Carolina Moon, Page 39

  her nose. "I suppose this is why. I don't know if this is a horrible place or a beautiful one. I can never make up my mind."

  "It takes courage to take something ugly and make it peaceful."

  "Courage?" Faith stuffed the tissue back in her purse, then lighted her cigarette in one sharp motion. "You think this was brave?"

  "I do. Braver than I could be. Your father was a good man. He was always very kind to me. Even after ... " She pressed her lips together. "Even after, he was nothing but kind to me. It couldn't have been easy to be kind."

  "He deserted us, emotionally, the psychologists would say, I expect. He abandoned us for his dead daughter."

  "I don't know what to say to you. Neither of us has ever dealt with the loss of a child. We can't know how we would cope with it, or what we would do to survive that loss."

  "I lost a sister."

  "So did I," Tory said quietly.

  "I resent your saying that. I resent more knowing it's true." "Do you expect me to blame you for that?"

  "I don't know what I expect from you." On a sigh, she reached down for the cooler she'd set beside the bench. "What I have here is a nice big jug of margaritas. A good drink on a warm evening."

  She poured the lime-green liquid into two plastic cups, offered one. "I did say we'd have a drink."

  "So you did." "To Hope, then." Faith touched her glass to Tory's. "It seems appropriate."

  "It has more bite than the lemonade we'd usually drink here. She liked her lemonade."

  "Lilah would make it for her fresh. Plenty of pulp and sugar."

  "She had a bottle of Coke that night, gone warm in her adventure kit, and she ... " Tory trailed off, shivered again.

  "Do you see it, that clear, still?"

  "Yes. I'd appreciate it if you didn't ask me. I didn't come here, in all the weeks I've been back, I haven't come. I haven't had the courage for it. As much as I dislike being a coward, I have to survive, too."

  "People put too much emphasis, too many demands, on courage, and they all put their own standards on it anyway. I wouldn't call you a coward, but I do keep my personal standards low."

  Tory let out a half laugh, drank again. "Why?"

  "Well, then I can meet them, can't I, without undo effort. Take my marriages, though God knows I wish I hadn't." She gestured grandly with her cup. "Some would say I'd failed in them, but I say I triumphed by getting out of them as unscathed as I did."

  "Were you in love?"

  "Which time?"

  "Either. Both."

  "Neither. I was in heavy lust the first time around. God almighty, that boy could fuck like a rabbit. As sex has been, for some time, a priority pleasure for me, he certainly fulfilled that part of the bargain. He was dangerously handsome, full of charm and fast talk. And a complete asshole." She toasted him absently, almost affectionately. "However, he fit the bill of being exactly what my mother despised. How could I not marry him?"

  "You could've just had sex."

  "I did, but then marriage was a real slap in her face. Take this, Mama." Faith tipped her head back and laughed. "Christ, what an idiot. Now, the second time, it was more impulse. Well, and there was that sex angle again. It was still perfectly inappropriate, as he was much too old for me, and married when we began our affair. I suppose that one was a little shot at my father. You enjoyed adultery, well, so can I. Now, an illicit affair is one thing, but marriage to a philanderer is another. I believe he was faithful enough for the first little while, but my God, I was bored. And then, I suppose, he was just as bored and thought he'd follow his song lyrics by cheating on me, drinking himself blind. He had made a bit of a mark in the music scene. The first time he decided to take a swing at me, I swung harder, then I walked. I got a nice chunk of money out of the divorce, and earned every penny."

  She and Hope had sat here, Tory thought, and talked about things they'd done, wanted to do. Simpler things, childhood things.

  But no less vital, no less intimate than what Faith spoke of now.

  "Why Wade?"

  "I don't know." Faith let out a breath, sipped from her plastic glass. "That's the puzzle, and the worry. It's not for gain or spite. He's pretty to look at and we do have amazing sex. But the town vet? That was never in my plans. Now he has to complicate everything by being in love with me. I'll ruin his life." She chugged the margarita, poured a second. "I'm bound to."

  "That would be his problem."

  Struck, Faith turned her head and stared. "Now, that is the last thing I expected you to say."

  "He's a grown man who knows his own mind and his own heart. It appears to me he's always done what he wanted, and gotten what he wanted. Could be he knows you better than you think. Then again, I don't understand men."

  "Oh, that's easy." She topped off Tory's glass. "Half the time they think with their dicks, and the other half they're thinking of their toys."

  "That's not very kind from a woman with a brother, and a lover."

  "Nothing unkind about it. I love men. Some would say I've loved entirely too many." There was a wicked gleam of humor in her eyes, and no apology whatsoever. Tory found herself enjoying it, envying it.

  "I've always preferred men for company," Faith added. "Women are so much more sly than men, and tend to view other women as rivals. Men look at other men as competitors, which is entirely different. You, however, are not sly. It's taken too much effort, I realize, to dislike and resent you."

