Dixie expelled a long sigh of impatience. “Hel-lo? Weren’t we just talking about my new boyfriend, the Yankee?”
“Milo still likes you a lot. Dang, I never did understand why you two broke up.”
“You wouldn’t. Probably.” Her feelings for Milo had been pure blah compared to what she had with Kyle.
“Try me. Talk to me. Why didn’t you and Milo tie the knot?”
If Bubba was going to be difficult, she’d rock him. “Here’s the truth of it, Bubba. I broke up with Milo because I didn’t feel passion for him.”
Bubba stared as if she had just stripped stark naked. “Passion?” he said in a shocked tone. They normally didn’t discuss that sort of thing.
She narrowed her eyes, not ready to back off yet. “Like when you want to crawl right into a person, you’re so attracted to him.”
Bubba’s face turned crimson and he appeared on the verge of swallowing his chin. “Uh, well, we shouldn’t be talking about that.”
“Then don’t ever bring it up again.”
“Not to worry. Geez, Dixie. I’m going to go get some of those boiled peanuts I stored in the garage.” He slapped a baseball cap on backward and marched out.
Joy and Katie returned, both of them chattering about the baby’s wardrobe. Joy reclaimed her bottle of beer. “I propose a toast to—What are you going to name her, Katie?”
“Marcella Jane Granthum,” Katie announced. “Marcy for short.”
“To Marcy,” Joy said. The women clinked bottles except for Katie who had forsaken alcohol for the duration of her pregnancy.
Bubba came back. “I can’t find the boiled peanuts that I had in the garage,” he said to Katie.
“They’re in the fridge, hon.”
Bubba rummaged for the peanuts and emptied them into a dish. He put a paper bag on the floor for the shells. “Our Marcy’s going to be the first of a bunch of born bricklayers named Granthum,” he declared. He’d recently started a masonry business, which he ran with the help of his cousin, and had often bemoaned the fact that it was hard to find skilled masons these days.
“My little girl, a bricklayer?” Katie said in mock disbelief.
“I’ll train her early, her and all the brothers and sisters she’s going to have. That doesn’t mean she can’t wear a pretty pink dress with petticoats once in a while,” Bubba said, all puffed up with fatherly pride.
Katie, Joy and Dixie started to laugh. “No one wears petticoats anymore,” Joy said.
“I guess I have a few things to learn about raising little girls,” Bubba said with a grin.
Past the gated bedroom door on the other side of the small dining room, Bubba’s old coon dog, Minnie Pearl, wagged her tail, four puppies gamboling around and between her legs. Katie went to the kitchen sink where she began to mix dressing for slaw.
“I hope y’all are agreeable to barbecue,” Katie said, glancing briefly over her shoulder. “How about you, Joyanne? Is pulled pork allowed on your diet?”
“I might have to make an exception so I can pig out on Bubba’s ’cue,” Joy said. “I’ll compensate by not eating anything but lettuce and watercress tomorrow.”
Bubba removed a couple of foam containers from the refrigerator. The containers held barbecue that he’d picked off the pig he’d roasted over his backyard pit last fall. “We’ll heat the meat in the microwave and spread everything out on the counter so we can help ourselves,” he said.
As Dixie and Joy pitched in, Katie glanced out the window where a red truck was pulling up beside the chinquapin tree. “You’d better get out another one of those barbecue containers, Bubba. Milo’s here.”
Dixie exchanged an alarmed glance with Joy. She certainly hadn’t expected her old boyfriend to show up for dinner.
“I didn’t invite him, but it’s not unusual for Milo to stop in,” Bubba said, observing Dixie’s ill-concealed alarm.
Joy took the lead. “It’ll be great to see him,” she said. “We were both active in the theater group when we were kids.”
“Milo checks on Minnie Pearl’s pups a few times a week. Say’s he’s of a mind to buy one.” Bubba tossed a peanut shell into the paper bag on the floor.
Katie smiled. “Oh, Bubba, you might as well give him his favorite, the little female. Then when she’s grown, you two can go coon hunting together.”
