The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (31 page)

“Sue-Ann,” she said.  “Ah told Cal ah wasn’t goin to marry him.”

I was glad to hear this, but Gina’s demeanor told me that there was more to it.  “You did?” I asked cautiously.

“But ah ain’t goin to leave him neither.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Ah don’t know if Cal loves me, ah don’t.  He doesn’t talk about love much.  Maybe he’s love shy after things not working out with his wahf.  But he was the first person in mah lahf to think that maybe ah was special.  He gave me some responsibility, an ah never had that.  Ah’ve done some good for the paper; he says that without me he’d have never even thought of goin to three a week, much less daily.  We’re kinda a team.”

“So you’re, what, going to stay with Cal?  You’re going to keep being his girlfriend?”

“If you and ah moved in together, there’d be talk.  Both of us’d probly lose our jobs and that wouldn’t be the worst part.  That’s okay for you, Sue-Ann; you’ve already given up a career, but ah caint do that.  But if ah stay with Cal, ah can help build a better paper and ah can feel good about mah abilities.”

“So,” I continued numbly, “you’re going to move in with Cal?”

“Ah won’t marry him and ah won’t move in with him.  Sometahms he’ll spend the night at mah place and sometahms we’ll stay at his.  Most of the tahm we’ll be apart.  Sometahms we’ll go out to a movie or somethin, but nothin formal.  Ah told him that we could date and we could be lovers, but that ah didn’t want people to see us as a couple.  That’s whah ah didn’t go to Pauley’s funeral.   It hurt him some, it did, but ah couldn’t tell him whah ah’ve changed.  Ah
won’t
tell him.  And here’s somethin else ah didn’t tell him: that if he wants me to have his baby, ah will.”

“But if you get pregnant, you’ll
have
to move in with him.  You’ll have to—”

“No, Sue-Ann.  ah won’t.”  Gina stopped and took a deep breath.  “If you don’t want to see me or be with me again, ah’ll understand.”

“You mean you still want to be . . . you want us
both
?” I burst out.

Gina just looked into the water like she was looking for a floating body.

I didn’t bother looking, I just jumped out of the boat and started swimming toward shore.  With any luck I would have overturned the boat; with better luck I would have drowned, but neither happened.  When I reached the shore I glanced back out and saw that the boat was still upright, Gina still sitting on her seat clutching an oar but making no attempt to use it.

I shouted at her: “Damn it, Gina.  You sent me a throbbing heart!”  I turned away and rushed into the cabin where I snatched off the bathing suit Gina had bought me and left it puddling on the wooden floor.  I ignored the bag of hiking clothes, dressed myself in what I had arrived in, and flew out the door to my truck.  And I drove and drove.

I’m not sure how long I was on the road and I don’t remember where I went.  I was angry and hurt beyond belief and took no note whatever of my surroundings until I looked at my gas gauge and realized that I was dangerously low on fuel.  I found a gas station, filled up and bought a hot dog from their deli.  It was atrocious, but far better than eating anything Gina cooked.  I took a thyroid pill and drove on.  But instead of finding myself in Tallahassee or Panama City or somewhere with a bar or a movie theater I could lose myself in; instead of calling Donny and telling him that we were back on; instead of showing up naked at Cal’s apartment, I found myself, hours later, pulling back in to the parking lot of the Cypress Lakes Lodge.

I parked and got out of the truck like a linebacker moving toward a loose football.  I opened the door of number 15 and slammed it behind me.  Gina was sitting back against the headboard of the bed, arms around her knees, staring at the floor.  I noticed that my bathing suit was no longer lying on the floor and the wet patch had been mopped up.

Gina looked up at me finally and said, with a sadness in her voice, “Forgit somethin?”

“Fucking A I forgot something.  I forgot to tell you about yourself.”

“Go raht ahead, doesn’t matter.”  Her voice was mechanical, like words were coming from her mouth without her making any conscious effort to speak.