  "And that's the basis for this moratorium?"

  "You have a better one?" Faith lifted a shoulder, then picked up the notepad. "I had an urge to write some things down, and I rarely ignore my urges. Why don't you read this?"

  "All right."

  Faith pushed to her feet, wandered with her drink and her smoke. She imagined she'd done more serious thinking that day than she had in a very long time. Honest and serious thinking. She hadn't solved anything, but she felt stronger for it.

  Wouldn't it be odd if Tory's coming back to Progress had started her on the road to finding contentment in her own life? She paused by the statue of her sister, looked at the face they had once shared. Wouldn't it be, she mused, the ultimate irony if she found herself now, just when she realized she'd been looking all along?

  She glanced back at Tory—so cool, she thought. So calm on the surface with all those violent ripples and jolts underneath. It was admirable, really, the way Tory maintained that shield and didn't turn brittle behind it.

  Spooky, Faith thought with a little smile, but not brittle.

  Brittle, she thought, was what her own mother had become. And brittle was what she herself had been on the edge of becoming. How strange, and somehow apt, that it was Tory who'd given her just enough of a jolt to break her stride before she'd rushed headlong into being what she'd fought against all her life.

  A warped mirror image of her own mother. She crushed her cigarette out, toed it

  under pine needles.

  "Maybe I should take up writing," Faith said lightly, as she strolled back. "You appear to be riveted."

  She'd been caught up, sliding into the rhythm of Faith's words and the images they had running through her mind. She'd been both amused and sad. Then the pressure had come, the weight on her chest that caused her heart to beat too fast and hard.

  The place, she'd thought, the memories that pounded fists on the white wall of her defense. She wouldn't answer them. Wouldn't heed them. She would stay in the here and the now.

  But the cold skinned over her, and the dark crept toward the edges of her vision.

  The notebook slipped from her ringers, fell on the ground at her feet, where a tiny breeze toyed with the pages. She was going under, being dragged under.

  "Someone's watching."

  "Hmm? Honey, you've only had two glasses of this stuff, haven't you? That's a mighty cheap drunk."

  "Someone's watching." She took Faith's hand, and her grip was like iron. "Run. You have to run."

  "Oh shit." Out of her depth, Faith bent over, t
apped her hand on Tory's cheek. "Come on back now. Get ahold of yourself."

  "He's watching. In the trees. He's waiting for you. You have to run."

  "There's nobody here but us." But a chill worked through her. "I'm Faith. I'm not Hope."

  "Faith." Tory struggled to keep the pictures clear, to hold yesterday and today separate. "He's back in the trees. I can feel him. He's watching. Run."

  Alarm rushed into her eyes, turning them big and bright. She could hear it now, just the faintest rustle from the brush beyond the clearing. Panic wanted to seize her, the cold fingertips of it scraped her skin.

  "There are two of us, goddamn it." She hissed it out as she snatched up her purse. "And we're not eight years old and helpless. Run my ass."

  She pulled her pretty pearl-handled .22 out of her bag, and hauled Tory to her feet.

  "Oh my God."

  "You snap out of it," Faith ordered. "We're going after him." "Are you crazy?" "Now, that's the pot calling the kettle.

  “Come on out, you limp-dicked son of a bitch."

  She heard the snap of a twig, the swish of leaves, and charged forward. "He's running. Bastard."

  "Faith! Don't." But she was already racing into the trees. Left with no choice, Tory rushed after her.

  The path narrowed, all but died out in a tangle of underbrush. Birds shot toward the sky like bullets, screaming in protest. Moss dripped down, caught in Tory's hair. She batted at it as she sprinted to catch up to Faith.

  "I think he went toward the river. We might not catch him, but we'll scare his sorry ass." She pointed the gun toward the sky and pulled the trigger.

  Gunshots blasted, echoed, and seemed to vibrate through Tory down to the toes. Birds exploded out of trees and rushed the clouds. At the sound of splashing, Faith grinned like a lunatic.

  "Maybe he'll end up gator bait. Come on."

  Tory could smell the river, the warm ripeness of it. The ground went soggy under her feet, had Faith sliding like a skater. "For God's sake, be careful. You'll shoot yourself."

  "I can handle a damn pissant gun like this." But her breath was heaving, as much from the flood of emotion as the run. "You know the swamp better than I do. You take the lead."

  "Put the safety on that thing. I don't care to get shot in the back." Tory caught her own breath, pushed the tangled hair out of her face. "We can cut this way toward the river, save time. Watch for snakes."

  "God, I knew there was a reason I hated this place." The first rush of adrenaline was gone, and in its place was an innate disgust for anything that crawled or skittered. But Tory was pushing ahead, and pride left her no choice but to follow through.

  "What was it about this place that appealed to you and Hope?"

  "It's beautiful. And wild." She heard footsteps, heavy, deliberate, and threw up a hand. "Someone's coming. From the river."

