Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my mother,” he said, “it’s that there’s no arguing with a gardener. Sure. If you have to go, I’m there.”

  “I know it isn’t great to ask you,” she said. “But I’m a little nervous about it. I could call Lake and ask him, but you know . . . I think he’d say no. In fact, I have half a feeling that he’d dig them up himself and throw them in the burn barrel just to spite me, especially if he was drunk. So I’m going to sneak in there and get them. He always goes to the bar after work on Friday. On that, he’s totally reliable.” That had come out bitter, so she kept going, trying for matter-of-fact. “It’ll be fine, but I’d rather not do it alone. My dad would go with me, but that might not end well.”

  “No,” Travis said, “I can imagine it wouldn’t. Having met your dad.”

  “Plus, I want to take a vehicle that his neighbors won’t recognize.”

  “You don’t have to give me all these reasons, you know,” he said. “You could assume that you could ask for what you need from me, and I’d do my best to say yes.”

  That brought her up short. “Well . . .” She tried to laugh. “My sister just wrecked your truck, remember? And favors aren’t my expectation.”

  “Yeah.” His expression might have been called . . . grim. “I noticed.” He stood up. “And I’ll do it anyway.”

  So on Friday at five thirty, instead of fixing a steak dinner at his place and then going dancing—which was the plan at the end of this—they were turning off the highway, and, stupid as it was to care anymore, her stomach was plummeting. It got worse with every rotation of the wheels, until finally, Travis was pulling into Lake’s driveway.

  The sun would be setting soon, but this wouldn’t take long. She concentrated on that, because she didn’t want to think about anything else. The little white house looked shabbier than ever in the bleak light of autumn. Something was funky about the screen door, too. A wide rip in the mesh about a foot off the ground, like somebody had put his boot through it. Which he probably had.

  She wasn’t looking at the house. Not anymore. She was here for a reason—a reason that wasn’t seeming like a great idea right now.

  They were here, though. Get in, do it, get out. “Pull around behind the shop,” she told Travis.

  He glanced at her, then rolled slowly over the weed-choked gravel and came to a stop behind the metal shop, out of sight of the road.

  She hopped out, grabbing two trowels, a couple paper bags, and her gardening gloves along the way, and Travis followed after her. She rocked to a stop, though, before she’d taken three steps.

  “Well,” she said, “that didn’t take long.”

  Travis was at her side, looking at the cornstalks, dried now, in the garden plot. Growing vegetables wasn’t like Lake, and judging from the unharvested ears on every plant, he hadn’t had any changes of heart. The point was what lay behind the corn. A row of marijuana plants, low to the ground from recent harvesting. At least twenty of them.

  “He tried that when we were married,” she said, shaking it off and heading for the front of the yard. “Planted them farther from the house, of course. Way out by the back fence, thinking I wouldn’t see. I found them anyway, of course. Dug them up and burned them the moment I saw them. Those were the first precious things of his I dumped into that burn barrel. I thought he was going to hit me that night for sure. That night almost did us in. It should have, probably, but I was still in there trying, and I guess he was, too.”

  She stopped near the fence bordering the road, said, “Here. Along in a row. The bulbs should be right down here,” and stuck the trowel down into the weedy earth.

  “He hit you?” Travis asked, crouching down and beginning to dig a couple yards away.

  “No. He didn’t get there, or he stopped first. Whichever.” Her trowel hit something, and she dug gently around it, found the knobby root, and pulled it up. “Ah,” she said. “Yep. Here we go,” She tossed it into a bag and kept digging.

  “He swung me around by the arm,” she continued at last. “Shoved me up against the kitchen wall while he shouted at me. First time he ever called me a fucking bitch, but not the last.” She looked up at Travis. “Don’t ever call me that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Travis said, and she’d call that look . . . hard. “I won’t.”

  “Funny,” she said, “I haven’t thought about that in a long time. Blocked it out, I guess. I was actually scared for a moment.”

  “Well, yeah. I’d imagine. What happened?”

