Authors: Carolyn Brown
“It don’t hurt like it did at first,” the woman said. “I just need a job. I’ll do anything, ma’am.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Lucy Fontaine. I come from up in the Kentucky hills. Little bitty town you wouldn’t even know. I used every dime I had to get this far away from there and my husband. I got a ride from Gainesville with a nice lady. She said you might be needin’ some help because she used to work here.”
“What happened to you?”
“Husband whooped me for the last time. I been savin’ for five years and figured if I didn’t leave, the next time he’d plumb kill me. I can clean rooms for a place to stay and some food.”
“Have you eaten lately?” Pearl asked. She couldn’t turn anyone away on Christmas.
“I ain’t here for a handout. I got some crackers left in my purse. What I need is a job.”
The phone rang before Pearl could tell her that a frozen dinner was going to waste in the kitchen. “Longhorn Inn. May I help you?”
“This is Rosa. I dumped a stray puppy on your doorstep. Hire her. You need help. She needs a place to heal and work.”
“But what if—” Pearl started to argue valid points.
“She’s broke. If you are anything like your aunt, you’ll help fix her.”
“You sure?” Pearl asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. Put her on for a month. She’ll work hard and heal slow. Check the books. You’re going to have a very busy season during duck hunting season. You can’t run it by yourself. If Wil Marshall hadn’t got his ass in a bind, you’d have still been cleaning rooms tonight, and you’d have missed out on Maddie O’Donnell’s Christmas supper.”
Pearl gasped. “How’d you know about that?”
“Honey, whatever happens in Henrietta is all over town before the clock strikes the next hour. So?”
“Okay, okay!”
“Feed her too. She’s been living on crackers for three days. Call me sometimes and let me know how she’s doin’.”
Pearl set the phone down and looked up to see Lucy munching on a saltine cracker that she’d taken from her purse. “Is your husband going to chase you down and cause trouble?”
“My husband thinks I’m dead. I fixed it that way. I took his truck and left him a note.” She looked Pearl straight in the eye and didn’t blink.
“Okay, do you have a social security card?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. It’s still in my name, Lucinda Fontaine. I never changed it because he wouldn’t let me do no work outside of the house. He lived by the old ways that said a man was the head of the house and the woman obeyed him. It was the way we was both raised up.”
“What was your married name?”
“Molly Brooks.”
Pearl frowned.
“My name is Molly Lucinda Fontaine Brooks. He wouldn’t call me Lucy because he hated them old television reruns with Lucy and Desi.” She swallowed hard and went on, “I’m makin’ a clean start so I want to be Lucy, not Molly. I ain’t never again goin’ to be Molly.”
“Okay then, Lucy Fontaine, have you ever done any work at a motel?”
“No, ma’am. All I did was some waitress work and a little cooking for the café when the fry cook called in sick. And that was twelve years ago when I was just sixteen. But I can learn right fast. You show me one time how you want it done and I’ll learn it.”
Hire her right now before she changes her mind. You can date if someone is here to watch the lobby. And having someone help cleaning rooms would be an added bonus. You just won the lottery. Don’t tear up the check.
Pearl didn’t even argue with the voice in her head. “Here’s the deal I can offer. I’ll pay you minimum wage and give you a room to live in as long as you want it. After thirty days we’ll sit down and decide if you want to stay. If we are both happy, I’ll give you a raise. I got one question. Are you sure your husband thinks you are dead?”
“Cleet ain’t too smart but I fixed it so there wasn’t no doubt. I waited ’til a day when he rode with his daddy to work and took his truck to the river in the middle of the mornin’. I left it in the middle of the river bridge with my good purse settin’ on the seat. I left my best shoes and my coat on the bridge. I ate a candy bar and was so nervous that I puked it up, but I was careful to do that over the side of the bridge. Then I crawled up on the railin’ with my messy hands so there’d be fingerprints.”
