Tied to the Tracks

by Rosina Lippi

  They were pressed together still, John’s face against her neck, arms and legs intertwined, comfortably messy, warm, nerves still jumping. If she looked in the mirror Angie knew she would see that her skin was mottled from her chest to her hairline, something that would take a good hour to go away. Maybe she could blame it on heatstroke.

  She’d have to avoid Rivera for a while, at least. And Tony, too.

  “I’m too tired to worry about that just now,” he was saying. “You wear me out.” And then jumped when she pinched him. They wrestled for a moment and then she gave in, as she’d always meant to, when he got hold of her. She was trying not to think about time or work and was almost there when she heard someone downstairs.

  John heard it too. He went very still and then all at once he moved, rolling off her and crossing the room in three long strides to turn the lock on the door. He looked so good standing there naked that Angie forgot to be worried for all of three seconds.

  “Hello? Angie?” The voice on the other side of the door was not unfamiliar to her. “It’s Win Walker.”

  “Win? What are you doing here?”

  “The dispatch people sent me over here to check on you. I’m the paramedic on duty.”

  Angie gulped down a giggle while John began to pick up his clothes.

  “That’s nice of you. Tell them I’m fine, would you?”

  “I’d be happy to. But first I have to check your blood pressure and pulse.”

  John began to tiptoe toward the bathroom while Angie fumbled for her underwear.

  “Angie? You okay?”

  “Just a minute, I’ll be right with you.” She wished she had paid more attention to her clothes this morning, but then maybe a hot-pink bra held up by two safety pins and a pair of lime green jockey shorts decorated with poodles would distract Win Walker. Maybe he wouldn’t notice that the room smelled like sweaty sex.

  She ran to the windows and opened them as far as they would go, and then she wrapped the top sheet around herself. Through all of this a sermon came droning from the other side of the door.

  “Heatstroke is serious business, you know—”

  “Is that so?”

  “Folks die of heat prostration all the time. Down in these parts we lose a Yankee every year or so because y’all can’t remember to put on a hat when you go out in the summer sun.”

  Angie flipped the lock and walked backward to sit on the bed.

  “Come in,” she said, and put on her biggest, brightest smile.

  He stood there frowning. “You’re not dressed.”

  Angie glanced down at herself. “I’m more covered up in this than I would be in shorts and a T-shirt. I need to get back to work, can we get this over with?”

  He pulled a blood-pressure cuff and stethoscope out of a bag. “Have you fainted again?”

  “I didn’t faint before,” Angie said. “I threw up.”

  “You fainted,” he corrected her. “That’s what Walker wrote on his duty sheet. He had to carry you into the house.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Angie said, trying not to laugh. “I hope he was a gentleman.”

  Win’s whole lower face twitched. “Stick your arm out here,” he said. “And stop trying to distract me.”

  Angie had the sense that the best way to get rid of Win Walker was to cooperate, so she bowed her head in what she hoped looked like contrition and did as he asked. She put out her arm for the blood-pressure cuff, and got a look at his watch. It was just before five, and that meant she had been gone from the Jubilee for more than three hours. In an hour she had to be changed and ready for the parade.

  Win was frowning at the dial on the blood-pressure cuff. “You been getting enough sleep?”

  She tried not to tense, and failed. She thought of saying, I got no sleep at all last night because I was otherwise occupied with John Grant. In fact, that salty smell you’re trying to ignore is more of John, who is hiding in that very bathroom. And do tell your aunt Patty-Cake I said hey.

  “Normally, yeah.”

  “Your blood pressure usually on the low side?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Okay.” He sat back on his heels. “You’re free to get up and go as long as you stay hydrated and out of the sun. Now I need to wash my hands and I’ll be on my way.”

  Shit.

  Angie said, “Um, okay, but can I go first? I really have to. I’ll just be a minute, I promise, if that’s okay.” And she lurched across the room with the sheet wrapped around her. At the door she turned to smile at him.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching for the magic words that would take the suspicious look off his face. “It’s . . . it’s a feminine hygiene issue, you understand.” Then she opened the door and stumbled in, slamming the door behind herself. She turned, breathing heavily.

  John stood at the far end of the small room between the shower stall—clear glass, no curtain—and a window, his face red with suppressed laughter. This in spite of the fact that there was no place to hide, and Patty-Cake Walker’s nephew was on the other side of the only door.

  Angie turned on the water taps in the sink and then went over to him. “Either you’re willing to come out to Win Walker right now and admit you’re cheating on your fiancée, or you’re going out that window,” she whispered.

  “I think Win’s sweet on you,” John said. “He wants your soul for Jesus but he’ll keep the rest of you for himself.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Angie said, trying not to giggle.

  John grabbed her and kissed her, hard. “I’ll call you later.” And then he opened the window, chinned himself up and through it feetfirst, and disappeared. Angie watched him shimmy down the drainpipe and run off through the shrubbery, long and lean, the muscles in his legs working, which could not be good for her pulse or blood pressure but was a joy in every other way.

  Then she used the bathroom—because that had been no lie—washed her hands and face, retrieved her clothes from the hook on the back of the door, and dressed as quickly as she could. All the while she was lecturing herself on the importance of keeping a straight face, making the right impression, and disabusing Win Walker of his suspicions.

  With all the dignity she could muster Angie opened the door and found him still waiting, his expression closed and cold as he passed her on his way to wash his hands. Angie was trying to make sense of that as she went over to the bedside table to get her things, where she stopped dead. Dizzy again, but this time it had nothing to do with the Georgia sun.

  Wrapping the top sheet around herself had seemed such a good idea at the time, given the state of her underwear. Now she saw—as Win had surely seen—a perfectly round wet spot in the very middle of the bottom sheet. Just to make things absolutely clear, a wilted, glossily damp, bright orange condom glistened against the cobalt blue of the sheet. A study in color contrasts, and the wages of sin.

  John found himself laughing all the way back to the Jubilee. In spite of the close call, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, he was giggling like a girl, something that would have to stop.

  He covered his mouth with his hand and bit his tongue. With some effort he called up images of Miss Junie, Miss Zula, Patty-Cake Walker. Caroline. That worked.

  The thing was, he told himself, he had needed a rest. Even Miss Junie had told him to go take a nap. So he had gone to his brother’s spare bedroom. What could be more sensible that that? He sure felt a lot better than he had an hour ago, in spite of the fact that he had done a 5K run this morning after spending the night with Angie.

  It was harder than he had imagined, having to field questions all day. People he barely knew stopped him, wanting to know where his pretty fiancée had got to, and how Caroline was holding up under the pressure, and wasn’t it just a bear, getting ready for a big wedding, and did he know how lucky he was to be walking off with the fairest blossom that Old Roses had to offer? This last bit of overextended imagery came from Missy Stillwater, whose sister Midge—he remember
ed with a combination of embarrassment and glee—had spent some time in the backseat of his car the summer he turned seventeen. John was very aware that every single person who came to talk to him about Caroline was looking for him to trip up and contradict the story that the Rose sisters were telling.

  And still the worst part of the day was that he had to ignore Angie, which felt wrong in every possible way.

  So he had fixed that. When Rob had told him that Angie was taking a few hours off in a quiet, private bedroom not ten minutes away, it had seemed the only thing to do.

  Now Miss Junie would be waiting for him to escort her to the parade, and there would be more questions, of that he could be sure. He didn’t want to make Miss Junie wait, and still somehow he found it hard to walk any faster.

  Like most of the matrons of her age and standing, Miss Junie had been watching the Jubilee parade from the corner of Main and the Parkway for the last thirty years. It was a good spot, just across from the university, made better by the fact that the Jubilee committee went so far as to build a raised platform. Every year Miss Junie picked one of her sons-in-law to accompany her there and get her settled. This year Miss Zula had decided to join her, so John, who had been given the honor, had both of them to contend with, chairs to adjust and readjust, and a sun umbrella to position.

  At least it took his mind off the fact that Win Walker and Walker Winfield were leaning up against the ambulance parked down the street, arms crossed and heads bowed close together as they talked. He had got away from Rob’s without being seen, but still it gave him a bad feeling to see the two cousins in deep conversation.

  When they first heard the high school band approaching, the ladies dismissed him and John loped across the street to stand with Rob and Kai.

  “How’s Angie?” Rob shouted at him, and John had to be satisfied with giving his brother a dirty look. It did no good to lecture Rob, so he turned his attention to the floats, elaborate platforms heaped with bunting and flags and flowers in primary colors. Ogilvie was a socially active place and every club, league, and association had a float: the Junior League, the Garden Club, the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Rifle Club. Every one of Ogilvie’s churches had some kind of float, some more than one. The First Baptist gospel choir went by in scarlet robes with golden tassels around their necks, followed by a whole battalion of Confederate reenactors in full uniform. John was just starting to feel more cheerful when the Basket Girls’ float appeared.

  Miss Maddie sat on an elevated chair in the middle, her gloved hands folded decorously on the basket in her lap. There was a great blue ribbon rosette on its handle, which meant that last year her basket had brought in the most money toward this year’s Jubilee. The rest of the Basket Girls walked alongside the float, all of them dressed to the teeth. Rivera was in a red polka-dot dress with a tiny cinched waist that made her look like a very tall and exotic Donna Reed, and even Angie, John saw, had been talked into dressing up.

  He knew with absolute certainly that the sundress she was wearing—butter yellow with a scattering of purple flowers—had been borrowed from somebody else and pressed on her by Miss Maddie. He couldn’t think of another person in the world who could have talked her into that dress, which made him think of talking her out of it, which was not a good thing to be thinking about just now.

  Not that he could look away from Angie in a dress. She pulled at the low-cut bodice, fiddled with the wide brim of the straw hat. For once her hair was neither pulled back in a ponytail or hidden under a scarf, and the breeze sent the curls dancing around her flushed face.

  “Wow,” said Rob.

  “Very sexy,” said Kai.

  Together they turned to watch the Basket Girl float disappear down the street toward the park. At the next corner Patty-Cake Walker was watching John, her expression all fire and brimstone.

  Ridley Smith was a nondescript forty-year-old mortician who was also Ogilvie’s mayor. The only thing southern about him, outwardly at least, was his voice, which was deep and melodious.

  “Bless Ridley’s soul, he’s as boring as vanilla pudding without the bananas,” said Marilee Bragg when Rivera asked about the mayor. As Basket Girls, they were sitting together on the stage, the baskets lined up in front of them. They were waiting for the Shriners to stop fussing with cables and the microphone so that the auction could start. Angie thought again how odd it was that none of the three black women who were participating were uncomfortable with this, and made a note to herself to ask the Bragg girls about it when she had them alone.

  Marilee’s sister Anthea was saying, “It’s true. It gives me gooseflesh just to listen to the man talk.”

  Miss Maddie giggled. She said, “Ridley’s talents were being wasted at his daddy’s funeral home. That MBA don’t mean much to the dead, but he balanced the town’s budget straightaway.”

  “Truth is,” said Anthea Bragg, “folks were tired of the Ogilvies running everything all the time.” She said this in a whisper, as Nan Ogilvie was sitting on her other side.

  “He’s a good auctioneer,” said Miss Maddie. “He’s got the patter.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Anthea. “Got a tongue hung in the middle so it can flap at both ends.”

  “Lucky Mrs. Mayor,” said Rivera, and Angie elbowed her.

  Miss Maddie said, “Angeline, dear, stop fidgeting. You look lovely. Very ladylike. Wouldn’t your mama be proud?”

  “Her mama would fall over flat,” said Rivera.

  “I feel like ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound bag,” Angie said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Miss Maddie said. “You’ve got a lovely figure.”

  “That dress looks better on you than it ever did on Anthea,” said Marilee, and: “Ouch. Leave off, sister, you know it’s true.”

  “The whole town must be here,” said Rivera, rising up from her seat to look over the crowd. “Wasn’t Shirley Jackson from the South? I keep thinking about ‘The Lottery.’ ”

  Nan Ogilvie turned to Rivera, her perfectly made-up face glowing beneath the brim of a hat the size of a small car. “It’s an auction, dear, not a lottery.”

  “Nan, she’s talking about a short story,” said one of the Stillwaters. She gave Angie a quick apologetic smile.

  “Oh,” said Nan Ogilvie, spreading her skirt around herself more artfully. And: “I’m far too busy to bother with fiction.”

  Miss Maddie said, “Hush now, he’s about to get started. Girls, sit up straight, and smile.”

  Here goes,” said Rob. “I bet Wyeth Horton twenty bucks that Ridley could shave fifteen seconds off Miss Maddie’s time.”

  “I hope you got odds,” said Kai. “The volunteer firefighters have been raising money for months.”

  Ridley held up Miss Maddie’s basket and started the bidding. The volunteer fire department went head to head with the college Faculty Club and the combined resources of the Mount Olive AME church. An individual had no chance at all, unless he was willing to put a second mortgage on his house.

  “Sold!” Ridley Smith slammed the gavel down less than thirty seconds after the first bid had been shouted out. “To the deacons of the Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, two thousand forty-one dollars and fifty cents. Miss Maddie?”

  There were hoots and whistles of appreciation as Miss Maddie walked off, head held high, on the arm of her nephew Martin.

  “Granny Junie sent me to say you should go ahead and bid, if you care to.”

  John turned to find Markus Holmes standing behind him.

  “She thought maybe you’d feel like you couldn’t bid because Caroline isn’t here. She said you should go ahead, if you want.”

  “I wasn’t planning on bidding,” John said.

  “Because,” Markus said, as if John hadn’t replied at all, “you could go in with me and Tony.” He pointed to Tony Russo, who was standing on a chair with a video camera pressed to his face. “We’re going to bid on Rivera’s basket. Unless you
were going to bid on Angie’s?”

  John met his brother’s eye over Markus’s head. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll go in with you on Rivera’s basket. Put me down for fifty dollars.”

  “It’ll take more than that,” Markus said. “How about a hundred? It’s for a good cause.”

  “It’s for fireworks and watermelons,” said John. “But okay, count me in.”

  Unless I miss my guess,” the mayor was saying in a voice that reverberated through the microphone, “I smell somebody’s mama’s secret recipe for macaroni and Vienna sausage casserole. Let’s see what else we got.” He held up the sheet of paper that listed the contents of each of the baskets.