Chapter 11
Zoe
I hadn’t even considered asking my family if Pete was going to be the security guard. They’d mentioned him, I dismissed the idea in my mind, and I hadn’t revisited it.
However, I wasn’t totally shocked when he walked in. Actually, the feeling that I had was definitely not shock. It was...joy? Happiness for sure. But joy as well. I definitely can see us spending a lot of time together, since I promised Kylie I would make sure I would check in on Baxley while she was gone.
Kylie loves drama, but she really is a good mother. And she was concerned that our step-mother would forget that she was supposed to take care of a little girl again. Not that mom had been a great, attentive mom growing up.
She was not my real mom. I don’t really remember my real mom, but my step-mom married my dad because he was a lawyer, and even though he was a small town lawyer, there’s still prestige that comes with that.
She came from money, and after dad married her, we had more.
Then when Kylie got married, money seemed to flow even more. I’m not sure what that has to do with her ex-husband, but they made a good bit of money together, before they got divorced. Kylie got a very large settlement. Dad’s law firm handled the divorce, which I know was very profitable for him.
Seems like that would be a bit of a conflict of interest, but their divorce was amicable, even though Kylie’s husband wasn’t really interested in Baxley.
He is a playboy.
Definitely not someone I would have been interested in, but I think Kylie just saw dollar signs. We were not raised in a cushy lifestyle exactly, but I think the idea of actually having to get a job and go to work was a little more than what she wanted to do.
Sometimes I’m not sure why I’m doing it. I could move back home and have a life of even ease and luxury. But, I guess there’s something inside of me that wants to know I can make it on my own.
Maybe it’s the idea of a safety net behind me that keeps me from being petrified of what will happen if my voice acting career doesn’t work out.
“I was surprised to see you here,” Pete says as he opens the door and allows us to walk out first.
He steps through and closes it behind us before I say, “I knew they asked you to, but that was...before.” And by before, I mean before we started talking and I realized that he wasn’t as bad as what I had always thought he was. “Still, I dismissed it because I thought that you would never leave the force.”
“About that,” he says. I can tell that what he wants to say is pretty important to him, and Baxley is fine. She walked out onto the grass, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. It looks like she’s texting someone.
She is rather quiet, and she seems a little depressed to me. I don’t know, maybe if I had to live in this house I’d be depressed too. It wasn’t like this when I was a kid. But, it was turning that way more and more every day.
“I kind of figured there was more to the story. I could tell that you wanted to say more at the table, but you didn’t.”
“You could tell?” he says, a little bemused.
“Yeah. You seemed antsy. I don’t think it was obvious. I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone else noticed. I was the one sitting beside you.” And I seem to be in tune with whatever he does. My eyes track to him whenever we’re in the same room together, and I feel a powerful pull, where I don’t want to leave his presence, and I want to be closer.
“I see,” he says, and then he says the rest. “You’re right. I would have turned it down if I could have. But I didn’t want to tell your family that. I don’t have anything against them, or anything. I just didn’t want to leave the force. And it didn’t matter how much money was waved in front of my face.”
“I didn’t think you’d be swayed by money. You’re just one of those people that doesn’t seem to care about it.”
“I care, but it’s not going to make me do something I don’t want to do. If that makes sense.”
“It does, except you’re here,” I teased him gently. That’s a little pry to get the rest of the story out.
“I didn’t have a choice because the chief put me on unpaid administrative leave, and so if I wanted to make money, and pay my rent, I had to take the job.”
“You’re a single man living by yourself. I know that being a cop doesn’t pay a whole lot, but other than rent...” I can see I touched on a nerve, because he fidgets again. Interesting. I am starting to be able to read him.
“I have some things I put money in. The anteaters for one.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re supporting a family of them now. What is that, a hundred bucks a month?” I ask, knowing that it couldn’t nearly be his entire salary. And I know how much his rent is, unless our landlord had been extremely unfair to me whenever he’d rented my place. Since our places were similar, I would imagine that the rent was very much similar to.
“I give a lot of my money to Aunt Arley. That’s not something that’s common knowledge,” he says to me, his eyes holding mine.
I nod, and I want to continue the conversation, but I know that we’re out here for Baxley.
I also know that he’s uncomfortable around children. He said as much yesterday.
“I thought Baxley would really enjoy seeing the farm. I almost took her on the field trip yesterday, but she’s at least two years older than the oldest kid there, and I didn’t want to use my position to get benefits I shouldn’t.”
“I would really like to go!” Baxley says as she comes back over towards us, and she looks excited about something for the first time that day.
“I’m sure we can arrange that,” he says, and I believe him. I’ve already established the fact that he’s not the kind of guy who says things he doesn’t mean.
