Dixie, still openmouthed in astonishment, followed her grandmother into the living room. “I, um, guess I’ll take my things up to the guest room,” she stammered, completely unhinged by the tale she’d been told.
“Go right ahead. Oh, here comes Bubba, and he’s brought somebody with him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that boy. He used to drop in all the time to say hello and find out if I’d baked anything lately, and now I hear he and his wife are expecting a young one. People do get married and have children later these days. Must be because everyone uses those condiments.”
“You mean condoms,” Dixie said, suppressing a giggle.
“Condoms. I hope you and Kyle do.”
“Mmm,” Dixie said. She wasn’t about to discuss this with Memaw.
At the top of the stairs, Dixie turned for one last perplexed glance at her grandmother. Memaw Frances was as cool as they come, fluffing her perfectly coiffed white hair and straightening her apron before she greeted her guests.
Dixie continued into the guest room, closed the door and indulged in one good long bout of silent, hysterical laughter. When she finished, tears were streaming down her cheeks and she had to splash her face with cool water before she could welcome Bubba.
Her own grandmother a wild young woman? Drinking moonshine and sneaking around to indulge in illicit sex? It was almost more than a body could stand.
AS TWILIGHT SETTLED IN, Kyle drove home from Sumter with the morning’s disagreement with Dixie fresh in his mind. Worst of all, he believed everything was his fault. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Andrea hadn’t caught a cold on purpose, and she seemed okay about their breakup now. When he’d brought her the throat spray, she’d interrogated him relentlessly about Milo. Kyle had stated that he really didn’t know the guy, but if Dixie liked him, that meant he was okay.
He had little patience for Andrea’s grilling when he was concerned about the way things were going with Dixie. He realized that he should have apologized to her for his abruptness that morning before she went to work. He should have made sure they kissed goodbye. She wasn’t exactly angry with him. But she was miffed. Upset. And life was too short to let that sort of thing interfere with their lives.
Hell, they’d never even discussed their relationship except in, well, excerpts. Dixie had made it clear that this rankled, and such a talk was overdue. Now he resolved to initiate it. Maybe it was even time to spring for the engagement ring. He liked the idea of watching it sparkle on her finger, and he grinned to himself. He enjoyed making her happy.
His mind ranged over the past few weeks, yearning for the warm aura of acceptance surrounding Dixie and wanting her certainty and contentment. Dixie’s relatives were always lively, sometimes amusing and a real treat for someone who had no extended family whatsoever. By now he couldn’t imagine living in a house that didn’t contain Dixie. When he was away from her, it was as if an important part of him was missing. All day, knowing that she wasn’t in a good mood, he’d felt as if something had been gnawing on his heart. Like Twinkle chewing his pants legs or his shoes, which the Yorkie had savaged more than once.
Kyle didn’t like that feeling at all. He preferred the pleasure of coming home to Dixie and being welcomed with open arms. He cherished their nights in bed when they turned to each other in the dark and held each other tight, and he was captivated by how she sometimes murmured his name in her sleep. She was the strong independent woman he’d always wanted, but she made it clear that she depended on him, as well. He appreciated her cooking and her ambition, and he admired her churchgoing habits. His life since he’d met her had been filled with kisses, with laughter, with lovemaking. They’d built something warm and solid between them. He had grown as a result of knowing her, and he never cared to go back to the emptiness of his old life. For his own sake, he needed to tell Dixie all of that. Soon.
He punched the radio tuner to WYEW and listened idly to Kenny Rogers singing “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?” A few sprinkles from the sky turned into a steady rainfall, and he switched on the windshield wipers. Their steady swish seemed to speak the name that had become so dear…Dix-ie, Dix-ie, Dix-ie. She was the most important person in his life now, maybe for all time.
The song on the radio ended, and the deejay cleared his throat. He proceeded to read a news flash.