“Just like the old days when our daddies did the same thing,” Bubba said. “Dad gum it, I believe I will give Milo that dog. I’ll make enough money off the others to furnish the nursery any way you like.” He and Katie shared a loving smile.
Dixie considered that she ought to be going but didn’t have her car. Milo came in, all smiles at seeing Joy, or were the smiles for Dixie? He enveloped Joy in a big hug, proclaimed that her bouncy new hairstyle was awesome and that she was prettier than ever. This might be a good time to go powder her nose, but before Dixie could make a hasty exit, Milo hugged her, as well. She escaped as soon as possible, insisting on setting the table so Katie could sit down and prop her swollen feet on a chair seat for a few minutes.
Milo’s curly hair looked as if he’d tried to smooth it down with some kind of gunk. Everything about him was too tidy—unwrinkled white shirt tucked neatly into khaki pants, shiny loafers without a smudge of dirt, fingernails trimmed just so. Of course, eating had to wait while Milo brought himself up to speed on Bubba’s beer.
This led to reminiscing among the five of them. Dixie, keeping her distance from Milo by perching on a stool at the breakfast bar, attempted to return the topic to the here and now, but the conversation worked its way back to the chilly fall night when they’d all gone cow tipping in Mr. Hibble’s field.
After they laughed over that, Milo recalled the year that Bubba treated himself to an orange-and-purple Mohawk haircut and was thus single-handedly responsible for the institution of a dress code at Yewville High. More seriously, Katie, who was a year younger than they were, mentioned the day their assistant principal, Mr. Dacoti, was wounded in the eye by a student who attacked him with a numchuk, a martial arts weapon that shouldn’t have been on campus in the first place.
It had been years before the shootings at Columbine, but in the space of a few short minutes after Mr. Dacoti was carried away in an ambulance, an atmosphere of fear settled over the high-school campus.
Dixie hadn’t recalled that day in years. She’d been a fifteen-year-old sophomore and worried that more violence was imminent. Rumblings of student discontent had been reported earlier in the day, so anything could happen. When Milo discovered Dixie cowering behind her locker door, he had immediately shepherded her off campus and driven her home. Her mother, already alerted to trouble at the school by the Yewville grapevine, had thanked him profusely.
Fortunately, the campus remained peaceful. Both Dixie and Milo were penalized for skipping classes, but she’d never blamed him for taking charge that day. It was the first time Dixie had known that Milo really cared for her.
Remembering that day made her smile at him, and his eyes lit up. Damn, Dixie thought. This beer must be much higher in alcohol content than the store-bought kind. She had unwittingly lowered the barriers that she’d thrown up between them earlier. As the others started to talk about what had happened to the rest of their high-school group in the years since graduation, she excused herself and went to play with the puppies on the other side of the gate barrier.
A tactical mistake. Milo soon joined her, smiling goofily. She recognized that grin, all right. She’d spotted it on his face at church the Sunday he proposed to her.
“I’m going to take that pup over there,” he said, gesturing toward the brown-spotted one that was poking at a red rubber bone with its nose.
“What will you name her?” Anything to keep him on the safe subject of the dog.
“Starbright.” Milo glanced at her sideways out of the corner of his eye.
Oh, drat. The name struck a too-familiar chord. On their first date, a church hayride, as they jounced over a rutted co
untry road surrounded by energetically necking couples, the stars above had started to pop out spectacularly and Milo had recited a poem.
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.
It was many months before Milo admitted that his wish had been that Dixie would kiss him good-night. Well, she had, and they’d started going steady two weeks later. It had been a good decision at the time, she now realized. All through high school they’d been companions, friends, and finally, shortly before they broke up, lovers. But she’d passed on marrying Milo. And that had been the right decision, too.
“Starbright is a nice name,” she murmured, not giving anything away.
“I’m glad you like it,” Milo said, seeking something in her expression that he clearly didn’t find. Dixie recognized the disappointment that shadowed his eyes ever so briefly before she turned away.
