Softly and Tenderly (4 page)

“Where’s the fire?” Mama gripped the banister as she descended the ancient, carved staircase.

“In my bones.” Jade offered Mama a hand. “How are you feeling? Sure you want to come to the shop? I’m going down to the city, not over to the Blue Umbrella.”

“If I stay inside another day, I’m going to pull out what’s left of my long, gray braid.” Mama’s narrow frame swam beneath her clothes. Her jeans pooched out in the front, and the collar of her top exposed the bony curve of her shoulder. “Glad to be done with Rituxan for a while.”

“The doctor didn’t promise. He said maybe.”

“Well, I say I am.” Mama looked pretty, despite her sallow skin and the gray patches under her eyes. “Leukemia can knock me down but can’t keep me there. I’m a teamster, for crying out loud.”

Jade lifted Mama’s sweater from the foyer coatrack. “Is this sweater going to be enough? It’s chilly today.”

“Stop treating me like a baby.” Mama snatched the sweater from Jade’s hand. “Or like I’m insane. I’m a dying woman, ’tis all. Battling leukemia, not brain damage.”

“Are you sure you’re not brain damaged?” Jade anchored the strap of her purse on her shoulder, then slung on her backpack. “If you get tired, please tell me. I’ll bring you home.”

“Would you just get going? I’m still your mother. So behave yourself.” Mama brushed her hand down Jade’s back as she crossed the threshold. “I’ll let you know if I’m tired.”

A year ago, if someone had told her she’d be caring for her ill mother—the woman who abandoned her, Aiden, and Willow when they were kids, left them to live with their granny while she drove trucks and partied with her friends—Jade would’ve scoffed.

But it was Mama’s compassion and wisdom that gave Jade perspective when she miscarried, then when Max confessed his drug problems. She’d been with them less than a month when he checked himself into the hospital to detox.

Last fall held no pleasant memories for Jade.

Steering Mama into the garage, Jade opened her door and helped her into the cab. “Max drives a Mercedes, for Pete’s sake, and here you are tooling around in a beat-up old pickup. It’s because it’s like Paps’s old truck, isn’t it?”

“You and June, bugging me about my truck. My baby.”
Baby
pinged against her soul. The future, with all its promise, still remained unsure. But the old truck was a faithful constant in her life. One that was not subject to miscarriages, dying mothers, or addicted husbands.

Yes, she loved the truck because it was like the one Paps drove, like the one that still sat in the old barn under the hayloft. Climbing in behind the wheel, Jade gripped the cool, thin steel.

“It makes me feel connected with Paps and Granny, with our roots.”

“Rotten roots, if you ask me.” Mama’s laugh trailed her words, but she reached for Jade’s hand. “It reminds me too.”

“Put on your seat belt.” Jade cranked the engine, shifted into reverse, and fired out of the garage. Recent healing in their relationship aside, the woman never ceased to be both a pain and a comfort.

Jade liked the feel of the road that came up from the tires through the driveshaft into the steering wheel. She loved the whine of the engine and grind of the gears.

If she had a new truck, she’d fret every time she loaded something heavy or awkward, fearful of giving the truck its first ding. With her old International baby, the dents, dings, and scratches simply enhanced the pickup’s character.

Mama reached for the radio knob, then sat back. “Ding, dang, dong—the least you could do is get the radio fixed.”

Jade peered at her sideways, frowning, then snickered. Mama chuckled.

“You taught me to drive in Paps’s truck. I’d think you’d love this old thing”—Jade kissed the wheel with the heel of her palm—“as much as I do.”

“That was a wild afternoon. You darn near killed me.”

“I only scared you half to death. There’s a difference.” Jade shifted into third and took the curve toward town. As she rounded the bend, the scene before her changed and suddenly she wasn’t driving the willow-treed, hilly terrain of Whisper Hollow. Her memories drifted back to a sunny afternoon many years ago when Mama taught her to drive, cruising along the flat stretch of highway just north of Prairie City. A dry, furnace-like air whipped through the cab’s open windows, tousling the ends of Jade’s hair and scattering Mama’s cigarette ashes over the dash.

“Up and over, Jade, up and over.” The gears of Paps’s old pickup moaned as fifteen-year-old Jade drove north on Highway 117, mashing the clutch and working the gearshift with trembling hands.

