Nobody's Child

by Austin Boyd

  She walked up to him, coaxing his right hand from his pocket. When she took it in her own, she felt a bandage and looked down. Flesh-colored tape covered three scraped knuckles. She pulled the hand to her lips and kissed his wound. “What happened?”

  Ian raised an eyebrow and shrugged, looking at the taped hand. “I won a reprimand and a three-day vacation.” He moved his hand to her shoulder to pull her closer.

  “Truth is, I slugged our office manager.” His face reddened, his pulse quickening in the throbbing beat of his neck. “Randy started spouting off about me ‘shacking up at the McGehee place.’ So I broke his nose.” He smiled, ponds visible in his eyes. “Got a stiff reprimand and three days of administrative leave for my trouble.” He took a deep breath and continued. “For what it’s worth, my boss said he didn’t blame me. Told me to chill out and go chop some wood.”

  Ian chuckled, then continued. “So — I’ve got three days off, gorgeous. You need any help?”

  “Hanging out together, stacking hay and irrigating a parched corn field. My goodness, folks in town are gonna talk,” Ian said with a laugh from his seat at her kitchen table. Sweat soaked his shirt with long white stains under his arms and down the center of his chest. A sunburn reddened his cheeks with a look of embarrassment. “You’re a taskmaster, McGehee. It’s eight o’clock, for crying out loud. Was this your idea of a date?”

  Laura Ann laughed, tossing a freshly peeled carrot his direction. “Think fast, Game Warden.” Ian caught the flying orange stick in midair and crunched loudly into the treat.

  “Not a date,” she said. “But how about a rain check?”

  “Deal!” Ian walked up to her at the sink, wrapping his arms around her waist where she stood paring vegetables. He pulled her close, lowering his head over her shoulder.

  His warmth fit into the small of her back, his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm, pushing the wet fabric of her shirt against her skin. Ian’s head tucked into the small of her neck, the stubble of a day-old beard scratching against her. She pulled her hands up to meet him, and leaned her head into his.

  “I have a request for you,” he whispered. “An invitation.”

  “Really?” she asked, twisting in his arms. Her face came close to his, brushing against the sandpaper of his chin.

  “A romantic evening in Parkersburg. A splurge.”

  “No, Ian,” she said, shaking her head. “Save the money. Please.”

  Ian pulled her tighter, squeezing strong arms about her in a mock punishment. “No can do. Got big plans.”

  “Where?” she asked, pretending to fight his grip and squirm toward the sink. He held her firm.

  “The Blennerhassett,” he replied, drawing out each syllable.

  “That beautiful old place down by the court house?” she asked. “No. Too expensive.” She prayed he’d resist. Daddy let her wander into the hotel years ago when he was filing some papers at the Wood County Courthouse. The memory never faded, the elegance of the hotel’s reception area unlike anything she’d seen in her life, even more sophisticated than the Wells Inn in Sistersville. Walnut wainscot. Deep leather chairs. And amazing food, according to local lore. Her mouth watered.

  “Not gonna hear it, McGehee. This will be a special night.” He cleared his throat, looked away, then back at her. “Very special.”

  Laura Ann relaxed in his arms, lowering her hands to rest on his shoulders. “Very?”

  He nodded. “Our six-month anniversary.”

  “Anniversary?” she asked, tracing the line of his ear with a finger.

  “Since that first kiss. So … I have reservations. A week from Friday.”

  “I can’t stop you, then?” she asked with a grin, tapping his head with a freshly pared carrot.

  He grinned, red wrinkles creasing his face. “Not a chance.”

  “Then it’s a date. I accept.”

  On tiptoe, Laura Ann felt for a zippered container on the top shelf of her towel closet, then pulled it free. Seated on the toilet lid in her bathroom, she opened a padded pink makeup kit and, one by one, laid the contents in the freestanding porcelain sink to her left. Her hands shook as she touched each piece in the kit, a sorcerer’s bag of genetic paraphernalia that transformed her body into money—four times — at a price.

  Images of Daddy filled her mind when she reached into the tiny case. She saw him in her daydream, standing here at the sink morning after morning, the door always left ajar when he shaved. Many days she would watch him from the kitchen while she cooked and he scraped a stubbly black forest off his face.

