Beauty and the Mustache (25 page)

I heard the footsteps
retreat along with the sound of Jethro and Billy’s irritated voices
and mild insults.

Jethro: “They’re right
there on the hook, how could you miss them?”

Billy: “They’re not on the
hook. I’m not blind. I can see your ugly face, can’t I?”

Jethro: “I don’t know, can
you? You couldn’t find a tree in these woods.”

Billy: “I can too. See?
That’s a tree.” I heard him smack it for emphasis.

Jethro: “That’s not a
tree, dummy. That’s a bush. I’ll give you five dollars if you can
find a leaf.”

I pressed my lips together and laughed to
myself. Their bickering was nearly constant. They reminded me a bit
of the roosters in our backyard, crowing at each other just for the
sake of crowing.

I hiked my skirt higher
and crossed to the other side of the riverbank. The bottom of the
stream was sandy in some spots, rocky in others. I walked slowly,
enjoying the feel of the cool water coursing between my legs and
the quiet sounds of the forest.

I should have felt
peaceful and at ease, but I didn’t. The hairs on the back of my
neck prickled and a shiver raced down my spine. Instinctively, I
glanced around and over my shoulder, finding the source of my
disquiet.

Drew stood in Jethro’s
abandoned spot. His thumbs were hooked in his belt loops, his white
T-shirt was tucked into the waist of his blue cargo pants, and he
was wearing the thick brown belt with the large buckle that spelled
SAVAGE.

And he was watching me.
His face was neutral except a whisper of a smile curving his lips
and lighting his eyes.

My gaze widened, surprised
to find him on the other side of the bank. My steps faltered and
stopped. We stared at each other silently, and the song of a nearby
bird filled the air.

When the bird finished its
solo, Drew lifted his chin—this had the effect of hooding his
gaze—and said, “Good to see you out of the house again.”

I gave him a tight smile. “And not being
chased by a rabid raccoon, right?”

“
Right.” His grin widened
and he nodded once. “So, you call your girls yet?”

My tight smile became soft and sincere.
“Yes. Yes I have. Thank you again for that.”

I knew he was referring to
my knitting group back in Chicago. The first thing I’d done after
logging on to the Internet was send off several emails to my
friends, letting them know how things stood, how I was, and
apologizing for not contacting them earlier.

Since then I’d Skyped once
with my friends Janie and Fiona, once with Elizabeth, twice with my
friends Marie and Kat, and two times with Sandra and her husband
Alex (who I also considered a close friend). Alex shared my passion
for novels and, therefore, we were frequently arguing the merits of
one author or another. He’d just finished re-reading one of my
favorites,
Lonesome
Dove
, and was eager to debate the virtues
of a happy ending versus a true-to-life ending.

He preferred a happy
ending. I preferred a true-to-life ending. We argued about this
often.

“
No need to keep saying
thank you.” Drew shrugged, his eyes serious. “Whatever you
need.”

I felt suddenly shy and we
fell silent again. I looked away, though I was sure he was still
watching me. I let myself steal a glance at him from the corner of
my eye and found I was right. In fact, his eyes were on my legs;
specifically, where my skirt was hiked up to my thighs.

My bizarre burst of
shyness was joined by an abrupt dose of
self-consciousness.

Not helping matters, Drew
picked that moment to say, “‘My friend must be a bird, because she
flies...’”

I stilled, aware of the
sound my heart was making between my ears, and swallowed the rising
sensation of delicious disquiet down, down, down.

Of course, I recognized the
words he’d just said as the beginning of a poem. But the original
Emily Dickenson poem was about a
he,
not a
she;
as in,
My friend must be a bird, because he flies.
It was a love poem, and it stirred something in my
stomach and chest. The forest felt close and overwhelming, like I
was being wrapped in a blanket of tree trunks and
leaves.

Yet I managed to clear my
throat and recite the next line: “‘Mortal, my friend must be,
because he dies’.”

I could hear the smile in
Drew’s voice when he continued, “‘Barbs has she, like a bee. Ah,
curious friend…’”

I lifted my eyes and held
his. We finished the poem together, saying in unison, “‘Thou
puzzlest me’.”

Drew’s smile was immense.
I returned it because I was randomly powerless against the sight of
him. He was bathed in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the
trees and casting him in a golden glow. So, basically, he was
dazzling.

After a long moment,
looking at him made my chest hurt, so I moved my attention
elsewhere and said, “What? No Nietzsche quotes today?”

“
How about this one:
‘Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine’.”

I smiled at the water and
nodded. “That’s a good one. I can’t stand the guy. But I admit
that’s a good quote.”

“
What’s not to like? His
well-constructed arguments against the insanity of group think and
forced societal mediocrity? Or is it his magnificent mustache you
can’t stand?”

My eyebrows lifted, though
I kept my attention affixed to the water’s surface. “Nietzsche
didn’t have a mustache.”

“
Yes he did.”

“
No, that wasn’t a
mustache. That was the pelt of a moderately sized woodland animal
and a lifestyle choice.”

Drew’s laughter filled the
air, danced around my head, and landed softly on my ears. I was
gratified to hear it, a deep belly laugh that—paired with his
behavior the night of the jam session—further contradicted my
earlier estimation of him as joyless. His laughter receded, leaving
me with rosy cheeks, flushed with pleasure, and a wide grin
claiming my mouth.

Since I was on a roll, I
added, “I like this one too: ‘Every deep thinker is more afraid of
being understood than of being misunderstood’
.
”

I glanced at Drew and
regretted it. The force of his gaze nearly knocked me over. I
frowned at his expression and tore my eyes away. I decided to
vehemently occupy myself by studying the pebbles on the bed of the
translucent stream, separating the orange rocks from the others
with my toes.

