Rock of Ages

by Howard Owen

  “I’m going canoeing with him this afternoon,” Georgia says, and then adds, “Kenny” when Forsythia seems confused.

  “In the river?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, that’s about the only place you can, other than Maxwell’s Mill Pond.”

  “Well,” Forsythia says, turning to go, “you be careful.”

  When Kenny comes for her, he has a smaller version of himself in tow.

  “This,” he announces to Georgia, Justin and Leeza, who are washing dishes, “is Tommy. What do you say, pal?”

  Tommy is coerced into a mumbled “Hi.”

  He has his father’s dark complexion, but his hair is reddish-blond, from either his mother’s genes or the residue of a sunstruck Carolina summer. Or maybe, Georgia thinks, it’ll just turn dark later.

  “We’re heading to Momma’s, aren’t we, buddy?” Kenny asks, and the boy nods with a lack of enthusiasm.

  Yesterday was Kenny’s day with Tommy, and they spent Saturday night camping out in the little stand of woods beyond the McCain graveyard.

  “We saw a ghost,” the boy says, but when Georgia tries to draw him out, he’s already distracted by something she can’t see.

  She tells Kenny it’s perfectly fine with her if Tommy comes with them canoeing. The boy looks up, and Georgia can’t tell if she’s seeing fear or hope. Kenny shakes his head, though, and mouths, “She’d kill me.”

  Georgia, trying to make conversation, asks Tommy how he likes school.

  “It sucks,” he mumbles, and is chastised by his father.

  She is to follow Kenny in the minivan, first to Teresa’s, where he will deliver the boy, and then to the river, where they’ll leave her vehicle at a pickup spot 10 miles downstream from where they put in, and then drive back to the starting point.

  She stays in the minivan, behind Kenny’s truck, with the engine running, while he takes his son to the home of his ex-wife and her parents. A head bobs out from behind the storm-door glass, and then ducks back in again.

  “Was she checking me out?” Georgia asks when they get to the landing.

  “Who? Teresa? Hell, no. Why should she? Are we on a date?” He has turned his head toward her as he throws his arm over the seat and backs out of the almost-abandoned dirt clearing beside the river. He smiles slightly, almost shyly, it seems to Georgia, then looks away.

  “I suppose,” Georgia tells him, “if you had a date today, we wouldn’t be going canoeing, would we?”

  “There you have it.”

  He drives them back to the place where they’ll enter the Campbell, just below the river bridge. This lot, larger than the one downstream, is also dirt and nearly deserted. From where they sit, almost level with the water in front of them, it seems a more pleasant river than Georgia remembers. The unexpected warmth of the day, magnified by the truck’s windows knocking off the wind—what Phil used to call “the windshield factor”—makes Georgia so comfortable she wants to do nothing more than sit there, maybe doze off, listen to some oldies on the radio.

  “If this doesn’t beat watching the Redskins choke another one,” Kenny says, looking out at the water, too, “I’ll kiss your ass.”

  He glances at her.

  “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  Georgia laughs.

  “Definitely figuratively speaking.”

  They get out, reluctantly, and manage to get the canoe, cooler, life vests and a couple of paddles out of the truck bed and into the water.

  “God, this is great,” Kenny says, and the way he says it, it almost sounds like a prayer. “No motorboats or Sea-Doos or any of that mess. It’s worth coming out here sometimes even in December, just for that. Cold weather keeps the riff-raff out.”

  Georgia finds that she has lost most of whatever rowing muscles she had developed on the Little Bright. She struggles to help Kenny, and it takes them a mile or so to attain a rhythm, with him slowing his stroke as she speeds up a little. Finally, they are moving in something resembling a straight line.

  She apologizes again as they find themselves pointing more toward the far bank than down river.

  “Stop that,” he says. “We aren’t in a hurry to be anywhere. It’s probably too late to make the Olympic rowing team anyhow.”

  “Sorry,” she says, then laughs.

  Almost as soon as they have achieved something resembling forward motion again, Kenny ceases rowing and motions her to do the same. They put the paddles in the boat and just drift.