I really, really admire that in anyone, but especially a man.
“Are you really a police officer?” Baxley says, and again, it surprises me that she’s even talking to him. She isn’t usually comfortable around strangers, and especially men. She’s usually very quiet and reserved.
“I am,” he says.
“Can I go see the station?”
“You sure can.” He seems pleased that she is interested.
“I wouldn’t mind going along for that,” I say, hoping I’m not pushing myself in where I’m not wanted.
“I hoped you would. And to the farm too. I... Don’t really want to go by myself,” she says softly, looking down.
I’ve often thought that as much as my sister and I butted heads because we’re not the slightest bit similar, I really appreciated the fact that I grew up with a sibling. I can’t imagine not having someone in my house to do things with. Like, to tour a farm and a police station.
“Your Aunt Zoe can go anywhere we go, if she wants to as far as I’m concerned,” Pete says, and the way he says it makes me look at him.
He’s looking at me, and it’s an intense look. Like he’s waiting for me to react to that. Whether I’m supposed to be happy or whether that means that I’m supposed to say something... I’m not sure. So I just say what I’m thinking. “If I’m able to go, I will. I’m sure we’re going to have a good time this month.”
“I thought it might be boring, because I guess I thought the security person was going to be old and want to sit and watch TV the whole time. But I don’t think that’s true.” Baxley is mature for her age, maybe because she’s an only child, and is around adults a lot. But even for her, that seems like a very mature statement.
I think he is impressed too, because he raises his brows, and then he nods.
“I think that was a compliment,” he says.
“An honest one,” I say, smiling. Then, because I’m a little uncomfortable because of everything that seems to be running between us, I say, “The grounds are really pretty here. Would you like to take a walk, Baxley, and show Pete around your place? After all, he’s going to give you a tour of the farm. You should give him a tour of the grounds here.”
“There’s really not anything to see,” Baxley says.
“There’s the creek.” I say. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the creek, but when I was a kid, I really enjoyed wading in it, catching crawdads, and just generally getting my feet wet.
I’m not sure Baxley has ever done that. If she has, it’s been a while.
“There are swans in the lake,” I say. There is a small lake at the bottom of the property, and there are two swans who think they own it.
“They’re mean,” Baxley says, wrinkling her nose up.
“We don’t have any swans on the farm. We have ducks and geese. Sometimes the geese are a little edgy, especially if they’ve got babies. I typically stay away from them. I got pinched by a goose once, and it hurts.” Pete lets out a exaggerated shiver, and Baxley looks at him for a moment, then she laughs.
I make a mental note to tell Pete later that I can’t remember the last time I heard Baxley laugh.
“All right,” she says. “Come see the creek and the lake and the swans.” She starts down in front of us, and I fall into step beside Pete.
“Is there really much danger for her?” he asks, as we follow Baxley, who has gotten a little bit ahead of us.
“No. I don’t think there’s ever been any kind of danger, whatsoever. Not a threat, written or physical. But, I guess when a mom is leaving the country, and she has a ton of money, it makes her feel a little bit less guilty for leaving her daughter behind if she hires someone to take care of her.”
Pete nods, and maybe I’ve said more than I should, but that’s the way I see it. I suppose there are other ways to look at it, but I’m not sure any of those other ways are accurate.
“Here’s the creek,” Baxley says a couple of moments later, as the trail bends, and goes beside the creek. There’s a small, wooden bridge that the creek flows under, and from here we can see the pond.
“That’s pretty neat. It’s a nice warm day out. Do you wade in it?”
“Like, get in the creek?” Baxley says, her brows drawn.
“Yeah. Like take off your shoes and socks and get in,” Pete says, and I almost think he’s kind of excited about doing that. Really? I did not peg him for that kind of guy.
“I guess I could,” Baxley says, kind of uncertainly.
“I don’t want to do anything that you’d get in trouble for. But when I was a kid, my favorite thing to do on the farm was to wade in the creek. I didn’t even need to be swimming. It wasn’t really deep enough for that. We just had a good time splashing around, looking for crawdads, and just letting the water run over our feet.”
I can’t imagine him sitting still long enough to let water run over his feet, but maybe that is appealing to him now that he is older.
“Okay,” Baxley says, and she’s wearing capris, so once she has her shoes and socks off, I roll them up so that they're above her knees.
By that time, Pete has his boots and socks off, and he’s got his jeans rolled up too. Not quite above his knees, but the creek isn’t more than six or eight inches deep. He’s not going to get his jeans wet.
“Zoe?” Pete’s voice rumbles down my spine. It seems to set my ribs vibrating, and wraps a warm ribbon of syrup around my heart.
In other words, I feel it in every part of my body.
“Yes?” I say, about five seconds too late.