But my feet halted their
movements when I heard him recite several lines of
poetry:

“Fire burns blue and
hot.

Its fair light blinds me
not.

Smell of smoke is
satisfying, tastes nourishing to my tongue.

I think fire ageless,
never old, and yet no longer young.

Morning coals are cool;
daylight leaves me blind.

I love the fire most
because of what it leaves behind
.”

My frown deepened because
I didn’t recognize the poem. I dared to give him a curious glance.
His returning gaze felt heavy somehow, demanding and fierce in a
way I couldn’t immediately grasp; or maybe I wasn’t ready to
understand.

Regardless, I asked the
question that was on my mind. “I don’t recognize that one. Who
wrote it?”

Drew removed his thumbs
from his belt loops and stuffed his hands in his pockets. His gaze
still unnerving in its intensity, he shrugged and said, “I wrote
it.”

My mouth dropped open
slightly in surprise, and I blinked at his admission. “You wrote
it?”

He nodded.

“
You write
poetry?”

He nodded again, glanced
at the toes of his boots, then at back me.

I thought about the poem,
or at least the lines I could remember. If I’d known he was going
to recite one of his own, I would have told him to hold that
thought so I could write it down, pick it apart later, and memorize
it. I never, in one million years, would have guessed that Drew was
a poet.

It seemed he had a gift for shocking the
butter off my biscuits.

In what felt like a sudden
departure, but what might have been after several minutes of me
staring at him completely dumbfounded, Drew tossed his thumb over
his shoulder and said, “I need to head out. I’ll see you
later.”

With that, he turned to
leave.

My heart did a weird
clenching thing in my chest and my feet moved toward him without me
telling them to do so. When I realized that I was basically chasing
after him, dredging my legs like heavy weights to the edge of the
stream, I instructed my body to cease and desist the
pursuit.

But before I could stop my
mouth, I blurted a question at his retreating back. “What does the
fire leave behind? Destruction? Death?”

Drew didn’t respond until
he was almost out of sight. Then he turned and, walking backward
for a few steps, he called out, “Ash—the fire leaves
ash.”

“
He had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of
Scarlett O’Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother’s
velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a
rooster.
”

―
Margaret Mitchell, Gone
with the Wind

Five weeks after
I arrived in Tennessee I ran out of
jokes.

On the Monday that I ran
out of jokes, Billy, Joe, and Marissa were sitting with Momma while
she dozed, Marissa having decided to stay for supper after her
shift ended. I was in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes
with Cletus and Jethro, lost in my thoughts while drying pots and
pans.

I was thinking about Drew
and wondering where he was. He hadn’t come to the house for supper.
He’d been MIA since our poetry recitation in the woods. I wondered
obliquely if the rain, which had been falling non-stop for the last
two days, was responsible for his absence.

Cutting through my
musings, I heard my mother’s voice calling my name, and my hands
stilled just as Billy appeared in the doorway.

“
Ash, Ash—come quick.
Momma says she has something to tell you.” He paused just long
enough to wave me forward then dashed back down the
hall.

I set the pot down and
barely registered the sound as it fell to the floor behind me. I
was already jogging out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the
den.

Momma’s eyes were open,
and she looked completely lucid. I tucked this vision of her away,
took a snapshot with my mind—because it occurred to me that this
might be her last lucid moment.

“
Hey, Momma. I’m here.” I
reached my hand out and she gripped it immediately.

“
Ashley.” Her eyes were
wide, and the usual urgency was present. Abruptly, I worried that
she would say something profound instead of her usual random bits
of wisdom.

I was terrified that this
time, she would say something real and necessary and earth
shattering, and it would mean the end of her.

But my fears were assuaged
when she said, “Ashley, the roosters. We have too many roosters. I
told your friend Sandra about it while she was here. You need to
butcher them, all but one, or else it’ll cause problems for the
hens, and they won’t lay as many eggs. Roosters need a purpose. If
you don’t give a rooster a purpose, they make trouble.”

I gave her a small smile
and nod, the knot of fear in my chest easing. “Okay, I’ll do that.
Tomorrow I’ll butcher the roosters.”

She nodded, relaxed back
to her pillows, and sighed. “Good. That’s good. Maybe you can make
some fried chicken. Also, I think I promised Julianne at the
library a bird. Do you mind?”

I shook my head. “I’ll
call her this week.”

“
Thank you,” she said
intently, her eyes moving between mine. Then she waited, watching
me like she expected me to say something else.

I stiffened when I
realized she was waiting for me to tell her a joke, and my throat
tightened when my mind went blank. The dash into the den, my worry
when I found her so lucid and awake, the fear that seized me when I
thought she was going to finally share something actually urgent
had pushed all the jokes from my mind.

My heart rate doubled as
her eyes moved over my face, her expectant smile
slipping.

“
Why did the rooster go to
KFC?” Billy, standing at my shoulder, blurted this
question.

I glanced at him and, to
my surprise, found that all my brothers were also in the room.
Billy’s eyes flickered to mine then back to my mother as he stated
the punchline. “Because he wanted to see a chicken
strip.”

We fell silent for half a
second, then my momma wrinkled her nose and shook her head. But she
was also laughing. “William, that is a terrible joke.”

“
I’ve got one,” Roscoe
volunteered. He was standing on the other side of the bed holding
my mother’s hand. “Why did the rooster cross the road?”