Sit! Stay! Speak! (11 page)

A devilish smile appeared on Jasper's face. “Good to know,” he replied. “Good to know.”

Addie stepped inside the barn. Grass had grown up in between the wooden slats, dirt and debris everywhere. There were rusty tools hanging from the rotting beams, swaying menacingly in the breeze. There was an old couch in the corner, its metal coils sticking out like curls on a child's head. With every step Addie took, something creaked or cracked or was crushed beneath her feet.

“We shouldn't stay in here too long,” Jasper warned her. “It's not safe.”

“Can I take a few of these loose boards with me?” Addie asked. “Some of them are still in pretty good shape.”

Jasper was standing in the doorway, his hands shoved down inside the pockets of his jeans. “What for?”

“I have an idea.” Addie bent down and picked up a stray board. That's when she saw it. Coiled inside the couch cushion next to the metal springs. A snake. “Jasper,” she rasped.
“Jasper!”

“What?” Jasper vaulted forward, following her voice. “What's wrong?”

Addie clutched the boards to her chest, afraid to move. It saw her. It was watching her. “Snake . . . snake . . . snake . . .” She repeated the word over and over.

Jasper took several swift steps toward her. “Cover your ears, Adelaide.”

Addie wasn't listening. The snake was moving. It was swaying back and forth. If it had haunches, it would have been on them. It was going to bite her. She knew it. She fell back when it lunged, the bullet from Jasper's gun whizzing by her ear. The snake's head popped like a cherry tomato, the bloody body writhing around the coils of the couch.

Addie sat there for a minute, stunned. Her ears were ringing.
She could see Jasper in front of her, but she couldn't hear what he was saying.

“Addie? Addie? Are you okay?” He was shaking her.

She blinked. “I'm okay.”

“I told you there were snakes in here.”

“Did you shoot it?” She let him pull her to her feet. “With a gun?”

“What else would I have shot it with?” Jasper asked. “I told you to cover your ears.”

“Does everybody have a gun in this damn town?”

“You're from Chicago. People have guns in Chicago.”

“The criminals have guns in Chicago,” Addie replied. “Cops have guns.”

“Well, down here we don't wait for the law to show up. We take care of our own business.”

Addie grinned at him. “You're such an enigma, Jasper Floyd. A gun-toting farmer with a law degree.”

“C'mon,” Jasper said. “We better get back to the festivities.”

Addie realized that he was still holding on to her hand. She allowed him to lead her back to the Polaris, and only then did he let her go. “Oh, wait!” Addie jumped off the vehicle as Jasper started it up. “I forgot my boards!”

A
CROWD HAD
gathered near the front porch of the Floyd mansion. There were several Floyd Farms employees standing off to one side as Artemis and Jack had a heated exchange behind them.

“What's going on over there?” Addie asked.

“I don't know.” Jasper jumped out of the driver's seat. He made a beeline for his parents.

Addie followed him, stopping next to Bobby and Wanda, who were looking on at the entire spectacle. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Bobby replied. “You missed half the show.”

“What do you mean?”

Bobby tore his eyes away from Artemis, Jack, and now Jasper. “Someone came over the loudspeaker and told everybody to gather out in the front yard for the fireworks display. About that time Jack Floyd come out of the house. They announce his name, everybody turns to look, and he starts yellin' at everybody.”

“Why?”

“Hell if I know.”

Jasper's arms were crossed, and he was staring down at his father, his mouth set in a hard line. After a few minutes, Jasper threw up his hands and stormed off toward the Polaris. As Addie hurried after Jasper she heard Artemis say, “Okay, everybody! Are you ready for some fireworks? Old Mr. Clyde here is going to start the show!”

Jasper heaved himself down on the seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“Is everything okay?” Addie asked.

“It's fine,” Jasper replied through clenched teeth.

“It didn't look fine.”

“I don't give a shit how it looks.”

Evening was setting in, and mosquitoes droned around Addie's face. She swatted at them with her hands, smacking her bare shoulders and neck. “I've never seen mosquitoes this big. I'm starting to think if I'm not careful they'll carry me off.”

“Welcome to the Delta.”

