Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

28

When they had been introduced,formally, Jude found out her name was Mrs. Fordham, which is what he called her from then on. He could not call her Bammy; paradoxically, he could not really think of her as Mrs. Fordham. Bammy she was, whatever he called her.

Bammy said, “Let’s put the dogs out back where they can run.”

Georgia and Jude traded a look. They were all of them in the kitchen then. Bon was under the kitchen table. Angus had lifted his head to sniff at the counter, where there were brownies on a plate under green Saran Wrap.

The space was too small to contain the dogs. The front hallway had been too small for them, too. When Angus and Bon came running down it, they had struck a side table, rattling the china on top of it, and reeled into walls, thudding them hard enough to knock pictures askew.

When Jude looked at Bammy again, she was frowning. She’d seen the glance that had passed between Jude and Georgia and knew it meant something, but not what.

Georgia spoke first. “Aw, Bammy, we can’t put them out in a strange place. They’ll get into your garden.”

Bon clouted aside a few chairs to squirm out from under the table. One fell over with a sharp bang. Georgia leaped toward her, caught her by the collar.

“I’ll take her,” Georgia said. “Is it all right if I run through the shower? I need to wash and maybe lie down. She can stay with me, where she won’t get into trouble.”

Angus put his paws up on the counter to get his snout closer to the brownies.

“Angus,” Jude said. “Get your ass over here.”

Bammy had cold chicken and slaw in the fridge. Also homemade lemonade, as promised, in a sweating glass pitcher. When Georgia went up the back stairs, Bammy fixed Jude a plate. He sat with it. Angus flopped at his feet.

From his place at the kitchen table, Jude had a view of the backyard. A mossy rope hung from the branch of a tall old walnut. The tire that had been attached to it once was long gone. Beyond the back fence was an alley, unevenly floored in old bricks.

Bammy poured herself a lemonade and leaned with her bottom against the kitchen counter. The windowsill behind her was crowded with bowling trophies. Her sleeves were rolled up to show forearms as hairy as his.

“I never heard the romantic story of how you two met.”

“We were both in Central Park,” he said. “Picking daisies. We got to talking and decided to have a picnic together.”

“It was either that or you met in some perverted fetish club.”

“Come to think of it, it might’ve been a perverted fetish club.”

“You’re eating like you never seen food before.”

“We overlooked lunch.”

“What’s your hurry? What’s happenin’ in Florida you’re in such a rush to get to? Some friends of yours havin’ an orgy you don’t want to miss?”

“You make this slaw yourself?”

“You bet.”

“It’s good.”

“You want the recipe?”

The kitchen was quiet except for the scrape of his fork on the plate and the thud of the dog’s tail on the floor. Bammy stared at him.

At last, to fill in the silence, Jude said, “Marybeth calls you Bammy. Why’s that?”

“Short for my first name,” Bammy said. “Alabama. M.B.’s called me that since she was wetting her didies.”

A dry mouthful of cold chicken lodged partway down Jude’s windpipe. He coughed and thumped his chest and blinked at watering eyes. His ears burned.

“Really,” he said, when his throat was clear. “This may be out of left field, but you ever go to one of my shows? Like, did you maybe see me on a twin bill with AC/DC in 1979?”

“Not likely. I didn’t care for that kind of music even when I was young. Buncha gorillas stompin’ around the stage, shoutin’ swearwords and screamin’ their throats out. I might’ve caught you if you were openin’ for the Bay City Rollers. Why?”

Jude wiped at the fresh sweat on his forehead, his insides all queer with relief. “I knew an Alabama once. Don’t worry about it.”

“How’d the two of you both get so beat up? You got scrapes on your scrapes.”

“We were in Virginia, and we walked to Denny’s from our motel. On the way back, we were nearly run down.”

“You sure about the ‘nearly’ part?”

“Going under a train trestle. Fella ran his Jeep right into the stone wall. Bashed his face a good one on his windshield, too.”

“How’d he make out?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Was he drunk?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“What happened when the cops got there?”

“We didn’t stay to talk to them.”

“You didn’t stay—” she started, then stopped and threw the rest of her lemonade into the sink, wiped her mouth with the back of her forearm. Her lips were puckered, as if her last swallow of lemonade had been more sour than she liked.

“You are in some hurry,” she said.

“A mite.”

“Son,” she said, “just how much trouble are the two of you in?”

Georgia called to him from the top of the stairs.

Come lie down, Jude. Come upstairs. We’ll lie down in my room. You wake us up, Bammy, in an hour? We still got some drivin’ to do.”

“You don’t need to go tonight. You know you can stay over.”

“Better not,” Jude said.

“I don’t see the sense. It’s almost five already. Wherever you’re going, you won’t get there till late.”

“It’s all right. We’re night people.” He put his plate in the sink.

Bammy studied him. “You won’t leave without dinner?”

“No, ma’am. Wouldn’t think of it. Thank you, ma’am.”

She nodded. “I’ll fix it while you nap. What part of the South are you from, anyway?”

“Louisiana. Place called Moore’s Corner. You wouldn’t have heard of it. There’s nothing there.”

“I know it. My sister married a man who took her to Slidell. Moore’s Corner is right next to it. There’s good people around there.”

“Not my people,” Jude said, and he went upstairs, Angus bounding up the steps after him.

Georgia was waiting at the top, in the cool darkness of the upstairs hallway. Her hair was wrapped in a towel, and she had on a faded Duke University T-shirt and a pair of loose blue shorts. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, and in her left hand was a flat white box, split at the corners and repaired with peeling brown tape.

Her eyes were the brightest thing in the shadows of the hall, greenish sparks of unnatural light, and in her wan, depleted face was a kind of eagerness.

“What’s that?” he asked, and she turned it so he could read what was written on the side.

OUIJA PARKER BROS. TALKING BOARD

29

She led him into her bedroom,where she removed the towel from her head and slung it over a chair.

It was a small room, under the eaves, with hardly enough space in it for them and the dogs. Bon was already curled up on the twin bed tucked against one wall. Georgia made a clicking sound with her tongue and patted the pillow, and Angus leaped up beside his sister. He settled.

Jude stood just inside the closed door—he had the Ouija board now—and turned in a slow circle, looking over the place where Georgia had spent most of her childhood. He had not been prepared for anything quite so wholesome as what he found. The bedspread was a hand-stitched quilt, patterned after an American flag. A herd of dusty-looking stuffed unicorns, in various sherbet colors, were corralled in a wicker basket in one corner.