by Lee Lynch
“That’s a deal.”
“Do you want to ask Allison and Cullie?”
The question jarred Jaudon. As harsh as she was about Allison, she’d come to understand that the so-called patriarchal government she’d been raised to love was thesame government that took half her hearing. It made her so angry she didn’t want to think about what happened. Allison stirred it all up every time she saw her. “I wanted time for the two of us.”
“I do too. I don’t know why I said that. Or it might be that I do know why. I want them to stay together always, the same as us. Wouldn’t it be nice to have another couple to do things with once in a while?”
“What about Rigo and Jimmy Neal?”
“You know I love them to pieces, Jaudon. I need woman company too, for fun times, as much as meetings.”
“Because I’m not that much of a woman, I guess.”
Gran gave her a severe look. “Jaudon, if you don’t stop acting like a hound dog that can’t find the duck, I’ll knock you so hard you’ll see tomorrow today.”
“Aw, heck, Berry, Gran, can’t a person talk about her shortcomings without having more shortcomings pointed out to her?”
Gran said, “I’m trying to help build you up, not pick on you, Jaudon Vicker.”
The TV advertisement ended and they sat watching in silence until Edith Bunker got Gran hysterical again by telling her doctor to take two aspirin and get some rest.
Berry said, “That’s what we should do, Jaudon.”
“What?” asked Gran.
“Take an antiworry pill and get some rest.”
Berry said she wasn’t as down in the dumps as she had been.
The threatened freeze never amounted to much. Jimmy Neal and Olive both needed hours at the store, so when the weather warmed up by the weekend, Berry and Jaudon were raring to go out on the small boat.
Gran said, “How about I make you girls a picnic lunch? My senior group went to Pleasant Grove Reservoir about a month ago—the reclaimed phosphate mine? The reservoir makes a nice clean lake. We saw wood ducks, bunny rabbits, one of those lacy-shawled anhinga birds, and egrets galore. It’s brand new, just open to the public, so you might want to go before every family in Lecoats County and their shirttail cousins discover the place.”
Jaudon popped up, saying to Berry, “I’ll hose down Pops’s skiff and hook it up to the boat trailer before we go, Berr.” She hugged Gran and rushed out to clean the boat.
They left the house by eight a.m. Sunday after dousing themselves with sunscreen and a homemade lemon eucalyptus oil Gran swore kept bugs away. They applied it to Zefer’s collar too, though she protested by hammering the kitchen rug a few times with her snout and throwing a sneezing fit.
Lines of fat oaks spread the length of Eulalia Road. Sun made the moss drapery sparkle this time of day and streamed slanted rays along their path, fashioning a dreamy light. Berry pictured this as the passage to heaven, if there was a heaven, and if there wasn’t, the sight was heaven enough.
They rode with the van windows open to the morning cool. Zefer, all thirty-four pounds of her, sat on Berry’s lap, head out the window.
“A whole day together,” said Berry.
“No ornery patients or customers. No politics.”
“We’ll wash this dog soon as we hit home, Jaudon. Didn’t you smell that she stinks on ice?”
“I was going to wash her, but I got busy.”
“You needn’t look so apologetic. I was too busy myself.”
The skiff was a shallow nine-footer made out of composite materials. They wrestled it into the water. Jaudon almost went under, losing her footing as she pulled the boat out deeper, but got aboard with Berry’s help. She rowed while Berry, shoulders bare above her halter top, settled in the stern. They both sat on red combination life saver/seat pads, and they put their picnic blanket under the flat bow for Zefer, who turned up her nose at it and jumped to stand on top of the bow, tongue lolling, leash hanging.
She rowed to the center of the reservoir. A gang of ducks paddled away from them. Otherwise there was no one on the water.
As if she was reading Jaudon’s mind, Berry said, “Just mallards.”
There was one car parked at the edge of the road and they heard very young children calling to parents in the woods.
Jaudon fished for a while, catching small ones and two legal bluegills before letting them go. By the time she put her rod away, she smelled almost as bad as Zefer.
“Phew. You need a dousing.” Berry scooped up handfuls of water to splash on her.