  “We’ll probably get to the other landing in less than three hours if we just drift,” Kenny said. He reaches for a beer and offers her one.

  “Got Coke if you want one,” he said. No, she says, a beer would taste good. The river reflects the bright sun that already is diving toward the trees on the other side. The double dose of sunlight and half an hour of rowing have made this feel more like a September day. Only the sycamores along the bank, mostly bare now, hint of impending winter, their mottled white trunks like a harbinger of snow.

  Ahead of them, an island splits the river into two diverging streams that are reunited a hundred yards farther down.

  “Peacock Island,” Kenny says. He guides the canoe to its sandy shore with one paddle, then helps Georgia out.

  “I’d always heard of this place,” she says, looking around. “Something about a rich guy who owned it and brought all kinds of exotic wildlife out here?”

  “Yeah. And the peacocks got loose. Some people say they can still hear one screaming now and then, but I think you’d have a hell of a time hiding a peacock on an island this size, or anywhere else around here.”

  Kenny has brought along some chips, and they sit under a live oak tree, legs crossed, passing the bag back and forth while they drink a couple of beers. To Georgia, who remembers the dry, blue-law Scots County Sundays of her youth, the alcohol seems like an illicit pleasure.

  They talk about Pooh Blackwell, although Georgia doesn’t mention her latest conversation with Wade Hairr. She hasn’t told anyone, partly because no one, including Kenny, seems interested in Jenny McLaurin conspiracy theories.

  They discuss Justin and Blue’s plan to sell much of the farm’s produce to northern distributors. As Blue had said earlier, Kenny is “studying it.”

  “There are so many ways for something like this to go wrong,” he tells her, “and only one way for it to go right. It might work, but Blue, you know, he’s had some crazy ideas. And Justin—well, he’s a smart kid—smart man. But, no offense, he doesn’t know much about farming.”

  “Well,” Georgia says, “maybe among the three of you, you can conjure up one decent plan. Put all those big ol’ manly brain cells together.”

  “Maybe we can. Who knows? Hell, I’m about one-third smart. Maybe Blue and Justin can fill in the rest.”

  They talk about her father, and, at last, loss.

  “I don’t know,” Kenny says, when she asks him, point blank, why he and Teresa broke up. “I think most people just haven’t completely grown up when they get married, you know? We just couldn’t seem to agree to grow in the same direction.”

  And she tells him about Jeff Bowman, Justin’s father, without mentioning how, with the aid of one of her graduate students, she managed to pay back his philandering in kind and complete the immolation of their marriage.

  “And then,” she goes on, “you jump from the frying pan into the fire, if you aren’t careful. Strike two.”

  “And—Phil—right? That must have been tough.”

  She starts to tell him about Phil Macomb, but she can’t do it. She has to turn away. It comes up on her all of a sudden sometimes, when she thinks she can talk about it more or less dispassionately.

  “Anyhow,” she says, composed again, “strike three.”

  Kenny puts his hand on hers, so softly that she can barely feel it.

  “It isn’t baseball, Georgia,” he says. “You can keep swinging as long as you want.”

  She laughs.

  “Figuratively speak
ing of course.”

  “Definitely,” he says, smiling as he squints into the sun. “Definitely figuratively.”

  He asks her if she has the gun with her.

  She bats her eyelashes.

  “Not today. I’ve got a big, strong man to protect me today.”

  “Well,” he says, “just don’t be afraid to use it, is all.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I really would rather go my whole life without having to kill somebody.”

  Kenny is silent. She wonders if he’s asleep, but when she turns, he’s just staring out across the river.

  “What about you?” she asks him, trying to make him smile. “Ever kill anybody?”

  He remains silent.

  “You have.” It isn’t a question. “You have. Haven’t you?”

  She feels his hand leave hers. Through the narrow slits of her vision, she sees him walk off toward the east side of the island.

  When he returns, he tells her that they’d better move on or plan to stay the night.

