Wedding Ring (12 page)

Helen was holding her breath again, only this time it was because she could see the whole story like it was being acted out in front of her.

“What kinda noise?” Mavis asked.

“Well, not the kind you or me, we’d ever want to hear. It was the deacon’s bull, a bad bull at that, who was usually kept in another pasture. Ol’ Herman saw that bull coming right at him for a look-see, and he was scared to death, I can tell you.”

“Scared and naked,” Delilah said. Helen could almost hear her smile.

“Herman, he didn’t have time to set and think about it. He did the only thing he could. He jumped to the left, just as the bull nearly got him with his horns, then, when the bull turned for another try, well, Herman, he just grabbed that bull’s tail so he could stay behind him. The bull ran and ran with this naked boy hanging on to his tail, and finally he got tired and went to stand under a tree.”

“That must have been a sight of running Herman did,” a woman said. “A real sight.”

“You better believe it was,” Becky said. “But once that bull stood still to rest, well, Herman saw his chance. He climbed that tree, first a low branch, then a higher one. Before long he was high up in that tree, and he thought he was safe.”

“But he wasn’t?” Lenore said. “He wasn’t safe?”

“Not a bit of it. You see, there was a hornets’ nest in that tree, and the hornets took a good look at Herman and decided he needed stinging. And that’s what they did. Sting, sting, sting.”

Helen winced. She felt real sorry for the boy. Real sorry.

“Herman, well, he knew he had to do something. So he swung out on a branch, and he landed on that bull’s back, and he hung on for dear life. That ol’ bull wasn’t used to being rode and such. So off he ran, faster and faster, ’til he broke through the fence and headed right off in the direction of the church.”

“Oh no!” Lenore giggled. “Still all naked, too!”

“Herman, he thought he was gonna die, and wouldn’t you? That bull bucked and that bull twisted, but Herman held on thinking those were his last moments on earth. And he was real sorry, I can tell you, chug full of sorry that he was heading right for that church, where he was going to meet his maker in front of all those folks, and naked, too. Altogether naked and no mistake about it.”

“I guess he was wishing he’d just gone to church,” Mavis said. “No sermon in the world as bad as all that.”

“Not a one,” Becky agreed. “Well, just about that time church was over. It had all taken so long to happen, you see. All the people were coming out of the church, and they saw the bull running toward them with something on his back. Women started screaming, and men started cursing, even though some of them still had one foot in God’s house.”

Everybody tsked.

“Anyway, the bull saw all those people coming out and decided he’d better turn around before he crashed into that old fence around the church building. So he twisted and started to run in the other direction. And when he did, Herman flew off like some kind of bird. And he landed in a patch of ivy just beside the church. A real soft patch, too, and he wasn’t even hurt.”

“But he was still naked!” Lenore said. “Naked in front of all those people.”

“Do you think that boy ever skipped church again any Sunday of his life?” Becky said.

A wide-eyed Helen heard a chair scrape; then she saw her mother’s face peeking under the quilt frame. “You think he did?” Delilah asked Helen.

Helen thought about it. Herman had had a good ride and something he could sure tell his grandchildren about until the day he died. And he’d survived it all. She wasn’t sure that being naked in front of the townspeople had really canceled all that out. She wasn’t sure at all, but she knew what she was supposed to say. “No, Mama,” she said.

Delilah winked before she disappeared.

T
essa took the wedding ring quilt up to her room that night and draped it over the footboard, where it was the first thing she saw the next morning. She had been nightmare free that night, an unusual enough occurrence. She had not awakened to the terrifying screech of brakes, the wailing of strangers. She had awakened with the quilt folded neatly in front of her, the way it had been for so many mornings of her childhood.

One decision in her life was simple. She wasn’t going to allow the quilt to disintegrate further, and she certainly wasn’t going to discard it. That had become perfectly clear last night as her grandmother talked about her own mother and the other women who had given her fabric. Tessa’s entire vision of Helen Stoneburner Henry had changed with that story, and so had her already high regard for the tattered remains on her footboard.

A knock sounded on her door; then her mother opened it just enough to peek inside. “You’re awake?”

Tessa sat up and stretched. “You’re up early.”

“I had a hard time sleeping.” Nancy came over and perched on the edge of Tessa’s bed, the way she had when Tessa was a little girl. Then the purpose of the early morning visits had been to school Tessa in the social graces or organize every moment of her day—at least, Tessa had felt that was the purpose. This morning Nancy just looked troubled.

Since it was a Sunday, Tessa asked the obvious. “Were you planning to go to church?”

“Not unless your grandmother insists, and that’s not likely. I don’t think she goes very often these days.”

“What’s the problem?” Tessa asked. She reached for the bedside clock and squinted. “It’s later than I thought. It’s going to be too hot to jog if I don’t get up and get going in a minute.”

Nancy got to her feet. “I won’t keep you.”

