Bittersweet Creek

by Sally Kilpatrick

  What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  From Rosemary Satterfield’s History of the Satterfield-McElroy Feud

  No one knows why she did what she did. She’d just lost her husband and her favorite brother, Houston, so some said she lost her mind. Others said she hated your granny for having so many children when Exie had had none.

  Either way, Exie had lived a very hard life. She never met her grandparents or three of her siblings, one of whom died in the influenza outbreak of 1918. When her husband died after less than a year of marriage, she had to move back in with her father. I think something snapped when her brother Houston died. Maybe she was thinking back to stories she’d heard about the moonshine fight. Maybe her daddy carried scars just like Myron and Benjamin the Third. He probably did.

  She and your granny had been unlikely friends at the one-room schoolhouse they both attended through eighth grade. Your granny said everyone told her it would never end well. She didn’t believe it until the day of the fire.

  Your granny woke up. She ran your aunt Nancy outside and left her under the sweet gum tree then she ran back upstairs to get your aunt Joy and your aunt Glenda. She had the presence of mind to wrap the five-year-old and the three-year-old up in a quilt and managed to get them all out just before the old frame house crashed in on itself. She told me about hoisting the burning quilt and basically rolling your two aunts out of it. Only when she saw all three of her babies safe on the lawn did she notice her dress was on fire.

  That’s why she had those ugly scars on her arms and legs, and that’s why she shut off the upstairs when she and your granddaddy moved into the big house. If there ever was another fire, she wasn’t going to have stairs between her family and getting out.

  Romy

  When I got to the Calais Café, I saw Genie cozied up to Ben. They held hands loosely on top of the table, gazing at each other with those goo-goo eyes that everyone but young lovers despised. I swallowed hard to fight off a twinge of envy.

  Looking down at the spot where my engagement ring had been, I realized Richard and I had long ago reached the comfort zone. He was attentive and generous, but he didn’t inspire hand holding for the sake of hand holding. His last kiss had been . . . demanding.

  I didn’t much care for demanding.

  Ben stood to go, then turned to give Genie a good-bye kiss to remember him by while smack-dab in the middle of the Former Farmers of America Convention of the Calais Café. The senior citizen farmers there for their daily dose of grease and sweet tea were, for the most part, not amused. Genie watched every step he took toward the door, never realizing there was anyone in the café besides the two of them.

  “So, did you find a new boyfriend?” I said as I slid into the booth that Ben had just vacated.

  “Hmm. What?” She blinked furiously as she tried to come back from the Land of Love. “Oh, yes. At least I hope so.”

  “Certainly looks as though you’d found a boyfriend to me. The two of you trying to stir up the Jim Crow contingent over there?”

  Genie looked over at the counter where several of the farmers sat on stools. One, in particular, glared at her. She sighed. “We did just enter a new millennium, right?”

  “We did,” I said softly. I wouldn’t want her to mistake my jealousy for disapproval. Ben was, and had always been, not only a handsome guy but a good guy. “For what it’s worth, I think you make a cute couple.”

  Genie grinned wide enough to show me all of her teeth, a radiant smile that pinched something deep inside me. “He’s something, isn’t he?”

  A waitress appeared out of nowhere with pad and pencil. “What can I get for you?”

  I’ll have what she’s having. “A grilled chicken salad and a sweet tea, please.”

  “And are you ready to order now?” she asked Genie.

  “You know what, I’ll have the same thing. Something healthy to offset all of those calories in the tea.”

  Off strutted the waitress, shaking her head at our creative nutrition.

  “Oh! Where’s your engagement ring?”

  I drew my hand under the table, but the damage had been done. “Richard and I have decided to take a break. It’s been a stressful few days.”

  Genie’s eyes narrowed. “So the rumors are true? You really are married to Julian.”

  I nodded.

  “No wonder Ben—” She pressed her lips together quickly, but not quite quickly enough.

  “No wonder Ben what?”

  She sighed, hanging her head in shame. “No wonder Ben wanted to strand the two of you together. He said Julian’s been pining for you for years.”

  Julian? Pining for me? “He has a funny way of showing it.”

  She shrugged. “That’s all I know, but I suppose in an indirect way I should say thank you. Ben wouldn’t have come over to sit with us then given me a ride home if he hadn’t been trying to get you two together. We might never have really had that chance to . . . talk, if not for you.”

  Judging from the beet-red color of her usually fair face, I was willing to bet that Genie and Ben weren’t doing a lot of talking these days. My mind wandered back to what she’d said. Julian’s been pining for you for years.

  Our salads arrived, but Genie could hardly eat hers for all of the class-reunion updates she gave me. In the end I had to get out notepad and pen to write down all of my appointed tasks. A few of them involved the Internet. Trying to get service out in the boondocks was always an adventure. I guessed I could conduct more business from the front porch for the good of the class, though.

  “Please don’t tell Ben or Julian what I told you,” she pleaded later as we were scooting out of the booth to pay our checks. “I’m pretty sure that was something I wasn’t supposed to say, and I don’t want to mess things up with Ben.”

  For a moment I got the feeling there was something going on that she wasn’t telling me. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Besides, I honestly think you and Ben make a good couple. He’s a good man, the best friend Julian’s ever had.”

