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It was late afternoon when the dinner-on-the-grounds at the church ended. Mack dropped his mother and aunt off at the house, then proceeded to the Turner’s to talk to Washburn Turner, Sr., Billy Joe’s grandfather.
Mack was not a happy man. The encounter with Nonny Folsom had been uncomfortable at first, which he expected it would be. But then, it became comfortable—too comfortable. Years and memories fading like a bad dream. As the day wore on, he found himself toying with the idea of rekindling the relationship. Even now, he was confused as to how that had transpired.
“Just like that—” He snapped his fingers to punctuate his thinking. “Twenty years just disappearing,” he snorted. “On TV maybe, but this isn’t a soap opera.”
Why would he do that? he wondered. Consider changing a lifestyle he had worked so hard to construct? He had come to favor his hit-and-run approach to relationships. It worked well with his job and temperament. He made sure the women he did take the time to acquaint himself with knew the facts from the get-go. Which went something like, a good romp in the hay’s one thing, expecting to find me next to you the next morning’s another. Now, alone and with time to reason through the abruptness of the change toward Nonny, he could find no reasonable explanation. Recalling how the relationship with her had ended those many years ago, he turned sour.
“Just because a bad dream fades away in a day or two, doesn’t mean it never happened.”
The thought of having to deal with old man Turner added to Mack’s ill temper. He drove through paradisal hills with the alertness of one on enemy patrol. In quick time, he found the asphalt driveway leading to the Turner enclave, three low-slung, rambling brick homes situated in a semi-circle. Pulling up the curving drive, he stopped at the largest of the three, one with a wide portico and hand-carved front door.
Before he could turn off the ignition, Mack saw the settled figure of an aged man open the door. As he walked up the stone steps, he looked through a large picture window and caught sight of a small, pink-haired woman sitting in a large wingback chair. He recognized the sharp facial features and fluffy permed hair instantly. Tootsie Turner. The woman looked the same to him as she had when he had been a boy. Overdressed, over made-up, and cocky as hell.
Locking eyes with the woman, he nodded. In response, she lifted a tumbler of amber liquid that he figured to be Southern Comfort or Wild Turkey. It was a well-known fact that the Turners were not abstainers. He considered that he might be invited in for a drink, which would suit him to a T. He was a beer man personally, but he wasn’t opposed to knocking back a few shooters. Alcohol of any persuasion made things go down smoother.
“How you doing, Wash?” he asked when he reached the front door. “Looks like you knew I was coming.”
“Billy Joe called me on his mobile phone, gave me a heads-up. The old man spoke from behind a heavy storm door. “Afraid I can’t be of any help.”
Mack nixed the idea of a whiskey neat and he got down to business. Pulling the picture of his grandfather and his mules from his pocket, he pressed it against the glass. “Maybe this would help.”
Washburn Turner waved the picture away. “Memory’s not what it used to be.”
Though he was looking hard at the man at the door, Mack could see another figure in the shadows. What the hell? he wondered, recognizing the profile of Billy Joe.
“Well maybe the picture would jog your memory,” he said, pressing the picture against the glass again.
“Won’t help a bit.” The old man pushed the hand-carved front door closed, saying, “Don’t have time to waste on such nonsense.” The click of a deadbolt being thrown served as a final exclamation mark for his words.
Mack stared at his reflection in the storm door a bit, then turned toward his truck. Catching one last glance of Tootsie Turner, still holding a tumbler of liquor, before the heavy drapes closed, he wondered who was pulling the curtain strings. Old Washburn or Billy Joe.
Curiosity getting the better of him, he swung wide at the arc in the curved driveway so he could see the rear of the house. He spotted a black GMC near the back entrance that looked similar to one he had seen at the church, one like Billy Joe drive away in. Pulling down the asphalt track, he stopped at the county road, pondering the situation.
“Someone’s trying to snooker me,” he muttered, “and I aim to find out why.” Without warning, Nonny Folsom popped into his mind. Remembering that his mother said she lived in her dad’s old place, he wheeled his Bronco that direction.
Fifteen minutes later, Mack pulled down a dirt track that wound through a tangle of trees and undergrowth so thick he had to turn his headlights on bright to see. By the time he pulled into the clearing where an old farmhouse with peeling paint sat, he could feel a wetness between his shoulder blades and smell the sour odor of sweat in his armpits.
He sat for a moment with the window rolled down before exiting the Bronco, breathing the cool air. As he waited, he reconsidered the wisdom of his decision. It would be better to leave right then, to make the drive back through that dark, matted square of space immediately rather than postpone it. The mind could play tricks on a man, especially if he tried to postpone the inevitable, make a mountain out of a molehill. Right now, that dark place was a molehill—
“Who’s out there!”
Mack turned to face a slender woman dressed in jeans and a white tee, long hair pulled back in a ponytail, holding what looked to be a single-barrel scattergun. The time for reconnoitering had passed.
“That you, Mack Barlow?”
“Yeah,” he called out. “But it’s kind of late. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” He watched Nonny lower the barrel of the gun. There was no mistaking the hesitation in her movements or her voice, as she waved him to the house.
