Man From Tennessee (10 page)

Kern had a message from the camp when the three of them got home, and for a short time he had to go out. Trisha spent an hour settling Julia in and from there wandered outside in the back. The grass was squeaky with dew beneath her feet, and she slipped off her sandals, swinging them with one hand, feeling the damp carpet curling around her bare toes. Stars peppered the cloudless, breezeless night.

Her head ached just a little from the unaccustomed wine. This time drinking in the clear mountain air, she stood pensively for a long time. The mood from their evening was suddenly erased. The feeling of vulnerability seemed to be assaulting her from all sides—from the look of her face in the mirror when she was brushing her hair, from her every response around Kern, from each time she looked at the mist-swirling mountains and felt small and insignificant. Vulnerability was something she’d never wanted to feel again. It was an unwelcomed emotion.

Finally she heard the click of the door behind her. There was no reason to turn to know who it was. She’d been waiting for Kern. “I’m going to need some money,” she said quietly.

“Fine.”

She half turned then. His answer was almost humorously indifferent. Kern rarely smoked, and from where he was leaning against the house, the glow of ash sent up a whisper of smoke.

“Not for me,” she said by way of qualification. “For your mother. I want to redo that room downstairs, Kern, in a style that would suit her. She thought it foolish at first, but I just reminded her that you had lots of space and you wanted her to have her own personal room when she came down for other visits. It might be a beginning, if she becomes attached to it.” Trisha hesitated when he didn’t comment. “She has expensive tastes, but I wouldn’t overdo. I know what I’m doing with fabrics, Kern, and I know exactly what would appeal to her…”

“Don’t be absurd, Tish. You know damn well there’s money for whatever she wants—or you want,” he said impatiently. “It bothered the hell out of me when I knew you were working and attending night school at the same time—”

“That was four years ago.”

“And the checks I sent you all came back. Now are we done with that subject?” She could hear his heel crush the cigarette butt.

“Yes.”

“And we suddenly have nothing else to talk about, do we, Tish?”

“Nothing.” She shivered then, though there was no reason for it in the still-warm night, and she moved forward to go inside. Barefoot when she came up the slope to Kern, to her he seemed taller than life, his head towering over hers. Her hand was on the doorknob when he reached out to stop her with an unexpectedly gentle hand. His fingers brushed back a strand of hair from her face and then his palm rested like a warm caress on her cheek.

“You’re a giver, Tish. I’d expect you to come up with an idea for my mother. You’ve been there for her for years when you didn’t need to be. She wasn’t your responsibility. And you were there for me at one of the roughest times in my life—”

“Kern.” Her fingers curled at his wrist, trying to dislodge the sensual palm.

“You haven’t really changed. The look’s very different, but you’re still afraid to reach out and
take,
Tish, to take what’s yours. I don’t understand what you’re afraid of. I never have,” he admitted bluntly. “There’s just…life. If you don’t reach out and take what you want, there’s nothing.”

His fingers smoothed down her cheek, caressed her throat, and let go. She was still for a moment, feeling a sudden rush of confusion. Her image of herself had been the opposite of a “giver.” She had failed to
give
him the response he needed in a wife. And what was he trying to tell her now? To seize this moment? Make love with him because the chemistry was there, as if there were no consequences? Was he even aware of how loud the words were that he
hadn’t
said? There was no mention of her staying here beyond a short time. She had been the one who insisted on staying, for Julia. She hesitated, then said, “You find it easy to go after what you want, no holds barred, Kern. But I can’t just—”

“You
can.
But if you don’t, Tish, I will. I want you and I’ll wait. But not long. Not anymore.”

The clipped phrases seemed to emphasize the threat. Threat? It was a promise he was delivering in gentle tones that echoed in the night.

Trisha was doing her best not to punish the Mercedes on the deplorable little dirt road. Potholes polka-dotted every few feet of the narrow path, and dust sprayed behind them in thin sandy clouds. Oblivious to both the bouncing and the early morning heat, Julia beside her had a hand shading her eyes as she peered out the window. It was not the first time in the past four days that their goal was an antique shop, and Julia by the hour was thriving on every little adventure Trisha had thought up for her.

