“But she won’t see him.”
“Maybe we can take her to the hospital.”
“There ain’t no way you’re gettin’ Miss Cleta to the hospital unless she’s out cold, and I ain’t goin’ to be the one that bats her over the head.” I stared back up at the sky in time to see it switch from orange to pink. “Nope. We’re goin’ to have to come up with somethin’ else.” The crickets and frogs joined up in a boisterous chorus, and I smiled. “That’s the sound of summer.”
“They’re loudest after a particularly nice day, you notice that? My momma used to say they were singin’ praises to God for another fine day.”
Gemma’s voice was touched by that same husky tone of remembrance that always tickled her throat when she talked about her late momma or daddy, and I reached my hand out to take hers. “Then your momma and daddy have the best seat in the house.”
She squeezed my hand in reply, and we lay there amid that peaceful buzz until the moon lit a path back home.
Luke had stayed after supper to help Daddy work on his old truck, and when we reached the house, he was still under the hood tinkering with things I couldn’t identify and didn’t want to. In the lantern light, Daddy was nowhere to be seen, and I took the opportunity to get under Luke’s skin.
“Ain’t nothin’ more attractive to a woman than a man workin’ with his shirtsleeves rolled up,” I sang out.
Luke stood up so sharply at the sound of my voice, he smacked his head on the hood.
I cringed and ran over to give his head a good rub. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Even in the insufficient light, I could see his ears light up pink, but they were tinted for more than my benefit this time.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daddy come around the truck. I turned slowly toward him only to find his eyebrows raised up to his hat.
“Oh . . . there you are, Daddy.” With one hand still cuddled up in Luke’s hair, I tried to smile, but Daddy’s expression was like an antidote to smiling. “Looks like you’re workin’ hard,” I managed to murmur. I looked at Gemma for help and found her struggling to keep the corners of her mouth down. I guess Daddy’s face was only withering to me and Luke.
But she came to my rescue no matter how humorous it all seemed to her. My hand was still on Luke’s head like it had been glued there, and she took me by the arm, pulling me toward her so it would drop away. “Bet some lemonade would hit the spot right about now. Me and Jessie’ll go fetch some.”
I tripped along behind her, taking the steps into the house without grace.
“You always got to say things,” she whispered as we entered the kitchen.
“Most people do say things, Gemma Teague!”
“Not the things you say. Talkin’ flirty to Luke in front of your daddy.”
“I didn’t know he was there.”
“You best stop your teasin’, anyhow.” She grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and pushed them into my hands. “It makes Luke nervous.”
“I’m only playin’.”
“You ain’t only playin’, and you know it. You’re fishin’ for his feelin’s is what you’re doin’.” She held Momma’s best pitcher in her left hand and grabbed my right hand with her own. “Hold the glass steady, for heaven’s sake. I’m tryin’ to pour.”
“Keep your voice down about Luke,” I whispered, steadying the glass against the kitchen table. “Momma’s in the den.”
“Well, you should leave him be, is all I’m sayin’. He’ll come around in his own time.”
Momma’s voice rang out from the hallway. “Who’ll come around in his own time?”
I should have known better. My momma had been a momma long enough to hear a whisper better than a shout, and I dropped my head with a sigh.
A bead of lemonade sloshed over the side of the glass, sliding down to rest on my hand. Gemma scolded me for it. “Keep it still, I said.”
“Who’s that you’re talkin’ about?” Momma asked again, joining us in the kitchen.
I scanned my mind for anything that would fill in for the truth without really being a lie, but Gemma was too quick for me. “Luke,” she said plainly. “Jessie’s been teasin’ him again, and her daddy heard it.”
I scowled at her. She never looked up to catch it, but I knew she felt it.
“You’re goin’ to wear that boy out.” Momma cut up a strawberry and plopped the slices into the glasses. “I never took you for a tease, Jessilyn. I swear, you surprise me more days than not.”
“Well, if Luke Talley’s goin’ to take so long to see me for a woman, I ain’t goin’ to sit around twiddlin’ my thumbs.”
