Chapter 5 #2
I set the broom aside and accepted the container. I didn’t immediately open it, though I wanted to. My stomach growled. It didn’t matter what was inside; it was free food, and I would eat it. “Thank you,” I said, placing the container on the porch railing and resuming my sweeping.
Walt laughed, a hearty sound that echoed across the woods.
“Take a break and sit with me for a second.” He hobbled back to the golf cart, opened the cooler on the back, and pulled out two bottles of water and a Sprite.
“I went by the first two cabins,” he said, handing a water and the Sprite to me.
He eased down onto the porch steps, groaning the entire way.
“It would have taken Beth all day to clean one, God bless her soul.”
I joined him on the steps, my food in my lap. I still hadn’t opened it.
“Eat,” he insisted, nodding toward the plate.
Finally, I opened the lid, my nose smelling the food before my eyes really took it in. Two golden pieces of fried chicken, fluffy mashed potatoes, sauteed cabbage, and a soft roll, still warm. My mouth watered.
“This looks and smells amazing,” I said. It had been years since I’d eaten a home-cooked meal. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“Go on—” he said.
Before he finished speaking, without thinking, I sank my teeth into the roll, tearing through it in two bites, chewing and swallowing but not tasting it.
My hand moved on its own, reaching for the chicken.
The fried skin crunched as I bit into it, the grease slick on my fingers.
I scooped up a mound of mashed potatoes with my fork, the heap rising toward my mouth—only then did I realize I had an audience.
“I’m sorry.” I hastily pressed a napkin to my mouth.
Walt waved a hand. “Whatcha sorry for? You’re hungry. I reckon you worked up an appetite.”
Still embarrassed, I continued eating, but much slower. “It’s really good.”
“That there is fried chicken from Jackson’s Station. Best fried chicken in Alabama, if you ask me.”
“Thank you.”
Walt shrugged. “A little good food is the least I can offer before I say what I gotta say.” He removed his hat, running his fingers through his thinning hair as he continued quickly, “Leigh…I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
I froze, a bite of cabbage caught in my throat. He knew. The world knew. The bus had been discovered and my mug shot plastered across the news. I was caught.
It felt like an eternity before he spoke again, his words now leaking out slowly, like water from a clogged faucet, hesitant. “I…um. Well, you see…” He paused, his brow furrowing deeper as he let out a long sigh.
“Look,” I said, standing so abruptly my food slipped off my lap. “I don’t want any trouble. I can just go.”
He regarded me, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “Why on earth would you do that? I’m trying to ask you to stay.”
“Stay?” I repeated, my voice full of shock but my heart finally settling back into a normal rhythm. He could have said his unicorn was giving birth, and that would have been less unexpected.
He sighed again, deeper this time. “Beth, my regular cleaner…her son done got into some trouble up north, and she had to run off to take care of them young’uns. I’ve tried before to find a replacement—she can’t clean worth a damn—but I can’t find anybody else around here willing to take the job.”
I crossed my arms, still processing, reeling. “You want me to stay and keep cleaning the cabins?” I said, more for myself than for him.
“It’s just temporary, mind you. I know it ain’t glamorous, but I’m in a real bind.
” He rubbed the back of his neck as if trying to massage the tension out.
“Business been pretty steady, and I need to turn these cabins over quick. I’d do it myself, but I just don’t get around as good anymore.
” He tapped his cane twice on the porch step before turning his gaze back toward the cabin.
The scent of bleach lingered in the air, mingling with the earthy aromas of the surrounding woods.
“It’s just until Beth gets back. Just a few weeks, at most.”
I hesitated, a breath that Walt read as reluctance.
“I can pay you three hundred a week,” he said.
My eyes widened in disbelief, and he rushed to sweeten the deal. “Four hundred a week,” he blurted as if we were negotiating. “And I’ll drive you to the next Greyhound bus station myself once Beth returns.”
My heart raced at the prospect of the money. Then something deeper nagged at me, something just as pressing and possibly obstructing. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have any place to stay.”