“The county sheriff’s office has issued a bulletin about an accident on the Allentown Road near Lyndale Crossroads. All drivers are urged to avoid the intersection due to a collision that has blocked the passage of vehicles until the road can be cleared.” There was more, but Kyle didn’t hear it.
He was driving on the Allentown Road, and if his memory was correct, the highway crossing it up ahead was in the small hamlet called Lyndale. He might be approaching that accident, and he’d needed to find an alternate route. He recalled a narrow cutoff that followed a power-line easement, and he believed it circled around and reentered the Allentown Road not far from Dixie’s grandmother’s house.
Sure enough, as he rounded the curve, he spotted the Day-Glo vest of a deputy who was redirecting traffic at an intersection. There was one truck ahead of him, and it was full of unsettled chickens on their way to market. He was paying more attention to the plight of the chickens than to the accident, the view of which was blocked by the trunks of several big trees.
The deputy, looking at his truck, signaled him to pull over. Kyle rolled down his window.
“You the coroner?” the deputy asked.
His truck had been mistaken for a coroner’s van before. “No, I’m not.” He gestured toward the wreck. “How’s it going?”
The deputy, a dour, long-faced fellow, shook his head. “It’s a bad one. A tanker truck skidded on the curve and hit a convertible.”
“Survivors?”
The deputy shrugged. “Can’t say. Detour to your left, please.”
Kyle swiveled his head in the direction of the accident as he made the turn. All he saw was a mangled mass of debris. He couldn’t make out shapes, but then maybe there weren’t any left. The scene was illuminated by flashing red and blue emergency lights and the shouts of rescue workers. He spared a thought for the accident victims’ loved ones who would be waiting at home unaware that wives or husbands or children wouldn’t be there for dinner.
The road looped back around, and suddenly the only thing between him and the accident scene was a wide fenced field. He was too far away to register many particulars, but he was able to make out the tanker lying on its side and the blue car it had hit. The car was crushed, the engine rammed back into the passenger compartment. He braked and scanned the scene.
An ambulance was driving away from the wreck, traveling slowly as if in no particular hurry. That was bad. If a survivor were riding in the ambulance, it would be rushing to the hospital.
The car. A blue car, and the blue the exact shade of Dixie’s Mustang. The deputy had said the car was a convertible. His heart quickened, and he could scarcely breathe. Despite her penchant for fast driving, he wouldn’t let himself believe that it could be Dixie. He racked his brains trying to remember what she was going to do that day. She’d mentioned appointments, she said she was going to the Eat Right for breakfast, and by now she’d be home.
Or would she be at home with Andrea staked out there? The house Dixie hoped to sell Lana was located off the Allentown Road, so she could have had a reason to go there today, especially late in the afternoon when Lana would have left work and might insist on taking another look.
He speeded up. If he could find an alternate route leading back to the Allentown Road, maybe approaching from the opposite direction, he’d be able to check and make sure that Dixie wasn’t involved. His heart in his throat, he dialed her cell-phone number. She didn’t answer, and his palms began to sweat. Dixie always kept her phone nearby in case she received a business call. She was hardly ever without it. Oh, if it was Dixie in that accident, he’d never forgive himself for that morning.
Sometimes when you’re th
reatened with losing someone you love, you begin to see things with crystal clarity. You realize where you went wrong and what you should have done instead. Kyle felt everything tumbling in on him, and the very things about their relationship that he had contemplated only a few moments ago became monumental in importance. All the things he should have done, that he should have said, and what if he never had the chance? What if he lost Dixie, the most precious human being in the world? What if he never got to buy her that engagement ring?
Frantic by now, fighting the sharp bite of nausea in his gut, he slowed to assess an unpaved road on his right, but it turned out to be a driveway. It wouldn’t take him back to the accident scene, so he kept going, exceeding the speed limit now, unable to worry about the slick highway or the many curves or his own well-being. He needed to know Dixie was safe.
