Twisted Creek

Chapter 16

The next few days passed in a calm haze. I went down to the gas station on the highway and called in an extra large order for Micki to bring out, which included two gallons of teal paint. I had thought of driving all the way into Lubbock and picking it out, but didn’t want to leave Nana too long. Cooking, she was great, but when she made change at the store, she couldn’t seem to get it right. Though she shrugged it off as always being poor at math, I remembered how she used to balance her checkbook to the penny.

When Micki brought the order on Thursday, I took a few hours off and painted the upstairs teal. Micki told me it looked great, but she was wearing a lime green scarf, orange-trimmed socks, and red knee shorts at the time. I couldn’t help but wonder what her husbands must have been like. She looked like she could bench-press three hundred pounds.

We made our weekly trip into town and bought our dollar-store supplies using money from the tip jar beside the free coffeepot. I told everyone it was free, but they always left a little anyway. I discovered fishermen were an easy lot, slow-moving and friendly with little-boy smiles. For most of them, a day fishing was a day playing hooky from life.

On the drive back home, Nana was silent for a long while, then said, “I always sleep next to Flo when winter comes. She can’t keep warm without me there.”

“You mean when you were a child?” I knew the past sometimes came back so strong to her that it was like yesterday and not seventy years ago.

“Yes,” she said as she stared out at the dry buffalo grass blowing in the wind. “My ma always made us wear socks, but when I’d crawled out of bed in the morning I could still feel the cold floor. We’d dress as fast as we could and run down to the kitchen stove. Many a morning I ate my breakfast standing with my back to the fire.”

I took her hand and we drove on in silence. I loved her stories, even the sad ones. They made me feel like I belonged to a small slice of that time-like the memory of it was in my genes, not just in my head.

When we pulled up to the lake, I noticed Paul Madison’s BMW parked near the dock. He had on jeans and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. He’d told me Monday that his cell phone wouldn’t work up at the cabin he’d just bought. I broke the news that no one’s phone worked around here except Mrs. Deals’s, and Willie said she’d turned the ringer off years ago. He said his wife would be writing if she wasn’t able to make it from Dallas by the end of the week.

I climbed out of the van, hoping he had no letter in the box left on our porch. Maybe she’d come down tomorrow and they’d patch up whatever argument had made him look so sad.

Paul waved as Timothy shoved off for his day of sitting on the lake, then the businessman turned and walked toward me. He tried to act casual, even offering to help with the groceries, but I saw the worry in his eyes when he glanced toward the porch.

Once we were inside, he poured himself a cup of coffee and watched me sort the mail.

I’d almost reached the bottom of the box when I frowned. Paul Madison had a letter. One in a business envelope. That couldn’t be good.

When I lifted it, he set down his coffee and walked toward me. I tried to think of something to say. “Maybe she’ll make it out for a little of the weekend.”

“Maybe,” he said as he took the letter. For a moment he just stared at it, then without looking at me, he walked out of the store.

The wind caught the wind chimes in Nana’s kitchen and I heard the familiar tinkle. I moved to the window and watched Paul head toward his car. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-six or so, but he seemed to age as he walked.

A pair of fishermen getting an early start on the weekend pulled in and blocked my view of Paul. They climbed out, laughing and wagering bets. One had a hat that looked like a hook cushion and the other’s hat had a bite-sized piece missing off the brim. His friend called him Hank, but he looked more like a Herbert to me. Old hats and new clothes. I’d guess these guys didn’t know much about fishing.

I stayed at the window, letting Nana greet them and offer coffee. The two men wandered around the store like two children allowed to fill the shopping basket for the first time. Forty dollars of snacks later, they were ready to go.

When they left, I turned and noticed Luke staring at them from the pass-through window. When he looked at me, he frowned.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Bank robbers hiding out or escapees from that show What Not to Wear? Or maybe they are junk-food addicts kicked out of all the towns around?”

“Worse,” he answered. “They’re drunk fishermen.”

I blinked and he was gone. I guessed it would be a waste of time to even bother to look for him. The man reminded me of a jack-in-the-box.

A jack-in-the-box who kissed, I added.

Nana yelled that she was starting bread so I decided to haul our potted plants up to the bedroom. With the walls painted and sheets made into curtains, the rooms upstairs had lost most of the drab they’d clung to.

An hour later, I glanced out the window and noticed Paul’s car was still out front. He sat in the dirt beside his passenger door with the open letter in both hands. He wasn’t crying, he just stared as if looking at something he couldn’t believe was real. I could feel his sorrow so raw I almost looked away. I didn’t even know this man. We’d only said a few words. It wasn’t my place to get involved in his problem.

But I remembered that first night when his wife had asked for wine and we didn’t stock any. Maybe that was the turning point, the last straw, and somehow I was responsible.

