by Lee Lynch
“You don’t have to worry about it. I begged him to come home and help his old man. He refused.”
Even Pops went to Bat before he came to her. Bitter, she was compelled to ask, “How is Momma? Aside from her memory.”
“That’s it, Daughter. You don’t know to look at her that anything’s wrong. It took the accountant to spot it because his father’s in a nursing home with a condition like your momma’s.”
“I tried to persuade Momma to let me do her book work.” She didn’t hide her annoyance. “I was afraid she was messing up.”
“Jaudon, your momma had no idea. It wasn’t her habit to be making bad decisions the way she has been for a while, but I didn’t know what to do. I never thought she might have taken ill.”
Her poor Pops. She reached for his hand. “Bat always joked Momma wasn’t right in the head. I’ll hazard a guess her mind’s been going for a long time.”
“He’s wrong about that, Daughter. I’m the one who married her and watched her build a business. She was smart as a whip. But he did speak the almighty truth when he said to me that you’re who I want. Said you’ve got the Batson brain for business.”
“Bat said that?” Her eyes filled up with tears. “My brother Bat?” She was going to write and tell him thank you. No, knowing her batty brother, he’d deny he ever said it.
“Yes, he did, and I agree with him. Your momma fears you’ll bring ruin on the family, looking the way you do and living as man and wife with Berry, but people don’t care about that as much as she thinks.”
Her pleasure at Bat’s compliment flamed into rage at Momma. She swallowed it out of care for her being so sick.
Pops went on. “Bat told me to tell your momma that Jaudon’s to take over. If it’s not working out, he’ll leave the service. Bat wants you to have that chance. He assured her that you’ll see to it that Momma and me will live a life of ease and plenty.”
The tears came again. Had she heard correctly? Was her hearing worse than she realized? Pops put his powerful arms around her.
“I never knew Bat thought that about me,” she said. Over Pops’s shoulder, she looked out at her store, heard the rain slow to a tapping on its metal roof. It was neat, clean, made them money, had low inventory losses; it was a perfect thing. Did she have it in her in fact to succeed at keeping all the stores running as well? For the first time it occurred to her that the years of name-calling, tears, and rejection she’d lived through so far might have made her strong enough to handle running a business.
She asked, “That’s what Bat and you want? For me to take over? I’m not even twenty-five, but I know the stores like nobody’s business. And I will for certain take care of the whole family.”
A surge of anxiety hit her hard enough to stop her tears. She sat hard on the stack of milk crates. “Will you stay in charge of the warehouse and the trucks, Pops?”
“Honey, your momma’s going to need some full-time care and I want to be the one to give it if she lives another forty years.”
She bit her lower lip. What does he see in Momma that keeps him so devoted? “That’s one thing Momma never let me in on, scheduling deliveries, supervising drivers. All I know is store level and how to keep the books.”
“Your cousin Cal was in transport in the service, same as Bat. You know he’s been working at that motorbike shop, but they can’t meet payroll half the time. Cal’s coming to work with us. I’ll train him and give him all the guidance he needs.
“The doc said your momma will require routine and she’ll have to be kept busy. I figure I’ll take her around to the stores and warehouse every day so she can keep tabs on things. You’ll let the crews know to agree to whatever she says, but not to carry anything out without your say-so. Will that be interfering too much?”
“Oh, no, Pops, I’ll be grateful for the help, to tell you the truth. And I’ll make Olive Ponder manager here if she wants it. She hasn’t heard anything more about her MIA son; this will keep her mind occupied.”
“You’re a kind soul, Daughter. I shouldn’t joke with your momma sick like she is and Mrs. Ponder hurting, but darn, I imagine we better skip this store when we make our rounds. Seeing a dark-skinned lady in full charge might send Momma screaming into the strawberry fields in the moonlight, stark nekkid.”
Jaudon laughed with him. She missed her Pops since Momma put him in the new house.
With a poke in the upper arm, she grinned at him, teasing him by stealing two of his expressions. “I’ll shoulder the load for you, Pops, and do you proud.”