  Daddy’s memory morphed into mental images of Ian, his tall frame hovering over this same sink hours ago, washing his face like Daddy used to do before dinner. She’d watched him from the kitchen too. Were Ian watching her now, he’d cry to see what she’d hidden from him in this package. Her little box of magic that helped service a debt she had no reliable means to repay. Daddy would cry for her sacrifice too, burdened that his self-inflicted disease led her to this place of desperation.

  She removed two foil packs with rows of pink, yellow, and green pills, each medication labeled by the day, a different color for each week. She held two new packs, each waiting to smooth her way for three weeks into the first phase of her next body preparation process. She laid aside a small foil-topped bottle labeled “Pergonal,” and its twin demon — a hypodermic syringe. She spread out the demon’s claws, three dozen sharp silver needles, recoiling at the sight of the razor-sharp points. Packed at the bottom of her pink Pandora’s box she retrieved a small spiral-bound notepad, filled with handwritten notes that recorded her days of oral supplements and self-administered injections. From the cover of the zippered pink box she pulled out a business card for Dr. Alexandros Katinakis. The doctor’s picture in the upper left corner of the card made her cringe. The caress of his fingers in her hidden places would long remain a disturbing memory.

  Laura Ann replaced the notebook, the card, and the paraphernalia, then zipped the case shut. Pink bag in hand, she stopped in the kitchen and took a box of matches from over the gas stove, then headed for the front door.

  A small pile of wood waited at the edge of the drive, her little campfire prepared when Ian drove away long after midnight. The few sticks and tinder she’d gathered would burn quickly, but not hot enough to endanger the farm on a dry night. Horizon to horizon, the Milky Way blazed above her in a cloudless sky as she lit the tiny bonfire, encouraging flames with a few puffs. A gentle night breeze carried smoke away from the house, and the dry wood caught fire. Within moments, her blaze licked upwards, seeking more fuel.

  Laura Ann set the pink zippered bag on top of the fire. Quickly, flames ate through the plastic, molten drips of burning pink falling into hot coals. Another burst of flame shot forth in a blaze of green and yellow — this time, the pill packs. A few moments later she heard a telltale hiss — the boiling of Pergonal in its bottle. More dripping balls of flame meant a melting hypodermic. Like an offering, she fueled a pyre with drugs, needles, and eight months of secrets and regrets. Venus suspended a waning crescent above her, heralding a new moon, a new month — and new life.

  Laura Ann stood transfixed by the dying fire. Embers glowed with all that remained of her former days. Her funerary obliterated the options she’d chosen when she had no other choice. Gone were the catalysts of four nightmares where cold hands suctioned precious innocence from her womb.

  Yet, somehow, her offering lacked closure.

  The drugs are gone, but my secret remains.

  CHAPTER 10

  JUNE 24

  Lucky nuzzled against Laura Ann’s leg in the woodshop, his jetblack fur speckled with shavings that spit from the edge of her blade. She pulled her tool off the lathe rest and nudged the cat aside with her foot, then moved the skew chisel back into a spinning oak cylinder, shaping the delicate surface of a decorative bead. For hours she’d turned lathe blanks, marking out cuts and shaping beads. Pungent reddish-beige oak dust covered her from shoulde
r to foot, and a pile of stool parts stood in the box at her side.

  Lucky jumped up and curled on the stack of today’s production. Fifty stools a month — two a day except Sundays—would match her income from the creep in Morgantown. With a barn full of Daddy’s red oak lumber and a bale of old jeans from the thrift store, all she needed was glue, beeswax, linseed oil — and time. Thanks to Ian’s last three days of help on the farm, she had time. Her heart picked up its pace when his image came to mind. Like a tall poplar, thin but majestic, Ian stood out in the crowd.

  Tiny chips flew from the lathe as her skew chisel advanced into the cut, paring away the gentle curve of a quarter-inch semicircle, one of three on her latest stool leg. With the deft pivot of the chisel and gentle swing of her arm and shoulder, she shaped the bead in a single pass, transforming the wood into a decorative post. Two more cuts of the sharp blade, and she had her latest leg ready to remove from the lathe. Curls of oak sheared away above the parting tool when she forced it into her pencil mark, denoting the end of the leg. Smooth red-tinged wood spiraled off the lathe over the top of her hand, curling to the floor like long locks of a wooden Rapunzel. The spinning cylinder separated from the lathe and she grabbed it midair with her left hand. Daddy would be proud.

