Over the Fence

by Mary Monroe

  I cut my eyes in Odell’s direction. The expression on his face was so miserable, I thought he was going to puke. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. He thought I was going to hit him up for even more cash. He was right.

  “And I might have to stay home and take care of him,” Yvonne threw in with a loud sigh.

  Bless her.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Joyce yelped. “I hope y’all don’t have to take off work for too long. It would be hard on anybody to miss too many days off work with no pay.” Her eyes suddenly got big. “I know what we can do to help.” She gave Odell a anxious look. He looked as confused as I was. “I’m going to call up Reverend Jessup and have him get a prayer chain going. Last year, when Sister Foster lost her job cleaning house for Mayor Wilcox, we prayed nonstop for several days in a row for her to get an even better job. By the end of that week, the mayor begged her to come back. And he upped her salary by five percent.”

  A prayer chain? This husky heifer had to be kidding! By the time I got through with Odell, they would need a prayer chain a whole lot more than we did!

  “How do you think a prayer chain is going to help us? If we don’t work, we don’t get paid, and Mr. Cunningham ain’t never made no exceptions,” Yvonne threw in.

  “We’ll pray that y’all won’t have to be off work too many days,” Joyce replied with a cheesy grin.

  CHAPTER 43

  YVONNE

  EVERYTIME ODELL’S EYES MET MINE, HE TURNED HIS HEAD. AFTER my tense meeting with him yesterday afternoon, there was just no telling how he felt about me now. He didn’t know how lucky he was, though, because I was letting him off easy. I didn’t have no plans to shake him down for a payment every week like Milton. The money he already gave me, and a little something extra now and then, would suit me just fine. But with Milton having to miss work, his next paycheck would be skimpy, so I needed a few more bucks right away to fall back on. I had no choice but to plan another visit to Odell, and it had to be soon.

  Joyce interrupted my thoughts. “Milton, if I didn’t know what happened, I’d swear you’d been fighting with a bear. Thank the good Lord you’re not any worse.”

  “He couldn’t get no worse!” I yelled.

  Joyce gave me a worrisome look. “Yes he could. He could be dead,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, but with God’s help, he won’t die for a real long time,” I sighed.

  “And, with God’s help, he’ll be good as new in no time,” Joyce added. “That’s why I’m going to get in touch with Reverend Jessup tomorrow about that prayer chain.”

  All this gloomy talk was wearing me out. “If y’all don’t mind, let’s lighten up this dreary conversation,” I suggested.

  “I feel the same way.” Joyce exhaled and turned to Odell, looking and sounding less gloomy. “Sugar, we best be going now if we want to go to Mosella’s for coffee and cake before they close.” Then she looked at me. “Y’all need any pills, some iodine, or more bandages? We don’t have much at the house. But I can have Odell open the store on our way home. We’ll pick up whatever y’all need and drop it off when we get back. We can even sit awhile if y’all want us to.”

  Odell couldn’t have looked more impatient if he tried when he tapped Joyce on her shoulder. “Baby, we told your folks we’d stop by after we leave Mosella’s. It’ll be way too late for us to come back over here tonight.” His tone was as dry as a fish bone.

  Joyce snapped her fingers, and her eyes rolled up in her head. “Oh, that’s right. My daddy is a little under the weather. I told him we’d check on him tonight.”

  “We got plenty bandages and iodine. And Yvonne just opened a new bottle of aspirin,” Milton muttered. “Thanks for being so considerate and generous, Joyce. You and Odell is the salt of the earth, and such a godsend to me and Yvonne. I hope your daddy don’t get too sick.” I noticed a devilish sparkle in his eyes as he went on. “Uh, Odell, speaking of daddies, how is yours getting along? You didn’t go see him last weekend. I don’t remember the last time you didn’t go visit Lonnie on the Sabbath.” It took me a few seconds to realize he was hinting at Odell’s bogus weekend visits to his daddy.