“I know, I know. Stop making me nervous, Mama.” The truck splashed through the sun and shade spots—light, dark, light, dark—that drifted down from the cotton-covered sky.

“If you know, then do it. For Pete’s sake, this side, this side . . .” Mama grabbed the wheel, jerking it to the right, pulling the International pickup back across the yellow line. Her cigarette dangled from her lips, barely holding on to a long, loose ash. “
This
is our lane. The right one.”

Jade narrowed her eyes and slowed the truck down to forty while hanging onto the wheel at 10 and 2, driving steadily between the white and yellow lines.

“Oh, fine . . .” Mama flicked her ashes so they blew across Jade’s face. “All I was trying to do was keep you from drifting across the line. Now look at you. You’d bite off your nose to spite your face. You’re so rigid, girl. One of these days, you’re going to have to break out of the mold, take a leap, live a little. You can’t go through life so cautious. I’d be nowhere if I’d followed all the rules.”

“But you might be somewhere if you had a few rules. Huh? Maybe one. Or two. Think you could handle two rules?”

“Ah, teenage angst. Finally aimed at me.”

Jade knew that she, Aiden, and Willow would be better off if Mama lived by some standard other than which-way-is-the-wind-blowing. She cut a sideways glance at her mama. She wanted Jade to break the rules. Her heart revved up as she pressed on the gas, surging the truck forward, the chassis rattling.

“Woo.” Mama angled forward with a pop of her hands. “Now you’re talking.”

Ever so gently, Jade eased the truck into the southbound lane, inch by inch, the sound of her pulse roaring in her ears.

“Jade-o, don’t be stupid.” Mama stopped laughing. “Here you go, biting off your nose to spite your face. Don’t think you’re scaring me. I’ve jumped out of a moving truck more than once.”

“Then jump.” Jade gritted her teeth and gunned the gas, fully committed to the southbound lane. “Go ahead.” Gone three months driving a truck for Carlisle’s carnival, leaving behind Aiden, Jade, and Willow, Mama had returned home last week ready to mother her children, deciding
she
was the one, not Granny, who should teach Jade to drive.

The truck whined as Jade revved the engine at the top of second gear, then coughed and lurched as she worked the clutch, shifting to third.

Mama’s hair flapped in the breeze—a coalition of horses’ tails.

“You should condition your hair. Or cut it,” Jade snapped.

“That’s what you’re going for? Insulting my hair? Ooo, ouch, hurt me.” Mama grabbed the ragged ends and fluttered them in Jade’s face, then propped her foot on the dash. She flicked her cigarette out the window, half the ashes sailing back inside.

The truck surged over a small rise in the road, still careening along in the left-hand lane, the speedometer shimmying just shy of the 75 mph tick mark.

A farmhouse winked at them from between two fields of August corn. Heat waves zigzagged along the horizon’s line. A dark spot shimmied toward them.

Jade swallowed. Another truck was speeding southbound. Grille to grille.

Mama lowered her foot. “Jade-o?”

“Scared, Mama?” Jade doubled down on the gas. Adrenaline soaked her thoughts. Mama would flinch first. She would grab the wheel. Deep down, everyone who runs is a coward. Mama and the Lion had a lot in common.

In the meantime, the black spot of the oncoming truck formed into defined blue lines.

“Jade.” Mama’s voice spiked as her hand gripped the top of her door. “That truck is closing in fast.”

“Then jump.” Jade held on to the wheel as the speedometer ached to touch 85. Was she biting off her nose to spite her face? Pressing the gas pedal despite her own heart’s warning? Danger. What did it matter? Jade never cared much for her skinny nose.

Mama swore and grabbed for the wheel, but Jade blocked the move with her elbow. “Don’t mess with me; I’m driving. Doing good too.”

“Doing good? You’re playing chicken with a bigger, newer truck at eighty-some miles an hour.” Mama’s posture froze, her hand on the door handle, her gazed fixed on the windshield. “This is crazy.”

“Wooo, this is great, huh, Mama? I’m breaking the rules.” Jade’s heart bounced in her chest like a Super Ball. She was beyond terrified. But she’d show Mama. “I’m not so rigid now, am I?” Jade turned up the radio volume on Paps’s old truck just as the Eagles came over the speakers.

