Beauty and the Mustache (5 page)

I looked from Billy to
Cletus to Jethro, and the events of the day—
Get Well Soon
balloons, the
compassionate nurse at the hospital, rocky road ice cream, speaking
with the social worker—crashed over me. I felt like I was being
sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The world was eating me and screaming
in my ears at the same time. I gasped, closed my eyes against the
onslaught, and pressed my hand to my forehead.

“
Crap…”

“
What is it?” Jethro’s
voice was closer. “What happened at the hospital?”

I gathered a deep breath,
held it within my lungs. When I was sure I wouldn’t cry, I released
it and opened my eyes. They found Drew’s first. Inexplicably, maybe
because he wasn’t family and my dislike for him still lingered, I
discovered that the words didn’t strangle me as I spoke.

“
I saw Momma,” I said,
“and I spoke to her doctor. She has cancer. It’s real
bad.”

A stunned quiet fell over
the room like fluttering snowflakes blanketing a field. It was a
soft silence, reverent, and the air felt cold and hollow. I didn’t
see my brothers’ reactions because my attention was still fixed on
the stranger hovering above me.

Drew’s hand on my wrist
gripped tighter, and his eyes flared with some emotion I didn’t
have enough energy to decipher.

I ignored all this and
continued to address him as though he were the only person in the
room. “The doctor is sending her home tomorrow with hospice. He
says she’s got six weeks…or so.”

“
Six weeks….?” Jethro’s
voice broke through my self-imposed trance, and my attention
flickered to him. He turned away and walked to the recliner at the
end of the couch. He sat down heavily, his elbows on his knees, his
head in his hands. “Six weeks.”

I glanced at the other
five Winston boys. They appeared to be equally shocked and
dismayed, and my gaze snagged on my youngest brother, Roscoe. The
last time I’d seen him in person he was twelve. He was now
twenty.

“
This doesn’t make any
sense,” he said, glancing around the room as if it would give him
answers. “How can she have cancer? She wasn’t even
sick.”

I had no words to offer,
so I stared at the ceiling making a mental list of all the things I
needed to do before she arrived the next day.

“
What can I do to help?”
Drew’s voice, now gentle and solicitous, pulled me out of my head
and back to the scene of quiet chaos in the living room.

I shrugged and my vision blurred again with
tears. They leaked from the corners of my eyes.

“
Pray,” I said, because it
was the only thing anyone could do.

I recognized the
frustration etched in his features; it betrayed the helplessness he
so obviously felt. However, the last thing I expected him to do was
lean forward, hold my cheeks in his palms, and place a soft,
lingering kiss on my forehead while his unwieldy beard tickled my
nose.

Therefore, when that was what Drew did, I
was so astonished that I stopped crying.

He retreated, his hands
still cupping my face, and his thumbs wiping away my tears. Drew
threaded the fingers of one hand through the hair at my temple and
brushed it away from my shoulders. Then, bringing his palm back to
my cheek, he said softly, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I stared at him bemused
and not so far removed by the insanity of grief and low blood sugar
to recognize that Drew was an odd possum. “Uh, okay.”

Drew studied me, his gaze
intent and as serious as a thundercloud. I watched him and imagined
my expression mirrored that of a deer frozen in approaching
headlights. His mouth hooked upward, though his eyes remained
solemn.

“
Ash is short for
Ashley….” I guessed he was speaking to himself, because it emerged
as though he were voicing a secret or a private joke.

So…still odd.

My hands moved to where he
continued to frame my face, and I wrapped my fingers around his
much larger ones. “That’s right.” I nodded as I held him. “Ash is
short for Ashley. Is Drew short for Andrew?”

He blinked and looked
startled. His hands stiffened, and he pulled them out of my grip,
sitting straight for a short moment before standing. He was up, up,
up, and away—tall like a tower or a great tree, or a
mountain.

