One House Over

by Mary Monroe

  “I’m glad to hear that you didn’t come home early because Yvonne said something stupid and hurt your feelings again.” Odell caressed my chin.

  “Well, she did say something I didn’t want to hear,” I admitted.

  “What did she say about you this time?”

  “It was something she said about you.” Odell gulped. He stopped caressing my chin and his body stiffened. “What’s the matter?” I gasped, feeling his forehead.

  “What did Yvonne have to say about me?” he asked in a raspy tone.

  “Nothing really that serious. She and Milton both made a few petty, stupid comments. But I said something just as petty and stupid about you myself that I regretted as soon as it left my mouth.”

  “What was said?” Now Odell’s voice sounded hollow and nervous.

  “They yip-yapped about how much time you spend away from me. Milton had the nerve to ask if it bothered me. I told him it didn’t, but then I said something about you being a part-time husband and how I was going to start going fishing with you, and out to your Daddy’s house more often.”

  “I hope you don’t start letting people we don’t even know that well give you advice.”

  “I’m not worried about that happening. They’re too ignorant for me to take seriously. There is nothing they could say that I would consider good advice anyway. Especially if it concerns our marriage.” I was glad Odell’s body felt more relaxed now. “I just want to know one thing and I hope you’ll be honest with me like you’ve always been.”

  He got stiff again. “What?”

  “Do you still love me as much as you did the day we got married?”

  “Baby, I couldn’t love you no more if I tried.”

  Chapter 46

  Odell

  I WAS STILL FEELING PRETTY STRESSED, BUT I MANAGED TO FALL ASLEEP a few minutes after Joyce. I wished I hadn’t. It was one of the roughest nights of my life. I had a nightmare with Milton chasing me down a long dark road, yelling and screaming at me and demanding more money. Me and him was both naked and the only two people in the dream that I could see. But I could hear women screaming on both sides of the road. Finally, one of the women floated out to the road and started running along with me. It was Betty Jean. She was screaming and hollering at me too. Then two more women entered the dream: Joyce and Yvonne. That was enough to wake me up around four in the morning.

  I didn’t want to face Joyce until I got my bearings back on track, so I snuck out of the house before she woke up.

  I made it to the store a hour early, so I sat in my office and read the Bible that I kept on top of the cabinet that contained the bogus and doctored-up paperwork I kept on file. My daddy told me one time that God answered all prayers when people asked for something, but sometimes he said no. I prayed that God would answer my prayer, which was for me to keep my double life a secret. He’d allowed me to get away with it for over five years, so I saw no reason why He would let things fall apart now.

  By nine a.m. when I opened the store, I felt better. But each time I heard a customer enter, I almost jumped out of my skin. All kinds of crazy thoughts started dancing around in my head. The worst one was: What if somebody else from Branson saw me with Betty Jean and the boys? Would I have to pay them off too? Giving Milton two months’ rent had really put a dent in my finances, but I was overjoyed that that was all he wanted. I had no idea how I was going to pay Betty Jean’s rent and the rest of her expenses for the next two months and still have enough money in my pocket to pay my own bills, and take Joyce out a few times. I had to come up with a plan and I had to come up with one quick. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt. I was in charge of the bookkeeping, so nobody but me knew how much money was coming in and how much was going out. This little problem with Milton could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. My in-laws being so loosey-goosey was going to pay off in a big way for me. After the cashiers turned in their drawers to me at the end of each day, I could do whatever I wanted with that money. It would be like having a great big personal piggy bank. Shit. Mac still didn’t trust banks. When I went to his house and handed him that paper bag every Friday evening with the week’s earnings, he didn’t even count it. He just snatched it out of my hand and tossed it on the coffee table. One week, when I went over the day after I’d dropped off the profits, the paper bag was still laying on the coffee table. And, according to Joyce, he’d even misplaced a few bags among all that junk he and my mother-in-law hoarded. I had advised her to find out where they stashed the money, because if something happened to them before she got that information, she’d have a major problem on her hands trying to find it.

  Joyce was going to inherit a lot, but what if she decided she didn’t want to stay married to me? What if she got so desperate for a baby, she thought she’d have better luck with a different husband? These were some of the thoughts running through my head while I sat at my desk counting the money I had in my wallet. I was trying to decide how much I was going to give Betty Jean so she could buy the new furniture she’d been begging for all year. I realized I needed to update my backup plan. At ten-thirty a.m., somebody knocked on my door and I opened it right away.

  It was Sadie. Standing next to her was Artherine Miller, a bothersome customer who shopped in the store several times a week. And, she complained about something several times a week. “What is it?” I gazed at the Miller woman’s angry wrinkled face.

  “Odell, I hate to bother you, but Sister Miller got a problem again,” Sadie told me, rolling her eyes.

  I groaned under my breath. “Sister Miller, what’s the problem this time?”

  “I bought two pounds of hog head cheese here earlier this morning. When me and my husband ate it, we realized right away it was stale and we didn’t enjoy it. I want my money back!” Mrs. Miller shouted, waving a receipt in my face.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What did you do with the hog head cheese?”

