Nobody's Child (9 page)

Laura Ann replaced the notebook, the card, and the paraphernalia, then zipped the case shut. Pink bag in hand, she stopped in the kitchen and took a box of matches from over the gas stove, then headed for the front door.

A small pile of wood waited at the edge of the drive, her little campfire prepared when Ian drove away long after midnight. The few sticks and tinder she'd gathered would burn quickly, but not hot enough to endanger the farm on a dry night. Horizon to horizon, the Milky Way blazed above her in a cloudless sky as she lit the tiny bonfire, encouraging flames with a few
puffs. A gentle night breeze carried smoke away from the house, and the dry wood caught fire. Within moments, her blaze licked upwards, seeking more fuel.

Laura Ann set the pink zippered bag on top of the fire. Quickly, flames ate through the plastic, molten drips of burning pink falling into hot coals. Another burst of flame shot forth in a blaze of green and yellow — this time, the pill packs. A few moments later she heard a telltale hiss — the boiling of Pergonal in its bottle. More dripping balls of flame meant a melting hypodermic. Like an offering, she fueled a pyre with drugs, needles, and eight months of secrets and regrets. Venus suspended a waning crescent above her, heralding a new moon, a new month — and new life.

Laura Ann stood transfixed by the dying fire. Embers glowed with all that remained of her former days. Her funerary obliterated the options she'd chosen when she had no other choice. Gone were the catalysts of four nightmares where cold hands suctioned precious innocence from her womb.

Yet, somehow, her offering lacked closure.

The drugs are gone, but my secret remains.

J
UNE 24

Lucky nuzzled against Laura Ann's leg in the woodshop, his jetblack fur speckled with shavings that spit from the edge of her blade. She pulled her tool off the lathe rest and nudged the cat aside with her foot, then moved the skew chisel back into a spinning oak cylinder, shaping the delicate surface of a decorative bead. For hours she'd turned lathe blanks, marking out cuts and shaping beads. Pungent reddish-beige oak dust covered her from shoulder to foot, and a pile of stool parts stood in the box at her side.

Lucky jumped up and curled on the stack of today's production. Fifty stools a month — two a day except Sundays—would match her income from the creep in Morgantown. With a barn full of Daddy's red oak lumber and a bale of old jeans from the thrift store, all she needed was glue, beeswax, linseed oil — and time. Thanks to Ian's last three days of help on the farm, she had time. Her heart picked up its pace when his image came to mind. Like a tall poplar, thin but majestic, Ian stood out in the crowd.

Tiny chips flew from the lathe as her skew chisel advanced into the cut, paring away the gentle curve of a quarter-inch semicircle,
one of three on her latest stool leg. With the deft pivot of the chisel and gentle swing of her arm and shoulder, she shaped the bead in a single pass, transforming the wood into a decorative post. Two more cuts of the sharp blade, and she had her latest leg ready to remove from the lathe. Curls of oak sheared away above the parting tool when she forced it into her pencil mark, denoting the end of the leg. Smooth red-tinged wood spiraled off the lathe over the top of her hand, curling to the floor like long locks of a wooden Rapunzel. The spinning cylinder separated from the lathe and she grabbed it midair with her left hand. Daddy would be proud.

Fifty stools — two hundred legs — spun through the slicing bit of her chisel. She set the newest leg on the stack beside Lucky and turned off the machine, stepping back to admire her handiwork.

“You're sleeping on our next mortgage payment,” she announced, nudging the cat. Accustomed to being bumped by cows and busy farm girls, he hardly moved. She stooped to pick him up, dusting off his temporary coat of oak dust. He didn't seem to care. “Run find someplace else to sleep. I have work to do.” She carried him from the shop into the light of a hot June afternoon sun and lowered him to the ground.

Leaden with the threat of showers, grey clouds filled the western sky. She prayed rain would materialize soon. For five days she'd watched clouds pass by, headed to dump their load of life-giving water on the mountains at the east side of the state. Something about the Ohio River, twelve miles to the west, raised an invisible wall against moisture. Her parched ground thirsted for refreshment, the red clay scorched and cracked in the glare of an unrelenting sun. Even hay grasses wilted in this infernal torture. West Virginia could be the North Pole in January, but transform into a humid Death Valley five months later. Today it felt like Death Valley on steroids.

Laura Ann headed for the garden, a still-thriving mix of tall sweet corn, tomatoes, and sprawling vines of squash and cucumbers. For half an hour she knelt in the soil and pulled at weeds that defied heat and hoe. Orchard grass fought to make a home in the tomatoes, tall shoots sucking up the water she fed each day to her precious plants. She ran her fingers along the sticky vines of ripening tomatoes. Next week she'd be canning dozens of jars of the red fruit, stewed, whole, or pureed into soup. Vitamin C bottled up for bitter winters.