“Berry, that’s cold.” She shook her head to empty the water from her ear. Zefer barked. When Berry didn’t stop, Jaudon took the bait pail and filled it. Zefer nearly dropped them in the drink leaning against the gunwale and yipping in excitement. At one point she tried chasing her wiry tail, but the boat was too small for a decent chase.
Berry gave Jaudon a threatening grin, hands in the water.
“Berry, I’m soaked now. You stop or I’ll slather bait slime on your sexy top.”
Berry surrendered, laughing. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing you have fun.”
Jaudon thought Berry’s smiling eyes looked as warm as a mug of hot chocolate in last week’s chill. She emptied the pail over the side.
The lake was surrounded by evergreens: tall, straight slash pines, their dark limbs reaching wide, bushy wax myrtles, and old longleaf and loblolly pines with top notches of greenery. Their shadows were still long over the lake, keeping the water clear and cool and the fish active. The air smelled of wood and warmed honey. The day was sunny, but the cooler nights took the sting out of the heat and by ten Jaudon guessed it was about seventy-five degrees, perfect to her mind. Without warning, a screen of white birds swept upward into the pines.
“This is glorious,” said Berry. “Angel, I truly believe we live in the most beautiful place in the world.”
“You won’t catch me disagreeing.”
“I wish I brought a fan though. As if—” Berry’s sharp laugh made Jaudon look up. “As if a fan is any defense against Florida heat.”
“A second ago you claimed you loved it here.”
“I do, but occasionally I imagine the horror of air on fire. Don’t you think that’s what hell is?”
“Berry, you’re overworked. Relax and don’t be thinking about such matters. You know I don’t believe in hell. Wasn’t Georgia this hot?”
“Almost, but my memory says it’s brighter here.”
“It does get gosh awful hot, the sun.”
“There are moments I believe the whole South is not survivable, Jaudon. How can a woman withstand winds that level buildings or tear trees from thousand-year seatings? From waters that would as soon drown us as feed the plants? Mother earth isn’t the enemy—until she is.”
“Mother Florida.” Jaudon was thinking of Momma.
“Let’s us someday go north far enough to see snow. We’ve never seen snow, Jaudon.”
“We have in the movies.” She rigged up some shade for Berry with a piece of tarp and fishing line.
She stretched out next to Berry against the stern, their legs under the center bench, heads propped on their seat cushions, Zefer on the bench itself. They held hands and took turns turning the pages of their paperback books. A jet from MacDill crossed the sky, leaving a streak of white contrail like skywriting in a language they didn’t know.
There was something about Berry’s light touch, both provocative and soft as a cat’s belly fur. She squeezed closer and slid her hand up inside Berry’s shorts.
“Jaudon,” Berry said in a quiet voice which sounded, to Jaudon, a mix of shock and pleasure. Berry let her book fall open on her breasts.
Jaudon removed her hand. She played a tattoo on Berry’s inner thigh.
Berry squealed and squirmed. “Angel. My angel.”
Jaudon was too desirous to tease Berry for long. She found the elastic waist and half pulled the shorts down. Berry moved enough to open hersel
f. She was so wet Jaudon’s hand slid before it found its place again. In the full heat of the sun and the heat of herself Berry raised her knees, let them fall askew, and lifted herself to Jaudon’s ever faster fingers. She slammed her bottom on the boat’s bottom as she came.
Jaudon didn’t stop. With two fingers inside Berry she was able to satisfy her again. Berry lay unmoving afterward, her breath slowing, while Jaudon adjusted her shorts and placed Berry’s book on her chest.
The sun was straight overhead. Grinning too widely to speak, sopping up sweat from her forehead with Jaudon’s bandana, Berry watched Jaudon row them to shore and maneuver the trailer down the ramp. They secured the skiff and ate their lunch at a picnic table in the shade. The new grass could not have looked more green.
“Key lime pie, Berry?”
“Mercy me. Gran must have got up before us to bake it.”
No trails were established yet, so they walked the dog on the quiet pine needles, smiling at each other, holding hands in broad daylight. The small bunny Gran predicted was peering at them before scuttling under some brush.