Momma poked an elbow into my ribs and nodded toward the kitchen window. “It’s open,” she whispered.
We all stopped dead still, but Luke’s voice floated in on the breeze, and I figured if he was able to talk about carburetors, he hadn’t heard any of what we’d been saying.
Momma shook her head and added some cookies to the tray that Gemma had set the lemonade on. “No matter what you say, Jessilyn Lassiter, you ain’t all the tomboy you think you are.” She handed the tray to me and patted my cheek once her hands were free. “Next time you figure on workin’ your womanly charms, you best make sure your daddy’s out of earshot.”
I gave her a smile in reply and carried the tray out, hoping Daddy had softened a bit. But he wasn’t around when I got there, and I wondered why I couldn’t have saved my comment for now instead.
Luke was leaning against a tree, one foot propped up on it, wiping his hands on an old cloth.
I peeked under the truck just to be sure. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Gone off to the field shed for a tool.” He lowered his voice for safety’s sake. “You best not go teasin’ me like that again. Makes your daddy think I’m takin’ liberties or somethin’.”
“How would you be takin’ liberties when I’m the one doin’ the talkin’?”
“Don’t matter who’s sayin’ what. He’s bound to think there’s somethin’ goin’ on between us, and you know well and good there ain’t.”
I looked away from him, the tray starting to shake a bit, more from frustration than nervousness. I set the tray on a nearby stump and walked over to lean against the truck, never letting my eyes drift to his. “Ain’t nobody in their right mind who’d ever say there was somethin’ between us.” The hood was still up, and I turned my back to him and peered inside. “Looks like a bunch of nothin’ if you ask me.”
I felt him walk up behind me, and those familiar prickles started parading down my spine. “I wasn’t tryin’ to put you out, Jessie.”
“Didn’t say you were. You’re right. There ain’t nothin’ between you and me for Daddy to get his back up about. He ought to know you don’t see me as much more’n a sister.”
He put his hands on my waist and turned me to face him. “You may be a lot of things to me, Jessilyn, but you ain’t like no sister.”
I didn’t get much more than a second to stare at him before Daddy’s singing sounded from the back of the house, but it was enough to make the rest of the world fall away. Luke stepped back but held my gaze, and I sauntered slowly backward, smiling at him as a way of saying good night. He returned my smile with a dimpled one of his own, and I turned around and floated into the house. Momma and Gemma were chatting in the den, but one look at my face made them take a break.
“You all right, Jessilyn?” Momma’s face spread into a sly grin. “You seem all flushed.”
“Ain’t nothin’, Momma. Just warm outside, is all.”
“Uh-huh.” Gemma’s gaze filtered down to my waist. “That why you got grease prints on your dress?”
I looked down to find perfect fingerprints decorating my sides like a sash. “Oh. I was around the truck and all . . .”
Momma’s face showed signs of trying not to laugh, but she managed to nod in the direction of the stairs. “Best get that off before your daddy figures out where them smudges came from.”
“I don’t know w
hat you’re talkin’ about,” I murmured without a lick of conviction.
“Well, all the same . . . get on upstairs and put on somethin’ fresh.”
“Yes’m.” I hurried upstairs, but once I got that dress off, I laid it carefully across the bed like it was made of glass. Most times, the first thing I’d do once I’d gotten something on my dress was to soak it, but not this time. Those fingerprints were like a trophy to me. Dressed only in my slip, I slid down onto the window seat to admire the dress, and every time I looked at the dark smudges, I remembered Luke’s touch.
Chapter 5
Men like Delmar Custis just aren’t satisfied with peace and quiet. Delmar had a cotton farm with a rickety old house plopped in the middle. Most days he did nothing but sit on that run-down porch of his with some kind of liquor in one hand and a cigarette in the other. From what I saw, the only reasons he ever got off his backside were to lay into his wife or one of his hired hands or to head over to the bar in town, where nine times out of ten he ended up making trouble.
My daddy would tell me that men like Delmar argue and fuss so much, there wasn’t any use in debating with them. “People who are wantin’ a fight will find a way to get one whichever way they can,” he’d say. “Don’t matter to them who’s right.”