“They don't seem to be bothering you.”

Jasper reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said. “It's a dryer sheet.”

“What do you want me to do with a dryer sheet?”

“Put it in your pocket or your shirt or something,” Jasper instructed. “It'll keep the mosquitoes away.”

Addie arched an eyebrow but wasted no time shoving the dryer sheet into the pocket of her cutoffs. “There are lots of secrets to surviving down here, aren't there?”

“There are secrets to surviving anywhere,” Jasper replied.

“This is the first place I've ever lived where I had to put a dryer sheet in my pants to avoid contracting malaria.”

Behind them the first of the fireworks burst forth into the sky followed by crackles and pops and oohs and aahs. “I better go make sure Clyde is all right,” Jasper said. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. “A few years ago he 'bout set himself on fire. My dad had to tackle him to the ground in front of everybody.”

“That explains why both your dad and Clyde seemed less than thrilled about the fireworks this year.”

“My dad loves fireworks,” Jasper replied. “It's about the only thing he likes. This was always his night. His show.”

“Then I don't understand—”

“What's not to understand?” Jasper cut her off. “The man didn't want to be pushed out in his wheelchair for everybody to see. He didn't want an announcement that he's a goddamn cripple. That he's not a man anymore.”

“Being in a wheelchair doesn't make him less of a man.”

Jasper pivoted. “You want to know a secret about living here? About
surviving
here? People either have or they have not. There is no in between. Not here. Generation after generation. You might see us playing nice at the grocery store or at the fair or even here tonight. But everybody knows exactly what the person next to them has. And what they don't. My father could walk into a room
and command respect. People feared him. He had power. All of that was taken away from him in fifteen seconds. Now his employees pity him. He thinks I pity him. How can anyone respect a man who needs help getting onto the toilet in the morning?”

“Is that really how you feel?” Addie asked. “About your dad? About everything?”

“Of course not,” Jasper said. “Why do you think I left?”

“You could change it. Be different.”

Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. “It doesn't work that way, Adelaide. You can't change an entire culture.”

“So I guess the best solution is to not even try?”

“You don't get it,” Jasper said. “People don't want to change. Not here. Not anywhere. But people like you always want someone
else
to step up to the mic and tell everybody that they're doing it wrong. That you know better. That your way beats our way. That's why people like you never last very long down here. We're all just waiting for you to give up and go home. We never really wanted you here to begin with.”

Jasper mashed a boot into the ground, a line drawn into the waning Delta twilight, a line that had not existed until that very second—until his eyes blazed right through her and focused on another muddy Mississippi River secret that Adelaide could not yet see.

A
DDIE LAY AWAKE IN HER BED, EYES OPEN
,
STARING AT THE
wall. The man in the white coat plagued her dreams. Jonah plagued her dreams. Jasper's angry face plagued her dreams.

In the darkness, Addie tried to focus on the familiar aspects of the room. The heavy oak dresser and nightstand had belonged to Aunt Tilda, as had the thick blanket under which Addie and Felix were huddled. She thought that maybe if she just concentrated hard enough she could still smell her aunt on the fabric.

She wished more than anything she had more than just a musty, old blanket to comfort her. She wished her aunt was there, stroking her hair and telling her that it would all be okay. She wished she could wander into the kitchen dazed from her bad dream and sit down at the table to a plate of cheese and crackers, her aunt's remedy for any ailment. Most of all, Addie wished that the last vision of her aunt's face wasn't fifteen years old. Addie
sat up, choking back the guilt and sobs that threatened to be her undoing. She wasn't going to cry. Not tonight.

In the closet in the spare room, Addie had begun a collection of sorts. Her aunt had used the shelving for quilts. On top of the quilts, Addie placed odds and ends—things that she didn't know what to do with but didn't want to throw away. So far, she'd amassed three light fixtures, four balls of twine, six hand mirrors, and various other knickknacks, including a handful of old doorknobs and dresser knobs—what Addie had come for.

Wandering into the living room, she sat down on the couch and looked at the boards she'd brought home from the farm. Some of them still had the flaking red barn paint on them. Some of the pieces were jagged, and some of them looked like they could be fit right back into the barn's walls as if they'd never been gone.