  Fifty stools — two hundred legs — spun through the slicing bit of her chisel. She set the newest leg on the stack beside Lucky and turned off the machine, stepping back to admire her handiwork.

  “You’re sleeping on our next mortgage payment,” she announced, nudging the cat. Accustomed to being bumped by cows and busy farm girls, he hardly moved. She stooped to pick him up, dusting off his temporary coat of oak dust. He didn’t seem to care. “Run find someplace else to sleep. I have work to do.” She carried him from the shop into the light of a hot June afternoon sun and lowered him to the ground.

  Leaden with the threat of showers, grey clouds filled the western sky. She prayed rain would materialize soon. For five days she’d watched clouds pass by, headed to dump their load of life-giving water on the mountains at the east side of the state. Something about the Ohio River, twelve miles to the west, raised an invisible wall against moisture. Her parched ground thirsted for refreshment, the red clay scorched and cracked in the glare of an unrelenting sun. Even hay grasses wilted in this infernal torture. West Virginia could be the North Pole in January, but transform into a humid Death Valley five months later. Today it felt like Death Valley on steroids.

  Laura Ann headed for the garden, a still-thriving mix of tall sweet corn, tomatoes, and sprawling vines of squash and cucumbers. For half an hour she knelt in the soil and pulled at weeds that defied heat and hoe. Orchard grass fought to make a home in the tomatoes, tall shoots sucking up the water she fed each day to her precious plants. She ran her fingers along the sticky vines of ripening tomatoes. Next week she’d be canning dozens of jars of the red fruit, stewed, whole, or pureed into soup. Vitamin C bottled up for bitter winters.

  “Gonna rain.”

  Laura Ann jumped, surprised by the voice, but glad to hear it. Granny Apple’s greeting brought her off her knees, tomatoes in hand, with a smile.

  “Hi, Granny. Did you bring a basket?” She held forth a handful of her first Big Boy crop.

  “Got all I can handle, child. Mine are making like there’s no tomorrow. Been canning all morning.” She took the tomatoes from Laura Ann’s hands and helped her step over a vine heavy with cucumbers.

  They walked together to the house, Laura Ann dusting off her clothes as they approached the porch. “I’ll have fifty stools ready to ship at the end of the month. Ian said he’d help me truck them over to a buyer in New Martinsville.”

  Laura Ann shed her shoes at the door and held it open for Granny Apple. Her mentor wore her trademark summer outfit: white canvas tennis shoes, white knee-length jeans, and a button-up white cotton shirt. Fanning herself with her hand, Granny entered and set the tomatoes on the kitchen table. Laura Ann shut the door and flipped on the window air conditioner.

  “Rain’s comin’,” Granny said, then took a seat at the kitchen table. “Tomorrow. Maybe tonight.”

  “I sure hope so.” Laura Ann joined her at the table, freshly washed tomatoes on a plate. She carved the red juicy fruit into thick slices and set them before Granny along with a pair of forks and some salt.

  “Feel it in my bones, child. Never wrong.”

  “Ian helped me water the pumpkin field last night,” Laura Ann said in between bites of thick juicy red. “Trying to save the crop.”

  “Didn’t need to,” Granny said, wiping at a dribble of red juice on her own chin. “Gonna get real wet.”

  She pushed her second slice of tomato around on the plate, not looking up. Laura Ann watched her with the fascination of her childhood days, always amazed at this country woman who knew so much, but never revealed how she learned it.

  “Ian left late.” Granny Apple offered the statement as a simple matter of fact. Her eyes met Laura Ann’s, a wide smile growing on her wrinkled face. “He’s the one,” she announced at last. “Your dad liked that boy. He’s right for you.”

  “Thanks.” Laura Ann stifled a chuckle. “I’m glad you approve.”

  “I do. Question is, will he?”