I was fighting back tears, had been fighting them back for hours.  “Remember what I said to you last night?”

“All of it.”

“Well, everything I said was a lie.  I don’t love . . . I don’t like you better than archery.  You’re still the slithery bitch you always were.  I was testing you to see how far you’d go.  I faked all those orgasms, too.  I was really convincing, right?”

“Then why are you cryin?”

“I have Graves’ disease.”

“Problem is, you do love me.”  Her voice had been getting slowly less mechanical.  I blinked and saw that she had folded herself into a lotus position.  Her eyes were brighter, her voice steadier.

I wiped my eyes.  “I do, and yes, it’s a problem.”

Gina didn’t answer, just kept looking at me.

“I can’t help it,” I continued.  “Even if I come in the office next week and you treat me like a stranger, I’m still going to want to be with you, I’m going to want to touch you, to travel to different countries with you, to sit and talk to you about philosophy and economics at the breakfast table.”

“Ah want those things, too, Sue-Ann, except the philosophy part scares me a little.”

I smiled; I couldn’t help it.  I couldn’t help walking toward the bed.

We kissed, we made love, we shouted at each other, and we cried and cried.

And in the morning we got in separate cars and drove in different directions.

Epilogue

The next months passed quietly.  The medication Dr. Morris had given me had allowed me to get back most of the weight I had lost and I was looking and feeling almost as good as new.  It was still another Friday and I had scheduled my iodine radiation therapy for early in the coming week.  There was no danger, but I was sad to be destroying a part of my body that had given me good service for many years, sad to know that I would need to take replacement hormones for the rest of my life.

In many ways it was a goodbye-to-the-old-era day.  Earlier that morning, I had set up an old 55-gallon steel drum and started burning all of Cindy’s old bank statements and unnecessary files.  Then I decided to burn pretty much everything in my father’s room—an easy way to finally clear up the clutter that the goths and vandals—and Mike himself—had left.  In addition, I had a lot of jetsam from the pasture to burn—old hay twine and scrap lumber from the cross fence I had to put up when Enemy Hunter was weaned a couple of weeks before.

When Gina got off work that afternoon she found me in the back practicing archery with my Black Widow.  With a wave, she went into the barn to change her clothes and get out her own archery gear.

No, Gina hasn’t moved in with me although I’m still hoping that someday she will.  We visit each other in secret and love each other when we can.  She is still the bright star in my sky, the one person who can hold me perfectly still and content.  But every story doesn’t end exactly the way you might think it should.  Gina and I could move to a larger city and live together openly.  I could get a job with almost any newspaper in the country, but if we moved to a city I wouldn’t be able to keep Alikki and Emmy, and I had grown as attached to them as I had to Gina.

And I no longer wanted a star-studded career.  I was excited at the changes we were making at
The Courier
and delighted about getting back into riding again.  I had begun work on writing the text of Jack’s book of Iraq photographs and had a couple projects of my own in mind.  I had queried a few publishers about possibly writing a book on my Baghdad experiences; a couple of similar books had come out already and they were popular.  I was also thinking about organizing my mother’s dressage aphorisms into a small, easy to read book, possibly using photographs or illustrations.  I had become familiar enough with some of the equine publications to know that they were always looking for new material.

“At least it’s not summer,” Gina said, fumbling to fasten the wrist guard around her right arm.

I loosed an arrow, hit the red portion of the bull’s-eye target, and smiled.

“What’s with the burnin?” she asked, doing a type of tai chi warm-up exercise I had taught her.

“House cleaning day,” I told her.