She hesitated and then went on. “Then I walked five miles to the next town. Bus comes through there once a week after the station closes. You got to buy your ticket ahead of time but I begged the driver to let me buy one from him to Memphis. If he hadn’t of done it I’d have kept on walkin’ but he did. I reckon he put the money in his pocket but I really don’t care. When I got to Memphis I counted out what I had left and got another ticket to Little Rock. From there I made it to Dallas, but I was almost out of money so I asked the man how far I could get on what I had left. That took me to Gainesville and I started walkin’ west and that lady picked me up on the side of the road right outside of town. That’s a lot of words but I reckon if you’re goin’ to hire me then you oughta have the whole thing.”
Pearl was amazed. “Why didn’t you leave sooner if he beat you?”
“Wife is supposed to be good. Momma said that if I was good I wouldn’t get them whoopin’s. Took me five years to save the money and to figure out that some men is just plain mean and it don’t matter how good a woman is they’re goin’ to beat on them. Savin’ the money had to be slow or he’d have found out and he had to think I was dead so he wouldn’t come after me so I had to plan it down to the last thing.”
Pearl opened the gate at the end of the counter. “Get your things and I’ll take you to your room.”
Lucy looked down at her sweatshirt and jeans. “This is my things. I bought ’em at a garage sale and didn’t tell him. If he goes through my stuff he won’t find a thing missin’.”
“Okay, then. I’ve got a frozen dinner in my apartment that you are going to take to your room and heat up in the microwave. The room has a small refrigerator with a microwave on top.” Pearl headed through the back door when the crunch of gravel took her attention to the parking lot.
Headlights lit up the lobby and in a minute a young man rushed inside out of the cold. He removed his cowboy hat and looked from Lucy to Pearl and back again. “You go on. You were here first.”
“We’ve already gotten her taken care of. What can I do for you?” Pearl said.
“I need three rooms,” he said. He wore his jeans right. His eyes were a soft brown and he held his black Stetson in his hand as he talked. An evening shadow of a beard gave him a rakishly handsome look, and his dark hair was just a little too long. So why didn’t he jack Pearl’s blood pressure up like Wil Marshall did? Why didn’t she have the sudden impulse to drag him off to bed? He was a cowboy, wasn’t he?
Nothing made a lick of sense.
Pearl watched him fill out the card. “Each room has two double beds.”
“I know. Me and the guys stay here every Christmas. We ought to make reservations but there’s always room. But them other two snore and there ain’t no way I’m stayin’ in the same room with either of them so we get our own rooms. And if you can I’d just as soon there was an empty room between me and them. Where’s that other lady? She knew what we liked.”
Pearl pulled out three cards. “That was my aunt and she passed away back in the fall.”
He nodded his head reverently. “Sorry to hear that, ma’am. She was a sweet old gal.”
“Thank you. Got a preference on rooms?”
“Over on that other side. It’s quieter.”
Pearl handed him the keys. “Okay, then here’s twenty-four, twenty-two, and twenty. If it doesn’t fill up tonight like last night there’ll be a space between all of you.”
The cowboy grinned. “Great!”
He put his hat back on and tipped it at Lucy before he left. The headlights lit up the lobby again and the noise of the truck moving slowly let them know that the men had turned around and parked in front of one of the rooms on the other side of the gravel lot.
“I’ll grab that dinner and take you up to your room,” Pearl said.
“Thank you,” Lucy told her. She would have been grateful for a bologna sandwich right then. Soul and body was about to split up from hunger and she’d just eaten the last of her crackers. But she was a long, long way from Cleet and his anger spells and she’d starve plumb to death before she went back.
Pearl put the TV dinner, a two-liter bottle of Coke, a package of Oreos, a banana, orange, and apple into a plastic grocery bag. She added a fork, knife, and spoon from her silverware drawer, a plate, cup, and saucer from the cabinet.
Lucy was still standing in the middle of the floor when she went back out.
