Tina Mcelroy Ansa (49 page)

When the first chill set in, Herman had shivered and teased her that in his day, folks had called her part of Mulberry County “Cold Neck.”

“Cold Neck!” he’d say as he walked through the house after checking on the horses for the night, his feet toasty in the shearling-lined brown leather slippers she had bought for him back in the summer when she discovered he was cold-natured.

“On a night like this un, I guess you can see why they called it that!” he’d say.

Then, he’d shiver.

In the nearly winter nights of late October and early November, the heated pool, the sauna and their bed were Lena and Herman’s domain. They took turns running from the bedroom to the kitchen from time to time for snacks in their red plaid flannel pajamas and long silk underwear. Herman was always ready to eat.

“I could eat a little som’um-som’um,” he’d say as if the idea just came to him.

Lena would pretend to suck her teeth and say under her breath loud enough for Herman to hear her, “I bet you could!” But she reveled in getting up and fixing him a little something.

When Herman couldn’t stand being inside any longer, he’d get them both up from their cozy nest and go outside—day or night—for some fresh air and excitement. “Can’t stand it no mo’ bein’ cooped up in here.”

Lena would sometimes stretch and moan and pretend to protest, “Awww, Herman, we comfortable here.” She’d point to the hot drinks in thick ceramic mugs and the chessboard they had set up.

“We so comfortable,” she repeated, stretching out in her long red underwear. But she only said it so he’d come over and tease and coax and play with her a little before she got up and started donning her outdoor gear.

“Come on, Lena, baby, we sitting up in here like
old people!”

Chuckling to herself as she pulled on her heavy insulated socks, she’d think, Shoot, you were born in 1855. You
are
old people! Herman just laughed at her thoughts.

“I ain’t as old as all a’ that,” he said, and made her laugh even more, grabbing at her “stuff” as she tried to dress.

Once outside, Herman would stop at the first bend in the trail to lean Lena against a tree, and they would dry-hump each other through their heavy warm clothes. Hot, sweaty and musky inside their layered clothing, he would rub Lena slow and hard against the rough bark of a live oak tree, then turn to enjoy Lena doing the same thing to him until they both came.

T
alk of Lena and her mystery man had been buzzing through Mulberry since the end of summer. But the week of Thanksgiving, it was being discussed all over town. Who was this man who was so important Lena couldn’t seem to leave him for a minute? And what? We little folks in town ain’t even good enough to
meet him!?
they asked each other. Even an unexpected Cleer Flo’ in mid-November could not push Lena and her mystery lover to the back burner of the town’s gossip mill.

“And by the way,” folks asked each other, “didn’t
he
show up about the same time Lena started acting so funny?”

Some of her father’s old poker and skin buddies swore it was an older man Lena had fallen for.

“It
has
to be a man with some age on him. Got to be a old man. You notice how she been talking lately?”

“Hell, she ain’t been around long ’nough lately for nobody to be noticing how she talking.

“How she talking?”

“Shoot, you ain’t noticed all them old-timey expressions Lena McPherson been using? Man, you must be blind
and deaf
in your old age.”

“Well, since you so clued-in, clue me in.”

“That’s just what I’m talking ’bout. When’s the last time you heard somebody ’sides us say something like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like what you just said. ’Clue me in.’ When’s the last time you heard somebody Lena’s age say that?”

“Humm, you are right.”

“Know I’m right. All you didn’t say was ’Daddy.’ ’Clue me in, Daddy.’ You old sona bitch.”

“Yeah, and what a young chippie like Lena know ’bout whiskey and watermelon killing you? She may a’ heard it when she was a child, but when the last time somebody her age say something like that?”

“She did come in here the end of the summer talkin’ ’bout whiskey and wallermelon, didn’t she?”

“She sho’ did.”

“Naw, can’t be no old man.”

“Why the hell you say that? You think a man with a few years on him can’t get a woman like Lena McPherson?”

“Naw, hell, I’m as much of a
real
man as I was thirty years ago. My manhood ain’t in my hambone. But I hear her new man doing all kinds a’ work out there on her property. Shoeing the hosses and planting scuppernong vines and building rose trellises all ’round the house.”