Now he was in familiar territory. He passed the turnoff to the lake, and coming up was a familiar roadside sign touting nematocides. Beyond that, Memaw Frances’s house nestled into the tree-dotted landscape, but he wouldn’t stop there. He needed to get home. He needed Dixie.
At Frances’s house, a number of cars were parked out front. He braked sharply as he noticed Bubba’s truck. Another car he didn’t recognize was there, and on the other side of it was a blue one. A Mustang convertible.
Relief washed over him at the sight of that car. His knees went weak even as his brain grappled with the reality that Dixie was at her memaw’s, not in an ambulance. He parked behind Bubba’s pickup, where he sat for a long moment and got a grip on himself. When he was ready to open the car door, another worry surfaced. What if something had happened to Frances?
He ran to the front door, hammered on it. By the time someone flung it open, he was ready to burst inside uninvited.
“Why, Kyle,” said Frances, beaming up at him affectionately. “Come in and join us.”
“Is Dixie—?” he stammered, needing to set eyes on her for himself. Because she might not be here, never mind her car out front. It was just a heap of metal and plastic and miscellaneous parts, not a person, and people were the most important thing in the world when they were your people. And she was his, he had always known it, and he should have taken steps to make her permanently his long before this.
“Kyle?” Dixie said, and her voice with its Southern lilt was as sweet as the scent of spring flowers borne on a freshening breeze.
She descended the stairs, and the sight of her made his heart leap in his chest. Once he would have disallowed anyone’s claim that merely setting eyes on someone could cause such an effect. Once he had considered such notions romantic frippery. But now—now he had Dixie.
She walked to the door as if this was any ordinary day and presented her cheek for his kiss. In that moment, Bubba faded away, and Chad, whom he belatedly noticed leaning against the mantel, and Frances and her friend Dottie, whose car that must be beside Dixie’s. For Kyle, no one else existed, and he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes for a long moment of thanksgiving before enfolding Dixie in his arms.
He held her close, the pulse in her temple beating against his cheek, the fragrance of her hair in his nostrils. And he couldn’t wait one more instant to tell her how he felt.
He pulled slightly apart so that he could watch her facial expression. He took a deep breath and let the words tumble out.
“Dixie, I love you. I should have told you long ago, and—and I don’t understand why I didn’t. But if you’ll have me, I want to marry you.” His eyes searched the depths of hers, one small part of him afraid that she wouldn’t accept. They’d known each other a comparatively short time. But if he was so certain in his own mind that this was the way it should be, surely Dixie was, too.
At first her lovely face registered bewilderment, which gave way to confusion, and his heart almost stopped. Then, at long last, there was joy.
He’d never forget the exquisite happiness in her voice in that moment. “Oh, Kyle. Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Do you love me?” First things first. He should have found that out before he’d impetuously blurted his proposal, but it wasn’t as though his thoughts were arriving sequentially right now.
She blinked. “I love you more than I can say.” Though some of the words came out strangled with emotion, they were what he’d hoped to hear.
He kissed her then, not once but twice, then three times. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back in a decidedly lustful manner. That must be what started the hoots and hollers from Bubba and Chad.
Brought back to reality by their commotion, he stopped kissing Dixie. Believe it or not, he’d forgotten that there were any people in the room but the two of them.
Bubba applauded, and Chad joined in. Frances said, “I do declare!” Her friend Dottie appeared nonplussed.
Chad grinned approvingly. “I give you credit, bro. That’s the best marriage proposal I’ve ever heard in my life. Not that I’ve heard all that many.”
“Me, too,” said Dottie in a quavering voice. She was an elderly woman wearing too much blusher, or maybe she was just embarrassed by the wild display of emotion on his part.
Frances didn’t miss a beat. “Welcome to the family,” she said. “Even though you are a Yan—”
“Memaw,” warned Dixie, and Frances bit her lip.
