CHAPTER
twenty-one
Dolly found Anna pacing in the hallway, stopping now and again to peek inside the parlor doorway, where she could see Reed, sitting on the front porch, through the front window.
“Honey, what on earth are you doin’?”
Anna motioned for Dolly to follow her into the kitchen. Once they were out of earshot, she told Dolly what she was up to. “I’m trying to work up my nerve.”
“To talk to Reed?”
“Not just talk to him—ask him a favor.”
“Sit down, honey, and tell me what’s goin’ on.”
“You saw Daisy’s truck when we pulled up the other day.”
Dolly shook her head. “That ol’ clunker’s gonna strand her in the boondocks one o’ these days.”
“I know! But she’d rather die than ask for help. So I figured I might ask. Reed has Jesse’s truck running like a top. And since Daisy’s been helping him with his exercises so much, I really don’t think he would mind taking a look at her truck, do you?”
“Why, heavens no. It would give him somethin’ useful to do, which I bet he’d enjoy.”
“And then there’s the other thing . . .”
“What other thing, honey?”
“Well . . . I might be getting my hopes up too soon, but I think there might be a little spark between them.”
“Well, get on out there, honey. Let’s help ’em fire it up!”
Anna went onto the porch, where Reed was looking through some old magazines. “Could I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She took a seat in the rocker next to him. “I need a favor. Actually, Daisy does, but she’s got way too much pride to ask. It’s that truck of hers. We went to the store together the other day, and I thought we’d have to push it home. You were such a help to Jesse when he had engine trouble that I was just wondering . . .”
“Want me to take a look?”
“Would you? But now, there’s a catch. You’ll have to offer because she’ll never ask. Just tell her I blabbed. I’ll let Jesse know that we might have to move.”
Reed had forgotten about hydrangeas. When he pulled into Ella’s driveway, Daisy was watering two that flanked the front steps. The backyard of his parents’ old house on the loop had a big bank of them. Reed had always loved their mop-head blooms in the summertime. When he was a little boy, Dolly had taught him how to dry them to make a bouquet for his mother so she could still enjoy at least a faded shade of their colors, even after the weather turned cold.
“Hey,” Daisy said, shutting off the garden hose.
“Hey.”
She looked wary of him, walking slowly to his truck and watching as he lifted a toolbox out of the back.
“This is not a social call,” he said. “I’m here on business.”
“Anna sent you down here to look at my truck, didn’t she? I tried to tell her it’s just a little moody, is all.”
“How ’bout I give it a listen? I won’t do anything else if you don’t want me to.”
Still Daisy hesitated.
“C’mon,” he coaxed her. “I’m bored. This’ll give me somethin’ to do.”
He followed Daisy into Ella’s backyard, where she had parked her ’29 Ford under a shade tree. Nobody could afford new vehicles during the Depression, and now that the war was on, nobody was making them, not for civilians anyway. Only veterans could buy anything new. Everybody else just had to keep patching up whatever they were driving when the whole world went crazy.
Reed lifted the hood and tried his best not to react to what he saw—hoses and belts that needed replacing, a leaky battery, oil everywhere . . .
“What you think?” Daisy peered under the hood next to him.
“Why don’t you crank it for me?” he said.
She climbed into the truck and managed to get the engine going after several false starts. Right away, Reed could hear that the truck had a serious case of piston slap. The exhaust was shot. The radiator was about ready for the junk heap. Parts were mighty hard to come by these days, but he figured he had earned the right to take any veteran’s privileges offered him and put them to work for Daisy.
“Okay, you can shut it off.”
The engine kept running.
“Go ahead and shut it off.”
Still the engine ran.
“Daisy?” Reed stepped around to the driver’s door and saw her sitting there, staring at the steering wheel with tears rolling down her cheeks. Through the open truck window, he reached across her and shut off the ignition.
“Let’s go sit for a minute.” He opened the truck door, took her by the hand, and gave her a gentle tug. She climbed out of the truck and let him lead her to a porch swing hanging by long ropes from the sprawling oak she had parked beneath.
“You prob’ly think I’m a blubberin’ idiot,” she said, swiping at her face with her hand.
“No, I don’t. But I think there’s somethin’ about this truck I don’t know.”
Daisy sighed. “It’s just one more thing, you know? Just one more reminder.”
“Of Charlie?”
“Of everything. Of every dang thing.”
“I follow that,” he said, which made her smile.
“It was so hard there at the end. Charlie was killin’ hisself tryin’ to keep worn-out tractors runnin’. I kept tellin’ him I was scared this ol’ truck was gonna strand me on some lonesome road, and he kept promisin’ to get to it. Seems so silly now, the stuff we worried about—tractors and pickups and a piece o’ land. Dirt. We spent all our time strugglin’ to save dirt. Why couldn’t we see how silly that was?”
“Got no answer for that one. I’m as sure as I’ve ever been about what matters and what don’t, but I wish like the daylights there’d been another way for me to figure that out.”
“Me too.”
“We sound pretty depressin’. Wanna come help me shop for parts and drown our sorrows in motor oil?”
Daisy smiled up at him. “Sure. I’m a cheap date.”
“Is this the right one?”
“That’s it.” Reed took the wrench from Daisy and finished tightening the last bolt on a radiator they had scavenged from a local junkyard. Apparently, some poor fella had just put a new one on his pickup when he got creamed from behind. Luckily for Daisy, the radiator and most of the engine parts Reed needed were spared.
“Never thought I’d say this about a radiator, but I think it’s beautiful,” Daisy said.
“Compared to the one I took out, she’s a stunner.”
“And that thing right there—that’s the carburetor?”
“Mm-hmm. Why all the curiosity about engine parts?”
Daisy shrugged. “Just figure I prob’ly need to learn about ’em so I can take care o’ things myself.”
Reed wiped his hands on a shop towel and watched her studying the engine. “As much as you help me, is it really so hard to let me help you?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I ’preciate everything you’re doin’. I really do. It’s just—well, it’s sinkin’ in that I’m by myself now. Took me a year and a half, but I finally got the message. I can’t bawl like a baby every time I get piston snap.”
“Uh, ma’am, that’s piston slap.”
Daisy had to laugh at herself. “You oughta be over there with all those beauty queens at the lake instead o’ stuck here with an ol’ widow woman.”
“Well, A, I’m not stuck; B, Jo-Jo gets on my nerves; and C, what are you, ol’ widow woman—all o’ twenty?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Same as me. We can go to the ol’ folks’ home together. Wanna get a hamburger on the way?”
They climbed into Reed’s truck and headed for Saxon’s across the river.
“Hey, what time is it?” Daisy asked.
Reed checked his watch. “A little after one.”
“You mind if I turn on the radio?” She turned the knob and carefully adjusted the dial till Reed could hear the unmistakable sound of Delta blues. “This is about the only reminder o’ home I still like,” she said.
“Well, if that song ain’t appropriate, I don’t know what is,” Reed said as a tune called “Feisty Little Mama” came over the airwaves.
Now Daisy was laughing. “Yep, that’s me alright. ’Course, you’d prob’ly change the title to ‘Annoyin’ Little Mama.’”
Reed couldn’t resist taking his eyes off the road for just a second to see her dimpled smile and the summer wind blowing her short hair. One of these days, he would need to do something about that. But for now, they could just enjoy an easy drive to a burger joint in a sunny Alabama town, far from the war that brought them together.