  They have to hurry the rest of the trip, and by the time they reach the lot where Georgia’s vehicle sits alone, the sun has disappeared below the tree line. The wind blowing down the river, an aid as they tried to make up for pleasantly lost time, now chills their sweat. The afternoon’s warmth is a distant memory.

  They realize that the canoe won’t fit into the van, so they have to go back for Kenny’s truck. As soon as she’s stopped, he gets out and goes around to the driver’s side door.

  She offers to follow him back and help him put the canoe back into the bed, but he says he’s fine, that she probably ought to be heading home. She can barely make out his dark face as he leans on the door frame. He seems to be smiling.

  “They probably think you drowned or something.”

  “Well,” she says, “anyhow, thank you for a very nice afternoon. Thank you for making me have a good time against my will. And I didn’t mean to be nosy. None of my business.”

  “You’re not nosy. Sometime, maybe I’ll tell you a story.”

  She leans toward him slightly. Neither of them could have said who kissed whom. Probably, Georgia thought, it was some kind of mutual pull that wouldn’t have happened if their faces hadn’t been so close that they were pulled the last few inches by scent or whatever stimulus makes people do the unlikely if not unthinkable.

  Whatever, Georgia thought, driving home alone, slightly disheveled and a little horny. It had been a hell of a kiss, her opening wide, without reserve, tasting him as he explored her mouth with a hunger she hadn’t experienced in recent memory. Most men, she was sure, did not understand how a really good, tongue-swallowing, dental-flossing kiss could move women, or at least her. Maybe Kenny didn’t know either.

  It couldn’t have lasted more than 10 seconds. When he pulled away first, he didn’t say anything, but he looked as troubled as Georgia had ever seen him when he backed off into the dark. He tripped on something and almost stumbled, cursing as he caught himself on the hood of his truck.

  “OK,” Georgia said. “Thanks. See you.”

  She couldn’t hear what he said.

  Back home, she has to placate Justin and Leeza, who do indeed seem to have surmised that she must have drowned.

  “You know,” she tells them, “I am a pretty good swimmer. I can take care of myself.”

  “I guess,” Justin says, frowning, and when she looks at herself a few moments later in the mirror, she sees that she does look like someone who has recently been in distress of some sort. Her sweater is bunched up badly from being thrown on in haste as the cold wind picked up. Her hair looks more than windblown. And her face, she feels, must be telegraphing, to anyone who studies it, Just Been Kissed.

  She shrugs and stands there. She had almost forgotten the spicy sweetness of guilty pleasure.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  November 25

  The Indian summer sun of last week would have found a way to break through these early morning clouds, but this is a weak and sickly imitation, a portent of bleakness.

  Leeza joins Georgia in the kitchen before 8, early for her these heavy-laded days. She seems ready to give birth any moment, although the calendar says it’ll be another month. She makes herself some tea, then waddles across the room and manages to squeeze herself and baby Alysyn-Maree-Gregg-Mack between a chair and the table.

  She answers Georgia’s unasked question.

  “I thought you might need some help.”

  There is no guile or irony in her face or words as she says it.

  “Well, thank you.”

  Georgia does indeed need some help. She has been induced to promise more than she thinks now she can deliver this Thanksgiving.

  There are four shut-ins that she and Forsythia Crumpler will be visiting today, sometime in the early afternoon. They will be bringing full dinners, prepared by others while Georgia is getting her own family’s meal ready. She is not sure how she will manage to be in two places at once. Kenny is coming and is bringing, at Georgia’s urging, his son. He gets Tommy on alternate holidays. She also asked Blue, Annabelle, Sherita, and their children. They seemed to appreciate the invitation, but Annabelle is cooking for an extended family that, as she ticks off the names, seems likely to fill the adults’ and children’s tables, then spill out of the Geddies’ modest home and into the yard.

  Georgia has managed to get Forsythia to join them as well, finally worming out of her the information that she was not in anyone’s plans for the day.

  Georgia has written down everything she will need to make Thanksgiving dinner, and now she has assembled all the many parts on the too-small kitchen counter. She marvels at cooks who never seem to look at recipes, or even have recipes, outside their own heads.