  She blushed as she smiled with the radiant glow of a woman in love. “Would it be ridiculously smothering of me to stop by his office on my way to my next shift?” she asked.

  “Nah.” With all the sexual electricity the two of them were radiating, he’d probably meet her at the door. Suddenly, the mental image in my head shifted to me being outside a door, knocking nervously. The door would open wide to . . . Julian, and he would crush me in his arms and—

  “Wanna mint?”

  And you are out of your mind! One whirl on the tractor with Julian should not be enough to get you riled up. It’s not like you to be having moments in the middle of the Calais Café. Get a grip! “Yes, please.”

  Later, as I drove past the McElroy place while still sucking on that mint, I almost stopped and knocked on Julian’s door to ask him if he’d really pined for me the way I’d pined for him.

  No. Not going there.

  But you are still his wife.

  And that reminder shouldn’t have dredged up all of those plans I’d made up as a senior in high school. The day before he broke his leg, Julian had looked down from where he leaned against my locker. “Romy, what are you going to do with a guy like me?”

  I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “I’m going to marry you, silly.”

  I pushed him out of the way so I could open my locker and get the books I needed for that night’s homework. “You’re going to follow me to Vanderbilt, and I’m going to get a law degree.”

  I was such an idiot. Sure, I’d planned on getting a law degree, but what was Julian supposed to do? He’d finally confessed that he could hardly read, and he wasn’t particularly good at math. How would he have ever survived at Vanderbilt? Especially without football.

  I’d been so busy thinking about two towheaded children—one boy and one girl—that I hadn’t thought about what we would do with the kids while we both worked or what Julian would even do for a living. No
, Richard had made me think of those things, practical things. He had talked me into education instead of law. He had reminded me I would want afternoons and summers off in order to be with the kids.

  Of course, his brother had passed a very unpopular piece of education legislation, so maybe he was thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have a Paris who was a teacher.

  Bitter and cynical woman. You know you didn’t really want to be a lawyer—

  Wait. Was that Delilah’s shiny gold Buick leaving our house?

  The car left the driveway in the opposite direction, and I pulled the old truck up under the Leaning Locust Tree of Pisa, as my mother had always called it. I was in too big of a hurry to roll down the windows, something I would surely regret later, but I bopped through the back door and into the kitchen. Daddy wasn’t there. And his bedroom door, the door that led out of the kitchen, was closed.

  “Delilah, honey, did you forget something?”

  My not-quite-sixty-year-old father is having a little afternoon delight with my hairdresser. I plopped down at the kitchen table so hard that the chair underneath me groaned. “It’s me, Daddy.”

  Was everyone in the universe but me having sex? I was an engaged woman, so why in heaven’s name was it bothering me so much?

  Because you keep thinking about Julian instead of Richard. That’s why.

  The high-ceilinged kitchen spun around me dangerously, and I couldn’t even look at the multicolored star pattern of the old linoleum floor. Why, oh why had I ever decided to come home?

  Hank rolled into the kitchen, not quite centered in his chair with the buttons on his plaid shirt off by one so that his collar stuck up too high on one side. Oh, God. I will not think about my father having sex. I will not think about my father having sex. . . .

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you,” he said softly.

  “How long?”

  He grimaced. “About a week after I broke my leg, she came by with a pie. We sorta hit it off, I guess.”

  I nodded. So he hadn’t been secretly dating her behind my back for years. “So this is why you want to sell the farm and move into town?”

  “Well, up until I realized you were going to marry that Paris boy, I was thinking about asking her to move out here and live with me. If that was okay with you.”

  My heart twisted. Daddy thought he needed to ask my permission? “Daddy, you don’t have to ask me for permission. I just wish you’d told me.”

  He shifted in his wheelchair, trying in vain to get comfortable. “Well, this was your mama’s house.”

  “It’s the Satterfield house,” I said. “Mama wasn’t the Satterfield.”

  “No, but it’s always felt more hers than mine for some reason,” he said softly. “I figured you might feel that way, too.”

  His words broke my heart in half, its sharp edges scraping my ribs. “Daddy, of course it’s her house. And those are her daffodils that she planted along the driveway. Those are the curtains she sewed that hang above the kitchen sink. But it’s Granny’s azalea in the front yard. And it’s my great-grandmother’s pecan trees in the backyard. And—” For a minute I wondered if I’d ever be able to say I’d added something to the house. “It’s our house, too.”

  He reached across the table and squeezed my hand, his gnarled and callused hand easily swallowing my soft one. “Thank you, Rosemary. You’re a good kid.”

  “Daddy, I only want you to be happy.”

  Tears threatened to fall from both of our eyes. I could see his and feel mine.

  “Baby, that’s exactly what I want for you.”

  The way his words hung in the kitchen, I could tell he was trying to tell me something in his crazy, stoic Satterfield sort of way. I just couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it, and, like the best of the authors I’d studied, he sure as hell wasn’t going to spell it out for me.

  Julian

  Romy had ruined me for tractor rides forever.

