“Oh! Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yeah, I heard. You said the next meal’s on me.” I swallowed hard and blew out a loud breath. “The thing is, I don’t know when I’ll be coming back this way.”
“We won’t worry about that for now. But if and when you do come back this way, you owe me.”
“Okay. By the way, what did you order for me?”
“Deep-fried catfish. They soak it in buttermilk first for about twenty minutes. And then they sprinkle it with a little bit of cayenne pepper before they coat it with meal and deep-fry it in lard. It’s the best fish in town. Even the mayor says so. He sends his colored handyman over here at least once a week to pick up his order. Last week that greedy peckerwood had the nerve to come over here hisself to complain about them being stingy with his orders. They gave him another order for free. That’s just how good the food is here.”
“Buttermilk-soaked, deep-fried catfish sure sounds real tasty and I can’t wait to see for myself, Betty Jean.” I looked toward my car. “I guess I’d better be on my way. I got a long drive ahead of me.”
“Well, since I treated you, you can treat me to a ride home. You can eat your order there while it’s still hot. If you wait until you get back to Branson, it’ll be cold and soggy. Come on. I live with my sister just down the road apiece and around the corner to the right. It’ll be the first house you get to.”
“All right,” I mumbled.
We didn’t talk during the short ride to the shabby, tin-roofed house near some railroad tracks. I was glad it was only about half a mile away. I didn’t want to spend too much time alone with this beautiful girl. I was going to gobble up my fish order as fast as I could and be on my way. Before I could even turn off the motor, Betty Jean swung open the door on her side and jumped out. I parked and followed her as she trotted toward the porch, even though I knew that what I should have been doing was running my ass in the opposite direction. But I couldn’t. Either she had already put a spell on me, or I was weaker than I thought.
Once we got inside, she waved me to a plaid couch in the middle of the living room/dining room floor. I eased down and looked around the sorry place. The odor of stale turnip greens was so thick, it seemed like it was seeping through the walls. Every piece of furniture looked like it belonged in the city dump, especially a chair with no legs facing the couch. But everything looked clean and was neatly organized. Several run-over shoes sat in a crooked row on the floor by the front door. If Betty Jean hadn’t been so cheerful, I would have felt sorry for her.
She dropped the bag on top of an empty crate used for a coffee table and then she disappeared behind a flowered curtain in the back of the room. She came back a couple of minutes later with a bottle of hot sauce and two different-size glasses filled with some kind of juice. She plopped down next to me and immediately started telling me about her family. Her daddy had died before she was born and her mama had died three years ago. She had three siblings and a bunch of other relatives scattered all over the state. While we ate our food, which was pretty good, I let her do most of the talking. She hadn’t asked me much about myself yet. And if she did, I hoped she didn’t ask about Joyce. “You look nervous. You ain’t got to be nervous around me. I don’t bite.” She laughed.
“I ain’t nervous,” I declared, with my hand shaking.
Betty Jean took my hand and kissed it. “Like I said, your wife is a real lucky woman.”
“I hope she thinks so too,” I said dryly. I had lost my appetite, but I managed to continue eating. Having to pick bones out of the fish slowed me down, so it was taking longer to finish than I wanted it to. I was walking on some thin ice and it was getting thinner by the minute. When I swallowed my last bite and hawked up a fishbone, I wiped grease off my lips with the back of my hand and then I got nosy. “Where is your man at?”
“What makes you think I got a man?”
“You look old enough and you sure got what every man wants. . . .”
“I do? Well, if you don’t mind, can you tell me what I got that every man wants?”
My laugh was so nervous, I almost choked on it. “Slow down now. You old enough to know what I mean, so ain’t no need for me to say it. And another thing, you moving kind of fast for a man my age. I’m surprised I’m able to keep up with you.”
“You ain’t that old. My ex turned forty on his last birthday.”
“Oh well.” I coughed because my words kept getting stuck in my mouth so it was getting harder and harder for me to spit them out. “Not that it’ll make no difference, but I’m thirty-one. What about you?”
“Old enough to marry but too young to bury,” she giggled. “My grandmama used to say that. She had five husbands. But if you really want to know, I turned eighteen last month.”
She looked more like fourteen, so I was glad to hear that