“Gonna rain.”

Laura Ann jumped, surprised by the voice, but glad to hear it. Granny Apple's greeting brought her off her knees, tomatoes in hand, with a smile.

“Hi, Granny. Did you bring a basket?” She held forth a handful of her first Big Boy crop.

“Got all I can handle, child. Mine are making like there's no tomorrow. Been canning all morning.” She took the tomatoes from Laura Ann's hands and helped her step over a vine heavy with cucumbers.

They walked together to the house, Laura Ann dusting off her clothes as they approached the porch. “I'll have fifty stools ready to ship at the end of the month. Ian said he'd help me truck them over to a buyer in New Martinsville.”

Laura Ann shed her shoes at the door and held it open for Granny Apple. Her mentor wore her trademark summer outfit: white canvas tennis shoes, white knee-length jeans, and a button-up white cotton shirt. Fanning herself with her hand, Granny entered and set the tomatoes on the kitchen table. Laura Ann shut the door and flipped on the window air conditioner.

“Rain's comin',” Granny said, then took a seat at the kitchen table. “Tomorrow. Maybe tonight.”

“I sure hope so.” Laura Ann joined her at the table, freshly
washed tomatoes on a plate. She carved the red juicy fruit into thick slices and set them before Granny along with a pair of forks and some salt.

“Feel it in my bones, child. Never wrong.”

“Ian helped me water the pumpkin field last night,” Laura Ann said in between bites of thick juicy red. “Trying to save the crop.”

“Didn't need to,” Granny said, wiping at a dribble of red juice on her own chin. “Gonna get real wet.”

She pushed her second slice of tomato around on the plate, not looking up. Laura Ann watched her with the fascination of her childhood days, always amazed at this country woman who knew so much, but never revealed how she learned it.

“Ian left late.” Granny Apple offered the statement as a simple matter of fact. Her eyes met Laura Ann's, a wide smile growing on her wrinkled face. “He's the one,” she announced at last. “Your dad liked that boy. He's right for you.”

“Thanks.” Laura Ann stifled a chuckle. “I'm glad you approve.”

“I do. Question is, will he?”

Laura Ann cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

“Secrets, Laura Ann. They don't become you.”

Her heart skipped, then began its futile race. The way it did when Ian came to visit, or when she was up against Uncle Jack all by herself. “Secrets?” Laura Ann asked, looking down at the plate. She sat naked across the table from a woman who knew everything.

Granny Apple picked up the used plates and forks. She took dishes to the sink in silence, washed the tomato juice off, and set the plates in the drainer. Laura Ann joined her, wiping the plates dry. Granny turned and extended a thin wrinkled hand, taking the drying towel and gripping Laura Ann's hand for a moment.

“You kept that allotment out of Jack's hands until it was too late to plant burley. You won, honey. And he knows it.” She paused, then added, “It's over.”

Laura Ann nodded, willing her shaking hand to be still, but failed.

“You didn't sit around hoping for a way out.” She squeezed Laura Ann's hand, the firm grasp of strong aged fingers and calloused palm. “Whatever you did to beat him, dear, it was courageous.”

Laura Ann nodded, unable to look up.

“But now it's done, hear? It's behind you, sweetheart. So learn from it — and don't keep secrets.” Granny Apple released her hands, turned back to the sink, and washed away the last of the tomato juice from the basin.

She dried her hands. Heading for the door, she offered one last warning. “Keep a good eye out. Jack won't ever give up.”

Laura Ann stood at the door to the front porch for a long time, staring at her friend in white who ambled across the field along their two-track dirt path, crossing the pasture on her way to the highway.

Heavy black clouds massed to the west, like Granny Apple had predicted. A metallic aroma of approaching rain filled the air, carried by gusts that blew out of the west, across the Middle Island Creek. After weeks with no rain, anything that might fall today would shed off the hard clay and head straight for the creek. She prayed for a gentle soaking drizzle, but gathering clouds threatened otherwise. Dust devils kicked up across the farmyard, spiraling eddies of red dirt that whipped across trampled ground and disappeared into the distance beyond the barn.

Her cows sensed the coming storm, all of them lying down
in the pasture, noses into the wind. She was glad for the weather change, a temporary end to roasting temperatures that stressed her black-skinned herd. Even Lucky hunkered down, curled in a chair on the porch.

Laura Ann sat down with the cat, lifting him into her lap to watch the weather. The shop and her stools could wait. Daddy would pull her out of her chores at a time like this, determined to watch storms and enjoy the cool. Unless, of course, they were pitching hay in the field — and then he would be racing to escape the death bolts that incinerated men who stood on hay wagons.

