Chapter Two
Bailey Rae could already imagine the headline in next week’s Bent Oak Weekly : Pig Stages Protest at Hot Dog Stand .
She’d had more than her fair share of experiences with the feral pigs that wandered out of the woods to tear up Winnie’s garden. Usually, they meandered off on their own. Unless agitated. No doubt, those boys had agitated the piss right out of this beast.
Her heart rate kicked up a notch.
At the other end of the field, the cop car doors swung wide. Two officers piled out, tossing aside their snow cones as they sprinted past stalls and toward the teens. The police shouted a jumble of commands: “Don’t do it, boys ... Everybody stay back ... Somebody find the game warden ...”
With a whoop, the camo-clad duo opened the kennel before scrambling to safety on top of the truck cab. The pig—a.k.a. Angry Wilbur—launched out of his cage and soared over the tailgate. He hit the ground, tumbling and squealing.
Drawing all eyes in his direction.
Not. Good. Bailey Rae’s pulse slugged harder as she searched for the fastest path to load Libby back into the safety of the minivan.
Skeeter came to life in a roll of gangly hound legs, shooting out from his shady spot under the pickup. He tipped back his head and howled. Every ounce of hound dog in his mixed DNA roared to life, his baying battle cry piercing the air.
The wild pig—or maybe it was a hog, she didn’t intend to get close enough to identify—made a slow turn in their direction. Skeeter and Wilbur locked eyes across the distance. The hog’s were beady. Skeeter narrowed his glacier-blue eye.
Outright terror for Skeeter and the three vulnerable women kicked her feet into high gear.
“Skeeter, stay!” Bailey Rae ordered, lunging to grab his collar, not trusting the strength of his tether. “Where is that game warden?”
Not in her wildest dreams would she have imagined praying for the new game warden’s help. That man had been a spur in her side since writing her a ticket for fishing without a license—on her own land. He’d informed her that while the land was hers, the water and fish were under the state’s purview.
And riiiiip . He’d torn off her ticket.
A ticket she still needed to pay. Or had he just given her a warning? She really shouldn’t have stuffed it to the back of her kitchen junk drawer in a fit of irritation.
Down by the 4-H booth, an engine roared to life just before a truck peeled out across the field.
The muddy black pickup sported a SCDNR logo—South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
Tires chewed up the earth as the game warden drove straight toward the wild pig charging onto the field.
Cloven hooves plowed the earth as the beast upended a table of watermelons and toppled the garden club’s flower sale.
The pickup bore down, closer, until only a couple feet shy of hitting the pig, the game warden blared his sirens and laid on the horn.
Startling the pig. Angry Wilbur turned into Confused Wilbur.
Accelerating, the truck took tight turns like a horse herding cattle, guiding the pig away from the crowd and into the woods.
Seconds later, three gunshots echoed from the tree line.
The stampeding crowd froze for a heartbeat, then burst into a round of applause for the hero of the day before melting right back into their setting up and shopping. Another normal day in Bent Oak.
Thea dabbed her forehead with her handkerchief. “Wild pigs can be eaten if cooked properly.”
Legs wobbly, Bailey Rae sank down beside Skeeter. “Is the councilman planning to dig a trench for a pig pickin’ party?”
Thea looked over the rims of her glasses. “Someone needs to let Game Warden Perez know there are a couple of single moms in the area who could use some help putting a meal on the table.” She dug in her purse for her cell phone. “I’ll call Howard to come field dress the pig.”
Her navy-blue pumps punched holes in the earth as she marched across the field, sidestepping split melons.
June patted Libby’s hand. “Could you stay here with Bailey Rae and package up purchases?” she asked, navigating Libby’s pride and loss of independence. “Thea may need my help.”
A smile teased at Bailey Rae. Thea rarely needed assistance.
Bailey Rae pushed to her feet just as Libby’s son shouldered through the growing crowd. Apparently, the pig incident was already ginning up extra traffic and potential buyers.
“Mom? Mom,” Keith said breathlessly, kneeling beside his mother’s wheelchair. “Are you okay?”
Libby patted his cheek. “Of course I am. Did you get the job? With a construction company, right?”
“I start on Monday. Of course, there aren’t a lot of hours available ...” Approaching sixty, Libby’s son wore the disappointments of his life like someone dragging a tractor tire.
Up a hill.
In summer.
He’d been through three divorces, six career changes—none by choice. After the most recent, he’d moved back in with his mother under the auspices of caring for her. But folks in this gossipy town knew he was flat broke.
