Nether Regions (4 page)

Tired, Sophie plopped onto a low bank backed by riotous willow trees and placed her basket in the middle of her folded legs. She peered into it, mentally checking off a grocery list of herbs—slippery elm for Carol’s sore throat, burdock for the Kiel boy’s skin tumor, balm to strew outside on the deck at the house and white willow to replenish her store. She still needed thyme and plantain, but she continued to sit. Just for a while. Being quiet and empty was a true indulgence, and wandering the bayou gathering supplies served as camouflage for an occasional bit of woolgathering. Not a lot—she was far too busy usually. But once in a while it was nice to sit and study the water by daylight, recharging her batteries.

A splash to her left caught her attention, and she saw the swirl of a catfish tail as the fish worked his way back to the bottom after a quick snack of leggy water gliders.

A tuft of sinewy plantain leaves snared her interest, and she leaned to one side, clippers extended, and snipped off a few, leaving thanks behind.

She sighed and fingered the thick plantain leaves. She thought of her mother and wondered what she was doing. They had managed to forge a strong relationship despite Faye’s penchant for men, cigarettes and booze, in that order, none of which factored into Sophie’s life. During her time as a healer, she’d seen too many times what addiction did to people and she’d healed a lot of black eyes dealt to women by their men. Not to mention the fact that she just wasn’t wired that way.

She realized, while still young, that she was different from other people and not only because she belonged to the Manu Lisse. An excursion with Cousin Rudee’s erection in a canoe on Lamplighter Tributary had proven to her that she did not even possess that longing for the pant and quick heave of the heterosexual tussle. It never confused her, she was too well-balanced in nature for any real trouble to grow, but when her eyes met the warm brown gaze of Kinsey Phelps in the cafeteria area of Stafford High School, it had all made sense. She was pulled toward women. Sophie had accepted this fact as easily as the knowledge that the sun rises each morning, and she set about making the lesbian world her own.

She piled the plantain leaves neatly into the basket, her thoughts drifting to Stephen and Righteous and their troubles. Herbs and care just wouldn’t heal some things. All she could offer was a sympathetic ear and whatever limited advice she could about maintaining a relationship. She sighed. What did she know about gay men? Or relationships, for that matter? She knew love when she saw it, however, and those two loved one another. Could love win out over unfaithfulness? She nodded to the bayou as if understanding some great secret. Sure it could. She saw evidence of that almost every day. Why else would Panda Cross’s husband, Mikie, allow her to come back home after a weeklong man and drinking binge. Mysteries. Life was full of them.

More plantain beckoned a few feet away, so she stood, grimacing when the wet seams of her jeans scraped against the tender flesh of her thighs. Back to work.

“There you are,” Clary said some time later as Sophie stepped out of the thicket into the yard behind Salamander House. The yard, sloped and surprisingly green, lay behind the cabin that had been in Sophie’s family since Great-Granda Wassel Fox Cofe had built it in the late 1940s. It was ramshackle, true, with tin and tar paper along the bottom and screen that was frayed around the outer edges, but it was home and hers and she loved it dearly.

The woman she loved just as dearly sat outside, on the border of the slope of well-tended lawn. It was a wheelchair day, so Sophie knew Grandam had not slept well after leaving her on the porch last night.

“Ida just called, said Karen’s water broke. She early?” Beulah’s voice, coming from the frail wheelchair-bound form, was surprisingly forceful. Her slim hands never slowed as she twisted cattail talismans with expertise born from years of practice and she felt no need to look up at her granddaughter.

Sophie nodded and ran to press her lips to Beulah’s soft, rosemary-scented cheek. “Just let me change pants. Damned moccasin dumped me.”

She handed the laden basket to Clary and walked into the house. Clary laughed as she followed. “You know they’re not partial to being milked. How many times you been bit?”

“Yeah, well.” Sophie stepped out of her jeans and handed them to Clary.

A stack of clean, folded laundry rested just inside the bedroom door atop the bureau. Sophie riffled through it until she found denim shorts and slipped into them, zipping them closed. Checking her T-shirt, she determined it was clean enough and grabbed up her canvas pack from the coat hook next to the door.