  She let out a huff of laughter, tossed a couple more bulbs into the bag from the growing trench, and said, “I looked him in the eye and said, ‘If you hit me, you’d better enjoy it, because it’ll be the last thing you do. You’ve got to sleep sometime.’ I meant it, too. Nobody hits me.”

  She wouldn’t have described the twist of Travis’s mouth as a smile. He was making good progress on his end of the trench, though. “Sounds about right. What did he do?”

  “Let me go and stormed out, stayed gone all day and all night. Showed up again the next day with an armful of flowers and an apology, sweet and sorry like he did so well, and I let it go, because he’d never been violent before. And give him credit, he never was again. And maybe I shouldn’t have done it myself—burned his plants. I suppose I felt bad that I’d reacted like that instead of talking to him about it. But I never liked having all that weed in the house anyway, and growing it? That made me crazy. I saw the SWAT team, you know. Saw myself in a jumpsuit and a jail cell, up on distribution charges. A bit dramatic, maybe, but the laws were tougher then, especially for that much of it. Not personal use, you know. And my job’s important to me.”

  “And your reputation,” Travis said.

  “Yeah. That, too.” They were moving fast, the recent rain having softened the ground. Halfway across the yard, which was good, because the light was fading.

  Just as she was thinking it, she dug her trowel into the earth, and the handle snapped off.

  “Shoot,” she said. Travis looked up, and she held up the blade. “I’ll go get a shovel.”

  She headed across the yard, grabbed the knob of the shop door, and bounced right off it. She hadn’t expected it to be locked.

  “Well, that’s stupid,” she said aloud. She reached up under the eaves of the overhang, felt along the board, and found the key, then opened the door and reached for the light.

  She blinked, as much in surprise as at the sudden brightness. Lake had always been a slob, and the back of the building was as messy as she remembered. A wheelbarrow and garden tools shoved into one corner, all mixed up with a lawn mower and a concrete mixer. Bags of fertilizer tossed back there, too. For the marijuana, probably, because he’d never cared enough about the lawn to go to extremes like actual fertilizer. She’d done the mowing, in fact, because he wouldn’t have bothered until the grass was knee-deep.

  The front of the shop, though, was clear, with a new line of shelving containing a neat row of cardboard boxes. An open container of snack-sized Ziploc bags sat beside a full carton of the same thing. There was a bottle of Canadian whisky and a stack of plastic glasses, too. A folding table was set up on the cement floor, with chairs on two sides and a couple more folded against the wall. As if there were a regular poker game happening out here, but why on earth would Lake be playing poker with his buddies out in his drafty, spidery shop? Not like he didn’t have the house to himself.

  Well, it wasn’t her problem. She went across to the garden tools and grabbed a spade, then left the building. Which was when she heard the engine.

  COMPANY

  The daylight was even dimmer than before, and the truck had its headlights on. She didn’t have to see it to recognize it, though. The low grumble of the old Ford’s engine would have told her. She knew the sound of Lake’s rig.

  She didn’t rush. No point. She hung up the key again under the eaves and went out to join Travis.

  The truck stopped at the entrance to the
driveway, and the window slowly lowered. Lake had somebody with him, a passenger she couldn’t make out in the gloom. A girl, probably. The only reason she could think of that he wouldn’t be at the bar.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. Which was a reasonable question.

  Travis reached out and took the shovel from Rochelle, and she let him have it and said, “Getting my bulbs. I figured you’d be out, and you wouldn’t care anyway.”

  Lake left the truck standing where it was and climbed down, and on the other side, his passenger did, too.

  It wasn’t a girl. It was Shane, which was a shock. Rochelle hadn’t realized they knew each other. Had Stacy known? If so, why hadn’t she told Rochelle?

  Shane came around the front of the truck, Lake stood still, and then both men were standing in front of the driver’s door. The headlights were still on, casting a faint glow over the scene, and beside her, Travis was moving. He took one step forward and to the left, ending up slightly in front of Rochelle. He had both hands on the shovel, had shifted it around so it was held down and to his right.