Our practice sessions were always casual, with more emphasis on form than on hitting anything.  In fact, it was identical to the instruction that I had received from Crookneck Smith, who I often spoke to her about with affection.  Soon I would teach her the ability to concentrate, but for now, it was common to catch up on the day’s activities while a portable radio sent out its messages from the chair it was sitting on.  Because they knew that we listened, Gamma and Smokestack sometimes played with us.  As Gina continued to limber up, we heard Smokestack say,

“Hey, out there.  This is WJAPE—the most fun you’ll ever have with a pirate radio station.  Listen, folks, we know we’ve been saying this for a while, but there’s a little horse farm out on Highway 77 and Cedar Road—I can’t say it’s name because it would embarrass the owner—but this little place needs some TLC cause the guy running it’s not as young as he used to be.  He needs some hay and feed and he needs some volunteers to muck out his stalls so the poor horses don’t have to stand around in poop 24-7.  But most of all, people, he needs advice.  Go on out there and give it to him, huh?  The horses will thank you for it.”

We had heard this spiel before and could imagine Mr. Moon’s fury when people stopped to throw hay into his bare fields or, manure rakes in hand, gave him their opinions of turnout, proper stall care, or the disposal of barnyard waste.  This was Gina’s doing—she had kept her word to Moon and this was her way to monitor his horse activities.

“And for all those in our listening area that are “that way,” here’s a gay little tune by Jonathan Richman.”

The song was new to me and I wasn’t paying much attention until I heard

“In the first bar things were just alright.

In this bar things were Friday night

and I was dancing in a lesbian bar ah-ooo, ah-ooo

I was dancing in a lesbian bar ooo ooo ooo.”

I looked at Gina to see if she had noticed.  She had.  Her eyes were wide open and she was shaking her head.  “Anyone in the listening area mah ass,” she said.  “Ah’m gonna git that boy.”

“Take soft breaths,” I suggested.  “Pull, point, and release.  Let the arrow roll off your fingers like a wheel rolling off a cliff.”

The fire was going out and I suddenly realized I still had something that needed to be burned; that should have been burned long ago.  “I’ll be right back,” I told Gina.  “Keep practicing.”

I ran around the side of the house to my truck, pushed up the seat, and took the brick of marijuana out of my toolbox.  When I got back and Gina saw what I was holding, she exclaimed.  “You’re not gonna—”  Then she stopped and shrugged.  “Ah guess it’s jist as well,” she said.  “We’ve been doin all raht without it.”

I began breaking the thick rectangle of marijuana into small chunks, then into flakes, and dropping them in the barrel.  “You know,” I said, “this is what started all that trouble,”

“The goat story,” Gina said.

“”I never told you this,” I said, “but I wrote up that story.  It was a really good piece of investigative work.  It’s just that the more we found out the more impossible it became to actually print it.”

Just then Smokestack played a song by the Squirrel Nut Zippers that had become the “pirate” radio station’s theme song.

“If it’s good enough for Granddad,

“It’s good enough for me.”

“You couldn’t give Torrington away,” Gina agreed.  She had put her new left-handed Martin Mamba aside and was helping me sprinkle the last shreds of grass into the burn barrel, trying not to breathe too much of the thick smoke.  Torrington had become special to us for many reasons and we had spent several nights there together.  I was thinking of giving archery lessons to the recuperating ex-soldiers.  We had gone trail riding with Krista on Torrington horses and Gina had finally met The Creeper himself, Ashley Torrington, and they had become friends.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to know about how far Pauley Hughes had gone over the edge,” I continued.  “That reminds me.  I got an email from Jack this morning.  He told me he saw Paul Senior in The Green Zone the other day.  I guess he got that job with Halliburton he wanted.”

“Ah guess.  And Mark has been covering Paul’s old territory pretty well.”

“I put us in the story, too,” I said.

“You did?”

I nodded.  “And unless we want everyone in Jasper County knowing about us, it’s like Paul said in that first meeting: there’s no story.”

“Just because it can’t be printed, Sue-Ann, doesn’t mean there’s not a story.” 

A voice from around the side of the house made us turn from the barrel.  “Anybody back here?”

“Clarence!”

“I didn’t know if I had the right—God’s banana, Sue-Ann; what are the two of you burning?”