“…what I want is one of those big iron kettles,” Julia continued. “You know, the kind they used to hang in the fireplace. I thought I’d put it out on the front steps and plant it with flowers.”

“We’ve seen a half dozen of them,” Trisha remarked.

Julia smiled. “They were always asking too much. But today, I just have a feeling…”

Trisha grinned. Her mother-in-law was dressed in a loose shirt and trousers that were decidedly baggy. The raw silks had been put away. Julia did not want to be “taken” because she was a city slicker, but the overall new image invariably made Trisha chuckle.

The store they stopped at was more of a shed than any other sort of establishment. The cobwebs clung to the corners and Trisha wondered idly if the wizened old man actually thought there was some saving grace in four inches of dust and dirt. A cloud of it stirred as they stepped inside, their footprints distinctive on the wooden floor.

“You want something?” The old man rocked, watching their slow intrusion in his store.

“Probably not,” Julia answered pleasantly.

Trisha fought the inclination to sneeze. There was barely room to navigate between the shaky wooden shelves packed into the shed, and each was filled with hopeful saleables, none of which had ever known a dust rag.

“Well, now…” He stood up, suddenly interested, sparing a glance for Trisha’s lovely pink-jeaned frame and lighting on the deliberately worn-looking Julia. “You must have come out this way for something.”

“Just looking.” Julia fingered a cracked bowl disdainfully, set it up to view from a dusty window, and set it down again. Trisha marveled. It was a full ten minutes before the two even touched on the subject of iron kettles. Finally Julia nudged with her foot a cobwebbed kettle in the corner. “I suppose you’re charging an arm and a leg for that.”

“Well now…”

“Never mind. I can see the rust. All the work to clean it up—”

“From the first settlers that ever came to this area,” the old man said firmly. “Earned its rust, it has.”

“So
you
say. How much?”

“I thought twenty-five,” the old man said cautiously.

“Oh, well.” Julia turned to Trisha. “Remember the one we saw for twelve in Kentucky? I knew I should have gotten it then. Perhaps next month we could make a trip up…”

Julia had seen no kettle in Kentucky, Trisha knew well. Yet the fibs flew fast and furious. The huge wrought-iron kettle took on added age, makeshift tragedy in its past, a history involving wagon trains and Indian uprisings. Julia was incredulous at the price, the amount of work it would take to refurbish it, and simply could not believe it was quite what she wanted. It was over forty minutes before Trisha was able to get the kettle in the trunk of the Mercedes, and even then she had to wait while the two finished their bickering at the back door. Julia’s smile was radiant as Trisha started the engine.

“Eighteen dollars!” She gloated. “An absolute steal! I haven’t had such fun in ages!”

“I knew you liked antiques,” Trisha commented, “but I always thought it was more the Queen Anne–type treasures—”

“Oh, no, my dear, it’s the primitives I’ve always treasured. They simply don’t belong in Grosse Pointe. Now, at Kern’s it’s a different story! Way back when I was first married I even liked to refinish the primitives; I like the feel of old wood and history around me.”

“That from the lady who was ready to turn around after the first look at ‘this wilderness country,’” Trisha murmured teasingly.

“Well, you’re no better, Patricia! Five years of effort to teach you the difference between Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, and you go disappearing into those woods every afternoon and come back looking like some…backwoods child!”

Trisha grinned mischievously. “Speaking of fashion, darling, when we get home I think I’ll take a picture of you just as you look right now and send it back to Grosse Pointe. Backwoods child, is it?”

“Idle threat,” Julia said peaceably, regarding Trisha’s pink jeans and black-and-pink, scooped-neck sweater with suddenly narrowed eyes. “It’s a good thing I took you shopping. I can’t understand why Kern didn’t do so to begin with. You could hardly have survived around the countryside in the few things you came with.”

Trisha was silent, aware that she now had a closetful of purchases pressed on her by Julia. They would be repaid in time, when they were home, although Julia would argue about it. But taking things from Kern, even on a borrowed basis, had a very different cast…

“It really is very different here than I first thought,” Julia admitted thoughtfully as they pulled up to Kern’s house.

