It's Not Like I Knew Her (23 page)

Jodie didn't argue further, although she'd heard plenty of doubt in what Crystal Ann didn't say.

“You think you might get back this way someday?” Jodie was unwilling to say
if it doesn't work out.

“No, I hear Mobile's real pretty and warm year round. I think I'm going to like it there on the Gulf of Mexico. Should you ever come that way I hope you'll look me up.”

“I'll do that.” She said what Crystal Ann wanted to hear, but the offer that Jodie should look
her
up didn't go unnoted. She'd hang her hope on nothing more than its vagueness.

By the scant light of the setting moon, Jodie helped Crystal Ann load what little of her possessions the Rambler held.

“Please tell me you're going to be okay. You've got your job, this place, Teddy and Maxine, and the women at the Hide and Seek. Your truck should get you to Dallas for the tryouts next spring. You'll be okay. Please tell me you understand.”

“It's all right. Don't worry. I'll be fine. Send me a pretty postcard, and I'll write you back.”

She drew Jodie close, held her tight, and whispered, “If I'd only met you first, you know I could've loved you the way you wanted.”

Jodie blinked hard and stepped back. Just maybe, Crystal Ann doubted the promise of love as much as she did.

Crystal Ann gave her a pained smile, got into the Rambler. “You promise to feed the stray cat until he decides to go elsewhere?”

Jodie nodded.

She watched as Crystal Ann drove out of the clearing onto the dirt road. She swore at having failed to remind Crystal Ann to have Teddy fix the Rambler's busted taillight. Right along with other things she hadn't found a way to say. She took a seat on the top step, and the air smelled of the damp leaves that now covered the ground in the nearby woods. The half-moon had disappeared behind a flurry of clouds, and Jodie felt that old ache of aloneness.

From the field of withered cornstalks, the stray entered the clearing on stiff legs, his tail arched, tip end swishing like an antenna.

“Damn, cat, where'd you come from?”

The cat walked a measured distance and stopped.

“You here for a handout?” She stepped inside the trailer, leaving the door ajar.

J
odie sat with Rose, a woman she knew but was in no way attracted to, apart from Rose's willingness. Rose had peppered her with a steady stream of questions that Jodie took as a way of judging her intent, until she grew weary of either side-stepping or outright lying.

“Jesus, Rose, stop with the damn questions. I'm not here to spill my guts; I'm here to get laid.” A quick apology did nothing to change the outcome, and Jodie found herself sitting alone.

Gabby leaned across the bar. “What do you hear from our gal in Mobile?”

She frowned and shook her head. “Not a damn thing. You?”

“Nothing.” She wiped beer mugs and glanced out across the near empty barroom. “Had hoped she'd finally ditched that religious nut and would stay put.”

Jodie nodded. “Yeah, well I guess I'll shove off. See you.”

“Hold up a minute.”

Jodie turned back, and Gabby came from behind the bar.

“If you're damned determined .…” She nodded in the direction of a skinny bottle-blonde dancing alone on the empty dance floor.

“Her? What makes you think …?” Jodie rammed her hands in her back pockets, swaying a bit. One rejection an evening was her limit.

Gabby frowned. “Hell, do you think she came here to dance alone any more than you want to go home to your own hand?”

Jodie weighed the emptiness of the long drive and, against her better judgment, crossed the room and took the woman, who called herself Star, into her arms. She was certain Gabby had called her Betty June.

T
hey made their drunken way to a late model ragtop, Star confessing to having paid top dollar for a convertible without working hydraulics. Jodie asked what she was thinking.

Star shrugged. “And who's going to know it don't work?” She smiled conspiratorially, as if she'd somehow outfoxed the envious. The irony wasn't lost on Jodie, but it wasn't Star's brain that had her caught up in a reckless mood.

“It's not far. Leave your old truck for now.” Her nose wrinkled, and typically a put-down of her truck would have pissed Jodie off. But she caught the keys Star flipped in her direction and slid behind the wheel.

They roared onto the highway, the radio blaring. Star sat close, her hand on Jodie's upper thigh, and such was the pity that roadside parking on a public highway was off limits.

