Читать книгу The Widows of Wichita County - Jodi Thomas - Страница 18

October 12

1:45 a.m.

Frankie’s Bar

The bartender leaned as far over the bar as his huge belly would allow and whispered, “We’re closing, Randi, you want another one?”

Randi Howard stacked her last shot glass beside the others and shook her head. “Can’t seem to drink enough to feel it tonight, Frankie.”

The old boxer behind the bar nodded. “I’ve been there, kid, believe me.” He used two of the glasses she’d emptied to pour them each a shot of tequila. “Jimmy was a good man and he’ll be missed. Here’s one to him.”

Randi didn’t down the offered drink. She just nodded. “He was a good man. Best damn husband I ever had.” She looked up at Frankie. “He never beat me. Did you know that? Not once.”

Frankie moved down the bar to the next customer; sympathy and advice were doled out like whiskey, in short shots. He’d been a boxer and a biker before settling down to tending bar. Randi guessed he’d heard every hard luck story over the years, and hers was just one more.

She lifted the last drink to her lips. “To you, Jimmy. I might not have been able to stand the boredom of living with you any longer, but I’m sure going to miss you now I know you’re gone and I can’t come running back.”

Blinking away a tear, she remembered how he once told her that she was a one-woman wrecking crew leaving broken hearts wherever she went. He always said things like that to her before they married. Afterward she swore sometimes he looked right through her. He worried more about his uncle Shelby’s business than he ever did about her. If the accident hadn’t happened, he probably wouldn’t have noticed she was gone for at least a week or two.

Randi closed her eyes wishing she could write the kind of sadness that settled in between them into a song. But singers don’t sing about love dying by inches or how it feels when there is nothing to feel anymore. None of the sad country songs she knew could ever make her hurt as badly as watching Jimmy slowly stop caring.

She hadn’t lost him in an oil fire. She’d lost him a fraction at a time…the day he stopped calling her name when he entered their trailer…the first morning he forgot to kiss her goodbye…the night he rolled away even though he knew she wanted to make love. She hadn’t known how to say goodbye then. She wasn’t sure she knew how to say goodbye now.

Maybe she should have had a farewell song ready the day she married. Then, every time something cut off a piece of her heart she could have turned up the volume a notch. Eventually, he would have heard it and then her leaving wouldn’t be a surprise.

The only thing she could think to do now was to stick with the plan she’d come up with less then twenty-four hours ago. She felt like she’d wasted most of her life trying to figure out what to do. She had been leaving him, heading to Nashville to give herself a chance at a dream she’d had all her life. She would just pretend Jimmy was back here waiting for her. That he still cared. It shouldn’t be much of a stretch really, she’d been pretending someone cared about her most of her life. Pretending was easier than believing. Believing could get her hurt, but pretending could go on forever. But now that she had finally decided on a direction, she would cut and run.

“It’s time to face the champ!” Frankie yelled from the end of the bar as he raised his fist and tapped the set of boxing gloves hanging above his head.

A young cowhand a few stools down leaned toward Randi. Long past drunk, he smelled of smoke. “What’s he talking about, ma’am?”

Randi smiled, wondering how many times she’d explained Frankie’s last call. “It’s time to face the champ. When anyone says that to a fighter, you can bet it is your last round for the night.”

The drunk nodded as if he understood.

Randi lifted her purse along with his hat off the empty stool between them. “Come on, cowboy. I’ll walk you to your pickup.”

“How’d you know what I drove?” he said as she turned him toward the door. “Lucky guess.”

Parking lot of County Memorial Hospital

2:15 a.m.

“Can you drive home, Meredith?” Sheriff Farrington knelt beside the open Mustang door as he helped Meredith Allen into her car.

She worked summers and holidays at the county clerk’s office just down the hall from his office, but she could never remember him using her name. Funny, when you are a schoolteacher in a small town everyone calls you by your last name. First students, then their parents. Even the other teachers in the building referred to one another as Misses or Misters. Slowly, the town knows you that way.

Meredith knew what people thought of her. When she had been in school, she had been a “good girl,” the type boys remembered to open doors for. She figured she would grow into middle age and become a “fine woman.” Then her hair would turn from auburn to light blue and she would take her place up front in church with all the other widows and become “a sweet old dear.”

