The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (5 page)

“Nobody wants to be around a sick person,” I complained.  “I don’t really blame Donny; I was hell to be around.  No reason for you to go, though.  Sorry I shouted. How’d you know where I live?”

“Ah do the payroll,” Ginette said.  “And if ah didn’t there’d still be the phone book.  Or ah could’ve rustled up Donny and ast him.  Maybe even—”

“Okay, okay.”

“When ah drove up, the front door was open wide as the big blue sky.  Ah saw how your place got all trashed up.  Called out, but nobody answered.  When ah saw that the back door was open too, ah came on out and saw you shootin.”  Ginette looked around the room in amazement.  “Is this stuff all yours?  All these bows and arrows and ah don’t even know whatall?”

“All mine,” I answered.

“And those trophies and things?”

“Yeah.  I used to be good.”

“You looked great to me,” said Ginette sincerely. 

“You must have missed my first three shots,” I said.

“Maybe ah was lookin at the stables,” Ginette answered.  “You have horses, too?”

“All the horses are gone,” I told her. “Look, you want me to talk you have to give me coffee.  Got your cigarettes with you?”

“In the car.”

“If you want me to talk you have to give me cigarettes.  I’ll make the coffee.  Meet me back in the house.”

In the living room, I hastily swept the debris away from the couch.  I picked up an ashtray from the floor and put it on the coffee table, then went into the kitchen and changed filters on the coffeemaker.  As I ground some of the beans I got from Clarence, I tried to make sense of what was going on. 

The first thing I had to get straight in my head was the fact that Ginette Cartwright was concerned enough about my health to look up my address, drive who knows how many miles, and get up the gumption to walk through  my front door. 

I mentioned earlier that Ginette and I were never close friends, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the incredibly complicated, subtle, and wrenching emotional roller coaster that we had once ridden together as we grew through our teens.  She was the bright shining star of Pine Oak High School, so popular that all the other popular girls looked up to her like little yapping dogs look up to a collie.  Gorgeous, yes, but also both hard and original.  She took the term “southern belle” and refashioned it to fit her the way an apple fits inside its skin.

I was more like a dark star, strong but untouchable, unfathomable.  I had my own popularity, but it was with the teachers and with those students blessed with brains but not big breasts or, in the case of guys, big balls.  I need to make another point here, though, because my star metaphors leave a lot of white still on the page—in my teens I was pretty hot-looking, but not as hot as Ginette.  She radiated, I smoldered.  Sometimes I would smile at her across the cafeteria or as we passed in the hall, but I hated her.  I hated her but wanted to be her so bad it almost killed me.

When we graduated, she got more fanfare for being invited to go straight to work in the cosmetics counter at the brand-new WalMart than I got for winning a free ride to the University of North Carolina.  We never fought, never argued; only smiled and watched and, at least in my case, learned.

And here’s something you didn’t know.  When I came back to Pine Oak, I decided that the only guy worth dating was Cal Dent, who was going through a messy divorce at the time.  Three kids were involved, that kind of thing.  But my few hints to let me take his mind from his problems didn’t seem to make an impression.  Actually, they were more than hints.  It took months for me to wise up to the fact that he was secretly seeing Ginette Cartwright.  In fact, I assumed that Ginette was responsible for the divorce.  What’s worse, I secretly suspected that she was also responsible for Cal giving me the bum’s rush and giving Mark Patterson most of the assignments that had earlier been given to me.

So I was feeling more than a little confused when Ginette came back in and placed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter near the ashtray.  She sat on an arm of the couch where I could see her from the kitchen.  “Funny how we’ve never really talked before,” she said.  “Specially since we’ve known each other since forever.  Haven’t you ever wanted to?”

“Wanted to what?” I shouted from the kitchen.

“Jist have a little talk.  Ah mean, we see each other at least a couple tahms a week.”

“Sure,” I said.  “I guess.  Look, don’t you find this kind of awkward?”

“Some, ah guess, but ah don’t care.  It’s tahm we had it out.”