“Yeah, even put up a big old wooden gate ’cross the road near James Petersen’s house. I went out there and seen it myself. Damn good piece a’ work. But what Lena McPherson need with a gate? Got a lock on it, too.”

“Yeah, well, irregardless, all that building and hauling and stuff. That ain’t old man’s work. That’s young man labor.”

“Maybe that’s what it is, then.”

“What?”

“She might not have no old man out there, she might have her a boy out there.”

“You think that’s the reason ain’t nobody seen this Very Important Man who done
took
Lena ’way from us?”

“Could be. Could be he just a boy.”

To this group of old flambeaux, “a boy” could mean anyone from a teenager to a man in his mid-forties.

And that was just the men. When the women in Mulberry discussed the possibilities, they brought infinitely more insight and incisiveness to the subject.

Women down at The Place tried to draw Gloria into the fray, but she stayed above it and refused to even discuss her employer and friend with them.

“Now, a woman don’t look that good in her mid-forties unless
something
is going mighty good in her life.”

“Yeah, Gloria, I even heard
you
asking her, ‘Lena, who you fucking?’ I heard you way back in June or July or August, one of them hot months, right down here at The Place say that. So don’t be acting like you don’t know what we talking ’bout … woman like you.”

Gloria just shrugged her shoulders, smiled the way she had seen her mentor Nellie McPherson do when she didn’t want to get involved in the politics of The Place and looked down that long long country road.

“Well, ya’ll can sit around here crying in your beer wondering what ever became of
our Lena
and such. But I’mo do something about it. I’mo corner her and ask her. Next time I see her, I’m just gon’ corner her and ask her.”

“Well, I wish you luck ’cause the last time I saw her—can’t even hardly remember when it was now—I tried to tell her what was going on with me, and she just smiled and didn’t say a mumblin’ word. Not ’Can I help you get on your feet?’ Not ’What can I do for you?’ Not ’Don’t worry. We’ll get it straight.’ Not nothing. Not a mumblin’ word. She just shook her head, all sympathetic-like, and walked off.

“Then, she had the nerve to turn around, come back and say, “I’ll be sure to pray for you.’ That’s what she said.

“Hell, I needed a little piece a’ money. I don’t need her fucking prayers.”

Things sure weren’t the way they had been when everybody could really count on Lena McPherson. That’s what folks noted to each other with incredulous shakes of their heads.

“Ain’t like it used to be before,” they said.

“Yeah, me and the children used to go out right regular to pet the horses and ride ’em sometimes. Shoot, now I wouldn’t
think
of going out there without getting
permission
first. Wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“Yeah, and Lena used to
always
make us feel comfortable!”

“Humph,
better not
go out there unannounced now. Rick Little said he learned that the hard way. Say before she got rid of him and found him a job out at that new riding club up by Macon …”

“She
fired
him??!”

“Um-huh, said she didn’t need so many folks working out there now.”

“Damn, what’s this new man’s name? Clark Kent?”

“Yeah, think just because she found Rick a job—good job, too, pay’s as good as she was giving, I hear—everything okay.”

“And who she think she is getting rid a’ people and then finding them jobs, anyway?”

“Well, Rick say before he was fired, he happened to go by early one evening to pick up some of his equipment, and he heard her up there in the loft moanin’ and screwin’ and singin’ like she didn’t have a care in the world!”

“Up in the hayloft??!”

“Uh-huh.”

“She and that man up in the hayloft?!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rick Little say he always thought Lena McPherson look like a woman who could throw down, but he never thought she’d be a screamer like that!”

“So you better not be taking your children out there unannounced. Ain’t no telling what you gon’ walk up on.”

“Ain’t like it used to be before,” they said.

They picked Lena apart as if she were a holiday turkey and feasted on her business. Even the customers and clients at The Place or at Candace Realty Co. tried to get away with dissecting Lena in her own places of business. But they did not get much play. For the employees and staff there, things were moving along rather smoothly with their boss’s attention elsewhere.

Lena had just about turned everything loose to devote her time to having fun with Herman, but her businesses didn’t go to hell in a handbasket as everyone had predicted.