Kyle knew what Frances had been about to say, but she was easy to forgive. “For your information, Frances,” he said, still hanging on to Dixie for dear life, “I’m planning to switch sides. Chad has invited me to join his group of Confederate reenactors.”
“You did?” Dixie asked Chad.
Chad shrugged. “Why not.”
“And you’ll try it?” she asked Kyle.
“If they don’t mind a Yankee in their midst.”
“Yeehaw!” Chad shouted, a full-blown rebel yell.
“I heard the timer go off in the kitchen,” Frances said. She grabbed Dottie’s elbow and bustled off. Following Frances’s lead, perhaps understanding his and Dixie’s need for privacy, Bubba and Chad announced that it was time to leave.
“We’ve promised to help Milo move furniture into his new double-wide this evening,” Chad said. “He’s got some girlfriend from up north who needs a place to stay. Says she’s sick with a cold and has a little dog.”
Dixie and Kyle shared a baffled glance, but it went unobserved by Bubba and Chad, who ducked into the kitchen to say goodbye to Frances and Dottie.
As the two men walked out the door, Kyle was gazing at Dixie, could hardly take his eyes off her. He was glad to be blessedly alone with the woman he loved.
“I have to tell you something,” he said. “I was afraid you’d been in an accident and I panicked. I was terrified that you’d been hurt or worse before I could tell you all that’s in my heart. Oh, Dixie, when I saw your car parked here at this house, I felt as if I’d been given a second chance, and I couldn’t mess it up. That’s why I didn’t wait for a more romantic moment to ask you to marry me. If you like, we can do this over with a bouquet of flowers, a ring and beautiful music under the moon somewhere. I’ll even get down on bended knee. When I saw you, realized that you were all right, my shattered world came back together again.”
“Wait,” Dixie said. “Why did you think I’d been in an accident?”
He told her about the radio bulletin, the detour and the car that so resembled hers. Her eyes grew round, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder for a moment.
“Dixie, why are you here? Is this some family occasion?”
She led him to the couch and they sat down as she started to explain. “Memaw invited us to stay here until Andrea leaves, and I took her up on it. I told Andrea to tell you, but you haven’t seen her. Then Bubba and Chad stopped by because they saw my car parked outside and they wanted to say hi.”
“Right.”
“The surprising thing is, Kyle, that when I got here, Memaw shared a confidence that blows my mind.”
“Which is?” He couldn’t stop looking at her
, couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be the man she loved.
Dixie paused for dramatic effect. “Kyle, Memaw drank moonshine and slept with Granddaddy before she was married. Back in those days, that was an unconventional thing to do.”
After taking a moment to absorb this astonishing information, Kyle threw his head back and laughed. “Your grandmother is my kind of girl.”
“She doesn’t mind if we share a bed at her house after all. It’s amazing.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’re amazing. I’m glad I found you.”
“So am I. Oh, bad news. Lana isn’t going to buy the house.”
Closing this deal had meant so much to her. “I’m sorry, Dixie.”
She brightened. “Yes, but the day hasn’t been a total waste. From my point of view, I mean.”
“Promise me we’ll never part in the morning without our goodbye kiss,” he said.
“That’s easy. I was out of sorts all day because we started out on a sour note. We won’t do that anymore, Kyle.”
“When can we get married?” He’d say the vows tomorrow if they could arrange it.
“We could have a big June wedding in church with bridesmaids and flower girls and a reception at the Moose Hall. I’ll borrow Memaw’s string of pearls. Oh, and the blue garter that my sister wore at her wedding. I’ll wear a long white dress with lots of buttons down the back, a demi-train and—”
“And a real low neckline?” he asked optimistically, figuring that if she was going to insist on a wedding with all the trimmings, there should be something for him to look forward to.
“Maybe. Voncille’s daughters can be flower girls, and little Petey can be the ring bearer, and we’ll need to find something for Paul to do so he doesn’t get bored. Maybe he could recite a poem or something. And—”
Down Home Dixie Page 18
