It's Not Like I Knew Her (8 page)

“Miss Maggie sent me. Said I should come and get acquainted. I think Mr. Red would've said the same if he hadn't left in such a hurry. But she never warned you'd be so contrary.”

“I do believe you can talk. And just so you know, I'm not one bit contrary unless first pissed off. And who's this Maggie?” She smashed a yellow fly perched on her elbow, flipping the corpse his way.

“She's not like any woman you've ever seen. Drove an army ambulance right into the thick of Hitler's war. Now she doctors those who don't have time off or money to see the real doctor.”

“You don't say? Since when did women get to be in the Army?” She plopped back onto the ground but kept her distance.

“Every word's the truth. She wears pants and curses like a hussy. People say things, but I don't care. She and Miss Ruth are my best friends. And Miss Ruth don't cuss or drink. She's always home before dark.”

“Is that a fact?”

He nodded repeatedly as though he'd spoken the truth on female respectability.

“You wouldn't think so highly of this Maggie if you'd known Jewel.”

“Uh-huh, and if you had half a boy brain, you'd be grateful to Maggie.” He tugged on Buster's ear and didn't look at her.

“Watch your mouth. I don't have cause to be grateful to nobody. Least of all a woman I've never laid eyes on.”

“It figures Mr. Red wouldn't have let on, since she scalded his dog.”

“Boy, what the hell are you talking about?”

He picked up a sweet gum ball and tossed it hesitantly at a cluster of pitcher plants growing along the creek, as though he was making up his mind about saying something he'd likely been told to keeping under his hat.

“Well, I'm waiting to hear whatever it is you're too chicken to tell.”

“You're not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“Miss Maggie told Mr. Red she didn't give a good gosh dang about his woman troubles. Called him a lily-livered coward. Said he was to fetch you back here or he'd answer to her.” He paused. “Don't nobody but her get away with talking to Mr. Red that way.”

Jodie needed time to gather herself, and she stared in the direction of noisy chatter. If it was true Red never wanted to bring her here, she didn't want to hear more from this boy.

He followed her gaze and they both watched.

“That big one's a boy squirrel. He wants to make babies with that girl squirrel.” He spoke in the same certain tone and he'd started to piss her off.

“Oh, yeah, and I guess you've seen a grown man and woman do it.”

“No, I ain't had a decent chance. Lost my daddy to Roosevelt's CCC for the promise of what he called a dollar a day, three hots, and a flop. And since my mama's a Christian widow, she refuses traveling men.”

“Boy howdy, Jewel sure didn't. She was so pretty. She had a new man every night. They all wanted to marry her and be my daddy.” Jodie waited for him to run like a turkey, but he only blinked hard, leading her to believe she'd outdone him.

“My daddy helped build a big dam till a dynamite charge went off in his hand. The others looked for him, but they never found parts enough to send home. That's why Mama got a check for fifty-seven dollars and a letter telling her about daddy's bravery, signed by nobody other than President Harry Truman.” His eyes narrowed in a challenge.

“Jewel died in a head-on collision with a semi loaded with hogs. Law swore folks stopped to butcher dead and crippled hogs. Blood and guts ran in the ditches steadier than water in that creek.”

His face puckered and he looked as if he might puke. She'd outdone him, all right, but her stomach felt queasy, and she wished she'd left out the part about blood and guts.

“This Jewel, she was your mama?”

“Didn't like for me to call her that. We were more like sisters.”

“Mama said Daddy died a no-account drunk. But I miss him just the same.”

Silas had ways Jodie had never known in a boy. Without really trying, he made her feel better about the way her mama had died.

He pulled a book from the bib of his overalls and held it up to her.

She looked away. It wasn't a book she recognized. Besides, there was a boy pictured on the cover.

“No, it's a real good book. About a boy named .…” He paused and squinted at her. “Jody's a boy's name. How come your mama gave you a boy's name?”

“What my mama did is none of your business.” She stood, her hands jammed in her pockets, and she glared at him.

“You a tomboy?” There was no meanness. Only his question.

“So what if I am? I'll gladly take it over sissy bookworm.”

“You ever heard of Abe Lincoln? He read every book in the library. And look where it took him.” He glared back, and she was starting to feel better about him.

