Mark leaning against her in comfort, Mama watching a pair of bees dance above her husband’s stone. I crossed my arms, stared down at my shoes, and kept my own thoughts. Finally Sister wiped her face, sniffled, and said: “Mark. Take your grandmother to the car. I need to talk to Uncle Jordy a minute.” “Aw, Mom, it’s hot in the car-” “Here. Turn on the air conditioner.” I tossed the keys at Mark and he went, knowing she would brook no argument. Mama laughed as they stumbled among the graves, winding their way back to the road. “Look, Sister, I’m sorry I forgot-” “You just tell me, Jordy. I need to know. Are you forgetting about him? Does he not matter to you anymore, now that you’ve got a new father?” I blinked. “Of course he matters to me. How could you ask that? I could never forget Daddy!” “You did today. I realize that all this mess with Lorna has you distracted, but you don’t ever talk about Daddy anymore. We used to laugh about his old Aggie jokes, the way he could impersonate Cousin Pearl, how he taught us to play baseball when we were kids. You don’t ever mention that now.” I shook my head. “This is crazy.” “Is it? You’ve got a new father, one that’s just chomping at the bit to be the World’s Greatest Dad to you. I don’t have that luxury. I’ve buried my daddy. I don’t have a replacement waiting in the wings.” “No one-not even Bob Don-could replace Daddy, Sister. Bob Don may want to be a father to me, but hell, I’m still not used to the idea of him being my father. If you think this has been hard on you, you don’t have a clue what it’s been like for me.” I knelt by Daddy’s wreath and fingered the ribbon of blue-his favorite color-that hung from the circle of flowers. “And my having a relationship with Bob Don- if I choose to have one-doesn’t mean I’ve betrayed Daddy.” “I’m not so sure I believe that, Jordy.” I stood. “Have you forgotten that Mama, Mark, and I would probably be dead if it wasn’t for Bob Don?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. Have you forgotten that your precious Bob Don slept with our mother when she was married to Daddy?” “Hardly.” I patted my chest. “You wouldn’t have me to torture if he hadn’t.” “And that’s the man you have as a father now.” She wiped her tears and pointed down at the grave we stood arguing over. “I’m angry. I’m angry the man who could have broken up our parents’ marriage wants to be in our lives. And don’t say it’s just your life. It’s mine, too. You’re my brother and I love you. But I’m furious and I’ve got every right to be.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know what I even want from Bob Don. I’m certainly not prepared to dismiss him from my life. You can’t ask me to do that.” “No. I don’t expect that.” I heard the distant whine of a car and saw a steel-gray Cadillac Seville churning dust along the cemetery road. “God, does he have radar?”
Sister asked. We watched Bob Don’s Caddy park behind my Blazer. He got out of the car, smoothing his crown of hair into place, carrying a large bouquet of flowers. “My God, he remembered and you didn’t.”
Sister walked in Bob Don’s direction as he tentatively approached Daddy’s grave. “Hi, Bob Don. I’m sure you and your son would like some time together.” He heard the hardness in her voice. “I’m sorry, Arlene. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” “Give Jordy a ride to the library, would you? I have to take Mama home.” She didn’t wait for a reply. I remained silent as he laid the flowers on Daddy’s grave, the only noise the retreating engine of my car as my sister gunned it down the cemetery path. “Thanks for coming,” I said, at a loss for original conversation. “I’m a little surprised you’re here.” “I’d planned to stop by today, but I called and Lorna said y’all were out here. I hoped you wouldn’t mind me coming out while you were here.” “I don’t mind. I can’t speak for my sister.” He tucked his hand into the back of his well-worn khakis. “She still ain’t used to me. That’s okay.
It’ll take some time.” “Yeah, but she has to be willing to give you that time, Bob Don. She’s not exactly comfortable with what you represent in our family’s past.” “Boy, you are the biggest brooder I ever saw.” Bob Don smiled up at me, shielding his eyes from the morning glare. “I’ve always believed that a man should go on with what life dealt him and try not to fret about it so much.” The thought rose in my mind, unbidden: Maybe that’s why you could wait until my mother was crazy and my daddy was dead to tell me the truth. It wasn’t fair; he’d only been holding up his end of a damnably hard bargain. “I don’t mean to be a brooder. I suppose I have more than my share to fret over.” “Arlene messing with your head?” “No. Lorna and Candace.” I kicked at the grass. “I got women troubles, Bob Don. I got one in my house that needs me and one that’s pretty upset about the situation.”
