into the clinic’s driveway. “And fries. They have great fries.”

  “I don’t eat fries.”

  “Really?”

  “They probably aren’t as good as you remember.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You probably wouldn’t even like it now.”

  “I think I would.” He smiled. “There’s some things you don’t forget.” He pulled into a gravel parking spot in front of the clinic. “Here we are. Now, you wait until I can help you down.”

  * * *

  The doctor, a handsome woman in her forties with a gray frizz of hair and unshaven legs under her hemp skirt, gave Lee a full examination, assuring her it wasn’t enough smoke to hurt the baby. She pushed gently on Lee’s stomach. “This your first baby?”

  Lee looked out the window at the fir tree that swayed in the spring breeze, light green new growth on the end of each branch. “Yes.”

  “Planned or unplanned?”

  “Unplanned.”

  “Do you have a partner?”

  “My husband passed away two months ago.” Lee pulled down her gown. “Unexpectedly.” She didn’t know why she was compelled to add the unexpected part. After all, who would have a baby if they knew their spouse was dying?

  “I’m sorry. Do you have a good support system, family or anything to help you through this?”

  “Sure.” She scratched her arm, noticing drops of rain caught in a spider’s web outside the window.

  The doctor’s freckled hand patted her arm. “Shall we see if we can find anything on the ultrasound?”

  “What?”

  “We should be able to see a baby by now.” She dragged a machine on a cart into the room and asked Lee to scoot down and put her feet into the stirrups. She squirted goop on a wand that looked like something out of a science fiction movie and felt cool but not uncomfortable when she slid it into Lee to look at her uterus. There was a black and green blur on the screen and then something that looked like a small mass and a pulsating dot. “There it is!” The doctor smiled. “The beginning of a life, a heart beating strong.” She punched some numbers into the machine. “I’m measuring to see if we can tell how far along you are.” She pushed another couple of buttons and a small piece of paper printed out of the machine. The doctor gave it to Lee, pointing at the blur that looked like a peanut. “There’s your baby, measuring about ten weeks.”

  The doctor pulled out the wand while Lee gawked at the printout. Could that mass be a real baby?

  “We need to schedule regular monthly visits until your due date.”

  Lee sat up and pulled down the robe to cover her exposed midriff. “I probably won’t be here that long. I’m here working on my mother’s house. I’m leaving before the baby comes.”

  “Regardless, you need to come in once a month.”

  “How much will those visits cost?”

  The doctor ruffled through her file. “You don’t have insurance?” There was a note of disapproval in her eyes.

  Lee flushed, embarrassed and angered at the same time. “No. I’m between insurance policies at the moment.”

  The doctor stiffened and backed away from the table. “Well, you’ll need to pay before you leave today. The receptionist shouldn’t have let you in without insurance.” She slammed the file shut and headed towards the door. “We’ll have to put you on a payment plan if you can’t pay. Having a baby’s expensive.” She was in the doorway. “Good luck to you.”

  Lee dressed, marched past the receptionist, and burst onto the porch, clutching the ultrasound picture between sweaty fingers. She shook with anger and shame, knowing she wouldn’t be able to pay the bill today or anytime soon. She wanted to weep, but pushed the feelings down as she stepped onto the porch. Ellen was nowhere to be seen but Tommy sat on the steps reading a collection of Eudora Welty short stories. He jumped up and crossed to her. Behind him, Verle slept in the porch swing on the clinic’s rustic front deck. “Everything okay?”

  “The baby’s fine except I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it.”

  He didn’t co
mment, simply waved his hand down the road. “Ellen will be right back. She went to the grocery store. Said something about getting you some decent food.” He looked at her hand. “Ultrasound picture?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced through the window at the reception desk, walking down the steps to his truck. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Sure thing.” He peered at her in that way of his that made her feel like she was under the magic goop and wand of the ultrasound machine, like he could see every part of her, in formation.

  Tommy nudged Verle. “C’mon Verle. Time to wake up.”

  Chapter 13

  The restaurant was empty, except for several regular customers chasing greasy food with sips of beer. The band didn’t play during the week and without them the restaurant had the desolate feel of a beach resort town the week after Labor Day. The weather had turned hot overnight on the second day of May. Lee, warm from pregnancy hormones, wore a sleeveless blouse made of stretch material, which, she realized after she left home, clung to her. She dropped a beer at the table of a young logger and felt his eyes linger at her breasts. She flipped the serving tray to cover her front section and glared at him with what she knew to be her coldest look. This was her fourth week at the restaurant and the leering and innuendoes were as tiresome as they were her first shift.

