The Scent of Lilacs (37 page)

Sallie kept grinning and strumming, but he hooked his foot out and pulled his hat under his chair. Without missing a beat, he changed songs. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.”

“And he’s going to see you have some more,” Ronnie said as he grabbed Sallie’s chair and shook it. Jesse tried to snatch the old man’s hat out from under the chair, but Sallie grabbed it up, bent the straw hat double, and stuffed it under his thigh.

Jocie grabbed Ronnie’s arm. “Leave him alone,” she said.

Sallie was still singing. “I see trouble. Trouble coming. Trouble coming down the road.”

Ronnie looked at Jocie as if he hadn’t even noticed she was there until she’d grabbed him. He changed targets. “Well, well, if it isn’t Miss I Love Doggies preacher’s kid. Course, your daddy isn’t going to be preacher much longer.”

Jocie counted to ten. She wasn’t worried about being nice to Ronnie. She was just trying to keep from swinging the coffee can at his head. “Nothing you or your father can do or say will keep my father from being a preacher.”

“Maybe he needs to do less preaching at church and more preaching at home,” Ronnie said with a sneer. “I hear your sister has a bun in the oven. A little bastard bun.”

Behind him, Jesse giggled and Sallie changed songs to “Rock-a-Bye, Baby.” Jocie stopped counting and began rumpling the top of the sack that held the coffee can to get a better hold before she took a swipe at Ronnie’s head. “I think you’d better quit talking about my sister.”

“Oh yeah, what are you going to do about it?” Ronnie laughed and looked over at Jesse. “I’ll bet she doesn’t even know what
bastard
means, even if she’s nothing but a bastard herself.”

Sallie stopped singing. Jesse stopped giggling and said, “Come on, Ronnie. We’d better go.”

Ronnie laughed. “What’s the matter, Jesse? You ain’t feeling
sorry for her, are you? But then maybe we should feel sorry for her, seeing as how she don’t have the first idea who her real father is. That’s what a bastard is. Somebody who doesn’t have a father.”

A terrible stillness came over Jocie. Everything seemed to freeze in place and be surrounded by bold lines as if they had stepped into a scene in a comic book. Sallie was holding his guitar up over his heart as if to protect himself and staring at her with big round eyes. Jesse was up on his toes as if he wanted to run. Ronnie was smiling at her, an awful smile full of teeth. A blood red pimple was popping out on his chin. She wanted to smash him in the face with the coffee can, but she couldn’t lift her arms. The air around her was pressing against her, making it hard to breath.

She heard Jesse’s words as if they came through a tunnel. “What are you talking about, Ronnie? She ain’t no bastard. She’s your preacher’s kid.”

Sallie started singing again. No words, just a mournful moaning sound. Jocie hardly noticed.

“That ain’t what my father says. He says her mama broke up my aunt’s marriage nine months before this poor excuse for a girl was born. My aunt kicked her husband’s sorry butt out, but not the preacher man. He pretended like nothing whatever had happened. He even pretended the bastard baby was his own.” Ronnie’s eyes bored into Jocie. “My daddy says some folks can carry turning the other cheek too far.”

Old Sallie started singing “Amazing Grace” as loud as he could. Jocie gripped the top of the grocery sack so hard it tore. “You’re lying,” she said.

“You think so? Why don’t you ask your pretend-like daddy? He wouldn’t lie, now would he? Being a preacher and all.” Ronnie grinned at her. “Or ask old Sallie here. I’ll bet he knows. Old Sallie knows lots of things about people in Hollyhill that they’d just as soon nobody ever knew, don’t you, Sallie? I dare you. Ask him.”

Old Sallie wouldn’t meet Jocie’s eyes. He just started in on a new verse of “Amazing Grace,” singing louder than ever and banging his hand against his guitar to keep time.

She didn’t ask him anything. It would have been a betrayal of her father. She looked back at Ronnie. “You don’t know anything. My father has never lied to me.”

