April looked at pictures of her high school boyfriend, Ron Schiele, on his Facebook page, and gauged how his life had turned out. When they were in high school he played football and ran track and was cut with muscles. Halfway through tenth grade, he had a scholarship offer to run the hundred meters at some college in South Carolina. He had these blue eyes and a smile that held people captive, even the teachers, could get away with anything, the type of guy everybody knew would wind up perfect.
All the girls hated April’s guts. They smiled to her face and told her they loved her earrings or her hair or her hand-me-down blouse or whatever it was they needed to love to play the game, but she saw the way they looked at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. She saw them sneer when she walked by in his coat. She knew the girls who asked if she and Ron wanted to ride to the prom in the limousine one of their parents had rented were the same girls who spread the rumors about her. They were the same girls who wrote on the bathroom stalls how she’d given Ron head in the field house during homeroom. They made up all kinds of stories about her and smeared her name from Sylva to Andrews until the day came that there was something bad enough that they didn’t have to make up stories anymore. She was pregnant.
Up until then Ron had never batted an eye to the stories boys told in the locker room. But soon as April started to show, Ron was quick to tell anyone who’d listen that the baby wasn’t his because, despite what everyone believed, they’d never actually done it. Folks had assumed, and Ron was fine with those assumptions on the long bus rides to away games, but when she got knocked up, it was like he’d never even thought about it. “That thing would’ve eat my dick off,” he’d say. “Only reason I was with her was because she swallowed.”
April slipped one of her Dorals out of the pack on the desk and laughed. Turned out Ron Schiele’s life hadn’t wound up so peachy, after all. He drank himself out of that track scholarship in just under a semester and was back home working in the paper mill before Thad cut his first tooth. The trophy wife he scooped up at twenty didn’t look so good at forty. The seven boys his wife gave him reaped hell on her body, and April figured that girl had either grown udders after the third one or more than likely her titties warped into something out of National Geographic. Ron hadn’t aged well either. He was losing his hair and his teeth were bad and he’d eaten himself into a caricature of the war on poverty. Not even the insulin could save him now. He’d resorted to prayer from friends, and April laughed at his status: “Going to the doctor tomorrow to see if they’ll have to take my leg. Please pray.” She liked it.
It was funny how things panned out. Life had a way of rolling over like a lake in fall. All those folks who had everything in high school wound up with nothing when it mattered. And people like Tom Rice, who she’d seen get hit so hard in the chest with a rotten apple Ron Schiele threw one afternoon at lunch that he shat himself in the courtyard with the whole school watching, wound up being the ones who got away.
The phone rang in the kitchen and April ashed her cigarette into a cold cup of coffee that had been on the desk since morning. She took another drag and walked into the kitchen to grab the cordless by the stove. When she picked up and said hello, she was taken aback by the voice she heard.
“April, it’s Tom,” he said. “How are you?”
April started to say that she’d just been thinking about him, but then it struck her how weird that might sound, or maybe it wouldn’t sound weird at all since he’d been there earlier that day. All of those thoughts hit her at once and tongue-tied her so that what she said made no sense at all.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I’m, I’m fine, Tom,” April stuttered. “How are you?”
“I’m well, April, but if I’ve caught you at a bad time I’d be more than happy to call back after the weekend. I know it’s getting late and I probably caught you in the middle of something—”
“No,” April interrupted, “No, I’m not doing anything.”
“Well, good. That’s good,” Tom said. “Listen, I don’t want to keep you, but I just wanted to call and tell you some good news. Some pretty good news, I think.”
“What is it?”
“Well, the Lathans have put in an offer on your property.”
“That is good news,” April said. She took two quick drags from her smoke, then turned on the faucet and held the cigarette in the water. When it was out, she turned off the tap and walked over to the trash can to throw the butt away.
“The thing is, it’s a lot lower than what you were asking.”
“How much lower?”
“About a third,” Tom said. “They’re wanting to give you sixty thousand.”
“That ain’t even tax value on the land,” April said, “let alone the house.”
“I know it, but it’s like they said when they were there, April. They’re not interested in the house, just the land, and they’re wanting to offer you ten thousand an acre.”
April suddenly felt sick to her stomach and she wanted another cigarette, but her pack was in the living room by the computer. She walked out of the kitchen and grabbed the Dorals off the desk, the cordless phone going all staticky until she got back by the stove. The next words came from the corner of her mouth, a cigarette in her lips. “So did you try to get them to go any higher, or did you just turn over?”
“Of course I tried to get the price up, April. You think I want to sell low? I don’t stand to make anything at that price, but I just know how long you’ve had the property on the market, and so at the very least I thought I’d put it on the table.”
“The county’s got these six acres valued at a hundred thousand dollars, Tom. A hundred thousand dollars, and that ain’t even counting the house,” April said. “Between the land and the hundred twenty they’ve got valued on the house and the thirty thousand on the trailer, I’m paying taxes on a quarter million dollars of property every year. What they’re offering is a slap in the face, and the fact that you’re putting it on the table—”
“Now, I’m going to have to stop you right there,” Tom said. His voice was stern and it was obvious to April she’d ticked him off. “You and I both know the value the county has on that land is high. The last time property was assessed was at the height of the market, and that place isn’t worth half that now. I’m sorry to put it like that, but it’s just the truth. The property is not worth that. So to be completely frank, I think ten thousand an acre is a generous offer, and I think if you’re really wanting to sell it right now, at the very least, you need to entertain it.”
“And what about the house?” April asked.
“They told you. They’re not interested in the house. To be honest with you, they’d probably offer a little higher if the house wasn’t there. The Lathans are going to have to tear down that house and that trailer and haul it off the property to do what they want to do. It’ll probably cost them twenty thousand just to get that piece of land anywhere close to how they want it.”
“You don’t think you can talk them up to a hundred?” April asked. She was hot-boxing the cigarette nervously and tapped her nails against the metal sink.
“There’s no way.”
“Well, I’m not selling for sixty. I’m just not,” April said. “You think you can get them up to eighty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seventy-five?”
“I can try.”
“Just ask,” April pleaded.
“I said I’ll try,” Tom said.
“You just tell them I ain’t selling for sixty, and that they’re going to have to come up if they want to make a tree farm out of this place.”
“I’ll see what they say, but you think about what I’m saying to you. If you want out, then you need to think long and hard about what that’s worth.”
When he was gone, April hung the cordless back on its charger. She leaned with her butt against the countertop and took a long drag from her cigarette, the ash breaking away and peppering the tile between her feet. Mittens jumped onto the counter and purred loudly as he rammed his face against her arm and back, tiptoeing a tightrope along the edge of the counter. For as far back as she could remember this place had been the very thing that haunted her. Every ridge, every road, every room, every face held memories. When she looked at her son or drove by the church or passed her parents’ old house, where she’d grown up, all April could see was the worst moment of her life. And when she lay in that bed just down the hall or stood there where she stood right then, all she could think about was the times George Trantham had taken every bit of hatred he had for this world out on her.
For a long time, all she’d wanted was to move to someplace that held no memories. All she wanted was to head off to some town where she knew no one. With the land sold she could go anywhere she damn well pleased: Savannah or Charleston or maybe Atlanta or Memphis, it just didn’t matter so long as it wasn’t Little Canada. So the question Tom Rice raised was a good question to ask, and she wasn’t quite sure of the answer. How much was it worth?