The sky ahead was a washpot black, threatening to unleash a downpour. Jodie licked her fingertips and rubbed her stinging eyes, and in spite of the rain that began to pound the canvas top, she drove on at a reckless speed.

Star's head sunk onto Jodie's shoulder and she either slept or passed out. Jodie turned up the radio static and drove on through the downpour in search of a place Star had only vaguely described.

The car lurched. The steering wheel jerked from Jodie's hand; the sound of sand and gravel pounded the undercarriage. She fought to regain control of the speeding car, and ahead through the darkness she made out the bridge railing racing toward them.

She pressed the brake pedal in rapid repetitions. The car fishtailed and struck the bridge railing a glancing blow. It spun and bucked its way back off the bridge onto the muddy shoulder, landing right side up in the water-filled ditch on the opposite side of the highway.

Jodie remembered her head striking something, but it was her right leg, jammed beneath the steering column, that sent wave after wave of excruciating pain all the way into her hip. She put a hand on her leg and felt the stickiness of blood and smelled its coppery scent. She gagged and her vomit was sour, smelling of beer, and she was sure she'd pass out.

Rain pelted her, and water from the overflowing ditch rushed into the car. Star lay crumpled on the floorboard. Jodie struggled to reach her but remained trapped, managing only to grab a hunk of hair and to hold her head above the rising water.

A searing flash of lightening lit the roadside, and Jodie's scalp tingled, the scent of pine tar exploding in the air.

J
odie woke to a set of false teeth smiling at her from a glass container. She attempted to move, but the pain in her right leg was so intense she moaned and dropped back onto the pillow.

“Shug, you ain't gonna want to try nothing like that.” The slack-mouthed warning came from a woman Jodie took to be the owner of the teeth.

“Where am I? How'd I get here?” Her throat was parched and her focus blurred.

“Deputy brought you here to County. But don't worry, they take charity cases.” To her question as to how long ago, the old woman answered more or less twelve hours. “You're here for a stay.”

“What's wrong with me?” Her right leg was wrapped thigh to calf, and it hurt to as much as wiggle her toes.

“Likely I ain't supposed to tell you. But I overheard the doctor say a bit more and you'd have woke up peg-legged.”

The old woman went on with bits of something about a ripped leg and enough stitches to make a good-sized quilt. “But other than being scarred, and a real bad limp, I'd say God's been good to you.”

There was nothing about her situation that made her feel blessed. She pictured the Cowgirls streaking up and down the court and knew there was no place for a gimp in their game.

“That pipestem-sized, stringy-headed blonde gal, who claimed you stole her brand-new car .…” The old woman smacked her lips in what Jodie took to be puzzlement. “Now she claimed she dragged you out of that sinking car just in the nick of time, you up to your chin in filthy ditch water.” The woman paused. “You know, she never said exactly how all that happened.”

“Got run down in a high-speed chase. Shoved off the road into that ditch.” Sweet Jesus, if the old woman didn't shut her mouth, Jodie felt she'd drop dead here and now.

“Goodness, you don't say.” She squinted at Jodie, appearing to search for something she might believe. “Just the same, she said I should tell you she won't be back.”

The door pushed open, and the face of Jodie's hottest dreams appeared in the space between the door and frame. Though brain-warped on pain killers, Jodie still had enough juice to imagine the Marilyn Monroe body that matched the woman's perfect face.

“Well, God bless you, Sister Sarah. Ain't you just the sweetest thing to visit an old, dying woman?” The woman grabbed her teeth and popped them into her mouth with the resolute click of a bullet forced into a chamber.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hansford. I do believe the rosiness has returned to your fair cheeks. I trust this means you're feeling better.”

The woman's schooled enunciation was precise, and her accent meant she wasn't from Selma, maybe not even the South. She wore a dark rose-colored, two-piece suit with a sheer white blouse ruffled at her pale throat, her posture erect and balanced on open-toed pumps. She was a stark contrast to the haggard, dull-eyed women who'd come into the Wing, and her appearance on the floor of the jean factory would stop the machines from spinning. Operators would stand idle, mouths gaped wide, as they stared at everything beautiful in a woman they were never born to become. Everything about her spoke of birth and life-long privilege.