Drew was no longer looking
at me. In fact, he was looking everywhere
but
at me. Through my perplexed
misery-riddled daze, I thought he might have been a smidge
discomfited by his forward behavior. As it was, given the day’s
events, his discomfiture and oddness made very little impact on my
mental state.

I watched numbly as he
picked up a leather-bound notebook from the coffee table and turned
to Beauford; he whispered something in the twin’s ear. Beau’s eyes,
rimmed with shock and emotion, met mine, and he nodded. Beau moved
from Drew, motioned to Duane, and crossed to me.

“
Okay, big sister, upsy
daisy.” Beau leaned down and gave me a wobbly smile. Before I could
comprehend what he was about, he lifted me in his arms like I was a
feather. “You need food and sleep. Drew is fixin’ to cook you
something good, and I’m carrying you to your room.”

I opened my mouth to
protest that I could walk, but Duane hushed me as he led the way
upstairs. “Don’t worry about nothing. We’ll all be here when you
wake up. You can boss us as much as you like in the
morning.”

Duane flipped on the light
in my room and began straightening the bed, fluffing the pillow,
and turning down the blanket. Beau set me on the floor next to the
foot of the bed and wrapped me in his big arms.

“
We missed you, Ash.” His
voice was watery, though I seriously doubted he would actually
cry.

Duane joined us and hugged
me from behind. “I’m sorry I put maggots in your macaroni and
cheese. I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time.”

Then Beau said, “And I’m sorry we used to
hold you down and spit in your mouth.”

“
Ugh! Gross, Beau.” I
gagged a little. “I’d forgotten about that.”

The memories stirred
something in me. The severity of the twins’ acts of torment was
nothing in comparison to the frequency. They had launched volleys
at me daily, hourly, whenever I was at home. I’d never thought of
them as particularly lovable because my earliest memories involved
their constant assaults.

I tried to reach out to my
brothers while I was in college to form some kind of sisterly bond
with them on a more grown-up level. In return, they showed up at my
dorm room stoned, behaved like criminals, and hid buckets of
freshly slaughtered pigs’ feet in my friends’ rooms. It took weeks
for us to find them all.

I didn’t know what to think
about all that now. I
tsked
and laughed at the absurdity of the moment, the
apology for things that happened years ago, yet it wasn’t that
absurd. Their wild behavior had kept us in limbo for eight
years.

Too tired to talk, I
lifted my arms to hug my brothers. We stood together for several
moments then Beau and Duane pulled away. Beau held my gaze—his eyes
still glassy—then he took a step back.

“
You need anything, we’re
right next door.”

“
That’s right, anything at
all.” Duane put his hand on Beau’s shoulder. “But you might want to
knock first.”

He hadn’t meant it as a joke. It was a sober
warning meant to save me from embarrassment. Too late.

Beau closed his eyes, gave his head a subtle
shake, and pushed Duane toward the door. “You’re a dummy.”

“
What? What did I say?”
Duane said, glancing between his twin and me.

“
Just keep walking,
dummy.” Beau’s eyes flickered to mine, apologetic and irritated,
then he managed to guide his twin the rest of the way, closing the
door behind them.

I went through the motions
of putting on my pajamas and brushing my hair, thinking about not
much, but what I thought about was on the spin cycle, and it was
making me dizzy. So I sat on my bed and stared into the
mirror.

I had bags under my eyes.
In the morning, I would have to go hunting for hemorrhoid cream. Or
I could just not care. I decided not to care.

I heard a knock followed
by my door creaking open.

“
Are you decent?” Jethro’s
voice sounded from the hallway.

“
Yes. Come in.”

He pushed his way into my
room using his elbows because his hands were full. He held a plate
in one hand with a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich on it, and a
cup of tea in the other that smelled like lemon, peppermint, and
bourbon.

“
Food,” he said, placing
everything on the nightstand.

I glanced at the sandwich
and tea, but made no response.

“
Come on now, you need to
eat.” Jethro picked up the plate and sat next to me. “Doctor’s
orders.”