  She returned to the counter and wiped the sticky layer of cola syrup stuck in the crevice behind the soda machine. As she worked, she thought about her plan for the restaurant, the beginning of a vision nestling near the surface of her mind. Over the last several days, for reasons she wasn’t clear about, she felt a twinge of her former interest and energy for life, vowing to have the business plan in Mike’s hands at the beginning of her fifth week at the restaurant. She understood her own strengths, how her brain worked to dissect and reassemble all the elements of something into a new form, like a pile of toddler’s blocks made into a tower. Unlike the other parts of her life—the baby, the fear of DeAngelo creeping into every moment—she was at ease with the process of creation, even as her current situation was dire.

  After four weeks of shifts, she had made a total of two hundred and fifty-three dollars in tips plus minimum wage, the total of which covered her utility bills, gas for her car, the minimum of groceries, and no extras. And she didn’t even have a house payment.

  Deana, the other waitress on shift, sat with Zac at his regular table. She had a barrel chest, wide shoulders, tummy fat that hung over her tight pants, and legs so skinny Lee wondered how they held her stout body. There were two empty beer glasses, a newspaper, and a plate of fries on the table between them. Deana ate fries one or two at a time, dunking them in ranch dressing before reaching out with her tongue to pull them into her mouth. The way she held the fries in her hands, shifting her eyes to the left in a way that looked guilty or sly, reminded Lee of a squirrel.

  Zac read the paper, frowning and drumming his fingers on the plastic surface of the table. Without raising his head, he motioned to Lee to bring another round of beer by snapping his fingers and pointing to the empty pitcher. She filled a large plastic pitcher with the amber-colored microbrew, the yeasty smell turning her stomach. As Lee neared the table, Deana got up, straddled Zac, and tented the newspaper over their heads. A raspy cigarette laugh floated from underneath the paper as Lee poured them each a glass of beer. Zac’s head poked out from under the newspaper. “Lee, it’s too slow for both of you to be on shift, so Deana’s taking the night off.”

  From underneath the newspaper, Deana laughed. “I have other things to do.” Zac’s head disappeared once again under the paper.

  “No problem.” Lee gritted her teeth and set the pitcher on the table, drops of foam landing on the plastic table.

  The paper came down and Deana took a big drink of beer, smacking her lips. Foam lingered above her mouth and she wiped it with the back of her arm.

  Lee averted her eyes, soaking up spilled beer with a spare napkin. “You guys want food?”

  Zac folded the newspaper and shoved it towards Lee. “Nachos. Extra jalapeños. Take this piece of shit paper with you.”

  Billy was at the stove in the kitchen taking the temperature of the hot oil in his fryer. Lee said hello and asked for a plate of nachos for Zac. She threw the newspaper into the recycle bin, reading the headline on the front page. “Local Sheriff Needs Funds for Drug War.” The caption under a picture of the sheriff read, “Newly elected sheriff says budget too small to battle drug crisis.”

  She opened the back door and breathed in the early evening air while Billy made the nachos. A quarter moon showed in the blue sky above the mountain. “What’s the deal with Deana?”

  “I think she’s on something.”

  “You think she’s high here at work?”

  “I guess so. All I know is she used to be kind of nice before she started working here. She’s all messed up now.” He placed a plate of nachos covered with slices of jalapeño peppers on the pick-up counter.

  Lee put her hand on the plate and looked at Billy. “Is this what he means by extra jalapeños?”

  Billy looked at her, deadpan, and shrugged his shoulders. “He always sends them back, says there aren’t enough peppers, so thought I’d give him what he wants.”

  Lee smiled, picking up the plate. “I should talk you out of this but I’m weak.”

  Billy laughed and sprinkled a couple more over the top. “It’s my funeral.”

  Back at the table, half the pitcher gone, Deana sat in a chair across from a gaunt man with a nervous twitch fiddling with a matchbook. Zac sat with his legs crossed in the style of a country gentleman. Lee placed the nachos in the middle of the table. Zac looked at the plate and sat up, glaring at Lee. “This a joke?”

  Lee widened her eyes. “Something wrong?”

