By the time I open the Hitchens County Animal Clinic door half an hour later, another summer thunderstorm is winding down. I fill my lungs with air, and a kind of contentment starts to take me over. Animals, and alcohol, and disinfectant, make a comfortable combination of smells; always calms me right down if I need calming. And today I need it.
Loretta, our receptionist, puts one of her hawk-eyed stares on me. “Hey, Violette. Have a bad morning? Y’all look kind of worried.”
No, I’m fine,” I lie. “What’s up?”
“Well, sugar, we got us a busy afternoon. You have three cages to clean for starters, so you may as well get cracking. Oh, and would you fill the birdfeeders? New seed’s here, and rain’s pretty much quit.”
“Okay, I’ll tend to that now.”
An inner office door opens, and a small dark-haired woman with the friendliest gray eyes walks out. I always think she looks too young to be a veterinarian. I study her white coat for the millionth time with the pocket that reads, Claire Campbell, DVM.
“Hey, Doc. I’m getting those feeders filled first thing.”
“Terrific, Violette. I can always count on you, girl.”
Mama should hear Doc call me girl. She’d think our Lord answered her prayers.
The storeroom’s jammed mostly with lots of animal food, the kind that’s better for your cat or dog than the stuff you buy at the IGA over in Blaylock. Problem is most folks around these parts can’t hardly afford even the grocery store stuff. Most Ozarks animals live on table scraps and miss a meal or two more than I like to think about.
I flop a twenty-pound bag of birdseed off a middle shelf, cut a slit in the top, and tote it to the side door. A few raindrops splat on my head and arms as I step on the concrete pad, making me shiver.
A beat-up, faded red truck is parked partly on the sidewalk. Dog chow bags are loaded to overflowing in the bed. I squint my eyes and give what I’m staring at some thought. It’s not Doc’s delivery truck. Doesn’t have the right kind of chow, either.
“Well, look who it ain’t,” a sarcastic voice says from the driver’s side open window.
Dale! I tip the bag, and a birdseed mound piles up on the grass; least of my worries right now. “What… what do you want?”
“You got the question right, Sinclair, and here’s the answer. I want you dead. You and that crazy witch maw of yours.”
I suck in too much air and start coughing. “Why?”
“I got a old score to settle with your maw. Y’all go on and ask her. She knows what I’m chinwagging about, and she’s had more’n a hunch this was coming at her, only a matter of time.”
I remind myself to breathe.
“One other thing. You open your trap about this to like, say, the sheriff or any other law? Well, you got a pretty little sister who thinks guys is just fine. She’ll get her turn to see how fine I am.” He hawks up more tobacco juice, like it’s his signature, and zaps it at me. Tipping the bill of his grubby baseball hat, he drawls, “You have a good day. That is, if you can, hear?”
I back up to the door and keep eyes tight on Dale. He’s known to shoot folks for fun. Where’s my flip-flop? Must have lost it in the wet grass. I shuffle into reception with one shoe on and my hair still dripping.
Loretta gapes at me. “I swan, girl. You’re a sight. You get in a wrestling match with that birdseed bag?”
“Naw. Slipped on wet grass. Lost my shoe’s all. I’ll get it and clean up the seed pretty quick, but I want to dry out a little first.”
“I think that tumble did you in earlier, Violette,” Loretta tells me when I’m ready to leave for home this evening. “You sure spilling some birdseed’s all that happened out in the side yard this afternoon?”
“Yeah,” I say, too harsh-like. “Why?”
She gives me a hard stare over the tops of her granny glasses. “Girl, you been as jumpy as frog legs in a pan since you came back in here; like the devil himself is on your tail. Get some sleep tonight.”
“Yeah, thanks, Loretta. See you tomorrow.”
I hope with all my heart I will.
“That you, Violette?” Jessie yells through the cracked-open front door. “I thought you’d never get home from work.”
I shut the door tight, then slam the deadbolt home. “Well, it was my late night.”
“What’re you locking up for?” she says. “Afraid the bogeyman’s gonna get you?”
“Never can tell. Where’s Mama?”
“She’s over at the church, helping with some kind of supper.” Jess flounces her long, yellow hair then puts her hand on her hip. “You need to help me fix the zipper on my cheerleading outfit.”
“I do?”