  Laura Ann cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

  “Secrets, Laura Ann. They don’t become you.”

  Her heart skipped, then began its futile race. The way it did when Ian came to visit, or when she was up against Uncle Jack all by herself. “Secrets?” Laura Ann asked, looking down at the plate. She sat naked across the table from a woman who knew everything.

  Granny Apple picked up the used plates and forks. She took dishes to the sink in silence, washed the tomato juice off, and set the plates in the drainer. Laura Ann joined her, wiping the plates dry. Granny turned and extended a thin wrinkled hand, taking the drying towel and gripping Laura Ann’s hand for a moment.

  “You kept that allotment out of Jack’s hands until it was too late to plant burley. You won, honey. And he knows it.” She paused, then added, “It’s over.”

  Laura Ann nodded, willing her shaking hand to be still, but failed.

  “You didn’t sit around hoping for a way out.” She squeezed Laura Ann’s hand, the firm grasp of strong aged fingers and calloused palm. “Whatever you did to beat him, dear, it was courageous.”

  Laura Ann nodded, unable to look up.

  “But now it’s done, hear? It’s behind you, sweetheart. So learn from it — and don’t keep secrets.” Granny Apple released her hands, turned back to the sink, and washed away the last of the tomato juice from the basin.

  She dried her hands. Heading for the door, she offered one last warning. “Keep a good eye out. Jack won’t ever give up.”

  Laura Ann stood at the door to the front porch for a long time, staring at her friend in white who ambled across the field along their two-track dirt path, crossing the pasture on her way to the highway.

  Heavy black clouds massed to the west, like Granny Apple had predicted. A metallic aroma of approaching rain filled the air, carried by gusts that blew out of the west, across the Middle Island Creek. After weeks with no rain, anything that might fall today would shed off the hard clay and head straight for the creek. She prayed for a gentle soaking drizzle, but gathering clouds threatened otherwise. Dust devils kicked up across the farmyard, spiraling eddies of red dirt that whipped across trampled ground and disappeared into the distance beyond the barn.

  Her cows sensed the coming storm, all of them lying down in the pasture, noses into the wind. She was glad for the weather change, a temporary end to roasting temperatures that stressed her black-skinned herd. Even Lucky hunkered down, curled in a chair on the porch.

  Laura Ann sat down with the cat, lifting him into her lap to watch the weather. The shop and her stools could wait. Daddy would pull her out of her chores at a time like this, determined to watch storms and enjoy the cool. Unless, of course, they were pitching hay in the field — and then he would be r
acing to escape the death bolts that incinerated men who stood on hay wagons.

  Daddy. How fast six months had passed, half a year of living alone — despite the visits from Granny, or the rare opportunity to call on Auntie Rose. Half a year running the farm with help from Ian. Surviving calving season with all its stresses. Plowing, planting, and coaxing crops from the ground. Half a year of lonely nights, except those wonderful evenings when Ian kept her company. Always a gentleman, he never pressed to stay the night. Honor defined him.

  Fire and anvil. Rays of pink and orange shot through the cloud layers, slicing a ceiling of grey. The metallic odor of rain faded as the gusts died into a quiet lull. Humidity clamped her in its jaws again as she watched the storm head to her right, away from the farm. The cows lay still in the pasture, noses to the west. Daddy would chide her for trying to guess the weather from watching them. “Cows lie down because they’re full,” he told her once. “And they lie down before it rains to get a dry patch of ground.” He laughed every time he said it, like repeating a farmer’s joke he’d heard once. She hoped they kept their dry spot, praying that rain would soon find her farm.

  Lucky’s purr box rattled while Laura Ann rocked. “Learn to rest,” Daddy said once. She’d done that so rarely these last months. Even Ian commented she’d become obsessed with getting things done and encouraged her every day to slow down. It felt good to sit now and watch life go by, like she used to do with Daddy.

  Grasshoppers rubbed their legs together, filling the afternoon with a summer serenade. Shimmers of heat rose in the still air. “Listen to your little voice,” Daddy said once when she asked him about making a decision. “That’s what I do. I pray about how I should proceed, and then I listen.”

  “What do you hear?” she’d asked, leaning at his knee where he rocked one summer night.