I put the coffee in the new filter and turned on the machine while Ginette folded a blanket she picked up from the floor and draped it neatly over the back of the couch. 

I didn’t answer.  As the coffee dripped, I tried not to notice Ginette as she got up and started picking up my dad’s books from the floor and placing them back evenly on their shelves.  “Ginette, quit that,” I told her.

When I walked in the room with two full cups and some packets of Splenda, Ginette was sitting on the couch straightening the pile of mail she had gathered up from around her feet.

“Had what out, Ginette?” I asked testily.

She stacked the mail carefully in the far corner of the coffee table before she answered.  “Damn it, Sue-Ann,” she said.  “You’re spose to be the smart one here.  For us not to trah to be friends is jist plain stupid.  It’s
always
been stupid!”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“You can laugh if you wanna, but ah’ve admired you since we were in the tenth grade, maybe even the sixth.  Didn’t ya know?”

“You
admire
me?” I asked, astonished.

“Raht,” said Ginette.

“I thought you despised me.”

“Ah don’t, though.”

“But you were the queen of Pine Oak High. You hung out with the best crowd and went to all the parties while I was stuck in the mud like some old dinosaur bone.  Even now, look at us.  You’re still the best looking woman in the county and you’re seeing one of the only decent guys I know.  I look like a scarecrow and the closest thing I have to a boyfriend is a cat.”

“Maybe we both see things backwards,” Ginette ventured.  “Ah lahked those parties and all the attention, sure ah did.  But what ah really wanted was to be
involved
in things.  You were always busy workin on the yearbook or the newspaper.  You were on the bowling team.  And you were
learnin
things while ah was only goin to class.”  She took up one of the cups and blew into it.  “Then you went off to college—outta state no less—and later we all knew you were workin on a big newspaper.  And then we heard you were in the Middle East. Heck, we ran some stories about you in
The Courier
.  Ah typed em up mahself.”

“I think that’s where I got sick,” I said.  Yet I still had a lingering suspicion that Ginette’s visit wasn’t all she said it was.  “Listen, are you sure Cal didn’t send you over here?” I asked.  “Or that bastard Donny?”

“Darn it, Sue-Ann.  Nobody told me to do nothin.  Ah’m worried about you and it’s that simple.  Why’re you so aggravatin?”

“Sorry.  You were Miss Sawdust, weren’t you?”

“That was half a lahf ago and don’t go tellin me that you’d lahk to trade places cause ah’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“I can’t believe you knew I was on the bowling team,” I said.

“Ah’m sure there’s lots of things ah know that you wouldn’t believe.”

“Did you ever think of going to college?”

“Been there and done that,” answered Ginette. 

“Sorry, Ginette, I didn’t know.”

“Two years at JCCC and another at FSU before ah quit.  Ah was twenty five and ah’d just got divorced from Jimmy Jepperson.  When we split the property ah came out with a little bundle a cash and thought ah’d use it to make somethin outta mahself.  Didn’t have the grades to go raht into a four-year college.”

“Why’d you quit?” 

“Same ole same ole,” she replied.  “Started seein one a mah professors and got pregnant.  Ended up miscarryin, and after that ah just kinda stopped goin to class.  Me and the guy broke up after a few months.  Ah traveled around some, then came back here.  Kinda soured me on school.  Learned some office management, though, and enough accountin to get by most places.”

“So you never had any kids?” I asked.

“Nope.  Not yet.  Ah’m still thinkin about it, though.”

“With Cal?”

“Mebbe yes, mebbe no.  But lahk you said, he’s not the worst guy in this wild world.  Listen, Sue-Ann, ah know you were puttin moves on Cal when you got back to town.  It didn’t bother me none—you didn’t have any way of knowin we were together.”

“But when I found out, it made me try harder,” I said.

Ginette gave me a cold stare, kind of the way she used to look at me in high school.  She took up the pack of cigarettes and lit one.  “Bring it on,” she said.  “But Cal is as high as ah can go.  You’re better than this little hole of a place.  You’ve even got rid of your accent.  Ah mean, listen to me talk; ah sound lahk Melanie Wilkes.”