The woman looked over at Jodie, a slight smile on her full, red mouth. Embarrassed at being caught staring, Jodie turned her gaze away. An odd hint of detection had passed between them: one both dangerous and forbidden. Yet overriding her fear was Crystal Ann's claim that somehow
they
could know each other. During the brief conversation that ensued between the old woman and the visitor, Jodie savored the woman's every word, holding each in her mind, committing them to memory.

At the sound of the door opening and closing, the sharp clipping of heels as the visitor made her retreat down the hallway, Jodie felt a sense of loss she could neither explain nor deny.

J
odie woke suddenly, and she couldn't be sure how long she'd slept. The door opened back forcefully, and Ted stepped into the room. The old woman smiled and turned away.

Teddy winked and Jodie got a much-needed jolt of amusement at the notion that the old woman likely meant to give her and her sweetheart suitable privacy. Teddy drew the curtain closed, stared, and turned a bit pale. She gripped Jodie's shoulder in her strong hand, leaned, and smacked her on the cheek.

“Damn, girl. You look like warmed-over death.” Teddy frowned and drew back the top sheet, getting a look at Jodie's heavily bandaged leg.

“What do you think?”

“That at least it's still attached.” She shook her head in disbelief.

“Aren't you just a shitload of cheerfulness?” Jodie tried deflecting, but Teddy's honesty was too much to overcome.

“Maxine sends her love. Along with decent pajamas, toothbrush, paste, comb—you know, the stuff of a stay.” She set a brown bag on the bedside table. “They said how long?”

“No, unless I'm to believe her.” Jodie nodded toward the old woman. “I haven't seen a doctor.”

“I'll buttonhole a nurse on my way out.”

“God, Teddy, this isn't the stay I'm worried about. Am I going to jail?”

“Cop kept saying how lucky you were the railing wasn't concrete.” She paused. “Damn, girl, I can't believe you decided to go back to the Hide and Seek on the night both kids were down with the shits. And then you leave with that crazy broad? You need something steady. That bitch changes lovers like me and you change our socks.”

“Never came to that.”

“Then you are lucky.”

“Yeah, well forget about her. Am I going to get charged?”

“Too much bother, I'm guessing. Considering nobody got hurt but the drunk driver.”

“Love me a lazy cop. And that heap of a car?” She worried she was responsible for removing it, and the repairs.

“Far as I know, that shit's totaled and right where you parked it.” Teddy snorted. “I'll get the shop boy to haul it to the salvage yard.”

“Thanks. Guess I am lucky. But my leg's a damn mess.” Jodie shoved her knuckles in her mouth, fought back tears.

“Yeah, well, someday I'll show you my motorcycle scars.” Teddy leaned and whispered, “And don't you dare start up with some kind of self-pity bullshit. You'll heal in time for the trials.”

Jodie searched Teddy's eyes for the slightest indication that she believed what she'd said. She read a world of improbable hype.

M
rs. Hansford checked out the following week, and there had been no more visits from Sister Sarah. Jodie's stay stretched into a third week, during which time her leg healed well enough for her to master the use of crutches. She limped out of the hospital with Maxine, who drove her home with her. She stayed with Maxine and her two kids her first week out of the hospital. The bill put her into debt to Teddy for two hundred dollars. The entire ordeal left the coffee can empty and her with a noticeable limp the doctor claimed—with luck, and her staying off her feet for a few months—would lessen but likely never completely disappear.

If that wasn't bad enough, she developed a nasty habit of nipping a little all along, straight through the day and late into the night. She was learning that pain coupled with self-pity were two of the main ingredients for the kind of blues Jewel had sung.

W
eek six and Jodie was back on the job as a new hire. The steady pain in her leg slowed her production pace to one that got her regular hard looks from the super and little extra in her pay envelope. After meager expenses and paying down her debt to Teddy, there was nothing to deposit in the coffee can. The odds of her putting aside enough money before trials grew slimmer with each passing day.