Stones in the Road (15 page)

“I’ll make a note of that in my report,” Mrs. North said smoothly.

“You do that,” Jackson said.

J
ACKSON
WENT
to work, for which I was rather grateful. I was mad at him and a little suspicious, neither of which I particularly enjoyed.

After some time spent at the swimming pool, Noah and I dressed in tanks, shorts, and sandals and piled into the station wagon for a trip to Subway, where we picked up a foot-long and iced teas before heading to Ballard Park for a picnic and Frisbee.

At the picnic table, we kept a careful eye on the ducks—they could be very aggressive when you were eating and they thought you ought to be sharing and you weren’t. We also kept an eye on the weather. The sun didn’t know whether it wanted to shine or hide behind long, rolling clouds. Wind gusted through the park now and again, setting everything in fluttery motion. Yet it was eighty degrees, and summer had come at last.

Jackson’s parents had decided to rent a car and drive to Oxford so
they could visit Faulkner’s house. They’d invited us to go along, but I had declined out of respect for homicide detectives who might have otherwise had to work a weekend shift. After the DHS visit, I wanted alone time with my boy. I could not take anyone else picking at me that day.

Wasn’t there something you wanted to tell me
? I signed after we finished the sandwich and sipped at our iced teas.

He looked uncomfortable.

You know you can always tell me everything
, I signed.
You know that, right
?

He nodded.

Is something bothering you?

I don’t want to talk about it.

The other night you said you were going to tell me something, but you were afraid I would get mad. I won’t get mad, sweetie. Promise.

Yes, you will.

No, I won’t. If I promise, then I can’t break my promise, can I
?

He shrugged uncomfortably and turned away to look at the ducks, thereby shutting off our communication.

I reached out, put my hand on his arm to get his attention, but he refused to look at me. He wasn’t ready to spill the beans. If pressed, he would only clam up further.

I bit at my lip in frustration.

I deposited our trash in the nearby can, grabbed the Frisbee.

You still know how to play
? I asked, feigning disbelief.

Of course I do! If you want, I can stay close so you don’t have to run too much. I know you’re getting old and fat and lazy….

Old and fat and lazy?

And slow too. A turtle could run faster than you!

You’re going to pay for that, you little shit!

If you can catch me, but you’re so fat you’re never going to catch me!

You take that back! I am
not
fat!

Yes, you are! You’re a great big giant fatso
! He puffed out his cheeks to demonstrate.
You’re so fat you have your own zip code!

Did your daddy teach you to talk like that
? I demanded.

He nodded eagerly, his huge smile revealing his wicked teeth.

At least I’m not a tiny little person
, I said,
with tiny little flippers for arms who looks like a tiny little penguin.

I don’t look like a penguin!

You probably can’t catch the Frisbee anymore because your arms are so short. You’re like a midget penguin.

At least I’m not a giant fatso!

I am
not
fat!

Are too!

Am not
!

I sailed the Frisbee in his direction.

With a laugh and a hoot, he scampered after it.

A
S
USUAL
,
I was the first up the following morning, and I padded to the kitchen in boxers to make coffee and fire up the laptop and see what was happening in the world, or at least on Facebook. The laptop was a gift from Jackson to encourage me to write another book. I called it “the laptop” because I don’t think of it as mine. Like so much else about our relationship, the mechanics of it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want someone buying me things. I wanted to provide for myself. But as a part-time worker making $7.55 an hour at a grocery store, a new laptop was out of the question. When my old laptop died, I used the public computers at the library, saving my work to a flash drive. Jackson decided I needed something more sensible, and I came home one day to find a brand new laptop on the kitchen table bearing a note written in Jackson’s hand:

If you build it, they will come
.

It was a gorgeous thing, that laptop, so shiny and new and spiffy, very high dollar and top of the line, so of course I told him I could not accept it.

“I’m just trying to help you!” he exclaimed, favoring me with a wounded look.

“I don’t need you to buy me things!”

“You need to write, Wiley. If you’re ever going to make something of yourself, you need to write—and I want to help you do that.”

“I don’t need charity.”

“Who said anything about charity? If you sell a million books, well, there’s a yacht at the marina with my name on it, and it had better be under the Christmas tree when I wake up on Christmas morning.”

“Your apartment’s not that big.”

“How can we be a team if all you think about is your Southern pride?”

“My Southern pride?”

“And let’s not forget the ego! The huge, overweening and enormously complicated ego!”

“Where are we now, Ledbetter?”

“You know exactly where we are! When I try to do something to help you, you throw it back in my face.”

“I don’t want you buying me things I can’t buy for you in return. I don’t like it.”

“Voila! Southern pride and ego!”

“It makes me feel cheap.”

“Oh, please!”

“Well, it does.”

“It’s an investment in our future, Wiley. And I want you to be happy.”

“You can’t buy happiness,” I pointed out, feeling rather like Mama when I said that, because it was something she would have said and something that would have made me cringe.

I was debating whether to visit Amazon.com and see if
Crack Baby
had picked up any new reviews when Jackson Ledbetter appeared in the kitchen wearing hip-hugging briefs and nothing else.

“Walking around in your undies?” I asked.

“It’s summer,” he explained.

“Call the Underwear Police!”

“Leave me alone!”

“Can naked breakfast be far behind?”

“Oh, please.”

He checked the bandage on my knee.

“I’m mad at you,” I said.

“I know.”

“Just so you do.”

His face looked a bit stricken.

“You should have just taken the damn test,” I said.

“I know my rights!”

“Bully for you!”

He made himself a cup of coffee.