“You love that Lorna?” Bob Don has never been one for beating around bushes. “I did once, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t know what love is.” “Now that, boy, is unadulterated bullshit.” Bob Don put his hands on his ample hips and shook his head at me. “Excuse me?” “Nobody who was raised with as much love as you could say they don’t know what love is. Your mama loves you.” He pointed down at Lloyd Poteet’s grave. “And you can’t tell me that man didn’t love you. God, he loved you. And your sister and your nephew love you, and I do believe Miss Candace Tully loves you. You’ve known more love in your life than most, Jordy. So don’t try telling me that you can’t figure out what to do about them gals ‘cause you don’t know what love is. You’re just goddamned lazy.” He imitated a drawly rasp of a whine on the last few words that I was sure represented my voice. I started to parry with a sharp reply, but ended up staring down at Daddy’s grave. Bob Don’d scored a hit against me and I knew it. I ran a finger along the clayred granite top of Daddy’s marker, the stone beginning to heat in the rising temperature. “Do I love Lorna? I’m sure I did once.” “Once ain’t now.” “No, it’s not. A lot’s changed. I’m not sure what I want.
If I was back with her-” “You could go on back to big ol’ Boston town and not fret no more about having a new daddy and a sick mama.” Bob Don, awkwardly, put a beefy hand on my shoulder. And as I looked into his face I saw that folks had been wrong; I wasn’t the spitting image of my mother. There was a lot of his face in mine-the wide eyes, the gentle taper of the nose, the high cheekbones, and the ruddy skin.
Standing over my daddy’s grave, I nearly shuddered at the shock of the realization. “I’m not interested in ducking my obligations, Bob Don.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you were. God knows I’m not one to accuse some soul of avoiding responsibility. But I think I know what that Yankee gal means to you. Your old life back, with none of these complications. You may love Candace and your mama, but they make life a little harder to live.” “Can you take me to the library? I’m running late now and if I lose my job, my life will be complicated for sure.”
“Glad to, son.” He glanced down at the double spray of flowers on Daddy’s grave. “See, Lloyd? I’m doing my best to take care of him now.
Just like I promised.” I spent the rest of that Saturday morning doing library business: drafting a grant application for more government money (the competition among rural libraries can be intense), ordering some new children’s books (that’s our fastest-growing section-we’re a fertile bunch in Mirabeau), and getting advice on how to heal my arm from our elderly patrons, many of whom still believe that a shot of whiskey mixed in a dollop of honey will cure pert near anything. I’d called Junebug earlier in the morning and told him what Lorna had told me about Greg’s business and his silent partner, Doreen Miller. He hadn’t called back with any news. Eula Mae and Nina Hernandez stopped by to festoon the library bulletin board with colorful flyers that proclaimed JOIN SAVE OUR RIVER ECOLOGY (S.O.R.E.)! CONTRIBUTE AND PROTECT MIRABEAU’S FUTURE. “I hope,” I observed acidly while watching Eula Mae indiscriminately shoot the cork with a staple gun, “that those flyers are printed with nontoxic inks on recycled paper.” “Of course they are!” Nina retorted. She seemed to have recovered from her interrogation after Greg’s murder and to be possessed of a new zeal to defeat the land-acquisition plans. I winced as they stapled right over my poster for the summer reading program. “I don’t think there’s much chance of Intraglobal continuing with their plans for Mirabeau. Greg Callahan has one silent partner that no one can find yet, and she’ll probably want to pull out.” “We aren’t taking that chance.” Eula Mae smirked. “If it’s not Intraglobal, it’ll be some other scum-sucking outfit of post-Eighties yuppies looking for one last frontier to ruin.
Nina and I are amassing a good-sized war chest to fight development on the river.” “Just how big has this gotten, Eula Mae?” She is one, after all, to throw herself entirely into a project. Lucky she’s never developed an interest in quicksand. “We’ve raised nearly fifty-five thousand dollars,” Eula Mae said, the pride evident in her voice.
“With more pledged on the way. We’re going to hold a big dance over at the Veterans’ Hall, and we’ve got people going door-to-door to solicit contributions, and-” “And you are about to staple those to the bricks.
Give me that.” I wrested the staple gun from her over-eager hand before she could attach the next notice to a spot beyond the bulletin board. “Well, aren’t you a mite grumpy? Things tense over at the Chateau de Yankee Amour?” Eula Mae asked sweetly, grabbing the staple gun back from me. “Everything is fine,” I replied. “Don’t y’all have somewhere else to go? Or someone else to bother? I can’t believe Miss Twyla is letting the two of you run this.” I usually have a saint’s patience with Eula Mae, but today I felt decidedly heretical. “Miss Twyla has her mind on strategic matters. C’mon, Nina,” Eula Mae said, shaking her head sadly at me. “Jordy is just upset he’s not going to be able to sell that land of his now. Of course he’s probably getting ready to go back to Boston anyway, where I’m sure they’re used to having nasty polluted rivers.” With that parting shot, she left the field, an equally haughty Nina in tow. With the S.O.R.E. Sisters dismissed, I’d just finished eating a ham sandwich I’d fixed in our little back kitchen when Gretchen arrived. I can’t say I wasn’t pleased to see Gretchen. She’d gobbled that annoying Billy Ray Bummel like a freetail bat on a skeeter, and I had to like her a little for that. Even if the rest of the time she could
