Jeremiah Lightcap looked out his office window and watched the dark clouds over the distant hills. For a moment, he thought about Iron Hoop and wondered if water could seep in where the railroad company had sealed its entrance many years ago. He was glad there were only two more patients to see that afternoon.
His nurse stuck her head around the door. “Elaine Collins is on the phone.”
With school out, the principal had too much time to worry about him, Jeremiah thought. “Tell her I’m with a patient.”
“That’s what she said you’d say, and she told me she’ll stay on hold if she has to.” Her look told Jeremiah that she had no patience for this game.
“I’ll take it, thank you.” He picked up the phone with a dismissing nod of his head to his nurse. “I’m in the middle of a delicate surgical procedure and you’re jeopardizing the health of my patient.”
“You’re getting ready to lance a boil on Betty Hayslip’s butt.”
In spite of his melancholy, Jeremiah laughed, caught off guard by Elaine’s candid language and her irreverent attitude.
“It seems my nurse doesn’t quite understand the confidential nature of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.
“No,” Elaine said, “It’s just that Betty has a big mouth and doesn’t care what she talks about over morning coffee.”
“Okay, the procedure isn’t delicate and my patient’s health is not in jeopardy. Still, I have to get to work.”
“Come over, tonight.” She got right to the point.
“Why the sudden invitation?”
“I’m a teacher on summer vacation and I’m bored, I miss you, and besides, if you don’t, you’re just going to sit around and get grumpy and depressed. You always do when it rains.”
“What makes you think I won’t just sit around your place grumpy and depressed?”
“Please come?”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He hung up, relieved that she had called. He put the storm clouds out of his mind and went into the treatment room to see Betty Hayslip. He wasn’t surprised to find her standing instead of sitting.
After he finished with his last patient for the day, Jeremiah swung by home and showered. He shaved and put on fresh clothes. Elaine would’ve been off all day, so he expected that she would be all done up. He felt obliged to be the same. Also, he did it because her voice had sounded special on the phone, and he wanted to look nice tonight. By the time he left his house to drive over to Elaine’s, the storm had come and gone. All that remained were a few large puddles and some small branches strewn about the street and people’s yards. He hated the sound his tires made on the wet pavement. He just wanted everything to dry up and the storm to be completely forgotten.
He got to Elaine’s and he’d been right, she looked fabulous. She was wearing a loose, summer dress and had her hair pulled back with a cotton scarf folded into a band. While all the other women were copying the prim, Jackie Kennedy angular look, Elaine was soft and flowing. The open collar of her dress stopped just short of revealing cleavage, but certainly wasn’t what one would expect of an elementary school principal in a small Southern town.
“You look terrific,” Jeremiah said.
“What, this old thing?” She spun around and her dress billowed out. She did look good and she knew it. “Would you like a drink?”
“I didn’t bring any wine.”
“That’s okay, I’ve got a bottle of bourbon around here some place.” Jeremiah looked a little stunned. “Jeremiah Lightcap, I may be a school marm, but I’m forty-two, I was raised with four brothers, and I have a life. I even smoked a cigarette once.” She stared at him for a moment. “How do you take your bourbon?”
“Ice, just a splash of water.” He watched as Elaine made him a drink and then a highball for herself. He grinned when he took his drink and said, “Only forty-two, I thought you were a lot older than that.”
“Oh, you country boys do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She punched him on the arm. “You’re pretty feisty tonight.”
“Beats grumpy and depressed.”
They sat on the couch and talked and gossiped about the town. Jeremiah hadn’t heard about Nate William’s run-in with Grub Hanley.
“I thought I told you about that. Policeman came by the school and talked to some of the teachers and students. Seems that Grub actually shot at Nate.”
Jeremiah got quiet and pensive for a moment at the mention of the shooting. “Nate told me he was having trouble with Grub. Seemed real interested in his grandfather, too.”
“Well, he’s out staying with his grandmother for the summer. Hopefully, that’ll keep him out of trouble.”
“They find the gun?”
“I don’t think so. They haven’t found Grub Hanley yet. Why do you ask about the gun?” Elaine could see Jeremiah pulling back inside himself as he often did when he just seemed on the edge of opening up. She hadn’t bought this dress and found that old bottle of Early Times just to lose him this early in the evening.
“I just get bits and pieces of what goes on around here,” she said, “But I’ve picked up on some kind of connection between that gun and Nate’s grandfather. Something else seems to run deep, but nobody’s talking to me. What the heck, I’ve only lived here three years, I’m still that outsider from Mobile.”
She got up and freshened their drinks. Jeremiah looked toward the kitchen to see if maybe he’d be saved by dinner. “What’s for dinner?”
Elaine sat back on the couch with one leg tucked up under her. “Maybe nothing if you don’t relax and talk to me a little.”
“What makes you think I know anything about any of this?”
“Betty Hayslip,” Elaine said. Jeremiah was sorry he hadn’t poked Betty harder that afternoon. “She said you knew all about Nate’s granddaddy.”
“What does Betty Hayslip know?”
Elaine got very serious and leaned toward Jeremiah. “Enough to know you’d be moody this afternoon when she heard the weather report.” She took Jeremiah’s hand. “I’m your friend. I got all dolled up and we’re having drinks on my living room couch because I’d like to be more than just a friend. But you’ve got to start giving me little pieces of yourself. You’ve got to give me something to build with.”
Jeremiah took a deep breath and a sip from his drink, and then told her the story about Iron Hoop. He stuck to facts and details, not getting into his own feelings about any of it, but Elaine knew it was a beginning and didn’t press for them. He told her about the gun and speculated that maybe it was the same one that Grub had used.
“What do you figure his grandmother thinks?” Elaine said.
“Mrs. Tillman and I have never spoken of the matter since it happened.”
Elaine wondered how two people joined by such a tragic event could not speak about it and share their common grief. How sad, she thought, that such a young boy had to shoulder such a burden silently, and how it showed on the grown man he had become.
“You’ve always been such a contradiction to me,” Elaine said, as she freshened their drinks once more. “You’re so kind and yet somehow aloof, almost cynical at times.”
They both sat on the couch and sipped their drinks in silence. Jeremiah knew that he would have to ante up more than he already had.
“Ever go to the greyhound races?” he said.
“Once.”
“They say if a dog ever catches that mechanical rabbit they chase, you can never race him again. He knows it doesn’t really matter, and he just can’t put his heart into it.”
Jeremiah took her hand. He wanted to be more than just friends, too. Little pieces of himself weren’t easy to come by, but he was trying to chip at the monolith of his emotions.
“Sometimes, I feel like that greyhound. I think that day in Iron Hoop I caught the mechanical rabbit, and ever since, I just can’t put my whole heart into the race.”
Elaine felt frightened. She had asked for something and he had given it to her. She was frightened by his trust, and she was frightened by her own feelings. She finished her highball and put the glass down. She took Jeremiah’s glass and put it on the table next to hers. “You know what’s the mating call of a Southern belle?”
“What?” Jeremiah was relieved by her lightening up the mood.
“Yoo-hoo, I’m drunk.” Elaine kicked off one of her heels and leaned back into the couch. Jeremiah knew that dinner wouldn’t get burned, there wasn’t any to burn. The invitation had never been about dinner.
Chapter 15
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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