Hard Row dk-13 Read online

and you can think up lots of games that take three peo-

  ple. You don’t have to play what she wants every time.

  Isn’t there anything besides television that you like that

  Jake can do, too?”

  Again that shrug, but then he grudgingly admitted

  that Jake was getting pretty good at Chinese checkers.

  “He almost beat me last week. And when we played with

  the blocks, his tower was higher than Mary Pat’s.”

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  “There you go then. See? You guys are going to know

  each other the rest of your lives and the older you get,

  the less it’s going to matter that he’s four years younger.

  By the time you get grown, four years won’t make a

  smidgin of difference. Your dad’s six years older than

  me and that doesn’t matter to either of us, does it?”

  “What doesn’t matter?” asked Dwight, who came

  into the kitchen yawning widely.

  “That you’re an old man and I’m your child bride,”

  I said as I got up to pour him a cup of coffee. “Rough

  night?”

  “Tell you about it later,” he answered. “You two look

  awfully serious. What’s up?”

  “Guess what?” I said brightly. “Your son’s giving me

  his ticket for the next Canes game.”

  “Really?” He looked at Cal and I could tell that he

  was half pleased, yet half puzzled. “You sure, son?”

  Cal nodded. “She likes them, too, and I heard

  Grandma talking with Aunt Kate ’bout how y’all haven’t

  been out together since . . . since” —his eyes suddenly

  misted—“since I came to live here.”

  I was stricken, knowing that he was thinking of Jonna

  again and that he probably felt a stab of heartsick long-

  ing for his mother, for the way things had been all his

  life. Another moment and I might have weakened.

  Fortunately for the cause, Dwight beamed and tousled

  Cal’s hair. “Thanks, buddy. We really appreciate that,

  don’t we, Deb’rah?”

  “We do,” I agreed. “Right now, though, Cal and I are

  on our way to pick up the others. We can swing past a

  grocery store if you want something special for supper?”

  “Don’t bother. By the time you get back, I’ll be

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  dressed and they can ride with me to see if the nursery’s

  got in those trees I ordered. I’ll pick up some barbecue

  or something.”

  Cal was quiet on the drive over to Kate’s, but shortly

  before we got there, he said in a small voice, “I really am

  sorry we were mean to Jake and got Aunt Kate mad.”

  “You might want to tell that to Aunt Kate next time

  you catch her alone,” I said, not being real big on pub-

  lic apologies. As a child, I much preferred a few quick

  swats on my bottom to the galling humiliation of having

  to apologize to someone in front of everybody. There

  were no cars behind us, so when we came to the stop

  sign, I paused and turned to face him. “And just for the

  record, Cal, as long as you try to do right by Jake, this

  is over and done with so far as I’m concerned.”

  “You’re not still mad at me?”

  I smiled at him. “Nope, and I don’t hold grudges

  either.”

  His look of relief almost broke my heart.

  “Look, honey. Stuff happens. I know you wish things

  could be the way they used to be, but they aren’t and

  there’s no way anybody can change it back. Your dad

  and I know this isn’t easy for you. There’re going to

  be times when you think you hate everybody and that

  everybody hates you. When you make bad choices and

  do things you know you shouldn’t, then yeah, I may get

  mad for the moment. But you need to know right now

  that I do love you and I love your dad and I don’t care

  how mad we all get at each other, I’m not going to stop

  loving either one of you. Okay?”

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  It could have been a Hallmark moment.

  In a perfect world, he would have leaned over and

  given me a warm spontaneous hug while someone

  cued the violins, and bluebirds and butterflies fluttered

  around the car.

  Instead, he stared straight ahead through the wind-

  shield for a long moment, then sighed and said,

  “Okay.”

  Hey, you take what you can get.

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  C H A P T E R

  14

  In the country, we can wear out our old clothes and go dirty

  sometimes, without fear of company. A little clean dirt

  is healthy; city folks wash their children too much and too

  often.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  % When he first suggested marriage, back when we

  agreed it would be a marriage of convenience and

  for pragmatic reasons only, Dwight said he was tired of

  living in a bachelor apartment, that he wanted to put

  down roots, plant trees.

  I thought that was just a figure of speech.

  Wrong.

  No sooner was his diamond on my finger than he

  borrowed the farm’s backhoe and started moving half-

  grown trees into the yard from the surrounding woods.

  I had built my house out in an open field. The only

  trees on the site were a couple of willows at the edge

  of the long pond that sits on the dividing line between

  my land and two of my brothers’. Now head-high dog-

  woods line the path down to the water. Taller oaks and

  maples would be casting shade over both porches this

  summer. Pear trees, apples, two fig bushes and a row

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  of blueberry bushes marked the beginning of a serious

  orchard. He had built a long curved stone wall to act

  as extra seating for family cookouts and we had planted

  azaleas and hydrangeas behind the wall. The azalea buds

  were already swelling despite Tuesday night’s freezing

  rain.