Well, he was right, I’m sure, like Daddy mostly was. But I wasn’t of any mind to keep from trying to convince somebody they were stupid when I got the chance. I’d been that way from the time I could put words together into sentences, and all the years that had passed didn’t do much to change that except I’d learned a whole lot more words to use in my arguments. After all, if a man’s a fool, I figure he ought to know about it.
Which is why I stood toe-to-toe with Delmar Custis and Sheriff Clancy that Wednesday afternoon, telling them just what I thought about Klansmen and their plans for backhanded dealings in Cole Mundy’s barn.
“You ain’t the sheriff in these here parts, Jessilyn Lassiter. Seems you still ain’t figured that out.”
“I don’t need no badge to know evil when I see it.”
Miss Cleta had sent me into town in Mr. Stokes’s taxi to fetch some groceries for her, and one of the bags started slipping from my hands. Neither man moved to help me; they just watched me use my hip to bump it back up into my arm.
“Sheriff, I didn’t call you over to listen to this man run off at the mouth. I called you over here because he was threatenin’ me.”
Delmar huffed and tobacco juices shot out of his mouth. “I ain’t done nothin’ to this girl.”
“Except step in my way so I couldn’t pass.”
He swept his hand to the side like he was putting the whole town on display for me. “This here’s a pretty big space for me to take up all by my lonesome. Seems to me I’d be mighty hard-pressed to block your way.”
“The way I see it, if a lady’s walkin’ down the sidewalk and a man sidles up in front of her and doesn’t budge, he’s goin’ out of his way to be threatenin’. And that’s just what you done.”
“Anybody say you got the right-of-way?”
“Most times what we call manners says I have the right-of-way, but then what am I thinkin’? I ain’t talkin’ to someone who was raised on such things. Men who go around beatin’ their womenfolk ain’t too likely to be chivalrous.”
Delmar drew his hand back like he was planning to whack me with it just like I figured he’d done to his wife a time or ten. I gripped the bags in my arms extra hard like I had some strange notion they would protect me against Delmar’s beefy hand, but Sheriff Clancy put his arm in front of Delmar like a barricade.
“Now that’s enough of this nonsense,” he said. “Jessilyn, I ain’t got no reason to arrest Delmar. We best just let this all go now, you hear?”
“I ain’t askin’ you to arrest the man, Sheriff. I just figured maybe you could let him know he don’t own the sidewalk, so he should let a woman pass if she sees fit to.”
Delmar shook his head with an expression that implied I was the dumbest woman he ever laid eyes on. “You just can’t shut your mouth, can you? I’m tellin’ you now, girl, you better back off.”
“All right, that’s enough.” Sheriff Clancy stepped in between us and gave Delmar a little shove. “Everybody needs to move on and let this lie.”
I had cold food to get back to Miss Cleta’s, and for her sake I might have done just what Sheriff Clancy ordered if things hadn’t taken the turn they did. I hiked up my bags, gave Delmar Custis one last look that told him I thought he was less than worthless, and turned to walk away.
Sheriff Clancy lit up a cigarette and sauntered back to the jailhouse, but Delmar stood right where he was. “You best keep an eye out for yourself, girl,” I heard him say from behind me. “I don’t take too kindly to people talkin’ against me.”
I stopped and swung around to look at him, but he only gave me a sordid grin.
“You threatenin’ me?” I asked.
“Just a friendly warnin’.” He glanced at the post office, where a group of young men stood around, apparently having nothing better to do than talk nonsense all day. “Bobby Ray!” Delmar called to his son. “You seen Jessilyn here?”
Bobby Ray flicked his cigarette into the bushes and stood up straight. “Hey there, Jessilyn.” His eyes made their way from my head to my shoes in a way that made me feel dirty. “Ain’t seen you in a while.”
“Best keep an eye on her,” Delmar said. “Seems she’s gettin’ on the wrong side of some folks hereabouts.”
Bobby Ray pulled another cigarette from his pocket, lit up, and watched me, squinty-eyed, through the smoke. “Yes’r. Reckon I won’t mind keepin’ an eye on her at all.”