  “We ate it. How you think we found out it was bad?”

  “Y’all ate all two pounds?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “If you noticed ‘right away’ that it was stale, why didn’t you stop eating it and bring back what was left so I could take a look at it?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Sadie mumbled.

  “We was hungry, that’s why we kept eating it!”

  I gave Sadie a pleading look. “Give Sister Miller a refund.” I turned back to the Miller woman. “Is there anything else I can help you with, ma’am?”

  “Well, I been meaning to come talk to y’all about the baloney I got here last Friday. There was a green spot on one of the slices. The only reason I ain’t been back to straighten things out is on account of I misplaced that receipt.”

  I held up my hand. “Um, we can discuss the green baloney when you find that receipt. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of work to do. Y’all please excuse me.”

  I closed my door and sat back down at my desk. There was so many thoughts bouncing around in my head, it started throbbing. After resting for about twenty minutes, I started counting money again. I had lost my place and had to start all over. Two minutes later, somebody knocked on my door again. I assumed the Miller woman had found her receipt and had come back to get another refund. Before I could get up, the door swung open and Milton strutted in like a banty rooster. Something told me this was not going to be a pleasant visit.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” I groaned, dropping the bills to the floor before he could see them. When he started strutting toward me, I scooted the money farther up under my desk with my foot. I stood up with my hands on my hips.

  “Yeah, it’s me again. I need another favor,” he said. He gave me a smug look and held up his hand. “And I swear this will be the last time.”

  “It better be. What do you need more money for?”

  Milton leaned over my desk and whined, “I got a mess on my hands. I got skunked in a crap game we had at the house last night, so I’m in a pickle again. Yvonne will shit a brick
if she was to find out I lost the rent money.”

  “Didn’t I give you enough money for two months’ rent?”

  “You did. That’s exactly what I lost. So now I’m right back where I was when I first came to see you. . . .”

  I was fit to be tied. I realized that this greedy motherfucker was going to milk me like I was a cow! Somehow I managed to keep my cool. But if I thought I could kill him and get away with it, I would have jumped over my desk and wrung his fucking neck!

  “Look, Milton. I ain’t a bank, so you need to find another way to get money when you get low. How do I know you won’t come back for more?”

  “I won’t . . . unless I really need to. I don’t want to put too much pressure on you. I figure you got enough of that already. You . . . um . . . you do take care of that other woman and them young’ns, right?”

  I took my time answering. “I help out as much as I can.”

  “Good! If I was you, I’d be doing the same thing.” He gave me a smug look, and then he had the nerve to smile. His big, dingy teeth reminded me of stale hominy corn. “I really like you, my man, and I enjoy being around you. I hope your class and good manners and whatnot rub off on me. If you give me a job in the store, I can be around you even more. And I’d be able to cut back on my bootlegging hours. I’m so sick of doing that shit so much anyway. Entertaining a house full of drunks every night and doing business with them hillbillies done finally got to me. I do declare, I been waiting on a good opportunity like this all my life.”

  Chapter 47

  Odell

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EARS! MILTON WAS THE LAST PERSON I wanted to look at eight hours a day, five days a week. Especially now that I knew what kind of man he really was. If he could blackmail me, there was no telling what else he was capable of doing. I thought about that picnic basket Betty Jean had packed last Saturday and how it had looked exactly like the one Joyce had packed when we’d celebrated our anniversary last year. Now I realized that it had not been just a coincidence; it had been a premonition that something real bad was going to happen to me. “You want me to give you a job in this store?”

  “Yup. I know you’ll pay me good and you know I’m a hardworking man. With me making more money, I’ll be able to take care of my finances without no more help from you.”

  “I don’t know if my in-laws would go for me hiring you—”

  Milton wasted no time cutting me off. He held up his hand and shook his head. “Uh-uh. Don’t even go there. I don’t want to hear that shit!”

  I let out a loud, heavy sigh and rubbed my eyes. The sight of Milton was making them burn and itch. “The only position I have open right now is stocking shelves. It’s only part-time and I can’t pay you but thirty cent a hour, the same thing Mac paid me when I stocked shelves. Working part-time, you’ll take home about eight dollars a week and—”

  He cut me off again. “I’ll take it!”

  “Hold your horses, Milton,” I said with my hand in the air. “It ain’t that cut and dry. I need some time to think about this.”

  He shook his head and glared at me with his eyes looking like slits. “I can start next Monday.”

  I knew when I was fighting a losing battle. If the corner I’d been backed into got any smaller, I’d blend into the wall. “Okay,” I mumbled. “Be here at nine o’clock sharp.”

  “I’ll be here with bells on.” Milton winked. Then he clapped his hands and danced a jig. “I can’t wait to see Yvonne’s face when I tell her I’m going to be working at the famous MacPherson’s store! Wahoo!”

  “Don’t tell her until I tell Joyce first,” I pleaded.

  “Man, you got Joyce in the bottom of your hip pocket! You can do whatever you want and she won’t give you no trouble. Don’t you know that by now?”

