Carolina Moon (27 page)

“Tell me about this one.” Jason, who has kicked smoking but still drops in every day to talk to Quee, points to a picture of a little infant in a woman’s lap, and she tells him that’s a photo of a baby who was left behind and how as a result he was one of the strongest, sweetest boys in the whole town of Fulton, a boy who ought not to smoke and surely shouldn’t drink and get himself all messed up with drugs when he could have a job right here at a successful business for addicts.

“Me?” His hand goes up to his own skinny chest, and then twists the silver cross dangling from his ear. “You mean I can work here?”

“And live if you like.” She turns away, so he won’t be embarrassed if he wants to say no; but then he is gone like a rocket through the screen door and across the yard. He is going as fast as he can to get his few possessions and move in. So there’ll be one less smoke-out room, that’s okay. She can build more if Tommy Lowe can keep his mind on work and off of Denny for an hour or two. Those two smile and wink and pat like they are the first to ever have sex.

Myra Carter is dreaming of compost and topsoil and fat red earthworms eating their way through it all. She is dreaming of Howard and Ruthie and Geraldo Rivera. Sometimes at night she can’t sleep for thinking of Jones Jameson; she will never ever garden in quite the same way.

For over a week now, at least one member of her Sunday school class has been by to check on her, and she is sure that Connie Briley must have spread around that she said the Lord talked to her all about Jones Jameson. Connie has probably told that Myra said Jesus said that Myra was good-looking. She can just hear Connie: “Now you know, ladies, if the Lord
was
to speak to Myra that he wouldn’t say
that!
”

She was so mad at Howard when he died and left her, but he couldn’t help it. She finally sees that now. You’d think since he took care of everybody else’s health problems that somebody, like Jesus for example, might step in and take care of his. He really was a good man, and if he fell under that old Purdy whore’s spell, well what can you say? A man will do that. A man just has no control over those parts when tampered with, and she’s a tamperer that Queen Mary
Stutts Purdy. Oh, yes. He couldn’t have done anything with that Jezebel, and if Myra had had her wits about her that day in the Winn-Dixie when the old floozy was waving around her avocados like she might be Angie Dickinson, who also looks cheap, then she would have said, “Why would my Howard ever even think about the likes of
you
and your tawdry tarty self?” Still, as much as Myra can’t stand that old harlot, she thinks she’d rather have dinner with her than Connie if given a choice in life. But life doesn’t always give you a choice. Life might just say: Here’s your old gummed-up hand, now play it! Life might say: Here’s your topsoil, and we threw a dead man in for good measure. It might say: Here’s your husband you love so dearly, and now he’s gone.

Testing . . . testing. Sorry I haven’t talked in over a week but I mean how could I? I’ve been so busy. Busier than I have ever been in my life. First of all the business is going great, and Quee has agreed to have a little day clinic of sorts for people who can’t afford to leave their families for so long. There was a horde of people at the impotency clinic yesterday, and just as many taking the samples of cinnamon dental floss and Close-Up toothpaste.

But all of that is beside the point. The truth is that I have been with Tom Lowe practically nonstop ever since I drove out to the beach to find him. I don’t know, but it kind of seems like we were just kind of waiting for somebody to come along at the right place and at the right time and then there we were. I mean of course it all started out kind of sexual, but doesn’t everything, when you get right down to it? Especially if you are more the oral, free-giving type, which it seems to me that both of us are. And just look at the foliage in his yard—ramblers and weeds gone wild!

We left the beach and went straight to his little camper, and I swear to you we both shed our clothes so fast that I lost a sock; I’m sure it fell out that little half door and one of those dogs ran off with
it. And all that time I was telling him about how it had been a long time since I’d thought of anybody like I’d been thinking of him, and then that made me think of how I used to think for long periods of time as a child about the daddy that my mother had told me all about, and then it came to me that
I
had stood up on a little kitchen step stool and stared out into a ventilation shaft when I was a tiny thing and living in that apartment in New York. I thought
What a coincidence
, how odd that Quee seems to know so much. I asked Tom did he think that Quee had some kind of special powers, and he asked me did I want to do this or not. I said, Yes, I told you yes all the way home, and then he asked me well then, could I please shut up and pay attention for just a minute because it had been so long for him that he was certain it was only going to take a second or two. I started to ask if he always liked it quiet when he was
doing things
but I decided not to because I didn’t want to end up like last time I talked him right out of it. So I shut my mouth, and I am so damn glad that I did.

