A Life for a Life - Lynda McDaniel (whitelam books TXT) 📗
- Author: Lynda McDaniel
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I’d enjoyed it too. I told things about myself I rarely shared, in part because Cleva, it turned out, was a good listener. And storyteller. She was a strong, independent woman who’d never married, though she had a huge family that benefited from her generous spirit. And she’d done more than her share of nurturing as a teacher, and later principal, in the local schools.
We’d been friends for almost a year now. In fact, Cleva was my only adult friend living close by. Kitt Scanlon seemed like a potential friend, though we’d only visited at each other’s stores. The women I met through the store were nice enough, but I’d learned that they saw me as their shopkeeper, a distinction that had never entered my mind until a customer hinted at it one day.
Jake licked my hand and brought me out of my reverie. I rubbed his ears for a while before heading downstairs to pack the truck. After hitching him in with his makeshift seatbelt, I eased the truck out of the driveway and on to Hanging Dog Road. A car racing into my parking lot made me swerve, its driver beeping the horn and flashing the lights.
I threw my truck into park and got out. Jake tried to join me. “Stay, boy. This won’t take a minute.”
At first, I didn’t recognize the driver, but when I got closer, I saw that she was a regular, Mary Lou Dockery. Her face was bruised and her lip bleeding. She’d have a black eye come morning.
“I need some Band-Aids, Mrs. Kincaid,” she said, as though she’d just skinned her knees.
“You sure do, Mary Lou. Let me open up for you.” We walked to the store in silence. I didn’t want to pry, and Mary Lou didn’t look as though she had the energy to answer questions. “You sit there, and I’ll round up some supplies for you.” I quickly gathered the Band-Aids, alcohol, and gauze. “Do you need any tissues,” I hollered from the back of the store.
“No, we’ve got them.” I brought the supplies to the checkout. “And I won’t need the gauze, Mrs. Kincaid,” Mary Lou mumbled.
“Okay, sure. Anything else?”
“Well, I could do with a quart of milk as long as I’m here. And Duane wants some Pabst.”
Good God. She was picking up beer for the son of a bitch who beat her. “Mary Lou, if you ever want to talk, I’m here by myself most of the time ...”
“Nothing to talk about. This is how it goes around here. One man is like the next.”
I wasn’t going to launch into my feminist diatribe. Mary Lou had four kids and no reasonable way to extricate herself from her marriage. “Hey, talk is free. Maybe ways to cope with the reality of the situation. I’m not trying to put you out on the street.”
Mary Lou tried for a smile, but didn’t quite make it, only managing to crack her lip open again. We settled up. I slipped a small box of Belgian chocolates into her bag and hoped she wouldn’t give them to her kids. Hershey’s was good enough for them. I watched her drive off, lost in thoughts about the havoc men can wreak.
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As I pulled into Cleva’s long driveway, the sky was scorched with pink and purple streaks that reminded me of Mary Lou. Jake steadied himself on the truck’s dashboard, whimpering a happy tune that broke the spell of that sorrow. No doubt he was anticipating the extra helpings of treats at Cleva’s. Once sated, he’d get to run free for a while to chase rabbits and opossums across the nearby meadows.
“Honey, how’re you doing?” Cleva asked, hugging so hard I couldn’t answer. My extra-long hug back said it all.
Dinner already filled the table: a mountain of fried chicken surrounded by bowls of fresh peas, cauliflower au gratin, and asparagus. Plus three-inch high biscuits and an apple crumble. We enjoyed the meal without mentioning L’s death. The grapevine had brought Cleva up to date, and that night, I was grateful for its unceasing buzz. Instead, we talked about our travels over the years, and I shared how much the natural beauty was feeding my life. “But it still doesn’t feel like home,” I confessed. “I keep expecting to pack up from a long vacation and head out.”
“Well, it takes time. Folks around here can be standoffish, but you’ve got me and Jake and Vester Junior. That’s a good start.” Cleva paused and added, “You look as though you could use an early night. Ready to turn in?”
She was right about that, and about my sleeping better away from town. But I still had disturbing dreams. Not surprisingly, I was working hard to escape from somewhere; when I awoke, I felt as though I’d been running all night. I couldn’t blame it all on The Day. It was just a new iteration of a recurring dream I’d had for years.
