Cry Baby Hollow (3 page)

“I turned left at the fork,” she told Joe.

Joe shrugged.

“I’ll handle it in the morning,” he told Vina. “She and I are the only ones down that way.”

“Me?” Aubrey asked, confused.

“You’re stayin’ in the cabin,” Vina informed her. “I got no problem with a weekend guest from time to time, but I like my independence. I can’t have you livin’ here.”

Aubrey sank into one of the kitchen chairs. She should have known something like this would happen. Things that involved Vina never went smoothly.

“Joe will escort you, in case you run into another deer,” Vina assured her. “Now get out. I’m an old woman and I need my sleep.”

Joe grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed to the door.

“You comin’?” He asked Aubrey over his shoulder.

Joe had to fold himself nearly in half and push the seat all the way back to get in the Mini, but once he was situated he seemed surprised at how comfortable he was.

Aubrey pulled out of Vina’s driveway and headed toward the cabin, all to aware that she was also heading toward the deer.

“When was the last time you were down?” Joe asked companionably.

“Christmas,” she told him, concentrating on the road.

“The cabin must a looked pretty rough then,” he said, seeing the concern on her face and guessing the cause.

“I didn’t go over,” she admitted, “except to drive by. I haven’t actually been inside it in years.”

“It’s not bad,” he said reassuringly.

“You’ve been inside recently?”

“I helped Vina get it set up for you,” he explained. “The septic system is good and they turned on the power a few days ago. There’s my trailer,” Joe told her, sticking his arm in front of her face to point out toward the lake.

She pulled into a muddy driveway that she didn’t remember ever noticing before. It wound through the trees briefly, and then they emerged in a clearing beside the lake. Instead of the single wide she had expected, she saw an old derelict RV, brightly lit by a pair of flood lights attached to a power pole beside it. She realized the fog was lifting and relaxed a fraction.

“You don’t have to drop me,” Joe told her. “I can walk back after I help you get settled.”

“I can’t believe Vina lets you park here,” she told him, trying to change the subject. She didn’t want to seem rude after he had been so nice about her assaulting him, but there was no way he was setting foot in the cabin with her. “She’s usually so fussy about the hollow.”

“She doesn’t let me,” he explained. “She sold me the lot.”

“Really?” Aubrey asked, amazed.

He nodded.

“It took a while to wear her down,” he admitted. “I was stayin’ in town one summer and talked her into lettin’ me fish in the lake. After a few years she got used to me and let me park my trailer here when I came to town. A few more years and she sold me the lot. I’m gonna build a house on it one of these days.”

“You don’t live here full time?” She asked.

He shook his head.

“Not much work out here,” he told her. “Unless you want to work on the line at the Beanie Weenie plant. I live in the city, mostly. I just come out this way summers and weekends to fish.”

Aubrey suspected the city he was referring to was Knoxville, but it might just as easily be Asheville. He  could even be talking about Morristown. A population of  twenty-thousand didn’t qualify you as a city in most parts of the world, but in East Tennessee, anything with more shopping than a Walmart was considered a metropolis.  

“You want to come in for a beer?” Joe asked.

“You’re out,” she reminded him.

His face fell.

“Yeah... Guess I am.”

“I don’t really drink much beer anyway,” she said soothingly.

“You don’t like beer?”

“Beer is a situational beverage for me,” Aubrey told him. “I drink it at live sporting events and pool halls.”

“What about when you’re fishin’?” He asked.

“I don’t fish.”

“Maybe you should start,” he suggested. “It’d give you another excuse to drink beer.”

“I don’t really need an excuse,” she explained. “It just doesn’t appeal to me all the time.”

“Bowling?” He asked. “Beer and bowling go good together.”

She nodded noncommittally.

“I guess beer is a situational beverage for me too,” he told her sagely, then added with a wink, “I just haven’t found many situations it don’t fit.”

“Well, good night,” she said, eager to be rid of him.

As he got out, Aubrey saw that all the wet grass clippings that had been stuck to his back were now plastered to the leather passenger seat. Joe didn’t seem to notice. He walked around to her side, rapping his knuckles against the glass until she lowered her window.

“You sure you don’t want help gettin’ settled?” He asked.

“Positive,” she assured him, closing the window and reversing out of the drive.

CHAPTER THREE

Aubrey woke to
the sound of car tires on gravel. She rubbed her eyes blearily and looked around. Joe’s face was inches from hers, grinning foolishly. His mouth moved but she couldn’t hear him. She pressed the button that rolled down the window.

“Mornin’” he said.

“Good morning, Joe,” she groaned, stretching a kink from her neck.

“Why’d you sleep in the car?” He asked. He was wearing a pair of khaki ca
rgo shorts in spite of the morning chill and he hadn’t shaved, but he already had a beer in his hand. She looked at the clock on the dash. It was 7:30.

“I was waiting for you to come over and show me around,” she said sarcastically.

His eyes went wide.

“Well hell,” he said. “I offered to do that last night.”

Aubrey opened the car door, forcing Joe to stand up and take a quick step back or get knocked on his ass. She stepped out and stretched elaborately.

“You sure you and Vina aren’t related?” He asked.

“Positive,” she told him. “After you,” she motioned to the deck.

“I went to get that deer out of the road,” Joe told her, taking a swig from his longneck.

She waited for him to make some further comment but he didn’t. He walked up onto the deck and stood in front of the door.

“And?” She asked.

“Couldn’t find it,” he said with a shrug. “Any idea where you were exactly?”

“Between here and the creek,” she told him.

He reached out and turned the handle, then stepped back.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“I noticed,” she told him.

He looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t have a key,” she explained.

Realization dawned on him.