Tessa reached out and grabbed her mother’s arm before she could disappear. “Don’t go. I’m just surprised I slept so long.”

Nancy fell back to the bed. “I’ve been up for an hour.”

“Why?”

If Nancy had been up for an hour, she hadn’t used any of it for personal grooming. She might have combed her hair, although not carefully, but she was still in her bathrobe without a smidgen of makeup. Tessa only rarely saw her like this, and she was surprised how young her mother still looked, even with the expensive artificial layers stripped away. Young, and even more vulnerable than usual.

“I’m worried about your grandmother,” Nancy said.

“Worried?”

“Aren’t you?”

Tessa felt like a contestant in an early morning quiz show. She was not awake enough to name the myriad forms of sea life at the Great Barrier Reef or the past governors of Rhode Island, and she was not
nearly
awake enough to delve into her mother’s psyche.

“Tessa?”

Tessa shrugged. “I think she’s doing remarkably well. She hasn’t thrown us out. She hasn’t retrieved more than an item or two we’ve tossed in the trailer.” She searched for something else to say, ending with another helpless shrug when she couldn’t find it.

“Last night, Tessa. Remember?”

“Last night was lovely.” She pulled the pillow from behind her and hugged it, leaning forward a little. “I used to wish I knew stories about the family, so I could share them with—” She looked away. “It bothered me that I knew so little. But whenever I tried to find out anything, I got the cold shoulder. I’d even forgotten Gram had brothers.”

“Your grandmother didn’t want to talk—”

“Not just Gram,” Tessa said. “
You
. Mostly you, in fact. You just didn’t want to talk about your family.”

Nancy drew herself up straighter. “What did I know? She never told me that story, either. And besides, you knew hundreds of stories from your daddy’s side of the family. That should have kept you happy.”

“Truthfully? I got a little tired of the Civil War and stories about how great life was when the Whitlocks owned a tobacco plantation on the James River.”

“Don’t forget the part where the slaves never had to worry about being sold downriver, because the Whitlocks certainly weren’t those kind of people.”

Tessa smiled, and Nancy smiled back.

“You didn’t buy that part, huh?” Tessa said.

“No, or the part where the field slaves carried on something terrible when the carpetbaggers forced them to leave the plantation after the war.” Nancy sobered. “I’m sorry. Your Grandmother Whitlock was a good woman.” She paused. “More or less,” she added, considerably softer.

In all her years, Tessa had never heard anything resembling a critical word against her grandmother. “It was revisionist history, the South the way she and a lot of other people wished it had been, but I never believed it. What’s funny, though, is that I thought you loved all that.”

“It’s possible you don’t understand me as well as you think you do.”

Tessa mulled that over. This was becoming a recurring theme.

Nancy straightened a little. “Anyway, since you can’t figure out why you should be worrying about your grandmother, I’ll tell you. She’s undergone a personality change. Telling stories, baking pies and frying chicken for us? I’ve heard people soften up this way sometimes, right before they die.” She paused. “I guess I’m not ready for her to go. And, Tessa, this is something we’ve purely skipped over. We haven’t really given her health a thought. Maybe your grandmother let the house go to rack and ruin because she’s sick. Maybe she was telling those stories last night because she knows the end is near.”

This kind of thinking was more what Tessa was used to from her mother. She felt on firmer ground. “That’s a huge leap in logic. Gram might just be glad to have us here.”

Nancy waved that away. “When has she ever been glad? It’s a good visit if she doesn’t tell us she’s tired of us before an hour is up.”

Tessa laughed. “Let’s make waffles this morning. You kept the waffle iron, didn’t you?”

Nancy got to her feet. “You’re not going to take me seriously, are you?”

“I’ll watch for signs, but I’ve got to say, she eats as much as we do. She seems to sleep well. She’s quilting up a storm. She’s not going to live forever, but she’ll get through the day.” She threw back the sheet and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “There’s a patch of blackberries beside the creek. I’ll come back that way and pick some when I finish jogging. They’ll be good on the waffles.”

Nancy’s eyes narrowed; then she relaxed. “No one ever listens to me.”

Tessa was glad she didn’t sound too worried about it.

Helen watched her daughter fussing over the waffle iron. “From the looks of it, I’d say the last time you made waffles was right there at that counter.”

“I’ve made them since then.”

“When?”

Nancy forked a half-formed waffle onto a plate and scowled at it. “Tessa was two, I think.”

“Do you remember when I got that waffle iron?”

Nancy wiped the grill, sprayed it to keep it from sticking and closed it so it would heat again. “They hadn’t invented Teflon, that’s for sure.”

“I won it at the church fair. You were eight.”

Nancy leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “I wanted a pony, and we got a waffle iron. Now I remember.”

“The pony wasn’t fit for dog food. The waffle iron’s lasted all these years. And you were so excited, I had to make waffles that very night for supper.”