Daddy. How fast six months had passed, half a year of living alone — despite the visits from Granny, or the rare opportunity to call on Auntie Rose. Half a year running the farm with help from Ian. Surviving calving season with all its stresses. Plowing, planting, and coaxing crops from the ground. Half a year of lonely nights, except those wonderful evenings when Ian kept her company. Always a gentleman, he never pressed to stay the night. Honor defined him.

Fire and anvil. Rays of pink and orange shot through the cloud layers, slicing a ceiling of grey. The metallic odor of rain faded as the gusts died into a quiet lull. Humidity clamped her in its jaws again as she watched the storm head to her right, away from the farm. The cows lay still in the pasture, noses to the west. Daddy would chide her for trying to guess the weather from watching them. “Cows lie down because they're full,” he told her once. “And they lie down before it rains to get a dry patch of ground.” He laughed every time he said it, like repeating a farmer's joke he'd heard once. She hoped they kept their dry spot, praying that rain would soon find her farm.

Lucky's purr box rattled while Laura Ann rocked. “Learn to rest,” Daddy said once. She'd done that so rarely these last months. Even Ian commented she'd become obsessed with getting things done and encouraged her every day to slow down.
It felt good to sit now and watch life go by, like she used to do with Daddy.

Grasshoppers rubbed their legs together, filling the afternoon with a summer serenade. Shimmers of heat rose in the still air. “Listen to your little voice,” Daddy said once when she asked him about making a decision. “That's what I do. I pray about how I should proceed, and then I listen.”

“What do you hear?” she'd asked, leaning at his knee where he rocked one summer night.

“A second sense. A feeling. I call it my ‘little voice.' “

“What does it say?” She wondered that a man so strong would depend on something so small and invisible as an inner voice.

“No words, Peppermint,” he said, his hand stroking her hair as he rocked. He stopped the motion and pointed at the base of the rocker. “Would you put your finger under there when I'm rocking?”

“No,” she exclaimed, moving back from the chair and the reach of his hand.

“Why?”

“It would hurt!”

“And what tells you that?”

“I can already imagine what it would feel like, Daddy. That's not funny.”

He motioned to her to move close, his face a sign of trust. She pulled near but careful to avoid the soiled white curve of the rocker.

“What you feel inside, that sense of the pain you'd experience, is sort of like that small voice I'm talking about. It's giving you a feeling of what's about to happen, a sense of the direction God wants you to go.”

She nodded under the weight of his hand on her head, and then laid her cheek on his knee.

“Listen to your little voice,” she said, repeating Daddy's words while she stood, watching the distant ridge.

A glint caught her eye, the reflection of a car. A silver SUV crept down the farm road, easing through ruts in the pasture. No danger of any mud this day, yet it moved with deliberate slowness, like a lost traveler scanning a street for the correct address.

Laura Ann moved off the porch to the picket fence as the vehicle passed the remains of the old tobacco barn. She recognized the ornament on the front of the car. A Lexus. The tinted windows of the fancy car hid the driver. Another emissary from her uncle? Standing alone, Laura Ann stiffened, determined to hold her ground. Soon, she hoped, she could stand side by side with Ian to weather the blistering ire of her uncle.

A woman stepped out of the car.

“Pumps?” Laura Ann exclaimed with a small laugh, too quiet to be heard. A thin woman in a skirt and loose top took an unsteady step away from the automobile as she tried to shut the door. She wobbled in the slag on her short heels, glanced at Laura Ann with a brief smile, and then grabbed for balance with a look of desperation.

Laura Ann let out a chuckle and stepped through the gate. “Need a hand?”

“Sorry,” the woman replied, embarrassed. She got her balance, then gingerly pushed the door closed and stepped in Laura Ann's direction. “Guess I should have worn sandals.”

Laura Ann smiled. “Don't apologize. Most folks from out of town expect a driveway or something.”

The woman stopped, her head cocked. “You know I'm from out of town?” she asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

Laura Ann pointed at the vehicle and smiled as she walked toward her. “Fancy car,” she said with a shrug. “It's a small town.”

The visitor stood Laura Ann's height, her skin a deeper
brown than she'd seen in a long time. Black wavy hair flowed over her shoulders, framing a broad smile and modern glasses shaped like little rectangles. Her nose was a little larger than she deserved, leading down into thin lips made deep red by a fresh application of lipstick. A printed top draped loose over her upper body, matching a tight pastel skirt. Saturday afternoon in the mountains, but this woman dressed like she'd planned on a nice dinner or church. She took an unsteady step in Laura Ann's direction, extending a hand as her smile grew.