Pops squeezed her to him again. “I swear, there’s no better child on earth than you, Miss Jaudon Vicker. There’s just enough of the devil in you to be my child.”
Did Pops truly love his shaggy daughter, she wondered, or was he being grateful she agreed to pick up the load? She wasn’t about to take on his private liquor business, but she’d speak with him about that later.
Pops asked her to stop by the new house as soon as possible. He sounded desperate.
Chapter Forty-three
Jaudon worked late that night and gave Berry the news the next morning, her voice raspier than usual from shedding a few tears.
“Well, that explains an awful lot about your momma. That rigid way she thinks, the way she bosses people around, her lack of compassion for her own children.”
“She is difficult.” Jaudon was cautious of being cruel despite how Momma treated her. She’d cried for Momma’s sudden decline, but also for the two decades of mistreatment Momma inflicted on her, and in utter relief at this unshackling. Today she was all rabbity. She wanted both to hide out in the woods until everything came around normal, and to hurry up taking over the stores. They planned a visit to see Momma Sunday.
Berry kept her hand on Jaudon’s shoulder as they drove to Momma’s house past the rare bursts of brightness from creamy loquat flowers, and the purple, orange, and yellow leaves of the sassafras.
Jaudon said, “I’ve been thinking about poor Momma. What in the world am I without her and her great gift of the business she never intended to give me? What other job could I do where being me doesn’t matter?”
Berry squeezed her shoulder. “Plenty.” She hoped the war between Jaudon and Momma might be ending. How would it have been between her and her own ma? She hoped not this stormy.
Jaudon gave a disgusted snicker. “Packing strawberries?”
The visit to Momma was grimmer than either of them imagined.
Pops said, “Your Momma’s gotten some worse all of the sudden. The doc says it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other whether people go downhill real quick or not.”
Berry was stunned to see Pops Vicker shuffling, a grizzly, shattered man. Jaudon was pale and sweaty-looking. She yearned to take Jaudon’s hand, to give her comfort and strength, and settled for standing so close their arms touched. She knew the day he’d stopped at Jaudon’s store was the last time Jaudon was ever going to see the Pops she’d always cherished.
When they entered the den, Momma was napping on her recliner.
“Momma, Jaudon’s here.”
Momma’s eyes snapped open. She looked like her usual self. Jaudon was certain her father, the doctor, both got it all wrong.
“Why, Jaudon, you came to visit! My own daughter. Look, Bat,” she said to Jaudon, “how pretty she is, smiling and ladylike. Come hug your momma.” Momma stretched her arms toward Berry.
Berry looked at Jaudon. The horrified hurt in Jaudon’s eyes made Berry recoil from Momma’s arms. At that moment she wished Jaudon’s hearing had declined in both ears.
“She gets confused,” Pops muttered. Berry saw that Jaudon didn’t hear him.
Berry blinked away tears. Everyone loses parents; she’d lost hers earlier than most, but the open wound of Momma wasn’t any less for Jaudon.
Jaudon folded her arms tight across her chest. She wasn’t going to let Momma make her ashamed about how she turned out anymore. As a matter of fact, at times she had a smidgeon of p
ride about herself. This was an eye-opener: growing up proved to be a matter of wrestling your demons. In Berry’s case, evil spirits. For Allison, it was the wrongs of the world. When it came to herself and Momma, it was waiting out the demon of being so different from each other.
They didn’t stay long after that. Pops had his hands full. He walked them to the door and pressed a check into Jaudon’s hand.
Jaudon reminded Pops of what she’d always promised: she’d take care of the business, from accounting to store coverage to dressing up for the dreaded chamber meetings. “The chamber will have to put up with who I am, Pops. Berry will help me find a nice pair of slacks and I have a good white shirt. Besides, there’s other ways into the business community,” she said, thinking of Rigo’s long-ago words about the loyalty of gay people and also of Olive, who, with the addition of Emmett’s wife to the crew, brought in more African Americans. Jaudon’s increasing grasp of Spanish helped too. “You’ll see, results speak louder than lipstick.”