Pete looks a little bemused, but he doesn’t ask me what I was thinking about, thankfully. How do I explain to him that I am thinking about his voice?
Of course, he might get it, since he’s complemented mine before. But I doubt my voice does to him what his voice does to me.
“Your Aunt Zoe is coming in the water, right Baxley?” Pete says, holding out his hands, asking, don’t you agree?
“Aunt Zoe!” Baxley says, looking more like a little girl than she has in years. “You’re not going to let me do this by myself? What would mother say?”
She sounds so old-fashioned. Mother. But, she is happy, and Pete wants me, and I shrug and say, “Give me a minute to get my shoes off. If he thinks he’s the only one who used to play in a creek when he was a kid, he’s wrong. I didn’t do a whole lot of things, and I definitely didn’t grow up on a farm, but playing in the creek, I’ve got that down to a science.
It doesn’t take me long to get my things off. Pete holds his hand out for Baxley first, and then me, as we go up the trail, and down into the water.
It is cold. Much colder than I remember it being when I was a kid.
“This feels good,” Baxley says, as she puts her bare feet in the water.
When I played in the creek when I was a kid, I wore some kind of shoes. Like slip ons. They were my creek shoes. The housekeeper, Annette, kept them in the mud room for me to wear whenever I wanted to play. In fact, Kylie and I did this a lot together. She had a pair of shoes as well.
Maybe that’s why the creek feels so much colder. But, I’m guessing it’s mostly because I’m older.
“I bet there’s crawfish in here,” Pete says, as he turns over a rock, already in up to his ankles. “Yeah. Here’s one. That’s a big one,” he says, and before I know it, his hand snaps forward, and it comes out with a crawfish between his two fingers.
Baxley squeals and backs up just a little, although he wasn’t waving it in her direction at all. I think it’s just the idea that there’s something in the creek that she didn’t know about.
“You just want to watch they don’t get your toes,” he says, with a wink.
“Do they really get your toes?” she asks, looking hard in the water, as though she’ll see them.
“They mostly hide under rocks. If they’re scared, or if I put this one down and he goes running towards us, you don’t want to move, because he might grab a hold of you. That’s the only defense mechanism they have.”
“It hurts too,” I say from experience. “But they don’t attack you without provocation, so it’s not like you have to be worried about it.”
“They’re tasty,” Pete says, and it’s my turn to stare at him.
“You don’t eat them?” I say, hardly able to believe it.
“Sure. Didn’t you?”
“No. I looked at them, but I was never really brave enough to pick them up, and I definitely didn’t think about eating them.” That’s a little bit disgusting. I guess they would be like shrimp? I’m not sure, but the idea of eating them is just not one I really want to think about.
“This’ll be a nice size one, too. But it takes a few to make a meal. Kind of like shrimp,” he says offhandedly.
Baxley isn’t quite sure about the crawfish, and maybe Pete senses that she is a little bit leery, because he walks downstream a bit before he sets it back down.
“I won’t pick anymore up. You don’t have to worry about it,” he says as he walks back. The water rushes over his feet, which looked a lot less tough than the rest of him. It makes sense. He probably never goes anywhere without shoes anymore, although I can imagine him brown and barefoot in the summer as a little boy. Wild and free, running everywhere on the farm.
“Did you grow up on the farm?” I asked, remembering that he said that Arley was his aunt.
“My uncle owned it, and I was there every chance I could be, but no. My parents lived down the road a piece. Close enough that I worked on it from the time I was about ten.”
“That’s how old I am!” Baxley says.
“Well, you better be careful, because Aunt Arley might put you to work. She always paid me, but sometimes her jobs are pretty tough.”
“What kind of jobs did you do when you were my age?” she asks, as she moves her feet around splashing a bit.
It seems like she is really enjoying the water. I have to say, I am really enjoying it too. It feels soothing, and while it was cold when I first stepped in, my feet have gotten used to it, and it feels good. I find a big rock, and sit down, listening as Pete talks to Baxley. “Well, I slopped the hogs, which entailed taking the kitchen scraps out and throwing them in the hog pen. That’s what they fed them. Along with a little bit of chop. Which is ground corn mostly, although when we didn’t have a whole lot of corn, we put hay in it too.”
“And they liked that?”
“Yeah. Corn will make them fat, but I don’t know that corn fed animals are the healthiest animals we can eat.” He paused and then as though thinking that that was probably not something a ten-year-old wanted to hear about, he continued on a different subject. “I helped milk the cows. I was able to go out into the field and bring them in when it was milking time. There for a while they had a horse I could ride, which I love. But mostly I just walked. When the milk truck came and emptied the tank, sometimes Pap would put me in the tank so I could walk around the bottom of it and scrub up the sides and the top, which were hard for him to reach, especially as he got older.”
