Chapter 8 #2
That evening, Brodie stripped out of Knox’s beach shorts and T-shirt and stepped into a steamy, hot shower.
As the water beat down on his back, he vowed that he would never take such a luxury for granted again.
What had happened in the café with Wanette and poor little Pansy seemed like a month ago, but in reality it had only been twenty-four hours.
He looked down at the stain and the four puncture marks the wire had made.
He’d been able to wash away some of the blueberry stain, but his chest still looked like he had lost a battle with a rattlesnake.
He finished his shower, brushed his teeth, and got dressed in a pair of pajama pants and a sleep shirt.
When he got to his bedroom, he opened the balcony doors and stepped outside.
The air was still warm even though it was fully dark, and there were no dark clouds in sight.
Maybe tomorrow, with the help of his brothers, he could get a lot of the fertilizing done and the straw around the base of the trees.
He sat down in a chair. The waning crescent moon seemed to be holding court for all the twinkling stars around it, and that made him think of his mother.
She loved to sit on the front porch and look up at the sky.
Even during those last weeks of her life, he would carry her outside, wrap her in a quilt, and sit with her.
That’s where they were the night she told him about Joe Clay.
The next morning, she told the twins about their parents, and then she died that night right after midnight.
She’d always said that she wanted to pass away on her birthday to make it a full circle, and she did.
Joe Clay came out from a doorway with two beers in his hand. “I thought maybe you might could use one of these after what all you’ve been through. Mind if I join you?”
“Not a bit.” Brodie reached out and took a beer from him. “And you are so right. I could really use a good cold one.”
“Tripp and Knox told me and Mary Jane what all happened. Mary Jane says that she would use the story about Audrey and Linda in one of her books, but her readers would call her out for going too far out there,” Joe Clay chuckled.
“The truth is stranger than fiction,” Brodie smiled. “Did I ever tell you that my whole name is Brodie Carter Callahan? I never knew until just before Mother died that my middle name came from you. She said that it made me a part of a wonderful memory.”
Joe Clay swiped a tear from his cheek with the back of his hand. “Thank you for sharing that with me. It means a lot.”
“I should have told you before now,” Brodie said. “And back to Audrey. That woman is like a major thorn—no, that’s not right—she’s more like a whole tree limb in my…” he paused and took a long gulp of the icy cold beer.
“In your butt or your heart?” Joe Clay asked.
“Can it be both?” Brodie asked. “I wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, especially to Bernie, but Audrey makes me so mad that…”
Joe Clay chuckled again. “You don’t have to explain. I felt the same way about Mary Jane at the first, but I didn’t have to contend with a feud going between two old ladies, and I had to live right here in the house with her.”
“For real?” Brodie was amazed that there could ever have been a cross word between his father and stepmother.
“Yep,” Joe Clay answered. “I was going out the door and planning to go straight to the recruiting office to reenlist when she called me a chicken.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I didn’t like kids, especially seven little sassy girls,” Joe Clay admitted. “She made me so mad that I stayed just to prove her wrong. My heart kept telling me that she was the one, but my mind didn’t want to accept it. Is Audrey the one?”
“I hope not,” Brodie answered.
They sat in silence and listened to the sounds of a spring night—crickets, tree frogs, cows mooing over in Remy and Ursula’s pasture.
Brodie kept going back over the events of the last few days and wondering if he was fighting against something that was supposed to be.
Could Audrey be the one? If she was, what kind of stink would that cause?
Finally, he put the questions to the side and asked, “The barbed wire on the fence between my place and Audrey’s is on my side. Am I right in assuming that it belongs to me and not her?”
“Yep, you are right,” Joe Clay answered. “Why?”
“Well, the part that Tripp and Knox might have left out is this.” He told his dad about the post falling when he tried to jump over the fence.
“And now Hettie and Audrey are insisting that you fix their fence?” Joe Clay laughed out loud.
Brodie nodded and sipped on his beer. “That’s right, and thanks again for this beer. I would have traded my new pig for anything cold last night. Other than icy water out of the shower, I might add. Matter of fact, I would have traded that pig for a bucket full of dirt before the night was done.”
“So, are you going to keep her?”
“Probably,” Brodie answered. “Mother supported a local animal shelter and got me a weekend job there when I was in middle school. Her theory was that parents fail their children when they don’t teach them to work.
Someday I hope to have a family, and the farm will be a perfect place for them to learn responsibility. ”
“That’s a good goal,” Joe Clay agreed. “And your mother was right in teaching you to work and respect animals. What kind of pen did you build?”
“We attached a framework to the west end of the trailer and boarded underneath the other three sides to give her a good shelter. Then we stretched wire—thank you for that—all around the frame and covered all the other boards with wire for extra protection. That way Pansy can lie in the sun or get under the trailer for protection when it rains. Knox came up with the idea.”
Joe Clay chuckled under his breath. “And nosy Hettie can’t see what’s going on, right?”
“I hope it drives her crazy,” Brodie laughed with him. “Maybe having a mess like that right next door will make her hush about me fixing my fence.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Joe Clay said. “My beer is gone, so I’m going back down to get a piece of the chocolate cake that Tertia brought over this evening. Want to join me?”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll sit right here and enjoy the view while I finish my beer, and then I’ll go in and appreciate a bed that’s longer and wider than the one I slept on last night,” Brodie answered.
Joe Clay stood up and gave Brodie’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Here’s hoping tomorrow treats you better than yesterday and today.”
“Amen!” Brodie agreed.
He replayed the conversation he’d just had with Joe Clay over again a couple of times in his mind and wondered if, after all was said and done, he and Audrey would find common ground in the future.
If they did, would Bernie and Hettie burn down the whole town of Spanish Fort, or would they simply disown Brodie and Audrey?
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” Brodie whispered.
Finally, he gave up trying to figure out anything and went inside. He removed his socks and crawled between the sheets. “This feels so good,” he whispered as he closed his eyes.
He dreamed again of Audrey. This time she held a little dark-haired girl up to pick a low-hanging peach. The bright sunshine lit up the child’s green eyes, and when she’d chosen the peach from all the dozens making the limb droop, she ran over to Brodie and handed it to him.
“Here, Daddy, you get the first one,” she said, and then wrapped her arms around his leg and squeezed tightly. “Now I’ll get one for Mommie and then one for me.”
He awoke the next morning with a smile on his face. “It was only a dream,” he told himself, “and it could never happen. We’ll be fighting until we are old and gray. There’s no way we would ever have children together.”