  The hair on the back of her neck was standing up. There was a menace in the air that she’d never felt with Lake, not even on that night she’d just been remembering.

  Shane still hadn’t said anything. He just stood there, a step behind Lake. Not such a tough guy, are you? Rochelle thought.

  “You were wrong,” Lake said. “I care. You don’t have any right to be here, and you sure as hell don’t have a right to get into my shop. You read the sign?” He gestured toward the fence. “Trespassers will be shot.”

  Rochelle laughed, and at that moment, she meant it. “I was there when you nailed that sign to the post, remember? You going to start your killing career with me? Come on, Lake. I took my bulbs, that’s all. Most of them. You don’t want my flowers anyway.”

  “Everything here is mine,” he said. “Everything.”

  “Yep,” she said, “and trust me, I don’t want any of it. Anything but this. So if you’ll quit acting like Arnold Schwarzenegger on a testosterone mission and pull your rig in so we can get out, we’ll be on our way.”

  It was a standoff, then, and she didn’t want to admit how fast her pulse was racing. Travis hadn’t moved, but she could feel the tension vibrating in him as if he were standing on his toes, his entire body on a hair trigger. That shovel ready to swing.

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty, while they all stood frozen. Finally, Lake said, “Get out of here, then.”

  Rochelle bent for her paper bags, and Lake said, “No.”

  “Lake . . .” She sighed. “That’s just silly. You don’t want them.”

  “No,” he said again.

  She shrugged, said, “Fine,” and looked at Travis. His face was carved from granite, and he hadn’t lowered his shovel one inch. “Come on,” she told him.

  “Get back in your truck,” Travis told Lake, his voice low, but not the least bit soft. “Move it out of the way, and we’ll leave.”

  “Or what?” Lake laughed, and the sound rang out as harsh as the caw of a crow. “You’ll hit me with my shovel?”

  “That’s right,” Travis said.

  “Two of us,” Lake said.

  “I’m fast,” Travis said. “Try me.” He jerked his head at Rochelle, but his eyes didn’t leave Lake. “Get your bulbs.”

  She did it. Fast as she could, grabbing first one paper bag, then the other, clutching them to her.

  Lake and Shane stood still a moment more, then Lake shrugged and said, “Fine. Too much trouble anyway. I sure as hell don’t need her white-trash father after me like a rabid dog.”

  The red mist descended over Rochelle’s vision, and it took everything she had to stand still, not to rush Lake and go for his eyes. But she did stand still, and after another moment, Lake and Shane climbed back up into the truck, its engine still grumbling.

  “We’re walking to my truck,” Travis told her quietly. “Now. Go.”

  She nodded once, short and jerky. Every muscle was rigid as she took the twenty steps to the shop, expecting to hear the truck shift into gear at any second, the revving of the engine. Travis stayed a pace behind her, still to her right. She knew he was poised to shove her out of the way if Lake tried to run them down. She knew it like it had already happened.

  The second they were behind the shop, out of sight of the two men, Travis was running. Pulling the passenger door open and throwing her inside with her paper bags, then around to his side, leaping in, handing her the shovel, shoving the key in the ignition. And then he was around the building. Face-to-face with the other truck.

  Two engines rumbling, and then Lake revved his.

  “Put your seat belt on,” Travis said, and she did it.

  Lake’s rig moved, and she tensed even more. But he went to their left, pulled up onto the concrete in front of the shop, and stopped, and Travis was giving his truck gas and heading out. Not fast, and not slow. And then he was turning onto the road. Still not fast. Until they were around the corner, and he put the hammer down and kicked up some dust.

  She didn’t think she breathed until they’d turned onto the highway. Travis drove to the next turnoff, then pulled off the road and turned the key with a hand that trembled.

  She had her seat belt unfastened and was in his arms in an instant. He grabbed her hard and held her close, and she took a few deep breaths and felt him doing the same.