  Saturday’s warm sunshine and soft western breezes

  had brought everything along, and in a protected cor-

  ner on the south side of the house, buttercups were

  up and blooming. Flowering quince and forsythia were

  showing their first flush of pink and yellow and if the

  weather held, they would explode into full bloom by

  the middle of the week.

  It was a jeans and muddy workshoes weekend. Dwight

  and the children and I spent most of it out in the yard,

  and some of my brothers and a couple of sisters-in-law

  stopped by to help set out a row of crepe myrtles on

  either side of the long drive out to the hardtop. Their

  twigs were bare now but Dwight promised that by late

  July we would be driving in and out through clouds of

  watermelon red.

  It wasn’t all work. The year before, my nephews and

  nieces had installed a regulation height basketball hoop

  at the peak of the garage roof so that they could use the

  concrete apron in front for a half-court. Dwight low-

  ered the hoop from ten feet to eight, inflated four of

 
the collapsed balls stashed in a bushel basket beneath

  the work bench, and showed the kids the hook shot that

  could have let him play for Carolina had he not joined

  the army instead.

  Cal and a chastened Mary Pat were on their best be-

  havior with Jake. Being outdoors in the milder weather

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  helped, of course. Running, jumping, digging in the

  dirt, riding their bikes, or using the hose to water in

  the new plants doesn’t take fine motor skills and there’s

  no squabbling over balls when every kid has one. It

  also helped that Robert had brought his grandson Bert

  along and that Bert was the same age as Jake. It took a

  lot of pressure off the two older children.

  Some of the farm dogs showed up and there was a

  flurry of snarls and growls and bared teeth before they

  backed down and acknowledged that Bandit did indeed

  own the territory around the house, territory he’d spent

  the last few weeks assiduously marking.

  Will and his wife Amy came out from town and Will

  got sucked into work while I stomped the dirt off my

  shoes and went inside with Amy. Will’s three brothers

  up from me; Amy is his third wife. She’s also the head of

  Human Resources at Dobbs Memorial Hospital and she

  was in the process of writing a grant proposal to fund

  a pilot program for servicing their Hispanic patients. I

  had told her that I would vet the proposal and that we

  could use my Lexis Nexis account to look up pertinent

  case law as it pertains to undocumented aliens.

  “Documented or not, we’re getting so many people

  in our emergency room and at the well-baby clinic that

  we need more translators to work every shift,” she said.

  “It scares the bejeebers out of some of the doctors and

  nurses when they’re trying to explain a complicated

  drug regimen and the only translator may be the pa-

  tient’s first-grade child. How can they be sure that a six-

  year-old understands enough to tell her mother that she

  needs to take the pills in increasing and decreasing dos-

  ages? And don’t get me started on ID cards. We almost

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  killed a man the other day. The record attached to that

  particular ID card said that he wasn’t allergic to penicil-

  lin, but guess what? The man who presented the card

  that day was deathly allergic. We almost lost him.”

  I showed her how to get into the site and suggested

  key words that might pull up the info she was after.

  I like Amy. She’s small and dark and claims to have

  Latin blood somewhere in her background despite not

  speaking a word of anything except English. She has a

  firecracker fuse and gets passionate about causes, but she

  also has a raucous sense of humor, all necessary traits to

  stay married to Will.

  He’s the oldest of my mother’s four children and a

  bit of a rounder. Will’s good-looking and has a silver

  tongue that could charm birds out of the trees or dol-

  lars out of your pocket, which is why he’s such a good

  auctioneer and just the person you want if you’re selling

  off the furnishings of your grandmother’s house. He

  doesn’t exactly lie, but damned if he can’t make your

  granny’s circa 1980 pressed glass pitcher sound almost

  as desirable as a piece of Waterford crystal.

  While Amy roamed the Internet looking for factoids

  to bolster her proposal, I read over what she had so far,

  put some of her layman’s language into more precise le-

  galese, and marked a few places where specific examples

  would help illuminate the point she was making.

  As she printed out the pieces she wanted to save, we

  talked about the migrant problem. Floods of undocu-

  mented aliens have poured into North Carolina in such a

  very short time and not all are “Messicans” as Haywood

  calls any Latino.

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  “I heard Seth telling Will about y’all’s meeting last

  Sunday.” She grinned. “Ostriches?”