“I, uh, I just put on a fresh pot of coffee, in case you want a cup. Thought you were going out to the Turner’s place. How’d you end up here?”
“Yeah, well, I just left there. Something fishy’s going on.” He turned as he reached the porch, pointing at the track he had just traversed. “You ever give any thought to having that jungle cleared?”
She stared at him.
“Never mind.” He walked into a kitchen steaming from fruit jars sterilizing in a pot on the stove and a pan of melting paraffin. “What the hell you doing?”
“Making jelly.” She hesitated as she replaced her gun in the rack over the kitchen door. “Well, re-making jelly, to be more accurate.” She pointed to large jars of Welch’s grape and strawberry jam sitting on the cabinet top. “Oh hell, to be completely accurate, I’m rebottling it. I give it to my route customers on the first Friday of the month. They have quite a sweet tooth, especially the older ones. It means more to them if they think it’s homemade.”
Mack couldn’t tell if the blush on Nonny’s face was from the steamy kitchen or her confession. When she waved him toward an old, cane-bottomed chair, he took a seat. Tilting it so he could lean against the wall, he took in the sagging cupboards, uneven oak flooring, out-dated appliances, and woman.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she said. “They think I make it from scratch.”
He tried to suppress a grin. “That legal? Passing off store-bought jelly as homemade?”
“I never gave it much thought.” She filled two mugs with coffee and turned introspective. “I worked at a food co-op in Norman and we repackaged lots of things. Peanut butter, flour and meal, things like that. I figure if I sterilize the jars and seal them with hot paraffin, it’s safe to give away.”
“Give away?” Mack took the cup of coffee Nonny offered. “Can’t they buy their own? I mean, they’ve gotta be on Social Security or the Indian dole.”
“Yeah, but a lot of them can’t get into town and others . . . Well, they still try to make their own and that’s where the rub comes in.” She took a swallow of coffee. “You see, right after I came back, Uncle George showed me this homemade plum jelly that his neighbor lady gave him—you remember the Clarks?”
Mack nodded. “So?”
“So, it was full of ants and Uncle George had eaten half the jar! Mrs. Clark’s eyes were so bad, she couldn’t see them. So I figured store bought would be safer. Geez, who knows what other vermin these old people might be eating and not even know it. Roaches. Silverfish. Flies.” She shivered at the thoughts running through her mind.
He stifled a laugh. “Some places I’ve been, vermin are considered a good source of protein.”
She snickered, then turned serious again. “You think there’s a chance of botulism?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
She nodded confidently. “Me either.” She fished a steaming Mason jar from a boiling pot and began ladling jelly inside. “You said something was fishy?”
Nonny’s question didn’t register immediately as Mack was staring at the woman—dampened hair clinging to her neckline, moist tee shirt clinging to her chest—and feeling his skin burn as though he had run through a patch of nettles. Trying to pull up the sour feeling he’d felt earlier, he considered questioning her about her changed lifestyle, her need to make something of herself—as though marrying him wouldn’t. But instead, he got up, took a spatula from a stoneware crock sitting on the counter, and began sliding it along the inside of the filled jelly jars.
Sensing Nonny looking at him, he gave her a sideways glance. “You got air bubbles in the jars. I’m getting rid of the air bubbles.”
“I know what you’re doing. I just didn’t think you’d know such things.”
He shrugged. “It comes back.” He nodded toward the jars of jelly, grinning. “Didn’t take you for such things either.”
“It comes back,” she said, grinning, too. “You said something was fishy?”
“Oh, yeah.” Mack related his visit to the Turner place as he and Nonny worked on the jelly. He finished up with, “That beer gut on the guy in the shadows could only belong to one person.”
“And you’re sure Mr. Turner said Billy Joe had telephoned.”
“’Called me on his mobile, gave me a heads-up.’ That’s what he said, word for word. Besides, it was clear as the nose on your face that Billy Joe had driven straight there from the church grounds. His truck was parked out back. Hell, I bet the engine block was still warm. Now, why would he hide like that? Wouldn’t you think he’d make his presence known? If everything was on the up and up, I mean.”
Nonny nodded slowly. “That does seem strange, even for one of the Turners.”
“And old man Turner wouldn’t even look at the picture. You got any idea what’s going on here?”
“Not a clue. I’ll get to the Genealogy Society tomorrow and see what I can find.” She paused. “From that picture, I figure Sister was, what . . .? Six or seven years old? How old is she now?”
Mack pulled the picture of his grandfather and mules from his pocket. “Probably closer to nine or ten when this was taken. She’s always been on the runty side. I figure she’s on either side of seventy by a few years.”
“Well, all right then, we’ll start checking in that timeframe. We should begin with census records, see if we can pin down where Pa lived.”
“Okay. I’ll check in with you tomorrow. I need to pick up some things for the house in town anyway. That hardware store still open out there on Choctaw Street?”
“God, no. Been closed down a long time. But there’s a True-Value on the highway, or you could try the Walmart. It carries a little bit of everything.”
Silence settled on the kitchen like a fog, and Mack sensed uneasiness in that stillness. “You want me to leave?” he asked.