“Haven’t seen you writing much lately,” he observed, changing the subject.

“I’m plot blocked.”

“Is that like being Koch-blocked?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“If you don’t stop posting crap about the Koch brothers on your Facebook page, I’m going to unfriend you. Honestly, who cares?”

“Spoken like a Republican!”

“I’m going to register to vote so that I can help make sure the oligarchy wins.”

“Do that and you’ll find all your shit sitting on the curb, Ledbetter.”

“I don’t know why you care so much. If voting made any difference, they would have outlawed it centuries ago. Surely you know that.”

“Don’t call me Shirley! And I know no such thing, you communist Nazi pig. What we have to decide is how many of our friends we’re going to talk into voting for Hillary in twenty sixteen.”

“Good luck with that, big guy.”

“You
will
vote for her unless you don’t want to have sex ever again in your entire miserable rotten life.”

“I don’t need you to have a party in my pants, Cantrell.”

I snorted at the thought of Jackson Ledbetter, insufferable prude that he was, having a party in his pants.

“We’re under a tornado watch,” he said, sitting down at the table with me.

“Aren’t we always?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Nobody does, sweetie. Since it’s Sunday morning, I think you need to do your wifely duty and make pancakes for the children.”

“He won’t be up for a while.”

“Doesn’t your husband count for something?”

“Would you like me to cook something?”

“I thought you’d never ask! And if you’re going to do pancakes, you might as well do bacon. ’Cause life without bacon simply isn’t worth living.”

“Said the heart attack to the clogged arteries. But the clogged arteries couldn’t hear because they were stuffed with fat.”

“You made a joke! You’re becoming more like your mother every day.”

“God forbid! You
are
working on your book, right?”

“Looking at high-definition porn, actually. It’s awesome! I’ll never go back to that low-resolution crap now.”

“You better not be looking at porn.”

“And why not?”

“Porn makes me nervous.”

“Excuse me while I die of surprise.”

“It does. It presents a very unrealistic—”

“I am
not
looking at porn, and, please God, no sermons on the objectification of male beauty. I don’t think I could take that so early in the morning, even if it’s delivered by someone in their underwear.”

“What I meant to say is, don’t be looking at porn, because if the DHS were to snoop through your computer, you don’t want anything like that on it.”

“I don’t think they have the legal right to do that. And I don’t think I’d be the only parent with porn on my computer. And if I was, what has that got to do with raising a child? People who look at porn can’t raise children?”

“That’s not the point. I don’t want those bastards to have any ammunition.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t look at porn. But of course, now that you’re telling me not to, it makes me want to see some porn. And not just porn, but nasty porn! Nasty people doing nasty things! I want a great big bucketful of porn! Give me porn or give me death! You can have my porn when you pry my cold, dead hands off it! You can—”

“God, you’re like a child. Now I know why your mother says you drive her crazy. Shit, you drive everyone crazy.”

“In your case, it’s not a long drive.”

“Thank you!”

“Love you,
big guy
!”

“Stop it.”

“Love, love,
love
you, big guy!!”

“Stop it, Wiley Cantrell!”

“You rock my world! I am
so
into you!”

“You keep on and I’ll bend you over this table….”

“While you’re doing that, I could work on my book. One of the many benefits of anal sex. Heavens knows you do go on and on.”

“Honest to God!”

“Love you!”

Jackson fetched pancake mix.

“Gonna cook in your underwear?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“You got a problem with that?”

“Nope!”

“Today it’s my underwear. Tomorrow it’s the Naked Chef!”

“I’m surprised you don’t shower with your clothes on like a nun.”

He turned to me, an impish smile on his lips.

“I dare you!” I said.

He casually removed his underwear, tossed them on the floor, stood there like the Greek god that he was.

“Isn’t it liberating?” I asked. “You’ve got to free your willy!”

He maintained his bluster for about eight seconds before darting forward to grab up his shorts and put them back on. “Someone might see,” he said sheepishly.

“Naked breakfast wasn’t built in a day.”

“I am
not
eating breakfast in the nude!”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to spend all day inside your shorts? Honest to Christmas! Show a little mercy on that poor thing.”

“You’re a bad influence on me.”

“I should hope so.”

“I’m not kidding. What is it with you?”

“Who cares what you do at six o’clock in the frikkin’ morning in the privacy of your own home?”

“I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.”

“Why do we have to be completely clothed at all hours of the day and night in case
someone might see
? Who cares? There’s nothing wrong with the human body.”

“If you say so.”

“There isn’t!”

“I believe you!”

“If you believe me, why are you such a prude?”

“It’s just weird….”

“Cooking breakfast in the nude is weird?”

“It makes me nervous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just does.”

“Afraid I’m going to look at your pee pee?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. It’s just….”

He fell silent, flustered, slightly embarrassed.

“I’m gonna make a redneck out of you yet,” I vowed.

He turned to me, a look of deadly seriousness on his face.

“What?” I asked, a little concerned.

“I’m going to do this,” he said. “I am going to cook breakfast in the nude. Noah won’t get up for another hour. So….”

“So?”

“I’m going to do this.”

He eased off his underwear again and put them on the counter. With a brave face, he grabbed a big wooden spoon and a mixing bowl and got busy.

“I’m still mad at you,” I said.

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you take that test?”

“Let it go, Wiley.”

“Why?”

“You can’t let people push you around. We have rights, you know.”

“In other words, you weren’t sure you’d pass.”

“Please! If she wants to get a judge to force me to take a test, I’ll take it. I’m not worried about it. But I’m not going to let someone push me around.”

“So you’re not doing drugs again?”

“Of course not!”