“Ye-ah. Mama said her eyes aren't good enough to see the place it keeps getting stuck, and the material’s too cheap to change the zipper, and I can’t afford a new outfit. You got nothing better going on now, anyway, do you?”
“A please would be nice.”
Instead, I get a Jessie glare: She's like a cat sizing me up with those green eyes, all blackened around the rims. She flips her hair across one shoulder. “Well?”
“Go get it,” I say, real flat.
I move a pile of raggedy old clothes Mama gathered up for the church missionary barrel to one side of the kitchen table and wait for Jessie.
“Here,” she says, tossing the costume at me.
Spreading the flimsy costume out, I take a good look. “Should be easy,” I mutter. “A two-minute stitch and glue job, and it’s done.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jessie says, checking her phone.
“There. You have to let it set up now,” I tell her. “Don’t zip it until tomorrow, at the earliest.”
She shrugs. “You always try to sound like that vet you work for. Putting on airs and giving instructions like a doctor or something.”
“Jess, you know if I get to be a vet, I need to talk better, more like Doc Campbell. She grew up in the Ozarks way we did, and look how she talks now.”
“Yeah, too citified to be from here.”
I shrug. “Suppose it’s from vet school in Minneapolis.”
“Well, all’s I know is putting on is gonna get you no place in these parts.”
“You must be right. Uh, Jess, I need to tell you about something awful bad that happened today. Downright dangerous, in fact.”
“Not now. I gotta give Jewel a call. Tell her my outfit’s okay. Plus, you always got something awful to tell me. Nothing good. Ever.”
Do I? I sit on our beat-up brown couch. “C’mon, Jess. Please. This is important.”
She perches on the edge and frowns at me. “Hurry up, then.”
“I don’t buy it,” my sister says, after not interrupting for a change. “There’s no way some strange guy would be after us. I mean, for what reason? I don’t even know this Dale whatever his name is. You sure about this?”
“After listening to his rant? Yes, and that means you gotta be extra careful. I don’t want to scare you crazy. But don’t go places alone. You hear?”
Her gaze shifts away from my eyes, and she gives a tiny nod, but I’m not convinced she believes me or I believe her. “I have a suspicion there are secrets, Jessie, dark ones. And you and me? We’re being dragged in because of Mama.”
She picks up a plastic cat that Seth won for her at the county fair, examines it like it’s a priceless treasure, and gently sets it back on the table. “So what can we do?”
“First, we gotta work out the real reason Dale’s after us.”
Jessie puts a smirky smile on me. “He’s after you because you’re not like us. Lots of folks around here’s downright vicious about it.”
I’m gonna ignore her ignorant attitude. “Don’t think it’s that simple anymore, Jess. I got a pretty big notion what’s going on circles right back to Mama.”
My sister sighs, gathers her hair in a hunk, and moves it to her other shoulder. “If what you’re saying is true, Vi, we gotta go to the police.”
“Won’t do any good. I hear Sheriff Fletcher’s real close to the Woodbines. Best friends and all. If that’s true, nothing’s going to touch Dale.”
“Then we need to talk to Uncle Gray. With him being the clan head of us Sinclairs, it’s his sworn duty to protect us.”
“Not Uncle Gray. No. Not yet.”
“Vi—”
“No! I can take care of this on my own.”
“Why are you so stubborn if we’re in this much danger, Violette? People in these parts get dead for a whole lot less than being gay. But since you are and everybody knows it, you got a real head start. You want that?”
“I don’t. But Uncle Gray, he’s got no respect or liking for me. Can’t you understand that, Jessie?”
“Yeah, and dead’s dead a long time. And you’re saying my life’s in danger now, so that’s something you should understand.” She flounces her hair back on both shoulders; a punctuation mark for being through with this conversation.
“I’m going out to get some air, Jess.”
She doesn’t answer, even when I slam the front porch door.
A lightning bolt zigzags between Bald Knob and Scoggins Ridge as I settle on the top porch step. Thunder growls like those Greek gods we studied battling over some old-timey feud. A few fat raindrops chill my thighs, and I brush them off.
Jess and Junior are pretty much right about me taking too many risks. I almost wish, for once, Mama would caution me on that. I long hard for her to love me for who I am. Mama, she always lays heavy on my heart.