  Considering how much time I was going to be spending on my tractor, the last thing I needed was to remember the feel of her sitting on my lap and the smell of her damned shampoo. Thanks to my thoughts of her I was making an unholy mess of the hay I was cutting on the Smith place.

  Part of me wanted to leave my tractor right there in the field and run over to the Satterfield house and beg her to forget about Richard and take me back. That would be the stupid wussy part of me. The smarter part of me kept my ass glued in the tractor seat while I cut the last of the hay. Smart me knew that no matter how much I wanted her, she deserved better.

  When I thought of all of those fights I’d been in back in high school, I cringed at the thought that she’d ever let me touch her at all. Back then I had been young and stupid. I’d thought I could overcome anything, including the infamous McElroy temper. Oh, it didn’t matter that I’d beat up the bigger boys who’d thought they could pick on me because I was wearing Goodwill hand-me-downs instead of some Abercrombie bullshit.

  No, that was different. I’d never beat up on Romy, I would tell myself. One fight in particular always came to mind when doubts began to surface. She’d agreed to meet me after football practice, but I was running late because I was talking to the newest member of the team, a transfer student from Chicago. We were in the middle of insulting each other’s mamas when one of the offensive linemen, a burly Gates, picked Ben Little up by the collar and dragged him to the back of the cinder-block field house to “initiate him.”

  I’d endured such “initiation” myself, but a couple of high school seniors with a paddle had nothing on Curtis. In the end, they gave up because they couldn’t make me yell. I told myself that Ben Little would survive it, too, and that I had a date with the prettiest girl in Yessum County. But something about his shriek made me run around the corner instead.

  Ben Little was the only black guy in sight—odd for a team that was at least half and half—and they’d stripped him to his jockstrap rather than leaving his padded pants on. Instead of the old high school paddle that the team captain kept hidden, several of the guys had branches from the old peach tree across the street. Ben had angry welts all over, and they were calling him every name they could think of.

  That’s when I remembered the Gates boy’s mama had been caught sleeping with a black man and that’s supposedly why his daddy ran off and never came back. This wasn’t their usual brand of cruelty. This was revenge for a crime Ben didn’t commit.

  I jumped into the middle of that circle, heard the whistle of the branches, and took more than one stinging blow without a flinch. “That’s enough, Gates.”

  “Get out the way, McElroy. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Beating someone isn’t gonna make you feel any better.” The words sounded good, but beating the hell out of me always brought a smile to my father’s face.

  “This ain’t about you! Git out the way!”

  “No.”

  One word and nothing but chaos after. There were four of them and just the two of us, but Ben had more in common with me than I’d thought. We might have beaten them, too, if Romy hadn’t shown up wailing like a banshee for us to break it up. I heard her before I saw her, sensed her even. Fists were flying. I ducked and whirled at the tap on my shoulder, ready to knock the person who’d touched me into kingdom come.

  But something held my fist back.

  And for the rest of my high school days I pointed to that moment in that fight as proof I would never, ever hurt Romy. I had an irrational pride that I’d done something good. I’d defended the underdog. I’d managed not to punch my girlfriend in the process. Surely those weren’t McElroy qualities. Surely that meant I could be someone different.

  And then Graduation Day happened, and I knew I could never take the chance.

  Because I could never be sure I was keeping her safe from Curtis. Or myself.

  Just shut up, Julian. Don’t think about it.

  As I came to the end of the hay field, I remembered something: Romy’s birthday was next week. At the very
least, I’d finally have a good excuse to give her Beatrice. She didn’t have to know the old nag was supposed to have been a wedding present.

  Yeah, and that sums up the difference between you and Paris. He’d give her a Corvette. You’d give her a moon blind, swaybacked mare.

  The last patch of hay cut, I went in search of the rake. If I could just keep myself busy enough, if I could just work the shit out of myself, maybe I’d be able to quit thinking about Romy.

  Romy

  After my little heart-to-heart with Daddy, I scooted out of the house in record time. We were Satterfields; we weren’t supposed to be touchy-feely. Once I’d checked on the cows and fed little Star, I went to the garden, where I almost sighed in relief at the sight of so many butter beans to pick. Picking them gave me something to do then, and shelling them gave me something to do later.

  Once I’d trudged back to the house with a couple of five-gallon buckets full of beans, we ate in silence then settled in on the front porch to shell the beans and watch the cars go by. It was unseasonably cool for a June evening, and we wanted to take advantage of being outside. Besides, now that Hank had aired his dirty laundry, the house seemed too cramped for the two of us.

  “Damned idiots driving like it’s the autobahn,” Daddy muttered under his breath as someone in a souped-up Dodge whizzed past. Down the road, tires squealed and the car honked. It was probably one of Mr. Smith’s lazy old hound dogs. They liked to lie in the middle of the road.

  Once the car rumbled past, the night evened out into something peaceful. Frogs and locusts sang in a competitive chorus, and a couple of bobwhites called to each other. A few fireflies flickered as the sun faded from white to pink behind the old oak tree by the road. God, the air even smelled sweeter.

  Well, aside from the tinge of manure from the pasture behind us. Come to think of it, I’d kinda missed that, too—sure beat the smells of car exhaust and wet city streets.