Right after I took the cornbread out of the oven, I heard a commotion in the living room. I ran from the kitchen with the pot holder and the pan of bread still in my hand. I made it to the living room just in time to see Odell moaning and stumbling across the floor, looking like he’d seen a ghost. “What in the world happened to you?” I asked. I set the pot holder and pan on the coffee table and ran up to him and wrapped my arms around him because the way he was hobbling, it looked like he was about to collapse. “Where all did you go?”
“Joyce, I’m so glad you home!” he hollered, swaying against me like a man with one leg.
“I was getting real worried. Did the car break down or did you get lost?”
“Baby, you won’t believe what all I been through!” He was almost out of breath as I guided him by the hand to the couch, where he dropped down like a sack of rocks. The way he was huffing and puffing, you would have thought a dog had chased him in the house.
“What happened? You left here almost five hours ago.” I could tell from the bug-eyed look on his face that he was already in enough distress, so I kept my voice soft and low. I sat in his lap and draped my arm around his shoulder. He started wincing like he was in pain. “And why do you have bruises on your neck? Looks like you ran into a nest of yellow jackets.”
“That’s exactly what happened. Let me tell you the whole story first.” Odell stopped talking long enough to let out a few deep breaths and rub his neck.
“As I was creeping along that dirt road that leads to Carson Lake, I made too sharp a turn and ended up in a sand trap. I tried to spin out, but the more I mashed on the gas pedal, the deeper the tires sunk down. I had passed a few houses a couple of miles back, so I decided to walk back to one and see if I could get some help. Well, would you believe that the old white man who lived in that first house came to the door with his shotgun? He told me that if I didn’t get my black behind off his property, he’d fill it full of buckshots.”
“My Lord in heaven! What did you do?” I checked out Odell’s neck again. When I looked back at his face, I noticed a bruise on his cheek, too.
“I got back on the road and started walking until I got to the next house. There was a pickup truck in the front yard, but nobody came to the door when I knocked. I tried the back door but nobody answered that one neither. Since I wasn’t having no luck, and was taking a chance on getting myself shot or worse, I went back to the car. I decided to get me some tree limbs and slide a few up under the tires hoping that would help me jiggle the car out of that sand. The first tree I went up to had a yellow jacket nest and it was a big one! Right after I had plucked off a few limbs, the nest fell and them damn things got on me like white on rice.”
My mouth dropped open and I shivered. I’d been stung by yellow jackets before, so I knew the kind of damage they could do to a human being. I’d had the same kind of bruises Odell had on his neck. I had been lucky that day because I’d been able to duck before they got to my neck and face, so they had only stung me on my hands and arms. But ten years ago, one of my teenage cousins stepped on a nest that had fallen from a tree. So many yellow jackets stung him, he died later that night. I didn’t know what would be worse, my husband getting shot to death by a mean old cracker, or stung to death by a swarm of yellow jackets.
“Odell, I waited too long to get you. If something ever happens to you, they’ll have to bury me with you. . . .”
Chapter 20
Odell
“I WISH YOU WOULDN’T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT. IT’S BAD LUCK,” I told Joyce. I rubbed one of the spots where Betty Jean had sucked on my neck. I couldn’t believe Joyce was naïve enough to swallow my story about the yellow jackets. And I couldn’t believe that I’d been so caught up in Betty Jean I hadn’t even noticed how hard she was nibbling on my flesh until it was too late. She had done the same thing on other parts of my body too. But as long as I kept my drawers and undershirt on and got naked in the dark like I usually did, Joyce wouldn’t see the rest of the damage.
Words couldn’t describe how good Betty Jean had made me feel. She had made me see sex from a whole different angle. I was still in a trance, which I’d been in from the minute I’d scrambled out of her bed. As much as I had enjoyed her amazing body, Joyce was still the most important woman in my life. I knew that the sooner I returned to reality and focused on her, the better off I’d be.
“Let me put it this way, Odell. If I ever lose you, I wouldn’t want any other man in my life.”
“Now you talking even crazier. If something was to happen to me, I’d want you to find somebody else. We both know what it feels like to be alone and I didn’t like it no more than you did.”
“If I died, you’d get married again?”
