Southern Discomfort

'My cousin and her new husband have a condo down at Emerald Isle,' said Cindy, 'and he's got to go to Chicago on business so she's invited us to come stay with her next week. Just four females. It's not like Jet's going to have men over or anything and her new-married.'

'Jet Johnson's your cousin?' I asked.

'Jet Ingram now,' Cindy said. 'Actually, second cousin. Our grandmothers are sisters. Anyhow, she's settled down a lot these last two years and I don't know why Mr. Herman won't trust her to chaperon.'

Annie Sue just shrugged, but I could have told Cindy why my straitlaced brother objected. And for once I agreed with him. Jet Johnson's more my age than Cindy's. She grew up in our part of the woods over in Cotton Grove and she didn't get her nickname at the tender age of thirteen just because she had dark eyes and coal black hair. She broke the Colleton County sound barrier, and drugs and sex were only the tip of her wildness. There'd been rumors of dealing and known acts of violence.

True, I'd heard nothing in the last year or so. And maybe I was turning into an old fogy right before my own eyes. All the same, I didn't like hearing that one of Annie Sue's best friends was that closely related, and I was glad old stick-in-the-mud Herman had put his foot down on any beach trip Jet Johnson might be a part of.

'I think he's just being mean,' Cindy persisted. 'Why don't—'

Paige abruptly nudged her foot and smiled over my shoulder. 'Hey, Miss Nadine.'

I turned and there was my sister-in-law bearing a box of homemade cookies.

'Ah, here you all are!' said Nadine. 'Who wants a fudge delight?'

CHAPTER 7

ROUGHING IN

'Rough carpentry includes the layout, cutting, and erection of formwork members and of such wooden structural members as plates, joists, studs, girders, bridging, bracing, and rafters... sheathing and subflooring members are also included under rough carpentry.'

The trusses to support the peaked roof were built of two-by-fours and looked like big wooden triangles with W-shaped stiff knees between rafter and joist. They spanned the full width of the house from one exterior wall to the other and they looked heavier than they were. Or maybe that was because many hands really do make light work. I was afraid we'd need sky hooks to hoist those cumber-some things up to the women perched like acrobats on those flimsy-looking skeletal walls. Up they went, though, and once they were nailed in place, the whole structure suddenly became rigid and sturdy. A steady stream of half-inch plywood sheets followed; and as soon as the bottom courses were secured, several of us swarmed onto the roof to tack down black tar paper.

'Now let it rain!' we told one another.

As we knocked off in the late afternoon, BeeBee Powell stood under the waterproof roof with a blissed-out smile on her face.

'Starting to look like a real house, isn't it?' I said.

'Starting to look like home,' she answered softly.

Her children were darting in and out between the open studs. 'Which is my room, Mama?' they called. 'Which is mine?'

Annie Sue approached with the wiring diagram in one hand and a carpenter's pencil in the other. 'We don't have to put everything exactly where it is on this, BeeBee. Did you think about where you'd like counter sockets in the kitchen? And what'd you decide about that ceiling light in Kaneesha's room?'

As they went off together to mark off on wall studs and ceiling joists where each socket and light fixture should go, I grabbed a basket and started picking up scraps to carry out to the dumpster.

Most of the women had gone, scattered for the week with promises to come back or send friends in their places next weekend. Still there were Annie Sue's friends who were straightening lumber in the back and Lu Bingham and Betty Ann Edgerton, who sat on the edge of the small front porch and conferred about delivery schedules for next Saturday's supplies. They were hoping to set the doors and windows and get the exterior sheathing on so that the whole house would be dried in, ready for insulation and Sheetrock.

I had emptied two basketfuls of trash when Betty Ann called, 'Come and sit a minute.'

'I'm afraid my muscles will seize up if I stop moving,' I said, but I didn't need to be asked twice.

Out in the side yard, Cindy McGee and Paige Byrd had stepped into a water fight with the Powell kids. Squeals of laughter erupted every time the hose changed hands.

'Where do they get the energy?' Betty Ann groaned as she pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her nail apron and lit up.

'Probably comes with being sixteen,' I said.

'Were we ever sixteen?' Lu took out her own cigarettes and offered me one.

I shook my head.

'We were sixteen,' Lu said. 'Because that's when you and I both started smoking. I remember sneaking out of study hall with you to the girls' bathroom. When did you quit?'

'When I was eighteen,' I reminded her. 'When my mother was dying with cancer.'

It was part of yet another secret bargain I had tried to strike with God that summer: Just let her live and I swear I'll never put another cigarette to my lips.

God wasn't bargaining that day either.

'Oh, Lordy, that's right,' said Betty Ann as Lu's hand hesitated on her lighter. 'Will it bother you if we smoke?'