My eyes flickered to my brother then to the
perfectly grilled cheese sandwich. I took it. Took a bite. Chewed.
Swallowed.

He passed me the tea. “Now drink.”

I squinted at him. “This has bourbon in
it.”

“
Yes, it does. Good,
Tennessee bourbon, guaranteed to make the pain go away. Drink
it.”

Making the pain go away sounded pretty good,
so I took a sip. It was warm, not hot, and tasted like bourbon and
honey. I took a larger gulp then followed it with another bite of
my sandwich.

“
Thank you,” I said; the
warmth of the alcohol spread down my throat to my chest.

“
Don’t thank me. Thank
Drew. He made all this.”

I studied Jethro for
another moment, took a bite of my sandwich. I debated whether I
wanted to have this conversation at all, let alone now. In the end,
I gave in to both curiosity and avoidance of heavier
subjects.

“
So…Drew. Who is this
guy?”

“
He’s my boss.”

“
What does he
do?”

“
He’s the federal game
warden for this stretch of the park.”

I frowned, not sure what a
game warden was, so I asked. “What’s that? Like a park ranger?” I
followed this question with another large gulp of my tea-laced
bourbon.

“
Uh, no. He’s not a park
ranger. Game wardens are law enforcement officers. Most are
employed by the state they work in. Drew is federal law
enforcement. He was appointed to the Great Smokies by some big-wigs
in Washington.”

I watched Jethro as I bit,
chewed, swallowed, repeat; I thought about this information. At
least I tried to think about this information. The bourbon plus no
sleep plus no food all day plus news of my mother’s terminal
diagnosis were all battling for dominance, Mad Max style, in my
brain cage.

“
Federal law enforcement.”
I shook my head hoping to clear it. “What does that mean in terms
of a national park? And why was he appointed? And how come he’s
here? And how does he know Momma?”

Jethro nodded toward my
tea and waited until I drank before responding. “Well, him being a
game warden and a federal officer…what that means is that he’s some
kind of big shot, PhD guy sent down from Washington to keep the
park safe. And I think he was appointed because he’s an expert in
endangered wildlife. He’s here tonight because I asked him to stay
just in case you had news when you got home from the hospital. And
he met Momma at the library when he was appointed to his position
at the park. They’re friends.”

I had trouble believing a
few of his assertions. First, Drew “Mountain-of-a-Man” Runous did
not strike me as a Dr. Runous unless his PhD was in lumberjacking
or plundering or beard growing or headlining in sexy daydreams and
dirty fantasies. Secondly, Dr. Runous’s posture of entitlement this
morning and odd possum behavior tonight made me question what kind
of friends he was with Momma.

My eyes weren’t
cooperating; I couldn’t keep them both open, so I peered at Jethro
through my left eye. “What kind of
friends
?”

Even through one eye, I
could see that Jethro was scowling at me. “Nothing like that, Ash.
Get your mind out of the gutter. He’s one of us. He’s like a son to
her and a brother to all of us. For God’s sake, he’s a year younger
than me. Plus he’s not like that.”

“
Not like
what?”

“
He’s…shy, I think. Quiet.
He doesn’t talk much, not even to me.”

“
He doesn’t seem quiet to
me, and he looks like he’d be a playboy, impregnating all the local
girls with Viking babies.”

“
You have a wild
imagination, sis. I think he’s just the opposite. In fact, I’m not
one to tell stories, but I think he might be celibate.”

That got both my eyes open.

“
We’ve all tried to hook
him up, but he won’t even go to the bar with us.”

“
Maybe he doesn’t
drink.”

“
No, he drinks. We’ve
tossed back beer and whiskey from time to time. He just doesn’t
socialize much. And he’s definitely not interested in Momma, so get
that thought out of your head.”

I shrugged. “Well, how am
I supposed to know? He called her Bethany. And he’s hanging around
here, and he cooks, and he kissed my forehead, and his beard
tickles, and…and he looks like a Viking.”