“You could have sat down,” Pearl said.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
Pearl set the food bag on the counter. “I forgot something. Go on and sit down and if anyone comes in tell them I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed another bag on her way through the apartment and carried it to her bedroom. She put in two sweat suits and followed that with a nightshirt and a lined denim jacket, a couple of pairs of socks, and she hesitated for a long moment but then shoved in three pairs of underpants. There was no way that Lucy could wear one of her bras so she’d just have to keep hers washed until they could make a run to a store.
Lucy sunk down into one of the comfortable recliners. She thought of Cleet sitting in his chair in front of the television, yelling at her to bring him a beer or a piece of cake or pie. Always yelling at her and yet being so nice to everyone else. She’d tried to be good. Where had she gone wrong?
Lucy was sitting very still when Pearl returned to the lobby. For a second she thought the girl had sat down in a recliner and died, but then she noticed that Lucy was breathing. Pearl picked up the key to the room and the extra bag and said, “Let’s get you settled into the room.”
Her voice startled Lucy and she curled forward in a ball around her worn tote bag.
Pearl touched her shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
Lucy flinched.
“Lucy, no one is going to hurt you again. If they do I’ll beat the shit out of them.”
Lucy looked up. “I’m sorry. It just happens.”
Pearl put the room key in her hand. “No need to be sorry. You’ll get over it. It’ll just take time. Now follow me and we’ll get you settled in for the night. I bet you’d like a warm bath after all that travel.”
Lucy nodded. She couldn’t begin to imagine a long hot bath with no fear. She usually took very quick showers, careful not to use an ounce of extra hot water or Cleet would be furious when he took his shower. If the hot water ran out before he was finished she was in for a beating. If he wanted chocolate cake and she had peach cobbler he’d jerk off his belt. To take her mind off that wide brown belt she looked up at the Texas sky. A person could see from here all the way to the end of the world. It was so different than back in the mountains of Kentucky. She’d miss her momma and her youngest sister, but if she never saw a mountain again she’d be happy. All they’d brought was pain and misery.
Pearl stood to one side while Lucy opened the door. “It’s not much but it’ll do until you can get on your feet. It’s got beds, a television, phone, bathroom, and I’ve got a few things here for you. Tomorrow I’ve got to go buy groceries. I’ll give you an advance on your first week’s salary so you can get whatever you like.”
“I’m obliged for it all,” she said, her accent even thicker since she’d started to relax. “What time do I start to work in the mornin’?”
“Checkout is at eleven but most folks get up and gone by eight or nine.”
“I’m used to havin’ breakfast on the table at six o’clock so I get up right early.” Lucy couldn’t keep from looking at everything in the room. All that luxury was more than she could take in with a single scan. Later, when she was alone it might sink in but right then it looked like a big slice of heaven.
“When we’ve got a couple of rooms empty, I’ll give you a call. The laundry room is next door. Use the machines to wash your clothes and there are towels and linens stacked up on racks. Change your bed whenever you want and help yourself to the towels. I’ll see you in the morning.” Pearl backed out of the room and shut the door.
She picked up the pace when two trucks pulled into the lot and beat the first customer to the lobby. It was an elderly lady wearing a cute little blue sweat suit decorated with rhinestones and pearls. “Honey, me and the husband out there in the truck need us a room with two beds for tonight. We’re on our way home from Christmas with the kids and I can’t see worth a damn when it gets dark and the husband has beginnin’ Alzheimer’s so I can’t trust him to make the right turns.”
“I’ve got just what you need.” Pearl picked the number two key from the wall and handed her a card to fill out.
She was getting computerized even if it caused Pearlita Richland’s ashes to reconnect, swim upstream from the Red River, and haunt her. Lucy was there to clean rooms so she would have the time to install the programs and talk to several people about key card locks. She could afford it and it would make things so much simpler.
“Thank you, darlin’,” the lady said after she’d filled out the card.
Pearl could have sworn she had heard and seen two trucks. She looked out the glass windows and sure enough there was another vehicle sitting there. She sucked in a lung full of air and prayed that old Cleet hadn’t found his way to her hotel. The truck door swung open and Wil stepped out, leaned in and picked something up, and carried it toward the motel lobby.