It's Not Like I Knew Her (35 page)

“Damn, Jodie, you are crazy.” He looked back at her across the unrestrained blue waters and began to laugh.

“What's so damn funny? They're breasts, not too big, not too small, just right, I've been told.” She waded into deeper water, her breasts floating freely.

He stopped laughing. “No, no, it's not that. For sure you aren't Sandra Dee, but you're not half bad.”

Jodie looked toward Maggie, who stood with her feet spread wide, surf and sand swirling around her ankles.

“Forget me, gal. I'm not getting in y'all's mess.” Maggie waded on, slinging the crab bait into the surf and retrieving soft-shelled crabs clinging to the raw chicken.

“After all these years of me in hot pursuit, and it's down to this.” He shook his head. “But I'm more than happy to love your crazy ass right on.” He turned and ran toward Maggie.

Jodie remembered Maggie had said Silas thought he knew what he wanted, but he was wrong. She believed that his laughter hadn't been ridicule but sudden awareness that the love they shared was indeed of a different nature. Then, he'd never stopped surprising her, and that was what she loved most about him.

Jodie walked out of the surf, struggled back into her clothes, and ran to join Maggie and Silas.

Their bucket filled with crabs, the three walked back along the beach to where they'd stashed the food and drink. Sitting on the sand beneath the rustle of a cabbage palm, Maggie made fold-overs from the bologna and bread. When they'd eaten their fill, Maggie slipped off behind a clump of palmetto while Jodie and Silas packed away the remaining food and drink. Maggie returned and spread the army blanket, settling onto the warm sand for a nap.

Silas stripped down to his boxers and waded into the water. His body had retained its youthful leanness. He plunged into the surf, his strokes strong and even, a man at ease in the water. He swam seventy yards or more into the bay before flipping onto his back, raising his arm in a quick wave while bobbing like a fisherman's cork.

Jodie walked back in the direction of the lagoon, gathering dry driftwood, downed palm fronds, and pine cones for the fire they'd need for steaming crabs.

Silas walked out of the surf, tugging at the front of his shorts. He pulled on his jeans and sat beside her, glancing over his shoulder at Maggie sleeping.

“Guess we've gained a step or two on her.” The love on his face could have melted ice.

Jodie smiled. “Best you don't let her hear you.”

She looked out across the blue-green expanse to where water and sky became one, and the gentle wave motion added to her newfound calm.

“What brings you such a peaceful look?” It was a treacherous question, but one that deserved an honest answer.

“I was thinking about what it might feel like to be in love.” She didn't look at him, but at the tide inching its way onto the sand.

“Guess I'm willing to work on that being a good thing. And this man is back where you came from?” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him in the way he might Maggie.

She stroked the rough, red skin over his knuckles, cleaned and softened by the salty water.

“Silas, I won't ever feel that way with a man.” The lapping sound of the surf was suddenly magnified a hundred fold.

“But, just now, I thought you .…” He got to his feet and his body grew stiff with his recognition.

“If it's the last thing I do, I promise you I'll hunt down Roy Dale Pitts. And I'll kill that mean sonofabitch.”

“No, no, Silas. There's no one to blame. Trust me, I'm not broken. I don't need fixing.”

“Good God, Jodie. Then stop your damn fooling around.” He turned his face away from her, but not before she saw it twist into pain, her meaning slowly taking hold.

He stumbled backward, tears in his eyes. “Why'd you have to tell me? Why not go on lying? I could live with that.”

He turned and ran, faster and faster, until he became a dark speck against the waning day. She wanted to believe that he had stopped running and stood bent, panting, searching for a way back.

The taste of salt spray on her lips, Jodie breathed more deeply, considering all the times she'd heard the word
queer
and felt fear, and had known anger and not pride. Scooping a handful of warm sand, she caressed it between her palms, her heart beating to a different rhythm, her resolve flowing through her veins warm as her blood.

She wasn't sure how long she sat before Maggie struggled to her feet, the tattered army blanket tightly wrapped around her shoulders.

“Girl, you're going to need to build us a fire. We've got crabs to steam.”