Being around one Custis was enough for any girl to stomach, but being around two got the butterflies working inside me. Delmar smiled at me and winked, then climbed into his truck and drove off. Bobby Ray still stared at me through that veil of cigarette smoke, and I figured I’d best get back to Mr. Stokes’s taxi while I could.
That was until I saw Noah Jarvis coming down the street, his head lowered like he wasn’t looking for a bit of trouble but expected it anyway. No doubt he’d seen those boys there on the steps and hoped he’d get by without a problem, but I didn’t bet on them keeping their peace. They watched Noah the whole way down the street, whispering to each other like they hoped beyond all hope he was heading their direction.
I made my way to meet up with Noah, but he put his head back down the second he saw me. “Best not come over here, Jessie,” he said loud enough that only I could hear. “They won’t like it much.”
“I don’t care what they like.”
He looked up at me with an uncharacteristic fire in his eyes. “Maybe you don’t, but it ain’t you they’ll pick a fight with.”
I got his meaning good and quick and stopped right there. A car horn alerted me that I was standing in the middle of the road, and I scurried to the sidewalk, watching Noah but not approaching him, knowing with dismay how right he was. Those boys were just waiting for a reason to light into any colored man no matter how peaceful he may be. But I couldn’t just walk away, so I made up some reason in my head why I would need to go into the post office and walked right up the steps, Bobby Ray Custis and all.
When I got three steps up, Bobby Ray tipped his filthy hat at me and eyed me like I was on the menu for supper. “Jessilyn, you’re lookin’ fine today.”
“I ain’t asked for your opinion, Bobby Ray.” He was leaning against a post, his feet out in front so they blocked my path. “You reckon you can get your giant boots out of my way?”
“Not so fast.” He leaned forward and flashed a smile that showed teeth I figured hadn’t ever met a toothbrush. “I ain’t seen you in a while. You and me, we got some catchin’ up to do.”
He reached out to grab my arm, but a hand shot around me to catch his instead. I looked over my shoulder to see Luke standing there with a death grip on Bobby Ray’s arm. Bobby Ray’s face turned bright purple, like the b
lood had all been pushed up to his cheeks, and he stopped breathing for a second. When Luke let go of his arm, Bobby Ray sucked in so much air, I wasn’t sure there’d be any left for the rest of us.
Luke leaned close enough to Bobby Ray that their hat brims touched. “I reckon you’re caught up now.” Then he took my arm and escorted me into the post office.
I looked back at Bobby Ray with pure satisfaction.
“I swear it ain’t safe for women to walk around this town in broad daylight no more,” Luke muttered. He took his hat off and whacked at the front as if he needed to clean the stench of Bobby Ray off of it. “Those boys do anythin’ to you before I got there?”
“Just bein’ ornery, is all.”
“You’re all right, then?”
“Sure, I’m all right.” Of course I was. I was perfect. It isn’t every day the love of your life comes in and manhandles a lout on your behalf. I set the bags down and tucked my arm through his. “I’m glad you came along, though.”
He looked around the post office. “Well, what’d you need in here? I’ll wait for you and walk you back out. I was drivin’ by when I saw you, so I can drive you home.”
“I didn’t need anythin’. I just came up the steps to distract those boys while Noah walked by. They looked rarin’ for a fight, and I didn’t want him gettin’ picked on for it.”
“Noah?” Luke walked over to the window and peered outside. He smacked his hat against his thigh and then shoved it back onto his head.
“What?” I rushed over next to him to see Malachi’s brown face sticking out from a crowd of white ones. “What’s he doin’ here?”
“He was with me, helpin’ me get a load of lumber. No doubt those boys said somethin’ to Noah and he just couldn’t help himself.”
Heat crept up my neck into my cheeks in two seconds flat. “He’s only stickin’ up for his brother.”
“Only stickin’ up for your brother when you’re colored means riskin’ your life.” Luke pulled his gun from his waistband and handed it to me. “If there’s a scuffle, I don’t want to risk one of them boys gettin’ hold of it.”
Catching Moondrops Page 5