She looked at the check and thrust it at Pops. “I can’t take this much money. Are you sure you didn’t put in too many zeros?”
Pop said, “Yes, Daughter. Vacations are few and far between in our business. I raided the store account to sign one last check on it. Shop for a dependable car. We can call it a company car and take a deduction. Go off somewhere for a couple of weeks to break it in. Or fly someplace you’ve always wanted to go, far from our hurricanes. We never took you kids anywhere, Jaudon. Go have some fun.”
“We don’t have any business living high on the hog like that, Pops.”
“Your Momma made us a bucket of money, Daughter. You don’t see it because she squirrels it away.”
“You’ll need it for Momma’s care, Pops.”
“The health insurance we’ve been carrying despite her squawking at every payment? Don’t worry, if you don’t make us another dime in profit, we’ll be okay.”
The thought of a vacation, of traveling away from Rainbow Gap, scared the bejesus out of Jaudon more than ever, with her hearing problem. Plus people were used to how she looked around here. In a strange place she’d be running the gauntlet of stares and kids’ barbed questions and the torture of being reminded she was different every step of the way.
“How can I leave the stores?” she asked Pops. “And, Berry, I can’t recall a time since we’ve been grown when we spent more than a day together without work or school between us.”
She saw the delight on Berry’s face and knew she wasn’t going to refuse her this pleasure. If Pops faced Momma failing, she determined to face the perils of leaving Rainbow Gap.
“I hope we get along,” said Berry, teasing now.
“This may be the last chance we get to have so much time off.”
“Oh, no. I want to see places with you. The Grand Canyon, Mardi Gras, Allison’s Oregon, New York City, the White House. You’d better get a very comfortable car because we’ll put lots of miles on it.”
Jaudon didn’t want to think about all that. “I suppose we don’t want the Bays represented by a nasty van and a foreign scooter,” she said, making her first decision as the new boss of the whole company. “I never thought of that before. I won’t buy a Cadillac. How about a Buick? I’ve been admiring a new Electra that comes through for wine.”
Pops frowned in the way she knew meant he was pondering. “You’re a CPA—you know you can write off the whole trip if you stop to visit some stores along the way. I’ll try not to bankrupt us before you return. Berry, I’m counting on you to keep Jaudon from coming up with wild ideas. The Beverage Bays may be old-fashioned, but there’s nothing wrong with that. People want tried and true.”
“I won’t abandon the foundation, Pops, but don’t you think a show of ambition—advertising, weekly sales—will keep us competitive?”
He scratched his chin. “I’d say a little bit of that won’t hurt. Remember, you don’t want to get too big for your britches, Daughter. Momma’s first principle is: don’t lose money.”
“I think I’ll make myself a big sign to always remind me. Meanwhile, if we go away, would you look in on Gran sometimes? She’ll be all alone except for Zefer and Toby and there’s been someone hanging around, stopping to watch the place from the road.”
Pops’s eyebrows shot up. “You know I’ll get over there every chance I get. Me and your momma can drive by on our rounds starting tomorrow. We’ll visit too. You gals are away all day.”
“That’ll make both of us feel better.” She turned to Berry. “We’ll see what we can sell the van for, and take out a loan to buy you something to run around in.”
“A loan? That sounds so grown up it’s scary, Jaudon.”
She smiled in agreement, but her mood was solemn, more so than high school graduation, her promotion to store manager, or earning the letters CPA after her name. “I wasn’t planning on growing up this soon either.”
Pops hugged them both.
“Don’t y’all dare have a hurricane while we’re away,” said Berry.
They stepped outside and Pops went to Momma, where he belonged.
Rejection, wrenching sadness, excitement about her Beverage Bays, love for Pops, confusion, filled her up and sped around her insides—her own personal storm cell. Momma used to say a Bible line to her and Bat when they were being hellions, as she called them, though Jaudon realized that’s how kids acted and there was nothing wrong with it. The line was something to do with putting aside childish things.