When the crabs were ready, Jodie and Maggie sat on the blanket and picked sweet meat from the soft shells, washing their food down with RC Colas. While they ate, a full moon rose over the water, turning the sand to a wide slivery path as far as Jodie could see. She and Maggie were alone.

“Should we look for him?”

“No, shug. He means to get back on his own.”

“Will he stop loving me?”

Maggie shook her head, sighed softly, “Lord, child, sometimes you amaze me at what you don't get out of living.”

“Please, tell me. I can't bear the thought of losing him.”

“He'd just begun to work out his feelings about giving you up to some other man. Now you've asked him to figure out how he's going to keep on loving you after hearing the truth. He'll need time.”

She'd rarely heard such tenderness in Maggie's voice, and she seemed to struggle with her thoughts before deciding to leave something unsaid. Jodie stoked the embers with the remaining twigs and palm branches. Flames flickered, built, and rose skyward in the way of rebirth, and they leaned in, drawn to the fire's primordial powers to comfort.

“How'd you know Miss Ruth's was the love you could trust?” Love remained a mystery to her, and what little she knew defied the shape of words.

“I remembered watching my grandpa work iron. He never hurried. Heated and cooled the iron, content to pound it into shape a little at a time, believing a good piece of iron would need shaping and reshaping with considerable care if it is to hold its core strength. Don't know if he was right or not, but I took his point.”

“For a moment back there with Miss Ruth, I thought I knew all I needed to know. But now, I'm not as sure.” She looked into the wider world she'd come to distrust, and spoke to what she couldn't know. Still, she said, “There's a woman I think I loved, but I let her get away without ever telling her as much.”

“Ah, and who is it you don't trust?”

Jodie felt her facial muscles relax, and she slowly nodded. She now believed she knew more fully why she'd run, but she'd need to understand the harder part of what she was willing to leave behind. She still had wrongs to settle.

“What's to be done about your half? The tombstone, I mean?”

“Uh, that .…” Maggie paused, and maybe they each avoided the inevitability of her death. “Silas has yet to see it. But whatever he feels, he'll do what's needed when the time comes.” She laughed. “What that sweet boy knows and denies about Ruth and me could fill one of those poetry books he keeps hidden behind the seat of his truck.”

“Why him?” Her sense of betrayal was more real than she meant to expose, and maybe her childhood jealousy drove her response.

“He'll stay and you won't.” Maggie smiled, and Jodie believed that Maggie wanted her to know that she, too, believed her leaving could be a good thing. They sat a moment longer, neither talking. When thick, black-velvet darkness enfolded them, they stood, gathered the remainder of the day, and walked the moonlit trail back to where they'd left the truck.

Maggie handed Jodie the keys, and they drove back along the mostly deserted highway, Maggie balancing two perfectly matched conch shells in her lap.

“My Ruth would have loved today.”

“Except for the part where Silas ran away.” For good, she thought, but could not bear saying it aloud.

“No, she would've liked that part best. Me waiting until her death was wrong. I should have never asked that of her. Thought I was sparing her pain, but she knew we weren't fooling anybody who really mattered.”

Jodie leaned across the space and kissed Maggie on the cheek.

“Figure I must taste like a salt lick.”

“No, ma'am. You taste good, like warm butter.”

“Felt good. I miss kisses.”

J
odie and Maggie sat bent over a wobbly card table, the results of their meager start at assembling the fifteen-hundred-piece puzzle of the Grand Canyon spread before them. A thunderstorm rolled toward the ridge, its outer edges beginning to pound rain onto the tin roof, muting the sounds of Maggie's labored breathing, their cycling sighs, and the familiar voice of Walter Cronkite.

At the barely audible mention of Selma, Alabama, Jodie looked up from the puzzle. She came to her feet, crossed the room, and stood staring at the snowy television screen.

Maggie stood at Jodie's elbow. “What on earth, child? You're trembling.”

“Just now, I may've seen someone.”