  “Huh? Uh, he doing about the same. I didn’t go see him last Sunday, because I didn’t want to miss Reverend Jessup’s anniversary celebration, remember? Besides that, Daddy and Ellamae was visiting her folks out of town.” Odell blinked hard and scratched the side of his face.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember.” Milton rubbed his head and moaned. “I declare, I’m aching in places where I ain’t never ached before. I hope I’m up and about by tomorrow.” When he stopped talking, he all of a sudden looked puzzled. “Hmmm. Time sure flies. I just realized tomorrow is Wednesday. Odell, if you ain’t got nothing to do tomorrow after work, I sure would appreciate you coming by to check up on me. You, too, Joyce. I know I won’t feel like hosting a bunch of drunks tomorrow night. But y’all’s presence would do me a world of good.”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow evening,” Odell mumbled, with a tight look on his face.

  “If we can get away from Daddy before it’s too late, we’ll be back tonight. And we’ll come as often as we can until you get back on your feet.” Joyce sounded truly concerned. Even with her and Odell’s snooty ways and the fact that they said some stupid shit to us, their hearts was in the right place. The only problem was, theirs wasn’t as big and good as mine and Milton’s.

  “I’d like that,” Milton said with a smile. And that made me smile, too.

  “We hate to run, but we can’t stay another minute longer,” Odell blurted out. Before anybody could say anything else, he took Joyce by the hand and they rushed out like somebody was chasing them.

  I locked the door and turned to Milton and wagged my finger at him. “Shame on you!”

  His eyes got big, and his mouth dropped open. “Huh?”

  “Was it necessary to make that comment about Odell not visiting his daddy last Sunday? That was a underhanded insinuation about him spending so many of his weekends with the Betty Jean woman.”

  “I just need to make sure the secret between me and him stay fresh on his mind. If he get too lax, he might slip up and let Joyce catch him on her own,” Milton said with a pout.

  I cackled like a setting hen.

  “What you laughing about, Yvonne?”

  “It stopped being a secret between you and him when you told me. And why would you think something so scandalous ain’t always fresh on his mind, anyway? Another thing, I thought you wanted us to avoid this subject.”

  “Never mind about that.”

  “Never mind, my ass. And what was up about that ‘Wednesday’ crack to Odell?” I was tempted to tell Milton I knew about his weekly “payday.”

  He ignored my question, and I wasn’t going to harp on it. I didn’t want to make this issue no bigger than it already was. And I didn’t want him to trick me into telling him that I’d confronted Odell and shook him down for some hush money myself.

  Milton coughed and moaned for a few seconds before he spoke again. “We need to talk about something a little more important. Like us having to miss work.”

  “We’ll see how you feel in the next day or so. If you don’t need me, I’ll go in. I’ll tell Mr. Cunningham and everybody else you fell off a truck.”

  “Okay, baby. Ask him to let you use his phone so you can get in touch with Willie Frank to let him know I got jumped. Be careful, and don’t let nobody overhear you talking. Now help me to the bedroom.”

  * * *

  Milton went to sleep right away after I put him to bed. I stayed awake for three more hours, thinking about what had happened and wondering if something even worse was coming our way.

  I was sleepy and exhausted when I woke up Wednesday morning, a few minutes before seven. Milton was still asleep. When he felt me moving around, he opened his eyes and sat up.

  “How you feeling, baby?” I asked.

  He let out a weak moan. “Better than I felt last night.” He had dar
k circles around his bloodshot eyes, and his voice was hoarse. I caressed his chin, and I was glad he didn’t have no bruises there. But since he claimed he was feeling better, I did, too.

  “Do you feel good enough to be by yourself so I can go to work today?”

  “I believe I do,” he answered. His voice was already sounding stronger. “Ain’t no sense in us both missing work without pay if it ain’t necessary.”

  After I washed Milton off, put more iodine on his wounds, and changed his bandages, I put him in fresh underwear, and he got back on the couch.