“Come on, you two,” Katie called from the kitchen. “Barbecue’s on.”
Dixie gratefully returned to the kitchen, where Milo kept sending beseeching glances across the small kitchen table as they ate. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary to talk much. Joy recited interesting anecdotes about her new life, and Bubba was expansive about his impending fatherhood. Apparently no one noticed that Dixie was uncharacteristically quiet.
The truth was that her mind had wandered back to Kyle. Before she left home she’d written a note of her own, using the saltshaker to pin hers down alongside his on the kitchen table. She’d written down Bubba’s address and phone number and asked Kyle to call her either at that number or on her cell when he got home. But as dinner wore on, as they cleaned up the kitchen, still no Kyle.
By the time Katie suggested that they adjourn to the living room for cake and coffee, Dixie was glancing at her watch for maybe the tenth time since they sat down to dinner. Bubba and Milo chatted about the best treatment for nematodes in soybeans, a topic of some interest in this rural area. Dixie filled Joy and Katie in on her new career and asked their opinion about accepting the cat Leland had offered. When Bubba brought out the Rummikub game, it was Joy who pleaded early exhaustion so she and Dixie could leave.
“Jet lag,” Joy said. “Flying cross-country cuts me down worse than anything.” She claimed to have done her share of traveling from coast to coast lately, seeing as her agent’s main office was in New York.
When Joy made it clear that she and Dixie needed to leave, Milo said he had to get up early the next morning. They all trooped to the door and hugged Katie and Bubba, thanking them for the delicious meal.
“Wait a minute, Dixie,” Bubba said. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of home brew. “Might as well give the Yankee a taste of really good beer.”
Dixie tucked the bottle under her arm. “Thanks, Bubba. Kyle may call you for the recipe.”
Bubba winked. “Anytime.”
Milo gazed wistfully at Dixie for a long moment, and he kept trying to catch her eye on the way out to the street where they all were parked. Dixie pretended she didn’t notice; she was uncomfortable with Milo’s overt longing and wasted no time sliding into Joy’s old Chevy.
“Fast enough exit?” Joy asked with a sly grin.
“What do you mean?”
“I saw how you were avoiding Milo’s glances, his effort to sit next to you in the living room, all that stuff.”
“You read me right, girlfriend.”
“Let’s get out of here. I’m sure you have other plans for the evening.”
Dixie smiled, though with marked restraint. “I hope so,” she said.
When Joy turned the key in the car’s ignition, all they heard was a disheartening click. “Uh-oh,” Joy said. “This sounds serious.” She tried the key again and this time elicited a tired groan from the battery, which engendered an even more tired groan from Joy.
“I should have asked Daddy to charge the battery, but Mama claimed she’d started this car up only a couple of weeks ago,” Joy said. “I’m planning to sell it. I figured that I’d at least be able to use it while I’m here.”
“Maybe you should try to start it again,” Dixie suggested. The Chevy had been in great mechanical shape when Joy left for California.
“Joyanne? Dixie?” Milo had rolled down the window of his pickup. “Got a problem?”
Dixie stared steadfastly ahead as Joy got out of the car and slammed the door. “Dead battery. Can’t get it going.” Crickets shrilled in the shrubbery, and somewhere a cat yowled.
“We could call Hub,” Dixie called out the window, naming the mechanic who had bought Carrie’s garage. “He could be here in a few minutes.”
“No need,” Milo said. “I can drive both of you home. You’re hardly out of my way.”
“Come on, Dixie,” Joy said. “We might as well. I really am too tired to deal with this right now.”
Hearing their voices, Katie and Bubba switched the porch light back on and opened the screen door.
“What’s wrong?” they chorused.
“Dead battery,” Joy called back.
“I’ve got jumper cables in my car. Won’t take me but a moment,” Bubba offered.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, maybe we can do it then. Thanks anyway.” Joy grabbed her purse, and Dixie climbed out of the Chevy. She’d rather not ride home with Milo, but what choice did she have? The last thing she’d do was cause a scene over this.