“Oh, so someday you're growing whiskers and living in the White House?”

“Maybe, but first I'm taking over my uncle's shop. Mean to fix people's cars and trucks. Then I'll see about the other.”

“I got news for you, sucker. No grease monkey's ever made it that far. Generals get to be President. And you don't look like general material.”

“Miss Ruth says there's a first time for everything. And besides, if you're so dang smart, what're you planning on?”

“I haven't decided. But for sure I'm not fixing busted cars.” Right now, staying a step ahead of Miss Mary's strap was using up her best wit. Beyond that, she wasn't sure.

He'd sat calmly through her tirade, his slow hand working its way around the binding of the book he held. “If I had a knife I'd cut fronds from that palmetto,” he pointed, “and we'd make a flutter mill like the boy Jody did in the book.”

She took her Barlow from her pocket and held it out to him.

“Dang, girl.” His eyes flashed with admiration.

She didn't know if she wanted to be friends with a boy who read books and failed to carry a knife. She admitted to her insides calming, but she couldn't be sure it had anything to do with this strange boy.

S
ilas had a fascination with other people's junk, and she'd agreed to spend another hot morning scavenging the county dump. Her decision came only after he'd promised she would finally meet the infamous Maggie, who would give them a ride back and haul his treasured castoffs.

They'd taken turns riding the bike he'd acquired from an earlier trip to the dump. He declared it to be as good as new, although it was short a seat and both fenders. He argued that only lazy riders sat to peddle, and the absence of fenders caused the bike to go faster. Silas had a special knack for explaining away all things contrary to what he wanted to believe. Given his pitiful station in life, she'd decided that his doing so served him well.

Silas piled the last of his treasures, a twisted tongue and front axle from what had been a kid's red wagon, next to the road. He wiped sweat from his eyes on the tail of his nasty shirt and grinned as if he'd bagged gold.

“What're you going to do with that?” Jodie shaded her eyes from the sun's glare and wished they'd brought water.

“Don't know yet, but something useful.” He stood staring at the pile, and she believed he was reconfiguring scrap.

“How much longer we got to wait?”

He squinted up at the sun. “I've never known Maggie to be late for a meal. Don't worry. She'll be along.”

He'd brought along his Roy Rogers BB gun, and they went back to targeting rats until the clatter of an approaching truck had Silas scurrying. He shouted, “It's her all right. Dead on the dime.”

The truck slid to a quick stop and Jodie got her first look at the woman he so admired. Her sunburned face wasn't altogether unfriendly, but there was a sternness about her that put Jodie in mind of Jewel.

“Get that mess loaded, boy. My dinner's getting cold.”

“Yes'm. You bet.” Silas grabbed up the bag and, with Jodie's help, heaved it and the bike into the bed of the truck. He scampered around the truck and held the door open. “Boys ride shotgun.”

“Slide on in, girlie. You must be Jodie Taylor.”

Jodie stared at the woman. Her hair, the color of Spanish moss, was cropped just below her ears, and she wore a white shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled above her elbows.

Silas gestured that she should answer. She jabbed him a sharp one to the ribs and he drew back, looking both surprised and anxious.

“I'm Jodie Taylor, all right. And don't call me girlie. It's meant for sissies, and I'm not one.”

Silas gulped air like he'd stepped on a rattler.

The big woman smiled. “You may survive after all. I'm Maggie, Jodie Taylor, and I'm pleased to meet you.” There was no sign of Jewel's brooding, only a hard playfulness in Maggie's manner.

“Plenty of starch, all right.” Silas nodded like a bobble doll, his tone one of relief, as if he'd set aside some personal dread.

Maggie turned the truck around and sped back onto the highway as if the devil gave chase. Jodie studied the woman's relaxed, one-hand grip on the steering wheel.

“You drive like a man.”

“No, Jodie Taylor, I drive like a woman with somewhere to be.”

Jodie settled back against the scratchy wool blanket covering the seat. For reasons she couldn't fathom, she felt more at ease, squeezed between Silas and this strange woman, than at any time since leaving the row.