Only now she was already a widow, and not one hair of her curly mass had turned gray. Something had gone wrong with the order of things.

“I’ll be fine, Sheriff. Thanks for sitting with me.” She took a long breath and leaned back against the headrest. “I just didn’t want to leave until the funeral home picked up Kevin. It didn’t seem right somehow to leave him alone.”

“I understand,” he said, his voice still cold but less formal than usual. “Restlawn would have been here faster if they’d known you were waiting. I guess they didn’t figure it mattered, so they sat out the rain.”

She looked up at him. “They will take good care of Kevin?” She knew she was making no sense, but she had to ask. Restlawn was the only funeral home in town. Kevin was dead and far too burned to have an open casket. What difference could the care make?

“Of course they will.” He played along with the fantasy. “Those boys have known your Kevin all his life. They’ll be taking care of one of their own.”

Meredith nodded.

“You call me if you need anything,” he offered.

“I will,” she answered, knowing she never would.

He stood and closed her door. She watched him walk back into the hospital as she pulled out of the parking lot. It was good of him to sit with her even if they had not said more than a handful of words to one another.

Meredith drove through deserted streets, trying to make herself believe Kevin was gone. Even after the long day at the hospital, it seemed impossible. She had loved and worried about him for more than half her life. He had always been there, through high school and college. Even before they married, every action, every thought, every decision had Kevin factored in. Then, today, for one second she blinked and the world changed. He was gone.

How could the town, the people, look the same? Didn’t they know the earth had tilted? Crystal Howard said she had felt something in the wind, a shifting. She was right. After this day, life would change for them all.

But the grain elevators still loomed like a miniature skyline behind the old depot. Main Street still ran in front of the courthouse with store fronts sliced in between vacant buildings, just as they had that morning when she drove to school.

Several years ago, a senior class had taken on a project to install displays of the history of Clifton Creek in the empty store windows. The undertaking was a great success but, as the years went by, sun and dust faded the efforts until they matched the dilapidated buildings that housed them. Tonight they loomed through the fog like ghosts of the past.

Meredith fought back tears, forcing herself to maintain control. Kevin always says getting emotional doesn’t help.

Kevin always said she corrected, as if a red pen sliced through her thoughts.

He could always tease her into smiling, no matter what happened. Only Kevin was no longer here. He would never be here again. Not to tease, or to gripe about the town, or to speed down Main when he thought he could get away with it.

He was gone. Not for tonight. Not for a few days. But for forever.

Breathe, she instructed. Breathe. Drive. Think.

The town Kevin swore never changed, had done just that. It was no longer small and welcoming, but cold and drab. The foggy air that hung on after the storm left Clifton Creek’s streets as colorless and as empty as her heart.

Meredith focused her eyes straight ahead. She was afraid if she turned to look at any place in town, she would see a memory. Kevin may have died, but she didn’t want to turn and catch a glimpse of him sitting on the bench outside the café, or walking across the grass on the square, or watching her pass from his office window at the bank. He loved to wave as she passed and then run out the back door of the bank and beat her home.

Meredith blinked hard and stared at the shiny black road. She had to think. She had to plan. This time he wasn’t racing home to greet her.

Where was she going to get the money for a funeral? The last time she checked, she had forty-three dollars in her savings account and even less in checking. She had called her mother and aunt a few hours ago. They told her they doubted they could afford to come. She could not ask them for a loan.

Tears bubbled over, blurring her vision until the street-lights were starbursts. She hated thinking about money now. She hated that she had to.

As she opened the door to their one-bedroom house, she caught herself almost shouting, “I’m home.” The place seemed quieter than she ever remembered it.

The living room was a mix-match of furniture they had either been given or had bought in garage sales. The couch was Mission, the chair Early American, the coffee table Modern. The tiny kitchen was cluttered, with a colorful plastic flower arrangement covering the burned spot on the counter.

“Our starter house,” Kevin had called it. Something they had bought right out of college, planning to move up in a few years when Kevin’s college loans were paid off. But the years passed and up never happened. Not that she minded, she told herself. This was home, easy to clean, close to school.