Milo reached across the front seat and threw open the passenger door of his truck. “I’ll drop Joyanne off first,” he said, which was logical because her parents’ house was only a mile or so away.
This meant that Dixie would have to sit in the middle of the pickup’s bench seat next to Milo, so she suppressed a sigh and got in. Joy climbed in after her. The whole way to Joy’s parents’ house, Dixie kept her eyes focused on the fuzzy black-and-white dice swinging from the rearview mirror. They made her dizzy, twirling around like that.
Joy was yawning by the time they dropped her off at the asbestos-shingled house where she’d grown up. Through the picture window, they could see her mother dipping up popcorn as she watched TV. “Thanks for the lift, Milo,” Joy said. “Dixie, I’ll call you in the morning.”
As soon as Joy was out of the vehicle, Dixie slid away from Milo and toward the door. He waited until Joy went inside, then backed out of the driveway. The silence was uneasy between them, and Dixie turned her head away to gaze out the window at the fields slipping by, most of them already plowed for planting soybeans or cotton or tobacco. The moon was full and the sky full of stars, bringing to mind that silly poem again. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might…
Tonight she’d wish that Kyle would be at home waiting for her when she got there. No question about that.
While Milo attempted to draw her out, Dixie replied to his remarks with as few words as possible, unerringly polite but not enthusiastic. Milo began telling her about buying acreage for his nursery business, a story which wasn’t of much interest to her.
After several minutes of Milo’s throwing out conversation starters, he must have grown weary of her monosyllabic replies because he lapsed into quiet long before he turned down her driveway. As they passed the sasanqua hedge, Dixie caught herself leaning forward in the seat in hopes of spotting a telltale gleam of chrome from Kyle’s truck, but it wasn’t parked in its usual space.
Over and above the letdown, she entertained the scary notion that Kyle might have skipped town. Gone back to Andrea. Left without telling her. But no, he’d left a note earlier. A kind of sweet note, actually, and he’d signed it Love, K.
“Thanks for the ride, Milo,” Dixie said as she swung down out of the truck. Belatedly, as he slid out from under the steering wheel, she realized that Milo was going to walk her to the door. She almost objected before deciding that an argument would be more trouble than it was worth. Dixie’s house was dark, unoccupied, and any true gen
tlemen would insist on seeing a woman safely inside.
She’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, and because she was still carrying the clammy bottle of beer, she fumbled with her key. Without a word, Milo took it from her and inserted it in the lock. He opened the door, and the glow of the night-light illuminated his face as she turned toward him to thank him again for the ride.
Perhaps she was sending mixed signals after all. Milo’s expression was one of hopefulness, of affection.
“It was wonderful seeing you, Dixie,” he said, a hitch in his voice.
Not, she thought as she stepped backward to minimize what she was pretty sure Milo had in mind. Too late. He firmly placed his hands on her shoulders and wasted no time in lowering his mouth to hers. She clamped her teeth shut and held her breath, leaning out of it. No matter how far backward she bent, Milo stuck like glue. Milo was still kissing her enthusiastically when bright headlights sliced across the hedge and Kyle’s truck pulled into the driveway.
The beer bottle fell on the steps and broke in an explosion of foam and glass.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Dixie was repentant and regretful, not that it seemed to help.
“All I did was talk to Andrea on the phone,” Kyle said angrily. “You were kissing Milo.” It was the first time he had ever raised his voice to her, and that alone made her forget how sorry she was.
“Milo was kissing me,” she informed him. “For which I should have slapped him, maybe.” They had adjourned to her bedroom after Milo left, and Kyle paced to the far end of it. She pulled off her shoes, wet with beer. “Or hit him over the head with the beer bottle,” she added on second thought. She sniffed at her hands; they smelled beery, too. Beer tasted better than it smelled, that was for sure.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because you were charging up the slope to the house and I figured if there was any physical punishment to be inflicted, you’d be the one to administer it.”
“I wanted to deck him, but he got away too fast.”
“Fortunately. The police chief and Milo are second cousins.”
Down Home Dixie Page 10