J
odie and Silas sprawled on the front porch, intent on playing a mean game of checkers. They played with two sets of caps, Silas insisting that RC caps were luckier than Aunt Jemima syrup bottle caps, although she still beat him seven out of ten games. If Silas was anything, he was loyal to a fault. They stopped their play and watched the approach of a delivery truck.

Miss Mary hurried onto the porch, flashing a rare smile. Her plump hands clasped beneath her double chin struck Jodie as an oddly prayerful pose. In a display of what Jodie viewed as downright silliness, she flitted about the small, over-crowded front room, directing the reluctant delivery men in multiple arrangements of the new furniture into what she must have imagined as fashionable. Jodie was sure Jewel would have gotten the arrangement right the first time, saving the backs of the delivery men and shaping a better looking room.

Jodie pondered the price Miss Mary had extracted from Red for trips to the row. Surely Jewel had cost him more than an ugly couch and chair. The more she saw of Red dealing with Miss Mary, the more she considered the radio/record player console Jewel had prized a similar act of appeasement.

Dressed in his customary starched khaki pants and long-sleeved white shirt, Red came onto the porch. He watched their play, and Jodie, feeling the nearness of him, leaned back against his leg. He bent and with his strong fingers gently kneaded her scalp, his whiskey-flavored breath brushing her cheek.

She pushed into the pleasure of his touch, remembering those late nights when he'd lifted her into his arms to the sound of Jewel's soft laughter and carried her to the makeshift cot in the kitchen where she'd slept the balance of his visit.

Silas scrambled to his feet and asked, “You want us to stop this game? Get the Chinese checkers out so you can play too?”

“Naw, boy, you kids are having too much fun. Besides, I've got me a strong hankering for strawberry cream.” He walked down the steps, rattling the loose change he always carried in his pocket.

“No you don't. Wait for us.” She, Silas, and even Hazel, chased after him, Hazel looking relieved when her mother didn't call her back. It seemed she, too, was to reap the reward of a temporary ceasefire between her parents.

They piled into the Dodge and headed for Gaskin's Drugs. Jodie and Silas hung out the passenger side window, hot air rushing into their lungs, and sang
She'll be coming around the mountain
loud enough, Red joked, they were surely heard in China. She wanted Red to say she sang good like her mama had, but it wasn't true. Still, she was disappointed and puzzled by the way Red picked truth from among so many lies.

Red followed the three of them into Gaskin's, a haven from the blistering heat. Its wagon wheel–sized overhead fans cooled the black-and-white tiled floor, and Jodie took care to step only on white squares. There was a part of her that still wanted to believe in good luck.

Red handed each a dime. “You kids take these before they rub a hole clear through my pocket.”

A car trip into town with Red, double scoops of strawberry ice cream, and a comic was more than Jodie had hoped for, the true makings of a perfect day.

On their return, Jodie sat in the porch swing, her new Wonder Woman comic, and Hazel's silly Archie, hidden inside her shirt, tucked up tight against the bib of her overalls.

“Jodie,” Hazel whispered. “It's my daddy's sin that me and you got funny books, right?”

“Damn, girl, they're
funny
books. Don't that tell you something?”

“But I think God's against fun.”

Hazel chewed her bloody cuticle, a habit she had when faced with the prospect of her parents' fighting. She was too dumb to know Miss Mary didn't give a big rat's ass about God, the Bible, or Satan's part in who read comics.

“I know.” Hazel's face lit up with her perceived cleverness. “We could hide them in his car.”

“And what happens when he takes a notion to drive off in the middle of the night?”

Hazel sucked blood from her torn cuticle.

“Damn, that's nasty. You some kind of girl vampire?”

J
odie had removed the stashed comics and flashlight from the wooden box with busted hinges that she and Silas had dragged from the dump and hidden beneath the house. When the light beneath Red and Miss Mary's bedroom door disappeared, she retrieved both from under the bed.

Cocooned in the wraith-like glow of the flashlight beam, they scrunched beneath the sheet, Jodie quietly reading the forbidden Archie comic, Hazel having reaffirmed that her just listening surely carried a lesser penalty. Jodie knew Hazel's thinking was flawed and that the spineless girl was never in any real danger of the lash. Still, she liked the conspiratorial feel of their doing so. It was, after all, their one act of shared defiance.