“They put you in the milk tank? Was it dangerous?” Baxley asked. I am thinking the same thing.
“No. Not dangerous at all. I could shimmy my way out if I needed to, and I often did. Now, I wouldn’t want to be in it when it had milk in it, because there was an agitator inside, that I’m sure probably wasn’t safe to be around. Plus, who would want to drink milk after it had a little boy swimming in it?”
That made Baxley laugh, and I laugh too. He is so charming when he wants to be, and he says he’s not good with children, but obviously he is mistaken. Baxley seems enraptured with him. Not in love with him, but just... Like she really likes him and enjoys his company.
“What else did you do?”
“I told you we played in the creek. But, there were goats to milk, and we had to feed the hens, which wasn’t hard, but watering them was a little bit more difficult. They had a lot more hens back then, maybe a hundred, and they had a five gallon waterer. That was pretty heavy for a little boy. But, one of my jobs was to fill it up every day. Because, hens will die if they don’t have water.”
“And you had to carry it to the henhouse?” Baxley asked.
“Yeah. Until I got smart and I used the hose. It was much easier to drag the hose over to the henhouse than it was to carry the five gallon bucket from the shed to the henhouse.”
“How long did it take you to figure that out?”
“I did a whole summer of carrying the five gallon bucket before I realized that I didn’t need to. And, my uncle just kind of looked at me and laughed. I think they figured I would learn more if I figured it out myself.”
“He didn’t tell you? Even though it was too heavy for you?”
“Nope. They were right. You know, when you tell somebody everything, and they don’t have anything left to figure out for themselves, you’re not really doing them any favors.”
“I don’t know,” Baxley said, and she looked like she was thinking about that.
“Well, I think you learn things better sometimes if you get to experience them. Now, big things, like learning to look both ways before you cross the street. It’s better that you learn to do that when someone tells you, rather than after getting hit by a car and decide maybe that wasn’t a good idea after all.”
“Um. You could be dead. And then you can’t learn!” Baxley pointed out.
It makes Pete laugh.
“Exactly. So, that’s probably something that somebody ought to tell you. But, the thing about the heavy water? It’s good for kids to figure things out. Actually, I’m not even sure my uncle knew that it was a smarter way to do it. Maybe he had never figured out that he could fill it up over the chicken coop and he didn’t have to walk the bucket the whole way from the shed to the coop.”
“And you taught him!” Baxley said, seeming to think the idea of him teaching his uncle something was pretty funny.
We played in the creek a bit more, and then Baxley suggested that she go show him the swans, and we got out of the creek, carrying our shoes and walking on the path while our feet dried off.
“If I would have known that we were doing this, I could have brought some towels down.”
“It’s more fun to walk in your bare feet,” Baxley said, although to my knowledge, she’d never been outside in her bare feet before. Even as a child. Her mother had always had her completely dressed.
Maybe what Pete was saying was absolutely right, and actually applied a little bit to Baxley, although I didn’t really think that he was deliberately talking about her. He didn’t really know what her upbringing was.
To my surprise, it was late afternoon by the time we were done just playing in the backyard. I had a better afternoon than I’ve had in a very long time, and I’m pretty sure Baxley feels the same.
As we are walking back, she says, “Are you coming tomorrow?”
She sounds eager.
“Sure am. I’ll be here at six, which is when they said you wake up, and I’ll be taking you to school, making sure you get in okay. And then I’ll be picking you up when it’s done.”
“Oh. I have to go to school. I forgot tomorrow was Monday.”
She wrinkled her nose, and I could plainly see she was not happy about that.
“I can’t promise we’ll be able to fit a whole lot in tomorrow afternoon, or any afternoon after school, but we can make plans now to go to the farm on Saturday. I usually go there on my day off and give my aunt a hand. I know that she’ll miss me if I don’t, and I can go while you’re at school if you don’t want to, but...if you do, I’ll make sure she knows we’re coming Saturday. She might even make some kind of dessert, like pumpkin pie.”
“I love pumpkin pie! It’s my favorite!” Baxley said. And then she nodded. “Please? Every day that I don’t have to be in school, I’d like to be on the farm. I mean, if I like it as much as I think I will.”
“I think you’ll like it more,” I say, and they both look at me like they’d forgotten I was there. It had been so much fun watching the two of them interact, and remembering what Pete had said about not being very good with children. I can’t wait to rub it in that he is actually much better with kids than what he thought he was.
He doesn’t stay long after we go inside the house, and I don’t follow him out. As much as I want to.
He does turn and look at me once, and our eyes meet. I don’t know what he is thinking, but I am thinking that I can’t wait to see him tomorrow night.