While I watched, Mary Lynn pulled up in her rusty Volvo. She drove over the dam road twice a week to see if any of her orders had come in. She’d said she was redecorating, but the mailman swore she must be “one of them compulsive shoppers,” because he was always delivering something she’d ordered.

The old maid took a few steps, then noticed Paul. Unlike me, she didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the banker and knelt down beside him.

I couldn’t hear what they said, but after a while, Paul stood, dusted off his jeans, and they headed toward the store. I ran downstairs feeling guilty that I’d watched.

“Afternoon,” I managed as they came in. “I’ll get your package, Mary Lynn.”

“Thank you,” she said in her polite, shy way. “And would you mind if we had a pot of tea, Allie? I think that might just hit the spot.”

“Of course,” I said, thinking that we didn’t usually serve tea. It didn’t seem to go with worms.

But Nana and I managed to find an old steel pot. While she heated water, I stacked Lipton bags on a saucer. We added the old sugar bowl and a small plate of cookies. Nana spread one of her bandana napkins over a cookie sheet and I served tea to our guests sitting in the bay window.

“Thank you,” Mary Lynn said. Her gentle smile somehow didn’t touch her eyes.

Since she didn’t invite me to join them, I moved to the other side of the store. As the afternoon aged, I watched her pour him tea. Neither seemed to talk much. Once I saw him nod when she pointed at something on the lake.

They were still there when the fishermen began to dock for the night. Luke’s canoe slipped in just as the sun touched the water. He pulled out a string of fish and walked up the dock.

Without a word to me, he handed the catch to Nana. “Same deal?”

My grandmother smiled. “Same deal.”

As they disappeared into the kitchen, I walked over to Mary Lynn and Paul for the first time. “Could I interest either of you in joining us for dinner? Looks like Luke caught twice what we can eat.”

They looked at each other, then turned to me and nodded. Paul stood slowly, like a man finding his footing on new ground. “I’ll help him clean the fish.”

Mary Lynn looked up at him. “You know how?”

He shrugged. “I’ve done it a few times.”

When he disappeared out the back, I sat down by Mary Lynn. “Is he all right?”

She nodded. “He will be.” She hesitated before sharing. “His wife wrote to tell him she filed for a divorce. She said buying a dusty little shack on a nowhere lake was the last straw.”

“Why’d he do it?”

Mary Lynn shook her head. “He said he’d always dreamed of having a place, a retreat from the world. He thought she understood.”

“He might be in time to stop the sale.”

“No. I don’t think he wants to. Maybe his life with her was part of the reason he needed the retreat.”

I felt like a voyeur looking into someone else’s pain so I changed the subject. An hour later, as we sat on the porch eating Luke’s fish and Nana’s cottage fries, I tried not to act as if anything was wrong even though I guessed this must be one of the saddest days of Paul’s life.

He ate little, stared at his plate, and forced a smile when he did look up.

Mary Lynn told us the story of how Jefferson’s Crossing got its name. It seemed Jefferson Platt was named after his ancestors who operated a raft so wagons could cross Twisted Creek. When they dammed the water and created the lake, his people stayed on, first with a trading post and later with the small bait store.

Luke backed her up, saying that when he was a kid he’d heard old Jefferson tell the same story. Except for the army, he’d lived his life in one spot.

I tried to picture Luke as a boy. Reason told me he couldn’t have been born six-feet tall and hard as a rock, but I couldn’t visualize him younger. Knowing that he’d come here for years ended my worry about him being a drifter, but I couldn’t see him living anywhere else. If this were his getaway place, where did he live?

When they’d left and Nana had gone up to bed, I walked out to the campfire Luke had built. Fall drifted in the air, chilling the breeze off the lake.

We sat for a while looking at the flames. I loved to watch the colors dance toward heaven. Once I’d tried to paint the firelight, but I could never make it come alive. An instructor told me that the only way I’d ever make fire look real on canvas was to burn it.

Finally, I could stand the silence no longer. “The banker’s wife is divorcing him because he bought a place out here.”

He stirred the fire. “Good a reason as any, I guess.”

I tried to see his face in the shadows. How could someone who kissed so good show no sympathy?

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Would you rather she left him for another man, or because she bankrupted him, or because she had a gambling problem?”

I got the point. “You’re right. The reason doesn’t matter, I guess, because it’s not the real reason. She left him because she doesn’t love him anymore.” Somehow that sounded so much worse than all the other reasons.

I wanted him to say something like loving someone for even a short time was better than never loving at all, but he didn’t. He just turned his back and watched clouds reflecting shadows on the water. I wondered if this quiet man had ever said he loved some woman. Did he understand Paul’s pain?

I stood. “Good night, Luke,” I said as I started up to the house.

He said good night so softly I couldn’t be sure I’d heard it.

When I reached the porch, I glanced back and saw him standing on the far side of the campfire staring out into the lake. His legs were wide apart, his body at parade rest. He seemed to be looking for something. Watching for something.