Wiry, like his mom, with graying dark hair, Keith dislodged the wheelchair from a mushy patch of grass before helping her shift into a seat beside Bailey Rae.
“Here, Mom.” He picked up her cane from the ground, a floral aluminum model today. It must have rolled from her lap in the confusion.
Libby draped the cane across her lap and patted Bailey Rae’s arm. “Go take a break, have some lunch, kick up your feet and dance a little.” She paused. “My son will keep me company so I don’t get confused about the prices. Right, Freddie?”
“Mama,” he said softly. “I’m Keith.”
Confusion only flickered before she smiled. “Of course. You just look like your father.”
Did he? Bailey Rae couldn’t recall seeing photos of him.
Winnie had always said Libby was so heartbroken by his death that she couldn’t bear reminders.
And soon Libby wouldn’t even have those memories.
Regardless of what latest failure had brought Keith home, thank heaven he was there to help his mother.
Bailey Rae slid an arm around Libby’s shoulders—thinning and hunching with age. “That’s sweet. But I’m fine. Although if Keith wants to go wander around, you’re welcome to hang out with me.”
He glanced back and forth from her to his mom. “If you’re sure. Maybe I could pick up food for all of us?”
The question in his tone settled around her, making her realize ... She reached into the cashbox and peeled off a pair of twenty-dollar bills. “If you don’t mind, that would be great.”
Keith backed away, waving the pair of bills. “I’ll let you get to your customers.”
Customers? Oh, right. The pig thing had thrown her off balance. And, truth be told, sorting through so many memories even just packing the truck that morning had been draining.
She dropped into a folding chair and chugged the rest of her water bottle since Libby was already working a sale with Mrs. Watson—the mother of identical twins Missy and Sissy, who had been in Bailey Rae’s class growing up.
No one seemed to remember the pair’s real names anymore.
Winnie had always insisted a person’s name didn’t matter near as much as how they treated others.
Which meant Missy and Sissy were worthless as gum on a bootheel.
More than once, Bailey Rae had wondered if Mrs. Watson knew that her precious little darlings used to enjoy chanting, Winnie Ballard’s a cuckoo bird, Winnie Ballard’s a cuckoo bird ...
Bailey Rae had put up with it until her seventh birthday—which her mother forgot—and then let her fists fly. The Watson girls fought dirty, biting and pulling hair. She’d only managed to break free by headbutting Sissy. Bailey Rae got three stitches, and Sissy had a chipped front tooth.
Sissy and Missy weren’t identical twins anymore.
Mrs. Watson lingered over a wedding ring quilt and traced the tiny stitches, her fingers arthritic from decades of teaching piano. “We sure do miss seeing Winnie at the market, but I bet she’s smiling down from heaven knowing you’re here.”
For now. “I’m not nearly woman enough to fill those floral Crocs of hers.”
“Winnie would disagree.” Mrs. Watson tucked her credit card into the reader and scrawled her signature with her finger on the screen. “Would you mind holding on to the quilt for me until I’m fixin’ to leave? I’m supposed to meet my girls and their babies for lunch.”
“Of course,” Bailey Rae said, rubbing the scar in her eyebrow.
Libby waggled a wave. “If you see Freddie over yonder, could you send him back over with our lunch?”
Mrs. Watson turned, penciled eyebrow lifted. “Freddie?”
Libby frowned, her gray eyes searching as if the memories would materialize. “My boy ... My boy ... Keith.”
Wrong name again? Libby was having a rough day. Bailey Rae considered calling Keith back to see if he should take his mother home.
“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar female voice interrupted.
Bailey Rae held up her hand for the person to wait, scanning Libby’s face for further signs of distress or disorientation. But the older woman seemed at peace, thumbing through one of the cookbooks, humming. The Freddie-Keith mix-up had already been forgotten.
Biting her lip, Bailey Rae willed away tears over losing this woman too, in a different way from Aunt Winnie. But a loss all the same. An end to the chapter that had started when the two women came to Bent Oak at the same time, responding to an ad for jobs at the paper mill.
Bailey Rae was more than ready for a fresh beginning of her own. She turned to her next customer. “Yes? If you don’t see exactly what you’re looking for here, I have more canned foods and quilts in the truck.”
A dark-haired woman leaned closer, maybe in her early thirties, with a toddler girl hiding her tiny face against her mother’s legs. The young woman looked like she hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in weeks. “I need your help.”
Her words were so soft they were almost swallowed by the bustle of shoppers and echo of beach music.