Jaudon said, “I like this doing nothing kind of day.”
“And nothing bad happening.”
“Oh, I thought we were bad enough.”
“You surely were, Ms. Vicker.”
“All for a good cause.” Hands on hips, she narrowed her eyes at Berry. “You’re doing better?”
“It gives a body perspective, getting away from it all. We’ve run ourselves flatter than a gander’s arch since we started college. I was so petrified of not passing every course and not measuring up at work, I never gave myself breathing space to build some confidence.”
They reached the van and Jaudon opened the side door. Zefer jumped in. “You didn’t let that stop you,” said Jaudon. “You didn’t let it show most of the time either.”
Once in the van, Berry opened up more. “There was no need to burden you. Your plate was just as full. It seems I always teeter on the brink of failure. Do you think someone, like Eddie Dill, put a curse on me? As fast as I was running toward being an effective nurse and a decent person, my fears were chasing me down. I was on tenterhooks from second to second.”
Jaudon started the van and tooled through the park. “What makes you think Eddie put a curse on you? Or knew how?”
“Because I walked away and left him in that sinkhole. Because he comes from people who did that sort of thing. Every time I remember that night I start trembling. The evening itself was a curse.”
Jaudon hadn’t seen Eddie go down, but the very thought of it made her claustrophobic. “You know there was nothing to be done for him, Berry. Remember, the firefighters and the police and the ambulance came and stood around shaking their heads. What were you going to do, grab hold of the truck and yank it onto solid ground while the sinkhole was active?”
“You know there’s always someone haunting my life, Jaudon. First Ma and Pa leaving, next your bullies at school, Eddie Dill, Lari Hand. They’re like flying curses, flittering their way into my mind when I’m not looking.” She shook her shoulders to shrug off the scraped-raw sensation the thought of them gave her.
Jaudon worried that Berry was caught up in a nasty spiderweb and tangling worse with her struggle. As she did with upgrading the Beverage Bays, she tried and tried to puzzle out how to work Berry loose.
Berry said, “I’ve been thinking more about Eddie’s death because Allison asked if Gran wanted to sell the Stinky Lane property for a women’s free clinic, or for women’s land. They could put up a few small cabins for women passing through who might be in trouble and need a place to stay.”
What remained of the pleasure of the day ran out of Jaudon. She was aware of the ringing in her ear for the first time in hours. She stopped in the park roadway and looked at Berry’s pretty, expectant face. “Aw, heck, Berry, that woman is unhinged. Does she think because she found a refuge here, we need to scoop up more troublemakers?”
“No, Jaudon.” She put a hand on Jaudon’s bare arm for emphasis. “She’s thinking more like women in trouble than troublemakers.”
Zefer stuck her nose between the seats and Berry scratched behind her ears.
“Same thing,” Jaudon said, squeezing Berry’s thigh, “when Allison Millar’s involved. I’m enjoying my day and won’t let her goofy pie-in-the-sky ideas bug me. Anyone who builds on Stinky Lane has got to be—”
“I know, I know. But if Gran lets down her guard for even one minute, the developers will find a way if Allison doesn’t. Look at what they’re doing over in Orlando. Walt Disney is destroying every bit of land he can buy. Gran wants to let her land be, but if women used it wisely…” She covered Jaudon’s hand. “Gran once told me that the Seminoles believe all creatures and inanimate objects have spirits that are set free when we die or an object breaks. Eddie’s spirit must be soaked into Gran’s land.”
Right before the exit from the park, Jaudon stopped and waited for a large tortoise to cross the road toward the reservoir. They watched it stump along, as if carrying the troubles of all the humans in Florida.
“Berry, that turtle’s taking your curse away on its shell. When she finds water she’ll drown the darn thing, guaranteed.” She wasn’t what she’d call lying, and she might have been telling the truth.
Chapter Thirty-four
Jaudon didn’t want to upset Gran by bringing up about Berry’s state of mind, the way she felt cursed. It was Cullie, with her font of common sense wisdom, who she’d like to mull things over with, but not in front of Allison. She went to Rigo. He was packing up his texts at the library carrel where they first met.