Life in the fast lane
.

“Jade, get in the right lane.” Mama tried for the wheel again, but Jade smacked her hand away.

By now the blue truck was fully formed and in clear view. Golden light glinted off its deep blue sheen.
Oh my gosh .
. . Jade tried to brake, but she hit the clutch instead. She wasn’t slowing down . . . she wasn’t slowing down.
Brake, brake
. Purple and gold spots blinded her as the sunlight bounced off the silver grille of the approaching truck.

Dustin Colter. It’s Dustin Colter
.

In a wash of panic meeting mind-numbness, the muscles in Jade’s arm surrendered before her hands received the brain’s command to move the heck over.

“Jade, get in the right lane. Now!”

She meant to veer right, really. But without so much as a conscious thought, Jade veered
left
off the road, careening headlong into Tank Victor’s ripened corn, swishing, crunching, popping, mowing down.

Mama expressed her pleasure with a string of four-five-and-six letter words.

Every cell of Jade’s body quivered as the truck jerked to a stop about twenty corn rows in. She inhaled the power of the navy Dodge speeding past.
Just keep
going. Just keep going
.

Heat and the Eagles’ harmonies filled the cab.

“Jade Freedom Fitzgerald, I swear I’m going to—” Mama’s face was the color of a bull’s-eye.

“What? Ground me? That’d be a first.” Her words came out strong and cool, but poker-hot adrenaline challenged every syllable. The small hairs on the back of Jade’s neck clung to her skin with terror-induced perspiration.

“Don’t be smart with me, Jade Fitzgerald.” Mama raised her hand, her fingers arched back and her palm stiff.

Seeing Mama flinch, Jade ducked, smashing her bottom lip against the sharp chrome of the steering wheel’s center. The sting ran along her jaw and up her cheeks until the pain filled her eyes. “You were going to hit me.” Mama had never hit her. Ever. Granny had wielded the stinging wooden spoon, but not Mama.

“No. But I was tempted.” Mama snatched her cigarettes from the glove box, flicking the lighter over and over, swearing when it wouldn’t work, knocking the Bic against her thigh. “Look at me, I’m trembling.” Mama extended her hand. “And you ruined Tank’s crop.” She flicked the Bic again. A small flame shot up, and the fragrance of burning mentholated tobacco meshed with the scent of crushed corn and moist soil.

The odor slipped through Jade’s nostrils, down her throat, through her lungs, and settled in her belly. Cigarette smoke was Mama’s perfume.

“Tank won’t be mad.” The crater-sized sensation filling Jade’s chest began to shrink. “If he does, you can sleep with him to pay off the debt.”

“Keep it up, Jade. I’ll slap you silly. And you’d deserve it.” The cigarette paper crackled as Mama took a long drag, and the atmosphere of the truck cab settled down. “If this is how you plan to drive, Jade, I’m not so sure—”

“It’s not how I plan to drive. You just make me so mad. You go off with Carlisle and your friends, leaving me, Aiden, and Willow with Granny. And when you are here, working for Midwest, you’re gone all the time, doing who-knows-what?”

“Earning a living, I’ll have you know. I make good money driving for the carnival. Better than Midwest Parcel, I’ll tell you that. Who do you think provides food and clothing?”

“Granny.”

“If I were a man, no one would say a word about me being gone, traveling, seeing the country, earning a good wage to support my family. I don’t see your dad here offering to help out. Nor you complaining about it.”

“Because you drove him away.”

“He left.”

“And you said good riddance. I saw you burning all of his stuff.”

“Did you now?” Mama clicked her thumbnail against her middle fingernail, letting her cigarette burn and swirl smoke. Sweat beaded on her brow. “You were supposed to be asleep.”

“And to this day you curse him whenever you hear a Fleetwood Mac song.”

“How long have you been storing up this conversation?” Mama nursed her cigarette, then blew a thick stream of smoke out the window. “What are we going to do to get out of here?”

The rhythm of swishing corn caused Jade to twist around to peer into the now-crooked side mirror.
Oh no, no, no
. She slouched against the seat, ducking below the window. “Mama,” she hissed, “get down.” Jade hit the radio button.