Jonah hadn't liked to make anything new out of anything old. He was traditional; he wanted only to save what had been lost. There had never been room inside their store for the repurposed creations. Everything had one purpose, Jonah's purpose.

But where Jonah saw barn wood, Addie saw shutters; she saw shelving. Where he saw doorknobs, Addie saw a coatrack.
But doorknobs don't always have to go on doors,
Addie thought.
Paint doesn't always have to be removed.

Jasper said she didn't understand the Delta, and maybe she didn't. Maybe it was like Jasper said—one person couldn't change a culture. Maybe it was like the wood in front of her; stripping away the paint would make it pretty, make it shiny, but then it wouldn't be the same thing.

Change was something Addie desperately needed. It was the reason she'd moved here, a place most of her friends and family back in Chicago didn't even know existed. She missed Chicago.
She missed the familiarity of it. She missed the restaurants, the weather, and the people. She missed the clients she and Jonah worked with. Many of them had become like family, and just before she left for Eunice, one of them offered her a job. He was the owner of a large auction house in Chicago.

“It wouldn't be much to start,” he'd said to her one afternoon over coffee. “You'd be the assistant to my top picker, but he'll be retiring in the next year.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Addie had gushed. “I'm leaving for Eunice, Arkansas, in a few days, but just for a few months.”

“Where?”

Addie laughed. It felt good to laugh. “It's just a little town. Nobody ever knows where it is.”

“Well, anyway,” he'd continued, “think about it, and when you get home give me a call.”

It was, at least, something for her to hold on to—a reason to go back to Chicago when the time came. She'd be starting all over . . . again. Addie took the most jagged paint-covered piece of board and sat it in front of her. Then she took four of the doorknobs and sat them face up on the wood. It looked like something she'd seen in a magazine once, hanging up in a shabby chic bedroom. What she'd hang on the knobs, she had no idea. Tomorrow she'd buy the tools to attach the knobs, and she'd hang it up in this house, her house, at least for now.

“Y
OU KNOW
,” A
DDIE SAID
,
PEEPING AT
W
ANDA OVER A RACK OF
clothes from inside Lily's Resale Boutique, “when I invited you to go to Memphis with me this weekend, I didn't mean that you had to plan everything down to the last detail.”

“It's your birthday!” Wanda exclaimed. “You shouldn't have to plan your own celebration.”

“It's not a celebration,” Addie pointed out. “We're just going into the city for a low-key weekend.”

“Right, right.” Wanda bobbed her head up and down. “I know.”

“Something tells me that you don't know.”

“So what are you going to wear on our big night out? Do you think Lily's will have what you're looking for?”

“Somehow I doubt it,” Addie replied.

“What are you talking about? Everybody knows that Lily's Resale Boutique is the premiere clothing shop in Eunice!” Wanda
rolled the word
premiere
around in her mouth so that it sounded like
pray-meere.

Both women were consumed by a fit of giggles. Lily's was nothing more than a thrift store with a fancy name and puffed-up prices, but every once in a while there was a real bargain to be had. Addie had found this out the hard way when she'd tried to donate some of her old winter clothing and had been flatly rejected by the priggish woman behind the counter.

“Seriously,” Wanda said as soon as they had calmed down. “What are you going to wear?”

“I don't know,” Addie replied with a shrug, searching through a rack of pleated dress pants. “Does it matter?”

Wanda rolled her eyes and grabbed Addie by the arm. “Come on. Let's see if we can find something cute in this godforsaken store.”

Addie followed Wanda to the back of the store and through an open doorway. “This is where they keep all the nicer stuff,” Wanda said. “You know, the stuff donated by people with money . . . the ones in Jasper's tax bracket.”

“Apparently that tax bracket is important,” Addie mumbled.

“It is for some people.” Wanda shrugged. “My granny used to say that none of us had a pot to piss in. Don't suppose I ever will.”

“What?”

“It means I don't have anything worth much.”

“You have Bryar.”

Wanda grinned and said, “And ain't he worth a million?”