  “I don’t want you to be up stirring around, so I’ll leave some sandwiches, aspirin, and a pitcher of water on the coffee table,” I told him. “In case you decide you want to get buzzed, I’ll set a jug of moonshine and ajar on the table, too. That way you can stay off your feet. And you better have your tail on this couch when I come home this evening! Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” he whimpered. “What about when I need to use the toilet?”

  “I’ll set the slop jar close by. We out of toilet paper, so I’ll leave some old newspapers for you to wipe yourself off with.”

  “Damn. I don’t know how I’m going to get through today.” Milton gave me a hopeless look.

  “You ain’t got no choice. And it might be more than one day.”

  “Shoot! That’s going to be a heap of money for us to lose out on,” he griped.

  “Um, I’m going to leave right after I make them sandwiches and get everything else situated.”

  Milton glanced at the clock on the wall behind me. “You leaving this early?”

  “Yeah. My monthly started early, and I just put on my last Kotex pad. I’m going to swing by next door on my way to the bus stop and see if I can borrow some from Joyce. She’ll probably hold me hostage for a while. If you don’t want me to go now, I’ll have to rip up one of your white shirts and use makeshift pads until I can get to the store and buy some more.”

  “I ain’t got but a few white shirts left! You better go get some of them yucky things from Joyce.”

  I didn’t need no pads. I wasn’t even on my period. It was the best excuse I could come up with to go next door. What I wanted to do was get a few bucks from Odell so I wouldn’t have to pay him a visit at the store today. If Joyce was in the way and I couldn’t talk to him, I’d tell her I’d come to borrow some pads.

  I walked out the door fifteen minutes later and shot out our gate like a bronco at a rodeo. When I got to Odell’s porch, I was surprised and pleased to see that Milton’s blood was gone. I was also pleased that Odell answered when I knocked. He didn’t look happy to see me as he motioned for me to come in.

  Instead of saying hello, he asked in a gruff tone, “Is Milton doing worse?”

  “No, he’s doing a lot better. I’m making him stay home today. I see y’all mopped up the blood.”

  “Yeah. Joyce took care of it before we went to bed last night. She didn’t want nobody to see it, and she didn’t want it to get too dry and be harder to clean up.”

  “Oh. Well, if she had waited until this evening, I would have helped her. I cleaned up a lot of dried blood when I was in prison.” I could hear Joyce humming in the background.

  “Is there something you need this morning?” Odell asked with a raised eyebrow.

  I leaned closer to him and whispered, “Can me and you go somewhere private?”

  His eyes got wide, and he looked over his shoulder before he answered. “Again? What the hell for this time?” he whispered back.

  “I need to talk to you about a financial matter.”

  “Shit! God damn!” He held up his hand. “Look, I ain’t about to let you come up in my house with this ‘financial matter’ bullshit.”

  Before I could go on, Joyce came prancing into the room, wiping her hands on a crisp pink apron.

  “Good morning, Joyce. I was just telling Odell I needed to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Sure. I’m sorry we didn’t come back last night. After we checked on Daddy, we ran into Buddy and his lady friend. His old jalopy had run out of gas, and we had to give them a ride home. What do you need to talk to me about?”

  From the pinched look on Odell’s face, I knew he wasn’t going to leave the room until I left, so I said, “My menstruation snuck up on me a week early this month, and I just put on my last Kotex pad. Do you have a few I can borrow?” From the corner of my eye, I seen Odell grimace and shudder.

  “I got plenty. Come on to the bedroom.”

  She gave me a whole box. When we got back to the living room, Odell was nowhere in sight. I could hear water running in the bathroom, so I assumed he was taking a bath.

  “I don’t mean to rush off, but the lady I ride to work with will be picking me up in a few minutes,” Joyce said, walking me to the door. I had no choice but to leave. “We’ll see y’all this evening. Now, you have a blessed day.”

  “Thanks, Joyce. You have a blessed day, too.”

  I was going to have to visit Odell at the store today, after all.