“Maybe not. But then again, maybe he’s just never told you the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help him God.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it hit you in the face,” Jocie said. “And I hope it does. I hope it knocks you down and stomps on you.”

“Looks to me like you’re the one getting stomped on,” Ronnie said.

Jocie whirled away from him to stalk away. There wasn’t any more to say. He was lying. Plain and simple. He was just making up stories about her because his family hadn’t been able to chase her father away from Mt. Pleasant. So what if everybody in Hollyhill acted as if she’d asked them to grab hold of a hot poker every time she mentioned her mother. That didn’t mean anything. There was no doubt who her mother was whether she’d wanted Jocie or not.

There was no doubt who her father was either. None whatsoever. She didn’t have the first doubt about that.
But you don’t look like your father or your mother
, a little voice whispered in a back corner of her mind. And Zella had acted strange that morning talking about her mother. But Zella had been born strange, and lots of kids didn’t look that much like their parents. Who was Ronnie Martin’s aunt anyway? Maybe more important—who was her husband?

Jocie shook her head. This was stupid. Ronnie Martin could say whatever he wanted. She knew who her father was. There was no need for her heart to start beating funny inside her. No need at all. Nothing he’d said had been true. Nothing.

She could ask Wes. She could ask Wes anything. He’d tell her she was being stupid, but at least he’d tell her. His words would push Ronnie Martin’s words right out of her ears, and then everything would be okay. She’d tell Wes what Ronnie had said, and Wes would say Ronnie should be sent to Neptune, and they’d laugh and figure out how to get him there.

But when she got back to the
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offices, Wes was still gone. Tabitha and Aunt Love were in the chairs in front of Zella’s desk waiting for her father to get back from picking Leigh up at the courthouse so they could leave for Grundy. Zella was smiling too big and sneaking peeks at Tabitha’s waistline.

Jocie set the sack with the coffee in it down on Zella’s desk.

“Where’s the change?” Zella asked.

“I gave it to old Sallie. He was hungry.”

“Hungry, my foot. He probably has hundreds of dollars stuffed in his mattress at the county poorhouse,” Zella said.

“He didn’t say anything about me, did he?” Tabitha asked a bit uneasily.

“Nope. He just sang. Ronnie Martin wasn’t as nice. He called me a bastard,” Jocie said.

Zella sucked in her breath at the word, and Aunt Love frowned as she said, “Put off the filthy communication out of your mouth.”

“I didn’t say it. He did.” Once Jocie started talking she didn’t seem to be able to stop. “He said my mother broke up his aunt’s marriage.”

Zella looked down at her desk, and Aunt Love seemed to be thumbing through her mind to come up with another Bible verse. Only Tabitha looked her straight in the eye. “She probably did, Jocie. DeeDee never worried much about who was married to who.”

Jocie didn’t want to keep looking at Tabitha. She didn’t want to keep talking to her. She wanted Wes to be there. She wanted to talk to Wes about sending Ronnie Martin to Neptune. Jocie
swallowed and licked her lips. Finally she said, “But it isn’t true what he said.”

“He shouldn’t have called you a bastard,” Tabitha said.

“But it isn’t true what he said,” Jocie said again.

Tabitha didn’t say anything. She just looked at Jocie. She had tears in her eyes.

“Tell me it isn’t true what he said,” Jocie said again.

“Do you want the truth?” Tabitha asked softly.

“No!” Jocie screamed.

S
he didn’t know how she got out of the building and on her bike. She spotted her father coming up the street with Leigh and spun her bike around the other direction. He yelled at her, but she just pedaled harder. She couldn’t see him now. She couldn’t hear him telling her the truth. She couldn’t hear the truth. How could that be the truth?

She pedaled faster. Once out of town, she swerved across the road. Two cars honked at her and the third almost hit her, but she made it onto the side street. She didn’t even know what street she’d turned on. She just wanted to get away from the cars, away from Hollyhill, away from her father.