  "Doubled back, did he?" Faith planted her feet, lifted the gun. "I'm ready for him. Show yourself, you son of a bitch. I've got a gun and I'll use it."

  There was a thump as if something had fallen or been dropped. "Christ Jesus, don't shoot!"

  "You step out, and you show yourself. Right now."

  "Don't go taking potshots. Holy God, Miss Faith, is that you? Miss Faith, it's just Piney. Piney Cobb."

  He eased out from the trees with his back to the curve of the river where cypress knees speared the surface. His hands shook as he held them high.

  "What the hell were you doing, sneaking around in here, watching us?" "I wasn't. Swear to God. Didn't know you were hereabouts till I heard the shots.

  Scared me down to the skin. Didn't know whether to run or hide. I've just been frogging, that's all. Been frogging the last hour or so. The boss, he don't mind if I do some frogging in here."

  "Then where are the frogs?"

  "Got the bag right over there. Dropped it when you called out. You scared ten years off me, Miss Faith."

  Tory saw nothing in his face but fear, felt nothing from him but panic. He smelled of sweat and whiskey. "Let's see the bag."

  "Okay. All right. It's right back here." Licking his lips, he pointed with one finger.

  "You be real careful how you step, Piney. I'm awful nervous right now and my finger's liable to shake."

  She kept the gun aimed while Tory moved forward. "See here? See? Been frogging with this old burlap sack."

  Tory crouched down, looked inside. Perhaps half a dozen unhappy frogs looked back at her. "This is a pretty pitiful haul for an hour's work."

  "Lost most of 'em when I dropped the bag. Dropped it twice," he added, as a flush worked up his neck. "Tell you true, I damn near shit a brick when that gun went off. Thought I heard somebody running off thataway, barely had time to wonder on it when the gunfire started. I figured I'd best get myself out of harm's way, nice and quiet. Maybe somebody's target shooting like Mr. Cade and his friends used to, and I could catch a stray bullet if I wasn't careful. I do some frogging every couple weeks. You can ask Mr. Cade if that ain't so."

  "What do you think?" Faith asked Tory. "I don't know. He has frogs, such as they are."

  He wasn't a young man, she thought, but he knew the swamp and his muscles were tough from fieldwork. Still, nothing could be proved. "I'm sorry we frightened you, but someone was sneaking around near the clearing."

  "Wasn't me." His eyes jumped from Tory to the gun, then back. "I heard somebody running, like I said. Lotsa ways in and out of here."

  She nodded, stepped back. Piney cleared his throat, reached down for the bag. "I guess I'll go on then."

  "Yeah, you go on," Faith told him. "If I were you, I'd make sure Cade knows when you plan to do some frogging."

  "I'll see to that for sure. You bet your life. I'm just gonna go on now." He backed up, watching Faith's face until he could slide into the shadows of the trees.

  25

  For close on to thirty-five years J.R. and Carl D. fished on Sunday afternoons. It hadn't started as a tradition, and even now both men would have been annoyed and embarrassed to have called it one. It was simply a way to relax and pass the time.

  After J.R.'s father died and his mother went to work, it had been Carl D.'s mother Iris had paid to watch Sarabeth after school and on Saturdays. And it had been an unspoken agreement between the women that she would run herd on J.R as well.

  Fanny Russ cooked like an angel and had a will of steel. Both were a matter of pride.

  J.R. learned to call her ma'am in a quick hurry. And during his growing-up years in the fifties when the Klan still burned their hate throughout the South in shapes of crosses, and no coloreds were allowed to sit at the counter in the diner on Market Street, the young white boy and young black boy quietly became friends.

  Neither made an issue out of it, and Sunday after Sunday, with a rare miss for holidays or illness, both men sat side by side with rod and reel on the bank of the river, just as they had as boys. They each had less hair and more girth than they'd had when they'd started, but the rhythm of the afternoon stayed essentially true.

  For a time during J.R.'s courtship and through the early months of his marriage to Boots, she'd prepared fancy little lunches in a wicker basket for them. It had taken J.R. some little doing to discourage this without hurting her feelings. Picnic baskets filled with chicken salad sandwiches and neatly sliced vegetables made it all too female. All the men needed was a cooler of beer and a fistful of night crawlers.

  And if they were lucky, a couple of wedges of Ma Russ's sweet potato or pecan pie.

  All that had remained constant for years. There were little changes by the river. The old peach tree had died three winters before, but it had sent out a half dozen volunteers that had grown like weeds until the town council had elected to nurture the best pair of them, and cut down the rest.

  Now the fruit, still underripe, hung on the branches and waited for children to come along to devour those hard green orbs and give themselves bellyaches.

  The water flowed slow and quiet, as always, with the grand old
willow bent over it to dip its lacy green fronds.

  And now and again, if you were patient enough, fish stirred