“You comin’?” She looked at Clary expectantly.

“Can’t. Promised Ella Jane I’d keep the girls. Beulah’s going to nap,” she said. She shook out Sophie’s jeans with a moue of disgust. “You and the damn swamp, I swear.”

Sophie was allowing her forward momentum to lead her out the door as she snatched her keys from a small table. “You’d best tell your sister to stay home with those kids before she ends up with another ulcer. She works way too much.”

Sophie did not wait to hear Clary’s possible response; she had already brought the engine of her small silver Toyota to life.

Chapter Five

Falling into autopilot, Hinchey rolled his polished Tacoma into the parking area in front of his house. He sat a moment, watching the house. Soft light spilled from the living room windows.

“It’s eight o’clock, do you know where your mother is?” he asked himself gently, chuckling at his own sense of the absurd.

Emma Barlowe had a passion for TV sitcoms and tonight was Thursday, her big night.
Friends
,
Will and Grace
. No, no one would see Mom Barlowe for a while. Later it would be
Nick at Nite
to get all the golden oldies.

Once when he had been thinking particularly deeply about the issue, he decided his mother, whose life perimeters never made it past the pet store on Harlequin Street where she worked, got a taste of a much bigger, better life by watching these television fantasies. No matter that it was as unreal as a Warner Bros. cartoon. It seemed real during those half-hour episodes and that’s what mattered.

“It’s me, Mama,” he called absently as he entered the kitchen door.

His dinner waited on the range top. His mother, in her usual orderly manner, had separated hot and cold foods and covered each plate securely with aluminum foil. He opened the freezer, took out a frosted glass full of ice and filled it from the pitcher of fresh sweet tea resting on the counter. After transporting everything to his precisely set place at the table, he took a seat and unwrapped the hot plate. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes and stewed okra. The cold plate held sliced tomatoes and Waldorf salad, a favorite.

“Ross just fell off a sofa and they think he has a broken arm,” his mother said as she entered the large kitchen.

“Ross?” Hinchey queried around a bite of meat loaf. Then he remembered. Ross was a character on the
Friends
television show. “Oh, I hope not.”

“Me too. How’s that meat loaf?” She poured herself a glass of tea.

“It’s good, Mama. Good.” He chewed without looking at her. He knew she would disappear as soon as the commercials ended.

“I used oatmeal instead of cracker crumbs this time.” She sipped tea as she watched him, awaiting a response.

Hinchey swallowed and looked at his mother. She looked the same as always: faded housedress and slippers this time of day, short curly hair the color of tarnished silver, eyes a washed-out blue, mouth slack and surrounded by pronounced frown lines. Mama.

“I like this better,” he said at last. “Has a better texture.”

“Good. Listen, I’ve got a hankering for a cherry pie and I picked up a nice one today. Save some room for it.”

“I will, Mama.”

She shuffled from the room. Hinchey wolfed down the rest of his dinner, placed the dishes in the sink and took the back stairway two steps at a time.

“Hello, Country Stud, this is your little Keychain. How’s life treating you there?”

Hinchey grinned and pressed his index fingers tip to tip. He pushed them together hard, until it hurt, as if preparing himself for a grueling race. Leaning forward, he applied these fingertips to the keys as he typed a reply.

Chain, good to see you. Life is good. Can’t complain. What’s happening in your neck of the woods?

Hinchey loved the little notebook computer he’d bought on sale at the Circuit City store in Goshen. It was the one possession in life he valued. It was one of his precious few personal possessions as he still lived at home with his mother. He glanced around the room and saw little of himself there—the furniture was a light pine and tan set his mother had chosen. He would have preferred individual pieces of darker maple or cherry, with plaid upholstery maybe.

He still slept in the single bed he’d slept in as a schoolboy more than fifteen years ago. Where had those years gone? He sat back and allowed his mind to wander, documenting his life to this point, his gaze lazily wandering the room. There had been two years of college at ’Bama State and then he’d gone to drinking with his buddy Larry and ended up selling cars for a living. For five years now. He’d just received his anniversary cupcake and complimentary dinner coupon May fifth. Where had his life gone?