Meredith put her purse and the tote bag that served as a briefcase on a bar chair. She wiggled out of her sweater and straightened the cotton blouse she wore beneath. It’s ruined, she thought, as she folded the sweater. She had picked at loose thread ends so often today that several of the letters were now missing. The L had rolled up like a retracting tape measure. What good is an alphabet sweater with twenty-one letters and a curly L?

She pulled out a lesson plan book and tried to think of what to tell the substitute to do for the next week. She told Principal Pickett she could come back the day after Kevin’s funeral, but he insisted she take some extra time off.

Walking to the kitchen, she pulled down a mug and coffee canister. Why was it people thought teachers got a day off when they were not at school? she wondered. The substitute’s plans were harder to do than showing up for class.

She opened the canister and smelled the aroma of coffee then remembered the coffeemaker lay upside down on the tiny kitchen table. Parts were scattered among tools. Kevin had promised he would fix it last night before he came to bed. But, as always, he had not even tried.

Meredith calmly put down the mug and walked to the back door. On the screened-in porch, she found two mops, a dust pan and the hatchet Kevin had borrowed from the neighbor a month ago. He had planned to trim a branch that kept scraping the bedroom window.

She lifted the hatchet, ran her fingers over the handle and tromped back to the kitchen. The first blow hit the broken coffeemaker with enough force to send parts bouncing off the ceiling. Whack! Whack! The fourth strike cut deep into the linoleum tabletop.

All the anger she had bottled up for years exploded with each swing. “He…never…fixed…anything!” she said almost calmly between attacks.

Like a lumberjack discovering the power of the ax, she widened her stance and lengthened her swing. Pieces of plastic and cord and metal flew around her.

Just as a chunk struck her on the cheek, the doorbell rang.

For a moment Meredith stood, hatchet ready, like a crazed killer seeking the next victim. Then slowly she wiped a drop of blood from her face and walked to the door.

“Yes,” she said, trying to hide the hatchet behind her.

“Are you all right?” Sheriff Farrington’s voice sounded from the shadows of the unlit porch.

Meredith calmed her breathing. “I’m fine. I was just fixing the coffeepot.”

There was a long pause. Meredith guessed she should say something else or turn on the light, but she made no move. It would be better if he could not see her face.

Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. “I forgot to ask you what you want me to do with Kevin’s car.”

Meredith could not fight down the smile as she gripped the hatchet. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

She could almost see the sheriff raise an eyebrow. His hand went out as if to touch her, then he pulled back. “Meredith, are you sure you’re all right? I could call someone. A friend or relative.”

“No,” she answered, surprised at the sheriff’s concern. She had passed him in the halls of the courthouse for years and he had never said more than a few words. He was like her, an observer, not a participant. Two onlookers rarely have much to say to one another.

“Where is Kevin’s car?” She had no intention of telling him how few friends she had. She knew almost everyone in town, but could think of no one to call to be with her.

“It’s in a two-hour parking spot at the bank,” he answered. “He must have ridden out to the Montano place with Shelby or Jimmy. I saw both Howards heading into the bank yesterday morning.”

She nodded. Everyone in town knew the sheriff observed folks passing on Main Street from his window with the same intensity that a sailor studies the sky.

“Don’t worry about Kevin’s car,” Farrington finally mumbled. “I’ll see it doesn’t get ticketed. You can deal with it after you’ve had some sleep.”

“Thank you.” Meredith slowly closed the door, thinking maybe she could sell the car to help pay expenses.

Kevin wouldn’t want anyone to know money was tight. Over the years she had seen him insist on paying, or throw money into a pot even when he knew it would run them short for the month. Once he had given a hundred dollars to help send the extras on the basketball team to the state tournament. The boys made it to Austin, but Meredith and Kevin ate macaroni and cheese for three weeks. That was the year they were so broke they got religion. The Baptist church had a young couples’ dinner every Wednesday. For all couples under thirty there was no charge, the church’s way of helping young folks get started.

She could continue to play the game alone. Meredith closed her eyes and reminded herself one more time to keep breathing.

“Our money is nobody’s business but ours.” She could almost hear Kevin saying. “But mine,” she corrected.