“Bout fahv thousand dollars worth of grade-A weed,” Gina told him.  “Somethin Sue-Ann picked up when she shouldn’t have.” She took a deep sniff.  “Ah think ah’m gittin hah,” she said.

“But why are you burning it?” he cried.

“Smoking is bad for your health,” I responded.  “What brings you out here?”

He took a close look at the burn barrel, then looked in my direction.  “I just wanted to see your place,” he said.  “Krista told me all about this archery range.  And I want to see this horse the two of you saved.”

“I’ve—we’ve got three horses now, Clarence.  Come on out to the pasture and we’ll introduce you.”

A minute or two later we were all leaning over a board fence that looked out into both sides of the pasture.  Alikki was grazing to our right, looking every bit of her 16.3 hands. “That’s her, Clarence,” I said.  “Her name is Alikki and she’s a registered Hanovarian.”

“She sure don’t look sick any more,” Clarence said.

“I figure she’s gained three or four hundred pounds since I got her,” I told him.  I pointed to the field on our left.  “That’s her baby,” I said.  “We just weaned her.  And that gray horse is an Andalusian Clydesdale cross named Hurricane Irene.  That’s Gina’s riding horse and right now she’s kind of an aunt to the baby.”

“What about you?” he asked.  “Are you riding?”

“I’ve been practicing on Irene and on a couple of the Torrington horses,” I said.  “I’m just lunging Alikki now, trying to get her strong enough to support a rider again.  Krista’ll probably be the first one to sit on her.  She’s a better rider than we are and she’s lighter.  When I can ride her, I’m going to start taking dressage lessons from one of my mother’s old friends.”

“But Sue-Ann,” Clarence said.  “Krista told me that she was the horse that your mother was riding when she . . . ”  His voice tailed off.

“Alikki’s not responsible,” I told him.  “If Cindy were here right now, and I really wish she was, she would tell all three of us that what happened was her own fault for riding alone and riding too near something that Alikki wasn’t familiar with, like a tractor or a wheelbarrow.  It might have been one of those commandos from Torrington shooting too near the house.  She might have stepped in a nest of ground wasps.  Thunder,” I added.  I looked at Gina and remembered my first rated show.  “A flapping banner.”

We stood there for a few minutes just watching the horses grazing in the rays of the setting sun.  As we were walking back toward the barn, out of nowhere, Clarence asked Gina.  “Have you moved in with Sue-Ann yet?”

“God, Clarence,” I exclaimed.  “It’s so weird that you know about us.  What the hell was The Creeper thinking?”

“Oh, I’m a pretty good person with a secret,” he said. 

“Yeah, I guess you are,” I admitted.  “Including keeping back everything I wanted to know about—”

“No, ah haven’t moved in,” Gina broke in, preventing the argument that usually ensued when Clarence and I got together.  “There’s a man ah don’t want to hurt.  It’s complicated.”

The smoke from the barrel was wafting our way and I felt lightheaded.  “Whooeee,” I cried.  “That smoke is making me feel real good.”   I hung my bow on the pole and took off my wrist guard.

“Anything new at the market, Clarence?” Gina asked.

“Peanuts,” he said.

“Peanuts?”

“I got a call from a guy out in Micanopy who’s developed this new strain of peanut and he wanted me to look at em.  Hey, that reminds me, there was something weird about that trip—maybe you can do a story about it.  I was driving over the Suwannee River on Highway 90 when all of a sudden I hear this song playing in my head.  The Suwannee River song.  Then I realized it wasn’t in my head at all, that somehow it was coming from the tires of my truck.  It was making my whole truck vibrate.  You know.”  He sang the line “‘Way down upon the Suwannee River.’  Just one time, then it was gone.”

“You heard this on the bridge itself?” I asked.

“Right. I mean, one of those extension bridges with the iron gratings.  Those things always make a kind of hum, but this one hummed a tune.  It was the damndest thing.  God’s great gourds, Sue-Ann; now I think
I’m
getting high.”