A tinkling signal let him know that Keychain had replied. She told him about her cat, Gretchen. That she’d had to have her put down. Hinchey wrote back that it had been the right decision. At sixteen years Gretchen had lived a good long life.

They talked about other things then, about how a dust storm had settled for two days in Alliance, New Mexico, and shut down the building where Keychain worked. She said it was a nice change from her demanding schedule as an editor for a medical publishing company.

Hinchey had a sudden urge to have been there with her. Just hanging out, sipping cold beer in front of a plate glass window as the world swirled red around them. He wondered again what she was really like. How did she smell? What kind of perfume? Did she have annoying habits? Was she one of those whining, endlessly complaining women, like the ones who drove him crazy at his mom’s church?

Well, that was something he’d never know. Restlessly he rose and walked to the bedroom door. He could hear his mom downstairs. She was in the kitchen, probably cooking the frozen cherry pie she’d promised earlier.

Emma Barlowe had been quite a catch in her youth. Married early, she’d popped out three children in three years. Then her plumbing had gone awry and there’d been no more. Hinchey, the youngest child, had heard this story hundreds of times in his twenty-five years. She told it regularly at church socials and at least once to every new acquaintance—along with the story of how hard she’d worked keeping the books for her husband’s carpet store. They had slaved together for thirty years until he’d dropped dead one morning in between the shag and the berber.

Hinchey returned to his desk and stared at the pulsing screen. He was remembering his father’s waxy face in the satin-lined, polished wood casket. He hadn’t looked peaceful. Thirty years of Emma may have been the reason.

Keychain’s response was blinking insistently, so Hinchey wrote her about his father’s death mask. He also told her about the smell of new carpet, how the odors made him retch.

She knew immediately what he was talking about, knew it was the dyes with their fixatives and the formaldehyde used as a preservative. It turned out she had an uncle with a carpet business in New Jersey. She’d spent a few summers with his family while still in high school.

“Wow,” Hinchey mouthed. He thought of Delora suddenly and felt guilty. If only she would leave Louie and be with him, he’d be complete and there’d be no need for Keychain in his life. He’d drop her without thought or regret. If Delora would come to him.

Keychain wrote that she wanted him to call her. She gave him her cell phone number and wrote that he’d better not be some type of pervert or ax murderer. Did he want to call?

Hinchey paused and dialed up her profile once again. Keychain was twenty-two years old and had a post office box in Alliance, New Mexico. There was no phone listed and he felt honored that two months of nightly conversation had engendered this much trust in him.

Sure
, he wrote back.
I’ll call. How about Saturday night at nine, my time?
They set the date and signed off.

Hinchey rose and unbuttoned his oxford shirt. His tie rested on the desktop so he retrieved it and hung it precisely in its empty slot in the tie holder on his closet door. He removed his shirt, folded it haphazardly, and placed it atop the other folded clothes in his dirty clothes hamper. His trousers and white cotton briefs followed the same path, and he stood naked in socks next to his bathroom door. He realized then that the bedroom door was still ajar and with a lurch of horror realized his mother could have come in while he stood naked in the room. After rushing to close the door, he pulled baggy shorts from a bureau drawer and slipped into them. Fetching his robe from the back of the bathroom door he slipped into it and made his way downstairs. The pie should be about ready.

Chapter Six

Karen Witter’s moans echoed loud against the close walls of the trailer. They’d been at it for hours, and the baby had dropped only slightly. Sophie could feel the tightness in her shoulders and neck; she’d been arched over Karen’s heated, heaving body for too long. With a deep sigh, she pulled herself upright and stretched as she pondered what to do for the girl. Karen was exhausted. She was too damn young to be trying to give birth. The thought of that slim, childlike body being split by this incoming baby made her rage inside. Her eyes flew to Andy and she hated him for just a second. It was that boy thing, that push of nature that got so many girls in trouble. And what about the girls? Giggly fools, believing that the boy will eventually
be
the boy they see through starry eyes. That he will be the protector, the provider, the loving father of children.