He waved a dismissive hand, and with a pained grunt, he grabbed his cane and pulled himself up. “That’s no trouble at all. You can stay in my old cabin.” He walked over to his golf cart. “Grab your food. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
I looked down for the first time. The spilled Styrofoam had landed right side up.
We drove deeper into the woods, the tires crunching over the gravel path until we reached a clearing where a cabin sat nestled in a bank of trees.
It was older than the others, with weathered boards and a slanted roof.
The rustic shingles bore the scars of time and curled at their edges.
Inside, the walls were wooden planks, and a small window filtered in soft beams of light, illuminating the cozy living space.
A vintage stove, with its faded enamel and dials, sat against one wall next to a porcelain basin sink.
In the bedroom, a sturdy wooden bed loomed in the center covered with a patchwork quilt draped across the foot.
I ran my hands across it, admiring the craftsmanship, the design.
“That’s a Gee’s Bend quilt, made about twenty minutes from here,” Walt said. “They’re known all over the world. It’s what this area is famous for.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, turning to face Walt. “So is this cabin.”
“It has a roof and doors.”
I hesitated, uncertainty gnawing at me, but the warmth in his gaze felt like a lifeline. “You sure this won’t be too much trouble?”
“Ain’t no bother. This place has been vacant for months. You would be doing me a favor, really.”
“But you don’t know me. You found me sleeping outside…” My voice trailed off, doubt lacing my words.
Walt eased down onto the bed, the old frame creaking beneath him. “I know a woman in trouble when I see one,” he said, genuine sincerity blooming in his eyes. “Are you running from whoever did that to your face?”
I nodded, leaning in to his assumptions, pressing my fingers to my cheek.
He cursed under his breath, the sound heavy with empathy.
“I’ve been married three times, divorced twice.
Wife number one and I stayed friends. She got the cancer, took her before we even knew it.
Wife number two…” He huffed, memories flooding his gaze.
“She ran off to Miami with a man who had rented a cabin. Eventually came back to Camden, bruised, broke, and brokenhearted. I divorced her, but we remarried. My point is, real men don’t hit women. ”
“Walt…” I began, a swell of gratitude—and guilt—rising within me. But for once, he stood quickly and walked over to the door.
“You’re safe here,” he said without turning around, his voice reassuring.
He was a nice man, pure and simple, and I liked him effortlessly.
“I’ll show you the ropes. Ain’t too hard once you get the hang of it.”
“And when Beth comes back, I will be moving on,” I said, hoping to register the understanding in his eyes, wanting to confirm that my stay would not be permanent. “I promise I won’t let you down.”
He laughed, a warm, rich sound that cracked the gravity in the room. “I ain’t running a five-star establishment here. You’re doing a good job. Keep it up.”
Before I knew it, a week had slipped away.
Every day, without fail, Walt would find me while I cleaned the cabins to bring me a warm lunch from Jackson’s Station.
Every time, he would look at my face and ask how I was feeling.
There was a gentleness in his manner that continued to surprise me.
I wasn’t used to men being so nice. His interest seemed genuine, a grandfather checking on his granddaughter, He wanted nothing from me but the cabins cleaned and conversation.
Through our talks, I gleaned fragments of his life, particularly stories about his second wife and their marriage after she came back.
I could sense his longing for companionship.
I enjoyed listening, grateful that I wasn’t expected to talk back, grateful that he never pried into my past. After that first day, he had sensed my reluctance to share, respecting the invisible walls I had erected around my life.
I wondered what it would have been like to have a father like Walt instead of Daddy.
It wasn’t the ancestors, the voices that he heard.
I didn’t understand mental illness until later in life, and then things started to make sense.
Before, I thought he was just a monster.
How else could I explain his long absences from the family he claimed to love?
What else could explain the violent mood swings?
Daddy could be happy one minute, teaching us how to purify water, and then bent over Mama with his fists raised the next.
We didn’t see the mood swings coming, and neither did he.
They came and went like a door opening and closing.
He never remembered them and, afterward, operated as if they had never happened. We didn’t have that same privilege.