Even Lena could see clearly that God and the universe were taking care of things.

As Herman said, “Right is right, Lena. And right don’t wrong nobody. When it happen the way it’s s’posed to, eve’body come out on top, baby.”

It seemed to Lena he was right.

Gloria was in all her glory being the true Boss of The Place now. But even Gloria questioned how The Place would fare without a McPherson at the helm.

“Lena, you know how places change when the owners change.”

“Shoot, Gloria, what are you talking about? You been the real boss of this place for a long time now and ain’t nothing changed except for the better.”

James Petersen, freed up from taking care of Lena and anticipating her every need, found time to polish up his mystery-in-progress.

He was pleased as he could be that Lena was acting like she was part of a world that didn’t extend beyond the perimeters of her riverfront property. He had never seen her so sunny and happy. Even though he didn’t see her much anymore, it was okay with him.

“She always did too much and saw too many anyway,” he said to himself many days as he buzzed to see if there was anything for him to do or if now was a good time to do it.

James figured that after so many years of having people all up in her face twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Lena deserved a bit of peace and solitude.

But by the week of Thanksgiving, the townspeople were so through with Lena and the way she had deserted all of them, they could hardly make sense.

“I never woulda thought it of Lena McPherson,” folks down at The Place said. “The one we could always count on. Shoot, I let my burial insurance lapse years ago ’cause I knew she’d see to me being buried proper … Guess I’mo have to end up in Potter’s Field now.”

With Thanksgiving so close and Christmas coming on and the idea of empty stockings and no honey-baked spiral-cut hams or smoked turkey breasts and “dry” Christmas cards or maybe no fancy hand-painted, suitable-for-framing cards at all, the townspeople’s anger at Lena whipped up to new levels.

“I always knew she was doing too much. Trying to be a saint or something. Serves her right.”

“Who the hell she think she is to just drop us like that? Going to church all the time. Humph, she ought to learn how to be a true Christian.”

“She shun me like
she
owe
me
money!!”

“Yeah, bringing us watermelons like we the yard niggers, and still can’t return our damn phone calls.”

It wasn’t that folks in Mulberry were just talking about Lena and her new odd “self-centered” behavior. It was that they were now calling themselves worried about her, ready to take action. Asking among themselves at The Place over their beer and wine, “What we gonna do ’bout Lena? What we gonna do ’bout our girl?” Meeting at intersections, leaning out of their cars pointed in opposite directions under the changing traffic light, “Don’t she seem strange to you?” Lifting the hood dryers in beauty shops to ask their salon partners, “You think she having a nervous breakdown?”

“Ain’t none of
ya’ll
met The Man, neither?” the women would inquire, trying to lead the women of Candace on.

But none of them, not Precious, not Wanda, not Marilyn, not Dorothy, not Brenda, not Carroll, not Lois, not Caryl, not Mrs. Jeffries, the receptionist, not Toya, the office assistant. No one wanted to upset the applecart at Candace.

The called themselves being loyal to Lena, and, in their way, they were. They knew she had been a good friend and employer to them.

“I don’t know anything about Lena McPherson’s business except her
realty business,”
Precious would say, stopping the gossipers in their tracks. “And as good as she been to all of ya’ll, I don’t see why you, of all folks, don’t let her have her own life.”

Lena had not made it public knowledge, but all the women at Candace were now part owners, and Lena’s magic still seemed to flow in and out of the realty office doors just as it had when she was sole owner and in and out the doors herself every weekday.

She had been thinking lately of turning the business entirely over to her partners and getting out of real estate altogether. Strange as it seemed for a woman who had made it her business to know about every property transaction in Mulberry, she no longer had any interest in acquiring land.

“Good God, Lena McPherson, ain’t a hundred acres enough?” she would ask herself when she came across the death notice of the last member of a large landowning family in the
Mulberry Times.
She would start to pick up the phone to call Precious to tell her to pass the information along to Wanda, who was now handling acquisitions. But then she remembered how Herman always said, “They smart people. They figure it out,” and she laughed at herself, and went off to find him and check on Keba.