Trisha stepped out of the car to take out the kettle from the trunk. She understood too well what Julia was feeling, because the emotion was shared. The past days had been nothing like her life here before. She was continually more aware of how much she seemed to have missed five years before; and in trying to arouse Julia’s interests she had been rather unwittingly arousing her own…a mistake, she knew. Once Julia was fully strong again, and in a position to make up her own mind if she could accept a move and be happy here, it was going to be difficult for Trisha to suddenly leave, and it didn’t have to do only with Kern.

As Trisha stepped inside the cool hallway to the kitchen, she saw Kern sitting at the kitchen table with maps spread out before him. Julia bent to kiss her son on the forehead, smoothing down his hair as if he were a six-year-old with a cowlick, an image Kern presented not at all. “We’ve been having an absolutely wonderful time. Bought a tremendous old kettle. I’m going out in the woods after it cools off this afternoon and get some azaleas, I think, though first I’ll have to deal with that rust…”

Trisha crouched down to take out from the refrigerator the tuna salad she had made earlier. In short order she had thin-sliced tomatoes to put on top and then added some slices of cheese, setting the tray under the broiler for a few short minutes. After pouring three glasses of lemonade, she reached on tiptoe for napkins from the top of the refrigerator—and turned to find Kern’s slate-gray eyes all over her.

He could make her conscious as no other man ever had of exactly how her jeans fit, of whether or not her hair needed combing. She knew the sun had added color to her complexion, and there was even an added pound or two from a new appetite encouraged by so much exercise. In spite of herself she was becoming more and more relaxed until her eyes collided unexpectedly with that watchful, waiting look of his. Then she felt like snatching up the car keys and running. “What have you been up to this morning?” she asked calmly.

“It’s what you two might like to be up to this afternoon that I was thinking about,” Kern responded. “Around two I was hoping to talk you both into a helicopter ride.”

Trisha frowned, taking the tray from the oven with a hot pad. “You know your mother isn’t fond of flying, Kern.”

Julia returned from freshening her hands in the bathroom. “An understatement, darling.”

“Lately there’ve been more helicopters in the area than cars,” Kern said absently. “The highest mountain ranges have been plagued with a tiny insect called a balsam woolly aphid. That bug is capable of destroying the entire adult Fraser fir population, and as yet there’s no solution. Our one option is to spray out sterile aphids from a helicopter so that they’ll mate with the damaging females. The ‘girls’ have only a short lifespan, so with no offspring their destructive habits are short-lived.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Julia commented. “I’ve heard of farmers spraying from planes…”

“Helicopters are more suited to the mountains,” Kern explained, “because obviously they can go right down into the affected area.”

“But you said it was a Smokies problem, Kern. Why do you have to get involved? Why don’t the forest people just handle it? If you have to put your own time and money into something that’s their problem—”

“Because the park is next to us, Julia, there are some problems that affect Kern’s land, too. It’s not an issue of time or money,” Trisha interrupted.

“Trisha, I wasn’t attacking you,” Julia chided primly. “For heaven’s sake, it was just an idle comment! I swear you’re getting as batty about this land as Kern is…”

Trisha drew in her breath, suddenly hearing herself as Julia seemed to. Kern had a fist propped under his chin, eyes glinting perfectly devilish amusement at her for taking on his cause. She stood up and cleared away the plates, turning away from him.

“Anyway, Kern, as far as going up in this helicopter, no. I never could handle air travel in any form. It was one of the reasons Trisha had to drive me here. But we haven’t planned anything beyond a bridge game down at the camp late this afternoon, Trisha. There isn’t any reason why you couldn’t go with Kern.”

“The outing was for you, darling,” Trisha pointed out quickly. “I’ve lived here before. I know what the area looks like.”

“I really don’t want to play bridge anyway. Not today. I want to fool with my kettle.”

“Then I’ll help you…”

There was a little silence, in which she could almost hear the echo of her own voice protesting too much. She did not want to go anywhere with Kern. She knew it and he knew it, but to this point she had the excuse of keeping a careful and continual eye on Julia’s health. The lady whose darting eyes surveyed both of them now denied that need, a fresh bloom of color in her cheeks, the shine of rest and renewed health in her eyes… Trisha turned from them both and heard Kern’s chair scrape back as he rose.