“You know,” said Berry, “we both lost our mommas early on.”
Jaudon looked at her, “We did?”
“I’m surprised I never thought of it before, that we never talked about it. I lost mine to Pa’s motorcycle dreams, yours to Momma’s obsession with status.”
“Bat once told me how lucky we were compared to you being motherless.”
“I used to think that too.”
“And I wished our momma would take off like yours.” She groaned at how unfunny life was, and imagined Berry vanishing in front of her very eyes into a fine mist she tried to capture. Her heart, her heart survived losing Momma’s love, but wouldn’t survive losing Berry. She might as well lay it on a rock and smash it with a sledgehammer. What could she do? Nothing, she told herself. It wasn’t her fault she never really had someone to mother her, and it wouldn’t be her fault if Berry disappeared too. Whoever, whatever she lost, in the end she, Jaudon, was the one with that sledgehammer, she was the one with the say-so over her heart and soul.
Berry looked at Momma’s symmetrical, precisely trimmed trees and thought of her ma and pa. They’d given her this life. It was about a week ago when the Great Spirit told her to stop tugging at them, to leave them be. She decided since then to get on with things, blossom where they planted her, honor them and their crazy love by how she lived. Aloud, she said, “Who knows where life leads anyone?”
Jaudon pictured their pond bench and two little girls reading books side by side, unaware of what’s ahead of them. As she looked, they dissipated, little ghosts of themselves, a long time ago.
In her determined, obtuse way, she said, “I’m not going anywhere.” She didn’t for one minute regret leaving her heart in Berry’s careful hands. It took a load off her to know this time she was no needy infant. It was her decision to make, her heart to offer, to give, to protect. She wondered if she was up to it and determined to be up to it. If nothing else, she had Momma’s grit.
“Good.” Berry took her hand. “Good. It leads nowhere but vacation—with you. I’d love to see Oregon just once. Bat’s friend John and Allison both say it’s heaven on earth. Cullie says there are a lot of people like us there, but you decide, Jaudon. I want to be with you, wherever you are.”
“Is it cold there?”
“There are such things as coats, Jaudon. Maybe between me and a Tampa Spartans jacket you’d be warm enough.”
“A Spartans jacket? For me?” She’d coveted those jackets as a kid while listening to games in the tree house
.
“I imagine we can afford one for our trip.”
She closed her eyes and imagined the tree house as it was this morning when she held Berry’s hand.
Offered up to the sky by its mother tree it looked forlorn. Clouds scudded past it, too hurried to pause; breezes buffeted it, as if Jaudon’s little castle in the air was in their way. Neglect worked fast in Florida’s damp heat. The plywood was warped, the ladder missing a rung. The wolf spiders must be mammoth by now, battling for mildewed space with one another and with generations of baby snakes lengthening by the day, grown snakes robbing birds’ nests in the higher branches of the old oak. She wanted to keep up her tattered shelter. Why not use this vacation to fix it, expand it.
Or was that a pitiful excuse to get out of traveling? Jaudon never once pictured herself away from the Beverage Bays, way out West. It might as well be the moon. But if going made her Berry happy, she wanted to be the first one on that airplane.
The old tree house would be there when they came home.
About the Author
Lee Lynch is the namesake and first recipient of The Golden Crown Literary Society Lee Lynch Classic Award for her novel The Swashbuckler. Among other honors, she has received the James Duggins Mid-Career Award in Writing, has been inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame, is a three-time Lammy finalist, earned an Alice B. Reader Award, and is the winner of three additional Goldies. She is a GCLS Trailblazer.
Bold Strokes Books has also published An American Queer, The Raid, Beggar of Love, and Sweet Creek and has made Lynch’s backlist available, including The Morton River Valley Trilogy and her short story collections. Lynch’s long-running column, “The Amazon Trail,” appears nationally. Her short stories can be found in many anthologies.
Originally from Queens, New York, she resides in the Pacific Northwest with her wife, Elaine Mulligan Lynch.