  CHAPTER 44

  MILTON

  YVONNE DIDN’T LIKE BEING ALONE IN A HOUSE. THE REASON WAS that the relatives that had raised her used to leave her on her own a lot. She said being alone made her think about her unhappy childhood. But her situation was not as serious as mine. I didn’t like being in a house by myself day or night. And I was scared to death of the dark. Like most of the folks I knew, I was superstitious and believed in haints. Every time I heard a suspicious noise, or if our windows rattled when the wind wasn’t blowing, my heart did push-ups.

  When I was single, I went out of my way to get my lady friends to spend the night. Even when they did, I always slept with the lights on. When Yvonne came into my life, I became a changed man in a lot of ways. Within days after the night we first met, she brung out things in me I didn’t know I had. I already had a lot of confidence, but she helped me finally feel handsome and smart. My fears didn’t bother me as much no more. I didn’t even need to leave the lights on when I turned in for the night with her.

  Even though I was in my own house now, with all the windows and doors locked, I was still a little paranoid. Them devils that had followed me yesterday knew where I lived. If they was brazen enough to attack me on the street in broad daylight, what would stop them from busting into my house to finish me off?

  Around 9:00 a.m. I heard what sounded like somebody scratching on my front door. I panicked. Yvonne had made me get rid of my knife because she didn’t want me to cut nobody and go back to jail. If somebody busted in, I didn’t have nothing to defend myself with but my fists. But they was so bruised and sore from my beating, they would be useless. I grabbed the butter knife I had used to cut my sandwiches with off the coffee table and scrambled up off the couch. I crept over to the window and peeped out. I was relieved when I didn’t see nobody.

  I cracked open the door and seen one of the cats that belonged to Janey Hemphill, the bug-eyed retired beautician that lived directly across the street. It stood in front of our threshold, meowing and sniffing my feet. The next thing I knew, the Hemphill woman came out her door in her bathrobe, with a frantic look on her face. She darted across the street and through our gate and didn’t stop until she got up on our porch.

  “Hello, Milton,” she greeted, huffing and puffing like she’d just run a country mile. She scooped up her cat and cradled him in her arms like a baby. “I’m sorry—” She stopped talking, and her eyes bulged out more than usual. “What happened to you? Was you in a accident?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I fell off the back of a truck.”

  “You must have fell in a right clumsy position to get them bruises on your face and have to wrap on a bandage like a headband.”

  “The truck I was riding on got too close to a cow-pasture fence, and I landed on my head smack-dab in the middle of some barbed wire.”

  “Goodness gracious. You better be more careful the next time. My nephew fell off a truck last year, and he wasn’
t as lucky as you. He hit his head on a big rock and died on the spot.”

  “I guess it wasn’t my time to go, praise the Lord.”

  “I’m sorry Moses is bothering you again,” she apologized, nuzzling the top of her pesky cat’s head. “I can’t keep this little booger from trespassing to save my soul.”

  “It ain’t no big deal. That’s what we get for forgetting to close our fence gate so much.”

  “This fussy little rascal took off when I tried to give him a bath.”

  “Moses must be looking for some more of them pigtails I gave him and his kin kitties last week.” I laughed.

  “I’m pleased you didn’t give him none today. So long as you keep feeding my cats, they’ll continue to pester you and Yvonne.” She stared at me. “You don’t look too good, so I won’t keep you. Take care of yourself, now.”

  After the cat lady left, I got back on the couch, made myself comfortable, and dozed off.

  When somebody stomped up on the porch at a few minutes before 10:00 a.m., I got up again. Before I could see who it was, Willie Frank unlocked the door and shot into the room like a cannonball. When he seen the mess I was, he done a double take.

  “Great balls of fire!” He cussed under his breath and ran up to me. “I would have been here sooner, but my brother had my truck.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and steered me back to the couch. I dropped down on it like a lead foot. “My God, buddy. You look like you been mauled by a mountain lion!” he yelled, plopping down next to me.