Ever since then it’s like we can’t wait to get to that trailer or the car or even up here in my room, though we have to be a little careful here because we have to pass in front of a line of people waiting for their feet to be massaged. Tom says, “So who cares?” and I tell him that I do. I don’t want anybody listening to what I might have to say.

Just the other night we went to the Maco Light and parked. Of course, Tom wanted to get out of the car to sit like he has done many many times before, but I just couldn’t do it. Even sitting right there I was all over him, scared to death that I might really
see
that old engineer swing by with a lantern and no head. He said in high school kids used to go out there on dates; he said it was a guarantee that your date would press all up against you and that if it was a good hazy night with lots of lantern potential, that you could probably touch something you weren’t supposed to touch and get away with it, which of
course he
did
. I suspect he has touched about everything I’ve got by now, and there is a nice comfortable feeling to come from that.

He has taken me all over this town, past where his mama lives (she was out watering her lawn and didn’t even see us—she is a little tiny woman with white hair), up in the bank building where Quee’s husband used to work (he told me that this was where he came the last time that he ever saw his dad), the high school football field (we
did
things under the bleachers because I felt left out that I never did anything like that while in high school, at least not that I could actually remember).

And it was there at the high school that he acted a little bit strange. He was trying hard, to be sure. I mean we had a blanket spread and a little transistor radio that he still
has
from high school. It was like he was having to try hard. He said, So what do you want to do? I said, You
know
what I want to do.

“So say it,” he said and laughed though his eyes and heart weren’t quite in it.

“Let’s do it,” I said, because I had already explained to him that I hated all the ways people referred to
it
. I mean I’m not going to say “make love” because that sounds so posed and old somehow and I’m not going to say the
word
because it makes me feel cheap and dirty, which he said was fine with him. So he said the words, every word he could think of, and then asked me which I wanted to do. I asked if I could have a sampling of each and then get back to him. We laughed and all, but there still wasn’t something right, and afterward when we were lying there half-dressed, I said what I’d been thinking the whole time. I didn’t plan to, but I said, “You’re in love with a ghost.” I got up and finished dressing and then knelt there right beside him and waited.

“No, no, I’m not.” He whispered and his jaw clenched with each word as if to hold him all together. “I guess maybe I’m afraid that you are, though.”

“Me? In love with a ghost?” I waved my hands through the air like they were floating, and then I let them fall, solid and firm, on his stomach. “I’m not in love with a ghost. Just you.” Can you believe that I said that? I mean, I can’t. My heart nearly stopped because he could so easily break the whole spell; he could laugh at me, say something like
fat chance
which I would never in my life get over. But he didn’t do that.

“But maybe I’m a ghost” is what he said and then he paused and took a deep breath. “I mean, you probably have some ideas about who I am or who I can be, but this is it. I’m it.” He sat up and patted his chest. “I mean, for years now I’ve been waiting for that famous ship to come in, for the ocean to cough up my land, for somebody to find out my old man left me something after all. But now I know that this is it. I’m it. There is no ship. No treasure.”

“So maybe the ship did come in,” I told him. “Maybe being nice and smart and handsome are part of having a ship come in. Come to think of it, maybe
you
are
my
ship.”

He thought that part was funny. He didn’t say anything back to me like that maybe I was his ship or that maybe he loved me, and I was glad really. I don’t want somebody just to spout back at me like a mynah bird might do. I could tell by the way that he looked at me that I shouldn’t be as nervous as I had been.