“You’d think,” said Rigo, “it would be my father’s people who wrote the book on curses and all that stuff, but every time I see my mom, she’s the one who presses another stone on me. Some are for love, others for money and luck and protection. I have a whole box of them at my father’s place and a list of their powers.”
She followed Rigo to his off-campus apartment. Jimmy Neal had moved in and he lifted her in the air with a hug while she protested. Rigo worked at the Bay once a week. Jimmy Neal took all the hours available to keep himself in school.
Jimmy Neal said, “His mom even gives me dried lavender and peppermint sachets for calm and sleep.”
“I smell the peppermint.”
“I have a little bit of insomnia,” said Jimmy Neal.
“No you don’t. I keep you awake snoring like a stock car that dropped its muffler,” Rigo said as he came out of the bedroom with a small wooden box. The three of them sat close together on the couch to examine the stones.
“I’ll be,” said Jaudon. “Those are too beautiful to touch.”
“My mother loves this stuff. She reads the tarot and uses a Ouija board and says she’s a psychic.”
“And she’s a showgirl?”
“Was. My father made her retire from that. Look, her list says malachite will protect a person.” He held out an oval piece about an inch and a half long. It was made of wavy stripes in various shades of green.
Jaudon held it in her palm, skeptical. “You think this will undo a curse?”
“Onyx is another one,” said Jimmy Neal. “Rigo gave me one of those to carry in my pocket.”
“Does it work?”
“Jaudo, I don’t believe in curses—don’t ask me.”
Jimmy Neal said, “What does it matter if it does or doesn’t? It’s a comfort to me to carry.”
“Take that one, Jaudon.”
She drew her hand away. “No, it’s too precious, and your mother wants you to have it.”
“Give it to Berry. Tell her to keep it with her always.” He looked at his mother’s list again and read aloud about malachite’s healing and protective properties. “When those shadows come into her mind, Berry can rub a thumb on it or grip it tightly.”
Jaudon slipped the rock into a buttoned pocket for safekeeping.
Rigo told her the news about Lari had hit the streets.
; “What about her?”
“People know she fell apart and got thrown in the nuthouse.”
“It could be she’s not the only nut, Rigo.”
“The feminists?”
“Berry’s batch of them anyway. I never saw such arguing, but they’re careful to stay off each other’s toes. There’s a lot of talk about men. The straight women defend them while the women who came out lambaste you guys but good. Meanwhile Berry, Judy, Mercie, and Allison are trying to pull the others together to work on big goals.”
Jimmy Neal asked, “Didn’t you say Lari took up with the Lewis woman?”
Rigo shook his head. “That was short-term. Lari came sniveling to me about Mercie turning tail after a few nights together. She didn’t understand why she was dumped.”
“Have you gone to see Lari?”
“I don’t seek her out, Jaudo. Not after she pulled that stunt on you. Anything new about her?”
“Nope. She’s disappeared.”
“She was always strange,” Rigo said. “I never thought she was crazy, but she smokes dope like it’s going out of style.”
“She is wild. We know that. A person can only be so wild before she goes off the deep end.”
“And sharp-tongued enough to draw blood.”
“Bowed up is what Gran called her when they met. The way a snake bows up his head before he strikes?”
Jimmy Neal wrung his big hands. “I don’t know the woman, but should you abandon her? Being gay can make anyone mentally ill. Near did me in before I saw I was being lied to about loving guys being unnatural. Once I opened my eyes, it was as plain as the nose on my face.”
Was that what was happening to Berry? Jaudon wanted to rush home and save her.
“I knew this guy who killed himself over it,” Jimmy Neal told them. “If that’s not a way of being sick, I don’t know what is.”
That spooked Jaudon more. “I have to go soon, guys.”
“It’s tough out there,” said Rigo, as if he didn’t hear her. “I know a dancer who got beaten up so badly he’s never going to dance or walk normally again. At least he lived. He was at his neighborhood gas station, washing his windshield so the attendant didn’t have to. Two men from the street where he lived walked by and called him a faggot. When he didn’t answer, they started whaling on him. The cops came quickly, but the animals were twice his size and had already stomped on his feet.”