“What?”
“You got awful quiet.”
“I was just thinking of something your mother said today. She wouldn’t want me to say anything, but . . . Oh, crap, have you noticed anything unusual with your mama, Mack? Since you’ve been here, I mean.”
“Well . . .” He stopped working on the jelly. “This thing with Pa has her real upset.”
“No, that’s not it.”
Mack pulled up an image of his mother. The bone-tired look on her face. The way she agitated easily. Suddenly, he recalled the postcard. “A postcard came to the house recently addressed to her mother and she seemed upset about it. Matter of fact, she ripped it to shreds. That it?”
Nonny paused. “No, but it is curious.” She looked at Mack. “Why’d she do that?”
He shrugged. “You got me.”
“Grace is your grandmother, isn’t she?”
“Was my grandmother,” he said. “She’s dead, been dead for a long time.”
Nonny’s eyes began to blink, as if mulling over something. “That’s what I always thought, but Claude Riley, the Indianola route driver, said she just disappeared one day.” She looked at Mack. “What do you know about your grandmother?”
“Not one damn thing. Why? You think that postcard’s important?”
“Probably not. Most of the time it means the school hasn’t updated their records and they’re using her last known address to try to find her . . .”
Mack waited a half minute, waiting for Nonny to say more. When she didn’t, he said, “Mama got a health problem she’s not telling me about? Is that what you’re shooting at?”
“Not exactly, at least not at the moment.” She began work on the jelly again.
“Spill it, Nonny,” Mack said, not knowing where to go next. “You know I was never good at guessing games.”
“All right . . .” Nonny let out her breath. “Ruby thinks you’re hiding something from her, Mack, and she thinks it has something to do with her. Not Pa or this Bill-and-Jack thing—but her.”
“Damn.” He laid the spatula on the counter and rubbed his mouth.
“Why, you are hiding something, Mack Barlow!”
Mack debated whether to tell the truth or lie and decided to lay it on the line. As if driving nails into a plank, he hammered out his intentions to find a safer place for his mother and aunt to live.
“You’re moving them to town,” Nonny stated, sounding incredulous.
“It’s not safe for them to be this far out anymore,” Mack said, hurrying to explain. “Especially given their age and physical condition. You hear about the prison break last Friday? I’m working with a realtor up at Henryetta, putting the place up for sale.”
“But what about Ruby’s business? She’s worked hard to build up her clientele and enjoys what she does. I know these women out here. They won’t drive into town to get their hair done. She’ll lose touch with her friends.”
He considered this. “Not that many left, friends and family’s dying off. Besides, it’s time she quit. She’s not a spring chicken anymore. And Sister’s even worse off.”
“So, what are you looking at then?”
Nonny’s hesitation indicated that she realized he was speaking true. He related the options he had looked at the previous day with Roxie Komenski. “I’m leaning toward the gated community. Safest place by far, with a guardhouse and security patrols. And there’s lots of stuff for them to do there.”
“Stuff,” she repeated, fishing another jar from the kettle. “And you haven’t told Ruby yet that you’re selling the home place?”
“There’s time yet. The realtor is still working out the details. Anyway, I need to get the old place ready to flip. You know, fix it up a little—”
“Or asked her opinion on where she’d like to live?”
Mack hesitated, wondering why he hadn’t thought to do that. It’s because I’m the one that knows what’s best for her, he decided. Her behavior today was a clear indication of that. What the hell difference does it make if brownies have nuts in them? Besides which, that route would’ve taken more time—time he didn’t have because he needed to haul ass back to the Panhandle. No, this was the right way to go.
“Did you hear what I said, Mack?”
“Yeah, I heard you. And no, I didn’t ask her. She’s been so upset over this Bill-and-Jack thing, I didn’t think the time was right. But I plan to talk to her real soon.”
“That would be a good idea, and the sooner the better. She’s worrying herself into a state that will affect her health.”
“First chance I get.” He picked up the spatula and began working the jelly again. “You won’t tell her before I do, will you?”
“Uh-uh—not on your life, buddy. Wouldn’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole.”
Nonny’s body language told Mack more than her words did. “You don’t think much of the idea, do you?”
“None of my business.”
“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said, feeling a need to break through her coolness.
“I know.” Brushing aside a lock of dark hair, she looked at him.
Mack turned away from those hypnotic eyes, which right then looked hard as agates, searching for other things to focus on. He found a broken lock on the kitchen window and a missing deadbolt on the back door, then looked at her again. “You, uh, you give any thought to moving away from here yourself?”
“Not once,” she said, screwing a lid down tight on a jar.
The air in the kitchen suddenly felt thick as the jelly they worked on. “That single shot’s not much protection—”
“Not for love nor money.”
“You don’t even have a dog.”
She turned hard eyes to him. “They’ll have to haul my ass out of here in a box. This place is my salvation.”
What the hell? Mack looked at the woman standing next to him as though she were a stranger, someone he had chanced upon out on the Indian Nations Turnpike while traveling to another place in a different time. And he could not help but wonder what had spun Nonny Folsom around a hundred-and-eighty-degrees.