“That’s what four semesters of broadcast journalism will do.”  I took the pack from Ginette and lit one for myself.  I hadn’t had a cigarette in months and the first inhalation sent my head spinning.

“Ah don’t mean to pry, Sue-Ann, but what made you come back here?”

“Lots of things,” I replied.  “Lots and lots of things.”  I drew deeply on my cigarette.  “First, it was the war.  Being in the Middle East for six months is like being in the lower reaches of hell.  Bullets popping, smoke everywhere.  People dead in the street.  Nobody safe.  And the way women are treated over there is a crime worse than the war.  I couldn’t stay neutral, and not being neutral is the kiss of death for a journalist.  We—the press, I mean—had our own little haven with razor wire and private security men, but we still went out.  I didn’t see a tenth of the things I might have seen but it was plenty.  Don’t tell Major Paul, but I just didn’t know why we were over there at all, I mean, except to keep the black gold pumping.  I ended up sleeping with a coworker over there I didn’t even like.  Then a couple of soldiers.  Maybe more than a couple.  Damn, Ginette, I don’t even remember most of their
names
!  I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, surprised at my own emotion.  It was something I had never revealed to anyone before. 

“Listen, Ginette,” I said.  “You want to get high?”

“Wouldn’t be the first tahm,” Ginette replied.  “Wouldn’t be the second neither.  And you can call me Gina if you want.”

I rummaged in my purse for my stash.  “I didn’t know people called you Gina.”

“They don’t,” Ginette said.

I folded a pinch of weed into a paper and rolled it with unsteady hands.  “You’re kind of weird, you know that?  Gina?”

Ginette broke into a smile that revealed white, even teeth, and reached over for the box.  “Here, let me do that; you’ll spill it all over creation.”  With a perfectly manicured hand she picked a speck of marijuana from my knee and put it in her mouth.  Then she finished rolling the joint with a dexterity that surprised me, licked the edge softly, and held it up as if it were a wineglass.  “To your health,” she said, then lit it with her lighter and took a hit. 

We passed the joint back and forth for a few minutes without speaking.  I still didn’t completely trust Ginette, but by the fourth hit or so, it didn’t matter.  I was glad that she had come, whatever her reason.  I watched her languidly as she fished for a pair of tweezers in her purse and used them as a roach clip.  She handed it to me and laid her head back so that her long blonde hair cascaded over the back of the couch.

“Wowie zowie,” she said.

“Gina,” I said.

“Hmmm?”

“Nothing.  Just Gina.  I’m trying it out.”

“Ah kinda lahk it,” Ginette said.  “So are you goin to finish tellin me about the musical beds you were playin in Iraq?”

“I was finished with that part,” I answered.  “I was about to say that I’d been there almost six months when I got a phone call that my mother had gotten thrown off a horse and died.”

“Ah heard about your mama and ah’m so sorry.”

“I left Baghdad on the next plane but the next plane in Iraq doesn’t necessarily leave when you need it to, and I missed the funeral by a day.”

“Where did it happen?” Ginette asked.

“You mean where did she get thrown?  Right out in back there.  Pretty much where I was shooting.  She was practicing her dressage, like she did almost every day.  Something must have happened to spook her filly—a rattlesnake, gunshot, whatever.  She got bucked off and she hit her head against one of the railroad ties around the ring.  Broke her neck.”

Ginette was silent, looking at me intently, listening with more sympathy than anyone had in a very long time.  Finally, she said, “Who found her?”

“My dad.  Must have been a couple of hours after it happened.  He went outside looking for her, saw Alikki grazing near the stalls in full saddle and with her bridle trailing on the ground.  It busted him up.  When I finally got here he seemed pretty crazy so I stayed a day or two before I went back to Richmond.  Guess I should have stayed longer.  After I left he either sold or gave away Alikki and the other two horses along with everything else he could get rid of in a hurry.  If I hadn’t boxed up some of her tack when I came home after the funeral, he would have sold that, too.”