  I nodded real slow because it was true. For how long though? Now Milton had me in the bottom of his hip pocket. But I believed that as long as I kept him, Joyce, and Betty Jean happy, everything would be all right.

  “I’ll come over to your place this evening after I talk to Joyce about hiring you. Even if she do go along with it, I’d still have to run it by Mac and Millie.”

  “Wait a minute. You just told me to be here Monday morning at nine o’clock.” Milton’s eyes darkened. He screwed up his face and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, which was shaking as hard as mine. That didn’t make no sense, because I was the one on the hot seat and had the most to lose.

  Now that it had sunk in that I was in one hell of a mess, I was scared to death, to say the least. I tried to keep my voice firm, but it wasn’t easy. I wanted to put my fist through the wall and upside Milton’s head. But for everybody’s sake involved, I had to stay as cool as I could. “Yeah, but I spoke too soon.” My tone was more gentle now.

  “Bullshit! You trying to tell me you didn’t know what you was saying!”

  “Man, you can’t expect me to be thinking straight when you came out of nowhere with this thing! I just said the first thing that came to my head!”

  “Well, you better start using your head for something other than a hat rack.”

  “Milton, put yourself in my place. You got me over a barrel and I want us to handle this right. Now, like I said, I really do need to make sure it’s okay with my wife and my in-laws for me to hire you.”

  “All right. What we going to do if they don’t go for it?”

  I was so exasperated, I could barely keep on talking. “Look, Milton. I don’t know what ‘we’ going to do if they don’t. I’m still just one of Mac and Millie’s employees.”

  “SHIT! I ain’t no fool,” he shot back. He slapped the top of my desk and for a second I thought he was going to slap me. “You married to their only child and they got you running that damn place, so I know you more than just a employee. Don’t tell me you can’t get over on your wife and them old geezers!”

  “Will you keep your voice down!” I hissed with my hand in the air.

  “I guess you done forgot you told me that they said you can hire and fire anybody you want to.”

  “Yeah, I did tell you that. But you ain’t just anybody. You know Mac and Millie is real religious. They have some concerns about me and Joyce being friends with you and Yvonne. And I don’t blame them.”

  “Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You have a criminal background.”

  “Don’t be bringing up my past. I’m a changed man. I ain’t been involved in no criminal activity in years!”

  “Oh yeah? Bootlegging is against the law. A lot of people would have a problem with a bootlegger working in a family, Christian-owned store like MacPherson’s!” I shuddered and my eyes got big as I peered at Milton with my mouth hanging open. “My preacher would think I done lost my mind.”

  He gave me a threatening look and puffed out his chest. “Reverend Jessup would probably think the same thing if he found out about you having a outside woman and three babies. Now, I advise you to go up to Joyce as soon as you get home this evening. If you win her over, she’ll help you sweeten up Mac and Millie. We straight?”

  With my head hanging low, I mumbled, “We straight.”

  “Good.” Milton let out a long, loud sigh and licked his lips. “Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you was doing. I hope when you come to the house this evening, you’ll have some good news for me.”

  “I hope so too. We done here now?”

  He gave me a thoughtful look and shook his head. “I want to bring up one more thing.”

  If my heart started beating any faster and harder, it would leave a tattoo on the inside of my chest. “What? If it’s about the pinstripe suit, we ain’t got no white ones in stock right now. I put in a new order this morning, but they won’t come in until next week.”

  “I can wait. And what I wanted to talk about was your girl, Billie Jean.”

  “Betty Jean.”

  “Whatever. She sure is a cutie pie. I been thinking about her ever since I seen her. She must be
the finest-looking woman in Hartville. That booty she got on her ought to be served on a platter.”

  I wanted to gut Milton and hang him out to dry. The thought of this slimy devil trying to get his paws on Betty Jean almost made me puke! “Don’t you even think about it!” I shook my fist in his face and gave him the most menacing look I could conjure up. If looks could kill, he would have dropped dead in front of me and that would have been just fine.

  “Think about what?” he asked with his eyebrows raised.

  “What is it you trying to say now?” I couldn’t get any angrier with this jackass if I tried. “If you go near my woman I will—”

  Milton wasted no time cutting me off. “Hold still, brother man. Get your mind out the gutter. I wouldn’t never go after the woman of my best friend.”

  “Then where the hell is this conversation going?”

  “I admire you for picking a woman that’s as easy on the eye as Betty Jean is. All I want to know now is if she got a sister or some friend girls that’s as pretty as she is.”

  “She got a sister and she got several friend girls. But they all married.”

  “So what? Being married don’t mean nothing! That ain’t never stopped nobody from creeping,” he laughed. “And don’t nobody know that better than you, huh?”

  “Milton, I have to get back to work.” I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else. I literally ran to the door and held it open for him. After he left, I read my Bible some more.

  Chapter 48

  Joyce

  WHEN I GOT HOME FROM WORK, YVONNE WAS SWEEPING OFF HER front porch. We waved to each other and five minutes after I got in the house, she was at my front door.

  “It’s a shame me and Milton ain’t got no phone so I can call you up sometime instead of having to come over,” she complained.