'No,' I said honestly.
In truth, I had always loved the smell of mellow tobacco and still missed cigarettes after all these years. Yet even if it did bother me, it would be hypocritical to say so, since part of my income is from the tobacco allotment I inherited from Mother. Besides, some of my sweetest memories had the smell of her cigarettes and Daddy's twining through them.
The sun headed down the western sky behind the tall pines but there was plenty of daylight left. I rested my tired back against a wall stud and waited for Annie Sue to finish up and carry me home. She and her two friends had talked about meeting some guys at a dance over at the Armory, but Aunt Zell and Uncle Ashe's Jacuzzi was the only entertainment I wanted tonight.
Marking on the studs as she talked, Annie Sue and BeeBee came down the newly defined hall into what would be the living room. '—and then over by the front door, we'll have a switch plate for the porch light and that lamp outlet, okay?'
BeeBee nodded. 'Sounds fine to me.' She grinned at the three of us flaked out on her new porch. 'Y'all look plumb worn out.'
Before we could retort, her son came around the corner of the house lugging the hose with such mischievous intent that she drew herself up sternly. 'Boy, you better think again 'fore you point that thing at me.'
Gurgling with laughter, he didn't hesitate and before we could dive for cover, all five of us were swept with a spray of cold water.
'Anthony Carl Powell, I'm gonna wear your bottom out!' his mother threatened as she leaped from the porch.
The child dropped the hose and fled, confident that she wasn't really angry, that the chase would end in a tumbled heap on the long grass under the trees.
Lu and Betty Ann looked at their soggy cigarettes ruefully.
'Time I was getting home anyhow,' said Betty Ann and went off to her truck.
'Me, too,' said Lu as she headed toward her own car. 'You'll be back next Saturday, Deborah?'
'Sure,' said Annie Sue. 'She's going to help me pull wire, right?'
I sighed. 'Right.'
'Maybe we could even get started one evening next week?'
'Maybe,' I said noncommittally.
Lu laughed and called goodbye to BeeBee, who was toweling her children off with her son's wet T-shirt so they wouldn't get mud on the seat of her car.
'Y'all aren't leaving now?' BeeBee asked.
'My dad's coming by to check that I've got everything marked out right,' Annie Sue told her. 'I thought he'd be here by now.'
'Probably making sure everybody's gone first,' I said.
'See you next week then,' said BeeBee as she finished buckling little Kaneesha into the backseat. Anthony Carl was buckled up, ready to roll, and both children waved to Paige and Cindy till the car pulled out of sight.
The two girls were drenched to the skin. Their hair hung in wet strands and their thin cotton shirts were plastered to their young bodies, outlining breasts and nipples.
At that moment, a bright red Jeep without its rag top screeched to a halt and a virile young white man pulled himself up by the roll bar. Sunlight glinted off his mirror shades.
'Well, well, well!' A salacious leer spread itself across his handsome face. 'Did someone forget to tell me about the wet T-shirt contest?'
He stepped down from the Jeep, hitched up his low-slung jeans and strolled across the grass. 'Hell-
The girls laughed at his burlesque of crude seducer. I just sat where I was and watched. Motionless on the floor behind the others, my baseball cap perched on one drawn-up knee, I could have been another teenager for all he noticed. He still hadn't pulled his eyes off those wet shirts; but I knew his face and now I remembered his name: C-for-Carver Bannerman, my cousin Reid's lead-foot, the man I'd fined a hundred dollars for grossly speeding in a residential zone and for failure to yield to an ambulance.
'Don't tell me you gals know how to hammer a stud into place?'
He marched right on up to them in that space-invading tactic men like him use, knowing most women will step back. Annie Sue and Paige did. Cindy stood her ground, dimples flashing, her green eyes daring him to further flights of outrageousness. Her back was against a porch support and he reached past her to brace himself, his chest less than six inches from hers. With his free hand, he pulled off his sunglasses and stared straight down into her pretty face.
It seemed a good time to pull the plug on this nonsense. I stuck my cap back on my head and leaned forward. 'Good evening, Mr. Bannerman.'
'Just wait your turn, dollface,' he drawled. 'I'll get to—' He hesitated, seeing me now, almost remembering my voice, but unable to think how he knew me.
Paige and Annie Sue were smiling as broadly as Cindy, who slipped out from under his arm and said, 'This is Ms. Deborah Knott.
'Oh, shit!' He downshifted from the cliche of walking penis to the cliche of boyish penitence, which he'd tried to use on me in court Tuesday. 'Stepped into it again, didn't I?'
'You do seem prone to it,' I agreed.