“That’s why you slept in your car!”

She nodded.

“I didn’t think Vina would be very happy if I woke her up to get one.”

He gave her a knowing look. “That’s an understatement,” he assured her, “but you could a come back and got mine,” he told her, pulling out his keys. “You knew I wasn’t asleep yet.”

“You have a key?”

“I told you I helped Vina get it set up for you,” he reminded her. “And anyway, even if I didn’t have a key you could a come to my place to sleep,” he said, sticking his beer into one of the cargo pockets and sorting through the fifty keys on his ring.

“I don’t make a habit of bunking down with strange men.”

“I wasn’t implyin’ anything,” he assured her. “My dinette folds into a spare bed.” He selected a key and opened the door. Stepping inside, he held it open while she followed him.

She walked in past him and let out an involuntary gasp.

The cabin had been built during her mother’s Asian Modern period. It was a perfectly square building with a steeply pitched, pyramidal roof with a little windowed copula at the peak. The wall facing the street was solid, but all the others were composed of sliding glass doors set one after another with thick cedar pillars in between. The interior was open, but areas around the perimeter could be sectioned off with shoji screens that glided along on tracks. The only truly private spaces were along the back wall. There, the perimeter housed a tiny kitchenette, a bathroom, and a utility closet. The center of the room had a sunken conversation pit with a huge, stone fireplace and above that, surrounded by the glass cupola, was a small loft.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

The floors had been refinished, the paper in the screens replaced, and the built in sofas in the pit had been recovered in a heavy, off white fabric. Glancing into the kitchen, she saw all new appliances in gleaming stainless steel.

“Vina said you’d be working from home, so we made a little office.” He pointed to one of the screened off areas where a desk sat ready for her laptop. “What is it you do?”

“I run an internet store,” she told him, looking around in awe.

“Oh yeah,” he remembered. “A toy store, right?”

“Actually I sell new and used board games, most of them antique, rare, or foreign.”

“Aren’t board games toys?” He asked.

She nodded noncommittally.

“I guess you’ll be spending a lot of time in the library then,” he observed. “We don’t get cable out here and we sure don’t get internet.”

“I’m having a satellite system installed,” she told him and then realized that she would need to call her movers and the satellite people and change the address.

“There’s a queen sized mattress up in the loft,” he pointed. “But we had to get a real low frame so you wouldn’t smack your head every time you sat up. Vina said that was your favorite part of the cabin and I figured that’s where you’d want it. We could move the bed down there and put the desk up there if you want, but it was kind of a bitch to get up there.”

“No,” she told him, craning her neck to look into the loft. “It’s perfect just the way it is.”

“You haven’t seen the best part,” Joe told her. He opened the bathroom door with a flourish.

The old tile floor had been ripped out and replaced with slate, and in the corner there was a large Japanese soaking tub with little teak stairs leading up to it. The room also had a toilet, bidet, double vanity with basin sinks and a slate tiled shower stall with glass walls.

“It’s amazing,” she told him. “It wasn’t this nice when it was new.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m pretty handy.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“You did all this?”

He shrugged.

“Vina did most of the picking out but she left the putting in to me. I told you we had it set up for ya.”

“It’s amazing,” she said again. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll keep the fridge stocked with beer and we’ll call it even,” he smiled and at the mention of the word seemed to realize that he didn’t have one in his hand. He looked around, confused.

Aubrey reached over, pulled the beer out of his pocket, and handed it to him.

He flashed her a smile.

“Oh hey, you haven’t seen the best part!”

“I thought you said this was the best part,” she told him, waving at the bathroom.

“That’s the best part inside,” he told her, “but the best, best part is out here.”

He walked over to the back wall and opened one of the sliding glass doors. The entire cabin was surrounded by a deck, but it was considerably wider on the back where it stretched out toward the lake. It had been expanded considerably, and the railing along the lake side had been removed and replaced with steps leading down to a whole new level of deck and a boardwalk leading out to a new dock. Joe pranced down to the lower level and held out his arms to frame the small sunken hot tub that had been added.

“And then there’s the even better, best part,” he told her and he pointed out into the lake. The cabin was built on a small inlet so that it was screened from view from all of the other houses, but where before there had been only trees, now there was another small dock. Joe’s RV could be seen clearly.

“Howdy neighbor,” he told her and slapped his knee.

“Oh hell,” he yelped. “I’ll be right back. Wait here.”

She watched him run around the deck and out to his truck where it was parked in the drive behind her car. He came trotting back with a bulky package wrapped in Sunday comics tucked under his arm and a fresh beer in his hand.

He handed her the package.

“Housewarming present,” he explained.

She ripped it open. Inside was a shiny new black mailbox with the name “Guinn” printed neatly on both sides in bold white letters. On the front was the number thirteen.

“Welcome to Red Bank Road,” he told her. “I’ll put that up for you after I finish my beer. I’ve got the post and cement in the back of my truck, but I didn’t bring those out here ‘cause they aren’t wrapped and they’re pretty heavy.”

“It’s very nice,” she said seriously, unsure how to react to so many good things at once. “Thank you.”

“Vina said you never did change your name when you got married,” he told her.

“I was in the military at the time,” she explained. “Everyone calls you by your last name and it would have meant changing all my uniforms. It just seemed silly to go to the trouble.”

“Bet you were glad when you got divorced,” he observed.

She stared at him.

“Well, not glad about the divorce, you know… Glad that you didn’t have to change your name back and all.”

Aubrey nodded and walked out onto the dock,  turning to look back at the cabin. Since the walls were all glass, Joe would be commanding an impressive view straight into her life. She was suddenly very glad that she had spent the night in her car. Drapes, she decided, would be the very first thing she shopped for.