“And they were first rate.” Nancy smiled. “Better than these are going to be. You tried to teach me to cook. I remember the lessons.”

“There’s nothing wrong with those salads you make.”

Nancy looked surprised at the compliment. “Tessa’s picking blackberries down by the creek on her way back. To put on top of the waffles.”

“Is she, now? I wonder if she’ll find the same thing I found down there one day.”

The back door rattled, and Tessa walked in. “These were at their peak. But I’m guessing there were about half as many as you’d get in a good year.” She placed a plastic bag with about two cups of berries in it on the counter. “Whew, it’s hot out there already.”

“You’re going to melt away to nothing,” Helen said. “And that’s a right puny bunch of berries. We’ve had years when there weren’t enough plastic bags like that in the whole world to hold all the berries we could pick.”

Nancy went to the refrigerator and poured her daughter a glass of orange juice, holding it out to her. “You’ve got time to cool down before the waffles are done.”

“I’m going to wash up. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Helen thought her granddaughter looked cooler when she returned. She’d washed her face and changed her shirt. She joined Helen at the table and sipped her juice.

Nancy approached with a colander filled with the freshly washed berries in one hand and a platter of reasonably edible waffles in the other. “At home I eat a small bowl of natural yogurt and a slice of whole wheat toast. I don’t like it, but it fills me up. Then I come here, and I can’t think of anything but food. If Tessa hadn’t suggested waffles this morning, I was going to.”

“We’re using up a lot of calories. You’re not going to gain a pound.” Tessa took the waffles after Helen had dished up her own plate. She took hers and passed the platter to Nancy, who did the same.

“How’s the swimming hole look?” Helen poured syrup on her waffles, then topped them with three big spoonfuls of berries.

“What swimming hole?”

“The one at the far side of the creek. Kayley could have showed you. She showed it to me once. She and Mack found it on a walk.”

“I don’t remember anything about a swimming hole,” Tessa said.

Helen watched the way Tessa’s face changed at the mention of her daughter. It didn’t seem right to Helen that the subject was still forbidden. She ignored Nancy’s warning glance.

“You’ve just forgotten,” Helen said. “Because she told you all about it. I remember. You’ve shoved it away somewhere, filed it under the past in your head.”

“Maybe.” Tessa looked up. “Exactly where is it? Can you really swim there?”

Helen thought the exchange had gone well. Her granddaughter hadn’t withdrawn completely, the way she usually did at the mention of Kayley’s name. “More like a wading hole, unless it’s been a real wet year. Then it’s maybe shoulder deep. But it was deep enough so’s all the young’uns what lived up and down Fitch Road liked to come and cool off there. A sight closer than going all the way down to the river.”

“Why didn’t they swim in the pond?”

“Snapping turtles. Bigger than a hubcap.”

Tessa paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Still?”

Helen shrugged. “This drought could chase them away, although it’s more likely that too much rain would do the trick. I wouldn’t mind if they went. Then we could have ducklings again.”

“I’d almost forgotten about the swimming hole,” Nancy said. “You caught me out there once with a boy and nearly skinned me alive.”

Helen scowled. “Because you hadn’t told me where you were going and you liked to have scared me to death.”

“Mom, were you skinny-dipping?” Tessa was smiling. “Is that why Gram was mad?”

“No, but I did skip my chores. And nothing made your grandmother madder than that. Not even if she’d found me stark naked.”

“There wasn’t another living soul to do them chores, ’cept me,” Helen said bluntly. “And I had my hands full.”

Nancy put her hand on her mother’s for just a moment. “I know you did.”

Helen was surprised. When had her daughter last touched her that way? When had anyone? For a moment she was mute.

“Well, I’m disappointed,” Tessa said. “I thought there might be a good story there.”

Helen recovered. “I’ll tell you a good story, you want to hear it. In a way, it has to do with last night’s, because it happened right after that, soon as the weather warmed up a little and the boys started swimming again.”

She watched her daughter and granddaughter exchange glances, as if they were surprised or…

“Just what is that about?” she demanded. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say, just tell me!”

Tessa leaned forward. “We’d love to hear it, only you don’t usually talk about the past. And it’s worrying Mom.”

“Worrying you?” Helen couldn’t believe it. “You’re worried because I’m talking? Isn’t it when people
stop
talking that you’re supposed to get worried?”

Nancy glared at Tessa. “Did you have to tell her that?”

Tessa dove back into her waffles. “Uh-huh.”

Helen tapped her daughter on the arm. “What exactly is worrying you, Nanny?”

“Are you…ill, Mama?”

Helen didn’t understand. “Do I look ill to you?”

“I’ve just been wondering if maybe there’s something you’re not telling us.”

This time Helen got it. “Like I’m dying?”

“Like that, yes.”

Helen couldn’t believe that one little story had produced such a reaction. She started to ridicule Nancy’s concern, then thought better of it. “I just never had time for stories, that’s all.”

“You’re feeling all right, then?”