Although the huge black man's features had appeared fuzzy on the screen, Jodie believed him to be Arthur Washington. But there was nothing more to learn. Cronkite had moved on from the bloody confrontation between police and protesters to an announcement from the White House on plans for a presidential visit to Dallas in mid-November.

“If Mother Nature keeps up her fury, those catch pans I set out all over this sorry excuse for a house will need emptying. Wouldn't hurt to check the one I set in the middle of your bed while I brew us a fresh pot of Irish.”

Jodie emptied the rainwater into the bathtub, reset the pan, and worked at convincing herself that the man she saw wasn't Arthur. He was too smart to return to Selma. But with him, it was never a matter of smarts.

Maggie poured two steaming cups, stiffened both with a double shot of bourbon, and took a seat opposite Jodie. She sipped the spiked coffee in an attempt to wash her fears from the twisted knot her gut had become. Still, she felt Arthur's presence as real as if he, too, sat across the table from her.

Maggie placed a warm hand on her balled fist and squeezed. She looked away and then back into Maggie's warm gaze, realizing that the bigger part of being who she was wasn't her many lies but all the silences she'd kept.

“This man I knew back in Selma. Cooked at the café where I worked.”

Maggie leaned forward, her torso perfectly square to Jodie's. Her expression, while expectant, spoke of patience.

“Wish you could have known him. He made biscuits nearly as good as yours.” She glanced at Maggie, gauging her take.

A flash of irritation set Maggie's jaw hard and she scoffed. “And you're telling me that this man's biscuits are reason enough for me to want to know him?” She leaned back in the chair, her intolerance for anything less than the whole truth barefaced.

“No, I'm telling you … he was my friend.” She paused. “Arthur. Arthur Washington. I think he was the man I saw just now, being jailed along with others I know nothing about. He's deep into all that civil rights business.”

Maggie leaned forward, setting the cup back onto the table. Her open expression invited more.

“Before I left Selma, a bunch of night riders nearly beat him to death. He barely escaped Selma ahead of their finishing their meanness.”

“And you had a hand in his escape.”

She nodded. “Yes'm, I did. He could still die.”

“Yeah, he could. It's a damn sorry thing, but more times than not suffering and dying is the horse change rides in on.”

Jodie's breath caught, and her eyes filled with tears. She was likely to never cross paths with Arthur again, but he would forever be a part of how she knew courage.

“But darling, you and Arthur are the friends we all crave. And it's rare aplenty if we get one or two in a lifetime. And it doesn't hurt one whit that they can turn out a pan of good biscuits. Brew a jug of moonshine. Or steal from crooked politicians.”

They sat for a time, listening to the last of the rainwater dripping from the eaves. Maggie appeared to sift through her own memories, a story gathering behind her furrowed brow. She poured bourbon into her empty cup.

“After the war, a bunch of us got booted out of the service.”

“Booted? How so?”

“Army paid shrinks to say all of us queers who were serving were crazy. We were all scared, some of us more than others—them enough to tattle, thinking to save their own hides, I figured. Army handed those of us accused dishonorable discharges.” Maggie's face grew harsh, her belly-stored pain boiling its way to the surface. “No one stood up for us. Not even those whose lives we nurses saved. I think that's what hurt me the most.”

“What'd you do?”

“Let it beat me down. Drank too damn much. Then it was never more than I needed. Stayed depressed over missing out on all the hoopla for returning vets. Parades and celebrations popped up in every little chicken-shit town across the country. I was a proud soldier. I wanted to wear my uniform. March with the others in just one of those homegrown parades.”

Jodie nodded.

“But all wasn't lost.” A smile brightened Maggie's worn face. “My Ruth threw me a private homecoming. I dressed in my uniform, stripped of its insignia, and she pinned handmade insignia and medals on my jacket. Escorted me to a candlelight dinner in our own tiny kitchen. Afterwards, we danced until two in the morning to Benny Goodman's band.”

“I fared better than those poor souls who suffered such fear and loneliness they took their own lives to escape it.” Maggie hugged her arms tightly across her breasts, and Jodie believed she saw in Maggie's eyes the same despair she'd often felt, and had seen in Sarah's eyes.