I tell you all of this because I need to tell somebody. Quee is taking it all in, but I’ve almost felt like she was jealous somehow or feeling left out. Believe it or not, I’ve actually been a little discreet with her. But the truth is that I have never been so happy in my whole life,
and if that big old meteor or whatever it was to hit Jupiter
did
hit me about now, I wouldn’t care, except that I’d miss all the time that would have been ahead of me. Even if it doesn’t work out. At least now I know that such a thing is possible.

Quee is in need of a little breather herself and has pro-claimed a day off for Smoke-Out. Ruthie is off somewhere quoting, and Mr. Radio is boasting about being a smoke-free person, and Quee is just damn glad to get a little peace and quiet, a little time to catch up with Denny and find out exactly what
is
going on with Tom Lowe. A day of rest; every great creation calls for one. Then tomorrow at noon a brand-new group of addicts will come calling, and it’ll be business as usual.

“Now, this is a picture I want you to see.” Quee leads Denny and Tom down to the very end of the hall. It’s dark and she has to turn on a light for them to be able to see the little frame that she pulls from the wall. It’s a picture of the river, vines dangling into the water. She bought the picture long ago because it made her think of Rapunzel, the vines like long braids reaching to pull somebody out. Off to the side is half of a person, someone who was never even supposed to be in the picture.

“This looks like the Braveman Bridge,” Tom says and leans down to study the photo. “Good fishing there.” He shakes his head. “You might even catch a body these days.”

“That is the Braveman Bridge,” Quee says. “It says so on the back, though I didn’t know it when I bought it.”

“So, is there a story to it?” Denny asks and steps right up close to Tom. If she got any closer she would
be
Tom.

“Oh, my, yes,” Quee says and places the frame back on its rusty nail. “You see, something has just happened here.”

“Yeah, we know.” Tom laughs again, and she waits until they are quiet. “I’m sorry, we’ll listen.” Tom reaches for Denny’s hand and she wiggles right up to him.

“Well, you see, the story is about a man and a woman meeting down here at the Braveman Bridge but the story doesn’t start there, Lord, no.” She leans closer to the wall, thick nubby bedroom shoes spread apart and turned out like she might be getting frisked. “The story starts, oh, maybe a year before that, when this same young man appeared at the woman’s door to say that he was in need of her services.” She turns and grins a fake grin. “You see, he thought she was in the business of prostitution.”

“One of the oldest professions,” Tom Lowe adds, and Quee has to sigh again. He has gotten to be a regular chatterbox.

“Well, anyway, he wanted her services and she said,
You git from my door you old dog
, because the truth was that he had a very nice sweet wife at home who didn’t even know what a horrible monster she had married.” She pauses to make sure that she has Tom and Denny’s full attention. She does. My, yes. You could hear a feather. “You see, the wife was
a friend
of this older woman, too. The fool man just had no sense about what loyalty means and about what a good friend will do for you.

“So he goes off in a great big huff, needing to pay city prices, you see. Go ahead and sit down there on the floor if you’re getting fidgety.”

“I’m not fidgety,” Denny says, consciously making herself like stone.

“And I’m petite,” Quee says. “Go on, take a load off. This is a long story. You guys can play footsie or whatever a lot better sitting than standing, too.” She waits for them to sit, both wide-eyed like the children she never had.

“So about a year later this same fella comes back with the very same request. He needs her services, and he is prepared to pay whatever it takes. Well, she has no intentions of giving him what he wants, but still she says,
All right then, meet me at the river, Braveman Bridge
, and he says he will. He drives a car, she goes on foot. He parks his car, oh round about here,” she rubs her finger along the wall beyond the frame. “And there they are on the bridge. Now in her pocket she has a little old pistol that doesn’t even work but she has brought it along for effect.

“‘I’m not in the business you think I’m in,’ she says. ‘Just what is it you
want?
’ He laughs and shakes his head from side to side. He pulls out his wallet and fans some money, takes out a credit card, and presses it into her hand, cool plastic in her palm.