Jake had had his own troubles settling down—he must have heard different noises in the night and probably smelled a skunk or other critters wandering near the house—but he eventually joined me on the bed, sleeping deeply without any audible dreams. The next morning, we came downstairs to another feast—fresh biscuits, sausage, grits, and scrambled eggs. Good thing I don’t live here, I thought, as I felt my waistband pinch. But that didn’t stop me from tucking into the spread and loving every morsel.
“I wanted this to be a good break for you, Della,” Cleva said as we scraped the plates into her compost bucket under the sink. “But I also wanted to show you this note I got from that dead girl. She sure was polite. She wrote me after I gave her a lift back to her campsite. She was staying by the river, no one around for miles, and I saw her wandering down the highway with that pack on her back. It was coming up on dusk, and I was afraid she wouldn’t make it before dark. I just had to stop.”
I held up the note. “Did you show this to Brower? A normal sheriff would consider it evidence.”
“Well, he’s not normal—I can’t stand that man. And you said he’d closed the case.”
“Well, he’s waiting for the tox screen, but he’s likely to close as fast as possible.” She looked so forlorn, I added, “I’ll make a copy and give him the original. You don’t have to deal with him.”
When I read the note, I could see it was written with the same precise, yet somewhat childish scrawl, I’d seen in the woods. A sweet note, saying that a favor from a stranger had a special quality to it, for which she was grateful. She added that she hoped she could do a favor for Cleva someday soon and signed it, Lucy. Finally we knew her first name.
“Doesn’t sound like someone fixin’ to leave this earth, does it?” Cleva said.
“It can be hard to see a suicide coming,” I said, setting the note down on the table. “I’ve known people to commit suicide while a cake baked in the oven. And she probably did want to do you a favor. Her emotions were on her sleeve. At her age, everything seems so wonderful and horrible.” I shivered remembering another suicide I’d witnessed. I sure hadn’t seen that one coming.
“You cold, honey? The sun hasn’t come full up. I could put on some heat.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, looking at my watch. “Though I need to get to the store. I wish I could sit here all day.”
It’d been a little over two weeks since The Day, as Della was calling it. Things were calming down—except for the rains, which had been blowing like crazy. Good thing the store’s roof had an overhang, so I could sit out front, rain or shine. I liked feeling protected.
But there weren’t much going on, and it was kinda boring again. Not that I wanted someone else to die to spice things up, but it’d been special having so many people coming in and out of the store. Even when Daddy ran it that never happened. To tell you the truth, that’s why he sold it. Della came along at just the right time, for Daddy, anyways.
I really liked it inside the store since Della got it all cleaned up. The fresh coffee and bakery bread and even those stinky cheeses she liked (I reckoned she was the only one who ate them) mixed together for a good smell. I couldn’t imagine what that store woulda been like if Sheriff Brower’s father had bought it like he’d said he was gonna do. I was glad Daddy decided different. That was a good thing he did, I had to give him that.
One night last week we did have a little dustup. From our living room, I heard some tires screeching in front of the store. Mary Lou Dockery came flying up into the driveway just as Della and Jake were leaving. I knew without seeing that Duane had beat up on her again. And I hated to think about what Della musta thought of the men round here.
I’ll grant you they could be rough. They’d get to drinking, and while that was supposed to make them feel happy, it just seemed to let all their frustrations and sorrows well up and pour out. I felt that sometimes—not from drinking, but from too many thoughts and feelings racing round inside. Like when I’d be on the playground, getting teased, and next thing I knew, my arms would just start swinging away. A visiting nurse at school taught me to beat up on my bed pillow, which I had to admit was a lot better than on Bobby McKeever. Bobby thought so, too (though he was still an asshole).
I’d lost more feathers than you’d think could come out of one pillow. Mama even noticed. “What’re you doing in the night, son? Having a pillow fight in your dreams?” she’d ask. Funny thing was, the more I’d hit that pillow, the less I felt I needed to, not just then but down the road when something else pissed me off. I wanted to run down and tell Mary Lou to let Duane know about pillows, but they’d all driven off by the time I could’ve made it outside.
It was kinda weird, too, because Duane was real nice to me when he stopped by the store. He’d take time to ask about me or my hubcaps or something he knew I liked. He even brought me a hubcap he’d found beside the road. Daddy would never’ve hit Mama, but he’d never ask me nothin’ about my day, neither. Things like that confused me.
And Gregg O’Donnell came by one night. He carried a big bouquet of
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