Summer in the South (16 page)

But, as often happens when a conscious decision is made to avoid someone, she seemed to run into Jake everywhere.

The first time she was coming out of the small bookstore on the square and he was passing on the sidewalk. He stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Ava. I’m Jake Woodburn.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Nice to meet you,” she said, taking his hand, briefly, and then hurrying away.

The second time was coming out of the Piggly Wiggly. He drove by in his truck and waved, but Ava turned her head and pretended she hadn’t seen him.

The third time was at the hardware store.

She had spent the morning listlessly prowling her bedroom. Determined to work on her outline, she had risen earlier than usual, and after a breakfast of cereal and fruit, had brought her coffee back to her room. She opened the shutters and made the bed, and then she sat down at the computer, facing the long windows. Sunlight flooded the room, lying in bands across the Oriental carpet and the dark polished floor. She ran her fingers over her favorite books, all neatly arranged on the wide desk between two bookends: her well-worn thesaurus, her copies of
Beloved, Jane Eyre, Love in the Time of Cholera
, and
The Turn of the Screw.

Outside in the garden, Fanny was feeding the cats. They were feral, and no one could get near them but her. She brought them scraps of food and milk, which she placed in saucers around the garden, and they followed at her feet mewing and rubbing themselves against her legs for all the world like a troop of tame house cats. But if anyone else entered the garden, they would take off like so many streaks of color, and if anyone else brought scraps, they would wait until the stranger reentered the house before they crept forth warily to eat.

Ava yawned and looked at the clock, wondering what Josephine might be making for lunch. She had grown accustomed to regular meals, and now she found herself looking forward to breakfast, lunch, and supper. It gave a pleasant order to the day and filled the house with delicious smells. Freed from her usual habit of eating restaurant food and takeout, she had begun to feel healthier than she had in years. She had even managed to lose a little weight. Now, if only she could sleep at night, her transformation to good health would be complete.

She yawned again and stared, bleary-eyed, at the garden. Fanny had disappeared around the corner of the house along with her coterie of cats. