Cry Baby Hollow

by Love, Aimee

  “Then maybe you should take off the ring,” Aubrey suggested. “Some women find being hit on by a man with a wedding ring to be rather offensive.” Though she doubted the kind of man who used the word ‘cunt’ in polite company cared very much about who he offended or why.

  He leaned in close.

  “I ain’t hittin’ on you, honey,” he whispered. “If I hit on you, you’ll know it.”

  His hand shot forward and he grabbed her upper arm.

  “I think we’ll both know it,” she told him evenly, reaching up and prying his fingers loose. He was a big man, but he wasn’t in very good shape and she pulled him off easily. “I’ll know because my knee will be sore, and you’ll know because your balls will be hanging out of your nose.”

  Sensing that the pleasantries were concluded, she turned and ran off, careful to keep her pace even so that she didn’t look like she was fleeing, just resuming her run.

  Aubrey found Vina sitting on the back porch, playing solitaire in the shade.

  “Who’s the asshole living in the forest?” She asked immediately.

  Vina made a moue of distaste.

  “Wayne Mosley,” she answered. “You stay the hell away from him,” she said, wagging her finger at Aubrey. “He’s a rotten sonofabitch.”

  “I already planned to,” Aubrey assured her. “How’d he get that land?”

  “His people live in the next hollow over,” Vina explained. “There was always a feud about where the property line was, but after the hills went National Forest, it didn’t much matter. Then a while ago they wanted to cut a lot out of their property for one of their kids, so they got a survey. Turns out they still had a tiny spit on this side of the hill. They gave it to him and slapped a trailer on it, probably just to piss me off.”

  Vina’s hatred of mobile homes was infamous.

  “I didn’t see a trailer,” Aubrey told her.

  “It got repo’ed,” Vina said with a shake of her head. “There are more Mosley’s in this county than trees, and the only reason I’m not saying they’re all bad is that even I haven’t met ‘em all. Those people breed like vermin, and that boy is the pick of this last litter. He can’t keep out a jail even though his uncle is the sheriff. He’s livin’ in that garage now, and my lawyer ain’t figured out how to get rid a him yet.”

  “Hold that thought,” Aubrey told her, growing uncomfortable in her sticky clothes. She went into the kitchen and splashed some cold water onto her face. She returned a moment later, a glass of sweet tea in her hand.

  “So how do you like the cabin?” Vina asked as Aubrey sat down across from her.

  “That’s why I stopped by,” Aubrey told her. “I wanted to thank you for fixing it up so nicely, and offer to pay you for all the repairs.”

  She knew Vina would never accept any money from her. She would never even let her buy groceries when she came to visit, but Aubrey felt it was important to make the gesture.

  “Don’t be simple,” Vina waved off the offer. “You know I’m always looking for new ways to spend the ingrates’ inheritance. What you and I got here is a mutually beneficial relationship. We were both in a bad patch, and you coming down here got me out of mine. Least I can do is make sure you’re comfortable. You really like it?”

  The ingrates in question were Vina’s step-children. They had been trying to have Vina put in a home for years so they could get their hands on the family money. They had almost succeeded in their last attempt, but they had been stymied when Aubrey had agreed to move down and act as Vina’s guardian. The timing had been perfect. Aubrey had just gotten divorced, and while her new business was doing much better than she had expected, it wasn’t sufficient to keep her in the Washington DC suburb she’d been living in.

  “It’s fabulous,” Aubrey told her whole-heartedly.

  “Speakin’ of fabulous,” Vina said. “How’d you like Joe? I noticed that your lights didn’t come on after you left last night, but his did. I gotta tell you, if it was me, I’d a gone for the big bed in the cabin instead of shacking up in his trailer, but then you’re young. You don’t have to worry about arthritis.”

  “You can’t see the cabin from here,” Aubrey said, turning to look out over the lake.

  “I got a telescope up in the back guest room,” Vina told her. “I can’t see inside on account of the trees, but I can see the lights reflecting on the lake.”

  Aubrey rolled her eyes, wondering how long it would be before Vina got an infrared attachment.

  “Joe seems very nice,” Aubrey told Vina, “but he’s not my type,” she added firmly.

  “Shit,” Vina scoffed. “That boy is every woman’s type. I could rent him out to the Mormons so they don’t have to electrocute their lesbos anymore.”

  Aubrey decided it was better not to go anywhere near that statement.

  “What?” Vina continued, unphased by the look on Aubrey’s face. “He wasn’t any good in bed? I always figured he would be.”

  “I didn’t sleep with him,” Aubrey promised. “And anyway, just because a man is handsome doesn’t mean he’s good in bed.”

  “It means he gets plenty of practice,” Vina countered, “and practice makes perfect. Besides, the last one was your type and look how that turned out. Your type is shit. You should let me pick the next one and I pick Joe.”

  “Jason wasn’t a bad man,” Aubrey said, appalled at herself for defending him, but feeling it was only fair. Post 9/11, dual-military marriages were more about vacations and holidays than actually being a couple. Everything was fine until Jason had gotten a job offer in the private sector and convinced her to get out too so that they could have a real life together. Neither of them had handled the transition well. He had just handled it worse.

  “Good men don’t cheat on their wives,” Vina told her definitively. “Anyway,” Vina said, waving off the subject as she won her solitaire game and shuffled the cards. “I didn’t take to Joe at first either, but he grows on you. He’s very handy to have around, and have you seen his backside?”

  “I have and it’s very nice,” Aubrey admitted, blushing. She was always slightly embarrassed to be discussing sex so blatantly with a woman in her nineties. It was a favorite topic of Vina’s though, and in spite of four dead husbands, no children of her own, and three decidedly evil step-children, she was always been after Aubrey to get married and settle down. She’d never counted Jason as an actual spouse, probably because he’d never come with her when she visited.

  Vina uncharacteristically let the subject drop and started dealing the cards into two stacks.

  “I can’t stay,” Aubrey said apologetically, sliding the cards back across the table. “I have a lot to do before the moving truck comes,” she lied.

  Vina gathered the cards back and dealt out another hand of solitaire with a shrug.

  “We’ll be needin’ you to be our fourth tomorrow night though,” Vina told her.

  “Sure,” Aubrey agreed, strapping her iPhone back onto her arm and sticking her headphones in her ears.

  “Seven,” Vina told her as she hopped down the steps with a wave.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aubrey took the long way home, not wanting another confrontation with Wayne Mosley. The first thing she passed was the old cemetery. Her grandfather’s was the only recent grave, and even that was over twenty years old. He had taken Aubrey’s mother away from here after his wife died, but he had insisted on being brought back and buried at her side. The big marble tombstone that marked both of her grandparents was the only one i

  n the cemetery. All the other graves had simple granite plaques set into the earth or small crosses with names on them. They dated back to before the civil war, and Aubrey had always meant to come here one day and figure out who they all were, but her short visits had never afforded her the time.

 
Now she walked through and looked at the sad little markers. Many of them were so pitted and weathered that the names were completely obscured. Of the ones she could read, most were unfamiliar. The residents of the hollow were mostly female, and she realized that she didn’t know many of their maiden names. The only thing that caught her eye was a nearly rotten wooden cross with the name ‘Skinner’ carved into it in crude block letters. Aubrey shuddered and left the cemetery.

  Half a mile further on, after the road began to curve back around the lake, she came to Lettie Campbell’s place. It was a small, well-kept little cottage and Lettie was out front, standing by her mailbox with a letter in her hand.

  “How lucky I caught you,” Lettie said as if she hadn’t been standing there for ten minutes, laying in wait. Aubrey trotted up to her side and gave her a hug, trying not to get too much sweat on her. Lettie was a spinster of at least eighty years who ran with the little old ladies, but didn’t play cards. Lettie always reminded Aubrey of Tweety Bird’s owner from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. She was what you expected an octogenarian to be. She wore her waist long, gray hair in a big, tight bun held in place with pencils, did the New York Times crossword puzzle with a timer running, and made an excellent cherry pie. She had been the town’s librarian for as long as anyone could remember, and although she was retired now, she still read at least a book a day.

  “Have you heard about Betty?” She asked.

  Aubrey nodded. “Cataract surgery, right?”

  Lettie nodded her head sadly.

  “We’re all getting so old,” she told Aubrey, as if it were a secret.

  Aubrey was pretty sure she was supposed to protest, but settled for telling Lettie that you were only as old as you felt.

  Lettie smiled and waved as Aubrey jogged away. She had only made it thirty feet when she was flagged down by Micejah Sizemore, standing in his driveway next door, puttering around his car.

  “I hoped I’d catch you,” he told her, giving her a rough squeeze. Micejah was tall and lean, with a nose like the beak of some great predatory bird. He had been a house painter before he retired, and now he bred racing pigeons and ran a moonshine still in his shed.

  His wife Emaline poked her head out of their relatively modern little ranch house and hollered her hello. The two were in their mid seventies and had only come to the lake after retirement. Emaline was a distant relation of Lettie’s, and they were thick as thieves, forming a sub-clique within the close knit neighborhood. Emaline had the largest collection of Beanie Babies in the Southeast, and was prone to dragging unwilling visitors into her shrine and showing them off. In spite of being Lettie’s junior, she looked much older and got around only with the help of a walker, which was fine with her since she’d always been mildly agoraphobic and tended to go out only with Lettie or Micejah close at hand. Aubrey waved to her and made a run for it before she could get sucked inside.

  Less than a quarter of a mile further on, Aubrey slowed in front of Betty Muncaster’s painfully quaint little log cabin. It had been added on to a half dozen times over the years but was reputed to be the oldest standing structure in the county. Aubrey thought for a moment that, what with Betty’s upcoming surgery, it would be the one house she could just slip past, but then she saw Betty on the front porch, wearing dark sunglasses and knitting up a storm. She remembered all of the sweaters, scarves and hats that Betty had sent her whenever she’d been stationed somewhere cold and turned in the driveway.

  “Well hello,” Betty said as Aubrey walked up the stairs to the front porch. “You look fabulous, honey!”

  Aubrey looked down at her sweaty running clothes and laughed. Betty was the Miss Manners of Cry Baby Hollow. She’d gone to Georgia on a trip with her church choir just after high school, met a rich, handsome businessman, and not come home until he died twenty years later. Her time in suburban Atlanta country clubs had instilled in her a different sort of southern charm than was generally found in the Appalachians. She was a raw boned woman, lanky instead of thin, but she held herself with a regal grace and was always so well turned out that no one would argue if you called her beautiful.

  “I don’t feel fabulous,” Aubrey told her with a grin. “I feel grungy.”

  “Would you like some tea? I made a pitcher fresh this morning.”

  “No thanks,” Aubrey told her. “I just stopped in to see if there was anything I could do.”

  Betty chuckled.

  “You can do me the favor of not treatin’ me like an invalid. You know everyone is so upset. They all want me to stay with them after the surgery or to bring me casseroles. The truth is it’s nothing more than a few hours in a doctor’s office and then a day or two of puttin’ special drops in my eyes. I think they’re just scared because cataracts are something that happens to old people, and if I’m old, well then they must be too.”

  Aubrey laughed.

  “Or maybe they just know that if it were any of them, you’d be the first one over with a pitcher of tea and a bowl of your famous potato salad.”

  Betty put down her knitting and leaned over to Aubrey.

  “I’ll tell you a secret, honey,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “since I’m goin’ under the knife and might never be able to share it again. I stole my famous potato salad recipe from Edna. The only difference is I use Dijon mustard instead of French’s.”

  Aubrey laughed. Edna was one of the best cooks on the planet. The fact that Betty, who normally felt that cooking was something best left to the staff, made better potato salad than she did had always troubled Edna.

  “I’ll take the secret with me to my grave,” Aubrey promised.

  Betty pulled down her glasses and gave her a huge wink.

  Aubrey patted her knee and got up to go.

  “You call me if you need anything, okay?”

  Betty nodded and smiled. She let Aubrey get a dozen feet away before calling, “Give my best to Joe!”

  Aubrey groaned and ran off. The next house belonged to Armistead Bunch, who enjoyed a certain cache as the neighborhoods only bachelor. In spite of the fact that he was only in his fifties, he felt it was his duty to act as escort whenever any of his neighbors needed one. He owned an auto shop in town, and Aubrey was grateful to see that his house was empty. At least someone in the hollow worked for a living.

  Germaine’s little farmhouse sat next in the line, vacant now that she had been put in The Home and a very sad sight indeed. Germaine was a champion gardener and her yard had always been the envy of every woman in the county. The impatiens she grew in hanging pots on her Jackson vine swathed front porch won ribbons at the fair every year. Now the plants were scraggly and brown from lack of care and the lawn was ankle deep.

  Edna Frisch’s once modest house was the last before the long empty stretch that led to the cabin. When her daughter Rose and Rose’ husband Charlie had moved in with her, they had completely remodeled it and added an entire new wing on the back. It was now the largest and nicest house in the hollow, as befitted Charlie’s position as the town’s only vet. He and Rose were nowhere in evidence, but Aubrey saw Edna out in the front yard, weeding a flowerbed. She picked up speed and ran past before she could be called over. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them all. The people of the hollow had always been like a family to her, sending her cookies and letters when she was at sea and making a huge fuss over her on her annual visits, but there was only so much society a girl could take all at once.

  After she passed the turn off to the Dixie Highway, Aubrey slowed to a walk and searched the road, but she reached the cabin without finding any sign of the deer or whatever had attacked it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aubrey arrived at Vina’s the following evening at five minutes after sev

  en.

  Vina was waiting for her in the driveway beside her enormous Buick, tapping her foot and looking
at her watch.

  “You’re late,” she snapped when Aubrey hopped out.

  “I couldn’t get Joe to leave,” Aubrey explained. “He keeps coming over and he just talks and talks. Besides, it’s only a few minutes.”

  “We were supposed to be there at seven,” Vina corrected.

  “We aren’t playing here?” Aubrey couldn’t believe it. Local legend had it that Vina had once delayed burying a husband for two days so that the house would be available for card night.

  “We have to play at The Home now,” Vina told her. “They won’t let us check Germaine out anymore on account of the last time we didn’t bring her back for three days.”

  “That’d do it,” Aubrey agreed.

  “I’m driving,” Vina told her, opening the door and reaching across to unlock the passenger side in spite of the fact that the car was less than two years old and undoubtedly had a button that would have done it for her. As they drove around the lake, they passed Joe walking back from the cabin to his RV.

  “You sleeping with him now?” Vina asked, waving as they passed.

  “Not yet,” Aubrey said with a sigh.

  Vina shook her head sadly.

  “You’re a waste of space,” she told Aubrey, softening her words with a knowing smile. “But that ‘yet’ let’s me know there’s still hope for ya.”

  They drove in silence, a circuitous route that wound through the mountains and several small towns. When they arrived at Placid Crest Assisted Living Community, Aubrey saw that the P, I, and C had been knocked off the sign so that it read ‘Lacd Rest’, a horribly misspelled but appropriate name for the place. Aubrey harbored no doubts about who had vandalized the sign. She looked over at Vina, who pulled up the drive with a look of such innocence and obliviousness plastered to her face that it only confirmed her guilt in Aubrey’s mind.