He was her father. He had to be her father. But then why was she running away? Why hadn’t she stopped and asked him? Why was she afraid of the truth?

What seemed like hours later, she had no idea where she was as she rode along a narrow, winding strip of blacktop between grass and weeds as high as the fence tops on the side of the road. No cars had passed her for a good while, and she hadn’t even seen a house for what must have been a couple of miles. She did pass a field where a farmer was mowing hay, but he was watching his mower and didn’t notice her. She didn’t recognize him.

She was glad it was hot. Glad she was thirsty. Glad the muscles in her legs were burning. That gave her something to think about. She felt a little dizzy, but she kept pedaling. Her shadow was
behind her. That must mean she was going west now, but who knew what direction she’d started out. North out of Hollyhill, she supposed, since she’d turned off North Main, but she had no idea how many times she’d turned since then. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to go back. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never.

So she just kept riding, coasting down a steep road carved into the side of a rocky, tree-covered slope. There was no sign of people. She stopped at the bottom of the hill and heard water running in a creek not far from the road. Birds were singing their summer songs. A bee buzzed by her ear. She didn’t hear the faintest sound of traffic or the faraway whistle of a train or even the drone of an airplane overhead. She was totally alone. Lost and alone. And very thirsty.

She pushed her bike off the road in behind a thick growth of stinkweed, careful not to touch the weeds. She pulled her shirt up over her nose and held her breath to block out the sickening odor of the white blooms and hurried along a faint path that led through the bushes to the creek. There were probably snakes, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care if the water made her puke. She cupped her hand under a rivulet flowing over some limestone rocks and took a drink. Then she sat down in the middle of the creek and watched the water run over her tennis shoes. She wished Zeb was with her. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.

The limestone rock was flat and smooth under her bottom. The water swirling gently past her was clear and cool. Tree limbs hung down over the creek, but here and there the sun pushed through to spark off the water. Up ahead of her the creek curved to the right, which would take it closer to the road. She wondered if this was the creek where they’d washed the car a few summers ago. A gravel road had passed right through the water. Her father had turned off the road and stopped the car in the middle of the creek. They’d scooped water up in buckets to throw over the car. Her father had slipped on the mossy rocks and fallen in. Then
since he’d fallen down, she had too, on purpose. Their laughter echoed in her head until she wanted to put her hands over her ears, but that wouldn’t stop what was inside her head. No more than she could block out the awful things Ronnie Martin had said or the shine of tears in Tabitha’s eyes when she couldn’t say it wasn’t true.

But how could it be true? How could her father not be her father?

She ran her fingers through the water. Maybe she ought to pray, but what good would it do? Whatever the truth was, she couldn’t change it. She supposed God could, because nothing was impossible with God. A camel could go through the eye of a needle. A virgin could have a baby. Lazarus could come out of the grave. But she’d never heard of God changing who anybody’s father was. She splashed some water on her face and let it drip off.

Maybe it wasn’t true. People liked to start stories in Hollyhill. Her father had always said she shouldn’t listen to gossip. And now she had and here she was in the middle of a creek, her shorts soaking wet, with not the first idea of where she was. Or who she was.

She looked down at the water. A crawdad poked his head out from under a rock. Jocie sat very still as the crawdad came toward her with his claws raised. She wasn’t sure if he thought she was just a big rock or supper. She stuck her finger slowly down in the water in front of him. He stopped and then hightailed it back under his rock. She picked the rock up, and he disappeared under another rock. She started to follow him, to keep picking up his hiding places and make him keep running, but then she put the first rock back in the same place.

The sunlight faded. Jocie thought it was just getting late until thunder sounded in the distance and black clouds rolled in above the treetops. She remembered another story when a flash flood had ripped down the very same creek where they’d washed their
car and taken out trees and barns along the creek. They’d put pictures in the
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. Wes had said it was almost as newsy as the ’59 tornado. It was hard to believe that such a gentle creek could turn into something that could uproot trees.