Addie was just about to give up when a dress caught her eye. Addie pulled it off the rack and held it up. It was blue chiffon with a floral print. The dress was short and strapless.

“Oh, Addie, you look great!” Wanda gushed when Addie emerged from the dressing room. “Really, I love it.”

“Me too,” Addie replied. “I have a pair of blue leather pumps that will match perfect.” She winked at her friend. “I know how you feel about heels.”

“I do love a good heel.”

Addie twirled in front of the mirror. She loved it. She knew what her mother would say if she was there.
I like that, Adelaide. You don't have anything that looks like that.

“It's a little snug on top,” she fretted. “But I don't think it looks too obscene, do you?”

“Of course not.” Wanda stared down into Addie's cleavage. “Then again . . . a little obscenity never hurt anybody.”

Addie glanced around the room. There were paintings with price tags hanging on the walls. There were baby bows made by locals at a booth at the front. There were several refinished dressers with clothes popping out of them, and they all seemed to have price tags as well. She turned to Wanda and said, “Hey, do you think people sell things on consignment here?”

Wanda wrinkled her brow. “You mean, like, clothes?”

“No.” Addie pointed to the paintings behind her friend. “Those paintings are for sale. So are half the pieces of furniture sitting in this store.”

“Hey,” Wanda hollered up to the woman at the front of the store. “Hey, honey, can you come back here a sec?”

“Well, Wanda Carter,” the woman said. “I didn't even see you come in.”

“Well, you was hittin' that Burger King wrapper pretty hard, Delores.” Wanda smiled. It was a smile Addie hadn't seen. “We have a question for ya.”

“Shoot.”

“Are them pictures up there on the walls for sale?”

“They are. Why? You looking to redecorate?”

“Maybe.”

Delores tapped a pointed red fingernail on one of her hips. “These pictures are pretty expensive, seein' as how they were painted by local artists and all. But the Goodwill is just down the street.”

“I was actually wondering if you were taking on any consignments,” Addie cut in before Wanda could respond.

Delores eyed Addie. “What's your name, sugar?”

“Adelaide Andrews.”

“Oh.” Her eyes lit up. “I know who you are. Sure, bring a sample of what you've got by. We're always looking for new talent.” She turned and walked back up to the front of the store without another word.

“That woman,” Wanda fumed. “She thinks her shit don't stink just 'cuz her daddy bought her this store. He bought her that nose, too, you know.”

“I didn't know,” Addie replied, trying not to smile. “Forget about her.”

“She's hated me since high school,” Wanda continued. “I've never been able to figure out why.”

“Let's just get out of here.” Addie hurried back into the dressing room.

“What on earth do you have to consign, anyway?”

“Nothing yet.”

“You thinkin' you might get back into the furniture business?”

Addie shrugged from inside the dressing room. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“You thinkin' you might stay here a while?”

“At least until I sell the house.”

Wanda followed Addie to the register. “Seems like a waste of time gettin' it all fixed up just to sell.”

“I'm not ruling anything out,” Addie said. She handed Delores the dress. “But the plan was always to sell.”

“My mama's a Realtor.” Delores handed Addie a strip of paper. “That's her card. She'd be happy to help you sell that house of yours.”

“Thanks.”

“Any friend of Jasper's is a friend of ours.”

Addie turned and raised an eyebrow at Wanda. This must be more of that small-town nuance that she was still becoming accustomed to. Everyone seemed to think there was something going on between her and Jasper.

“It was nice seeing you, Delores.” Wanda smiled that smile again. “Tell that little Joey of yours hello from Bryar. They're such good buddies at school.”

Delores went rigid. “Joey isn't mine,” she whispered.

“Oh, that's right.” Wanda slapped the countertop with her palm. “He belongs to McKenzie, don't he? I'm sorry; I keep forgettin' which one of you Troy married and which one of you gave birth to his illegitimate son. Anyway, you have a nice night.”

Addie took the bag from Delores's outstretched hand and said, “Thanks for the card. I'll be sure to give your mom a call.”

“I guess I know why Delores doesn't like me much,” Wanda said once they were outside. “But damn, sometimes that girl needs to be reminded that it ain't just her nose that's fake.”