  “Tell Billy to get his ass out here so I can fire him.” His words slurred and he shoved the plate across the table. As fast as a lizard’s tongue after a fly, the twitchy man flung his arm out and caught the plate mere centimeters from the edge of the table.

  Deana caressed Zac’s arm, her eyes bloodshot slits, her voice a low scratch with traces of phlegm. “Don’t worry about it, baby. He’s just a dumbass who doesn’t know what extra means. Lee’ll take it back and get a new one.”

  Zac shoved her arm aside and the drunk, unsteady force knocked her off the chair and onto the floor. She popped up, lunging towards Zac. Obscenities streamed from her mouth as she pushed him off his chair.

  They wrestled on the dirty floor until one of the male customers lifted Deana off Zac, holding her next to his chest. She punched and kicked the air, hair askew and jeans unzipped. The man hauled her out the front door of the restaurant. His friend put Zac back in his chair, with a hand on his chest. “Just chill out, dude.” Zac tossed his head and said, “Yeah, man. It’s all good.” The twitchy man laughed in a high-pitched squeal before slapping the table and walking out the front door.

  Lee stood in the middle of the restaurant, tray clutched to her chest, overwhelmed with the feeling that she was in a foreign land with no direction, no map with which to find her way back to her real life.

  Zac looked at her and motioned her over to his table. “Lee, come over here and keep me company.”

  “I have work to do.”

  “Oh, come on, we should be friends.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes in slits. “We should be friends, like the old days.”

  She stood next to the table. “We were never friends.”

  He slapped the table and pushed a chair out with his foot. “C’mon now, that isn’t true. All the girls loved me back then.”

  She placed her hands on the back of the chair. “Do you want something to eat?”

  “Nah, I got beer here, that’s all I need. I was thinking about you though, Lee.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at her, eyelids half closed. “Yeah, I was thinking about you and thinking how we should be friends. I’m leaving soon and we should be friends, y’know. Friends are good to have, don’t
you think?”

  “I’m going to bring you some of the white fett you like, okay?”

  “Yeah, Billy always makes me that, good ol’ Billy. He’s a good kid.” He looked at Lee and grinned. “Do you remember Lindsey, from high school? I ever tell you I married her?”

  “I think you mentioned that, yes. You stay here and I’m going to get Billy to make you some dinner.”

  He nodded and waved his hand towards the kitchen. “I’ll stay right here, but you have to promise to come back so I can tell you about Lindsey, how she ran off with a girl. Yeah, she turned out to like girls, can you believe that?”

  She left him at the table and went into the kitchen to order the food for Zac. After giving Billy the order, she went to the locker area, sat on the bench, and tried to stop shaking. Zac’s drunkenness pushed her to the dark automatic mode of caretaking and cajoling that she used with her mother. It made her feel out of control and hopeless and scared. She put her head between her legs and breathed in and out—telling herself that he was nothing to her and that it wasn’t her fault he was drunk and that it didn’t matter if he was, that he couldn’t hurt her—until the panic subsided. She went back to Billy and picked up the fettuccini, pretending everything was fine.

  When she got back out to the table Zac was talking to the man who carried Deana out of the restaurant. Lee put the food in front of Zac and went to her post at the counter, trying to ignore his loud, drunk voice, but it was impossible. “Yeah, my wife Lindsey, she took up with some chick from Klamath Falls. Just up and left me for a fucking chick.” The man nodded and helped himself to more beer from Zac’s pitcher. “She was the love of my life, man, and she left. Women, they all leave, y’know, after a while. My mother left because of this place, she was a classy lady and didn’t want to live in this piece of shit town. She lives in Florida now and I asked her if I could stay with her for a while when I move down there and she said no. She’s such a fucking mother of the year. I went there when I was in high school and I should’ve stayed ‘cause I loved it. The beach was so rad and anyway, I’m going back there soon. Gonna buy a place, a better place than my mother’s and then I can say ‘fuck you’ anytime I want. She sent me back here ‘cause of some guy she thought was gonna marry her and then he dumped her anyway.” The man nodded his head like he was listening, but his eyes were unfocused, giving Lee the impression he’d heard the story before. She was relieved when she saw Tommy come through the front door. He waved to her and came over to where she stood at the counter. His eyes were lazy instead of the intense focus they had the day her porch burned. “You missed the Jerry Springer moment,” she said.