  We giggled about Isabel’s thinking hogs would be

  more natural and about Robert’s reaction to the idea of

  shiitake mushrooms.

  “Seth said something about giving the kids some land

  to grow some chemical-free crops?”

  “They won’t be able to market their crops as organic

  for a few years,” I said, “but it’s a start.”

  “And bless them for it.” Amy gathered up the print-

  outs, blocked their edges, and pushed back from the

  computer. “It absolutely infuriates me to see how cava-

  lier some of the growers are with pesticides.”

  “Well, Haywood and Robert can remember when

  they had to worm and sucker tobacco by hand,” I said

  as we moved into the living room. I added another log

  to the fire and we sat down on the couch in front of the

  crackling flames. “No wonder they love being able to

  run a tractor through the fields pulling a sprayer that’ll

  take care of everything chemically.”

  “Better living through chemistry?” Amy slipped off

  her boots and tucked her short legs under her. “Except

  that it isn’t. I wish they had to see some of the mi-

  grants who come into the emergency room, covered

  with pesticides, their clothes green with it. The rashes

  on their skin. The coughs. The headaches and memory

  loss and God alone knows how many strokes, cancers,

  and heart attacks have been triggered by careless han-

  dling. They’re not supposed to go back in the fields

  for forty-eight hours after some of those chemicals are

  used, yet we’ve had women tell us that they’ve actually

  been sprayed while they were out there working. Most

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  times they don’t even know what they’ve been doused

  with. Birth defects are up. It’s criminal. We’ve called

  EPA and the US Department of Agriculture on some of

  the employers, but there’s not enough teeth in the laws

  to make the growers back off.”

  Her tirade broke off as the children came in, hungry

  and needing to use the bathroom. I had set out a tray

  of raw vegetables and sliced apples with a yogurt-based

  dip, but Mary Pat spotted the bowl of oranges and im-

  mediately asked if I’d cut a hole in the top so she could

  suck out the juice. The three boys thought that was a

  great idea and they all headed back outside, oranges in

  hand, noisily sucking.

  “She’s a pistol, that one.” Amy laughed. “Kate’s

  going to have her hands full.”

  “She already does,” I said ruefully.

  We took the children back to Kate and Rob’s on

  Sunday evening, tired and dirty and ready for bath and

  bed. Kate, on the other hand, looked the most relaxed

  I’d seen her since R.W. was born. There was color in her

  pretty face and her honey brown hair had been cut and

  styled since yesterday morning. The haircut echoed her


  old glamour and reminded me that she had been a New

  York fashion model before she married Jake’s dad and

  switched from modeling clothes to designing the fabric

  for those clothes.

  “You could still be a model,” I said when we were

  alone together in the kitchen, putting together coffee

  and dessert while Dwight and Rob discussed the virtues

  of planting more than two varieties of blueberries.

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  MARGARET MARON

  She made a face. “For what? Plus sizes? Thanks, but

  no thanks.”

  “You’re not fat,” I protested. “And you were way too

  skinny before. In fact, the first time Bessie Stewart saw

  you she told Maidie they could just stick two grains of

  corn on a hoe handle and use that as your dress form.”

  Bessie Stewart is our mother-in-law’s housekeeper

  and a plainspoken country woman.

  Kate laughed. “I know. She’s still trying to fatten me

  up. You certainly don’t think I made this custard pie,

  do you? Skinny or fat, I’m comfortable where I am,

  though, and I appreciate you and Miss Emily giving me

  this weekend to put it all in perspective. I’m not super-

  woman and I’ve been hovering over the kids too much

  instead of letting them work it out. I’m sorry I snapped

  at you yesterday.”

  “No, you were right to. It doesn’t hurt to teach older

  children to be patient with younger ones. All the same,

  Kate, you need to understand—”

  “You don’t have to say it. Rob admits that he was a

  pain in the butt to Dwight and Beth, and that Nancy

  Faye used to irritate the hell out of all of them in turn.

  I never had brothers or sisters, so I never saw that give

  and take. Anyhow, things are going to get better. Rob’s

  finally convinced me that the children won’t grow up to

  be axe-murderers if I get back in my studio and work on

  some designs I’ve been mulling around in my head.”

  She filled the cream pitcher with half-and-half and

  added it to the tray.

  “We haven’t touched Lacy’s room since he died last

  year.” A shadow flitted across her face for that cantan-

  kerous old man, her first husband’s uncle.

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  HARD ROW

  Lacy Honeycutt had initially resented Kate as an in-

  terloper who bewitched Jake and kept him in New York

  almost against his will. It had been hard for Lacy to

  realize that it was Jake’s competitive zest for the New

  York Stock Exchange and not Kate alone that kept him