  •Turkey (almost defrosted; she will have to get Justin to reach inside the still-icy bird and pull out what her father used to call “lizards and gizzards”).

  •Makings for sweet-potato casserole, with note not to forget the little marshmallows this time.

  •Makings for yellow-squash casserole.

  •Pumpkin pie (bought).

  •Cranberry sauce (bought).

  •Dressing (bought).

  •Rolls (definitely bought).

  Kenny is bring field peas and butterbeans, canned by his mother and cooked by him with, he assures her, at least half a pound of pork fat for flavoring.

  Even vegetarians, he tells her, have strokes down here.

  Georgia asks Leeza to cut up the squash and onions while she reacquaints herself with the sweet-potato recipe.

  “Would you like me to make some biscuits?” Leeza asks.

  There is little Georgia would like less. She contemplates the neatly boxed, canned, and organized bounty before her and knows that soon it will explode into a mess that will in no way justify the resulting meal. The last thing she needs, she wants to say, is biscuits, with flour and Crisco and buttermilk everywhere, one more large bowl, one more need for the lone chopping block.

  But Leeza has become quite proud of her biscuits, which with more consultation with Annabelle have become, even Georgia must admit, quite acceptable, a welcome addition to her small domestic résumé.

  “Sure,” Georgia says, “biscuits would be great. Annabelle didn’t show you how to make gravy, did she?”

  Leeza shakes her head.

  “No, she didn’t. Can’t you …?”

  “Sometimes.”

  If they can get the two casseroles prepared, if the turkey is ready to go into the oven by 10:30, if somebody can set the table and keep an eye on the bird and put everything else in the oven at the requisite times, if nothing else happens, they might be eating at 3:30, the way it was planned. And that’s counting on me to make the gravy, Georgia thinks. God help us.

  “Shit,” she says. “Shit!”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Beaujolais nouveau. I forgot the Beaujolais nouveau.”

  She always stocked up on a few bottles for Thanksgiving at
home. Even if they were eating elsewhere, they’d bring the new wine with them. This year, in a strange setting, she has forgotten the Beaujolais nouveau.

  Leeza giggles.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Well,” she says, “I can’t drink it. I doubt if Mrs. Crumpler will. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kenny drink anything except beer, and I doubt his son is much of a drinker. I’m sure Justin won’t hold it against you.”

  I need it, Georgia wants to say. I wanted everything to be perfect. She remembers all the imperfect meals back in Montclair, the burned, underdone, oversalted, underseasoned, sabotaged-by-bad-recipes meals. She equates the mess of her life to some extent with her inability to make edible meals on a consistent basis.

  But she can’t say all that without sounding like the mental case she fears she has become.

  “OK,” she shrugs, “no wine. What the hell.”

  She has agreed to pick up Forsythia at noon. Their four stops shouldn’t take more than hour, she thought at first, but she since has realized that she is on what she has always referred to, ever since she left, as EGT—East Geddie Time. Pleasantries will have to be exchanged. The two of them will be obliged to sit down in a dark, overstuffed living room or, even worse, a bedroom smelling of Ben-Gay and night sweats. They might be there for only 15 minutes, but they will have to sit and “visit.”

  “I’ll be back by 2:30,” she tells Justin and Leeza, who assure her they have things under control.

  Forsythia is ready when Georgia arrives, dressed as if she were going to church. Georgia is wearing slacks and a peasant blouse with a sweet-potato stain on the front.

  They pick up the four complete dinners that the men and women of the Presbyterian and Baptist churches have prepared, everything from soup to nuts, they assure them. Georgia can smell the turkey and dressing under the tinfoil, much better than what is cooking back at Chez McCain, she’s sure. She is tempted to steal one of the little tins of gravy.

  “It’s mighty nice of you to do this, Georgia,” Minnie McCauley says conspiratorially while Forsythia is talking with one of the deacons about the best route for them to take. “She really hadn’t ought to be driving all over the county by herself.”