  “Wow,” she said when she could speak again. “Wow. I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” he said, his voice unsteady. “No. You didn’t know, or you wouldn’t have gone. I’ll just say one thing, and then I’ll shut up. Do not ever go out there again, you hear?”

  “This is where I say something kick-ass,” she said, wishing her voice weren’t shaking. “But I can’t. I’m just going to say—thanks. Thanks for making him let me take my . . . my bulbs. They’d better bloom now, that’s all I have to say. They’d damn well . . . better.”

  “That was . . . pretty kick-ass right there,” he said. “What you said. That wasn’t bad at all.”

  DIE TRYING

  Travis’s shakes subsided only gradually, and he could tell it was the same for Rochelle.

  Halfway to town, she stirred herself and said, “I didn’t know that Shane knew Lake. Or the other way around. That doesn’t feel like good news.”

  “Shane?” Travis said. “Who’s Shane? Oh. The bad boyfriend. That was him? That’s . . . odd.”

  “Yeah.” She pulled out her phone, dialed, grimaced, and said, “It’s me. Ro. Call me when you can,” and hung up. “She was going out tonight,” she told Travis. “With her girlfriends, which I was glad of. Entering the land of the living again, I thought. I know it was a shock, finding the body and everything, but her reaction’s so . . . over the top. She’s been going to the counseling center, but I’m not sure it’s helping. And tonight . . . I hope she’s not going to see him. I know she hasn’t this week, because I’ve been there. She’s been so low, and he hasn’t been around. Tells you something. Well, tells you something, and tells me something. Doesn’t tell Stacy anything, apparently.” She shrugged, a weary motion. “I don’t even know what to say. ‘Don’t go out with that guy, because I don’t think he’s any better than the guy I actually married?’”

  “Easy to give advice,” Travis said. “Hard to take it.”

  “Yep.” She pulled a hand through her hair and sighed. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow anyway. I’ll try again.”

  And then she put the phone away and was quiet, and Travis thought, Yes, you will. Rochelle would always try again. “Quit” wasn’t in her vocabulary, or her nature. Except maybe with him, and even there—she was trying.

  She was so tough, and so tender, too. So afraid to show her soft places, thinking that if she did, somebody would stomp them. The same way Lake would have tossed her bulbs into the burn barrel, just because they were precious to her.

  Lake might never have hit her, maybe. That didn’t mean h
e hadn’t hurt her.

  When he pulled up outside his house, he said, “Let’s make dinner,” and she nodded. So they went inside, and they did. Steak. Potatoes in the microwave, salad, a beer. When they’d eaten, he felt better, and he thought she did, too. They loaded the dishwasher, and he said, “Come on. Let’s take a shower.”

  There would be no jumping anyone, not tonight. They stood under the warm spray, and he took the soap and a cloth and washed her body like he could wash the pain and the fear away, the shock of thinking that somebody you’d loved could want to hurt you. His touch was gentle over her arms, her neck, down to her breasts, and beyond, and she stood, her eyes closed, and let him do it.

  He wanted his hands to be the ones she thought about tonight, his voice the one she heard when she fell asleep, his arms the ones she would dream about. He wanted to be the strength that kept away her nightmares.

  When he finished, she took the soap and the cloth from him and did it all to him. Still not speaking, but her eyes steady on his now, her hands firm, but gentle, too, as if she knew how much he needed her. As if she knew how afraid he’d been, and she wanted to make it better, the same way he did for her. Then she put the soap away, and they stepped out, dried each other off, and went into the bedroom. They pulled the covers back, climbed in, and made a nest. A haven where nothing could threaten them, because they were together.

  No rushing, not tonight. Slow touches, soft murmurs, kisses so tender that his heart ached with it. A long, slow, sweet build, and then he was rocking her, slow and deep and steady, her breath in his ears, her hands clutching his shoulders, sliding down his arms, hanging on tight. Her heart pounding beneath him, and his pounding, too. Until she was climbing, and he was going right along with her. Until they went over the top together, shuddering and sighing, then held each other close during the whole ride down.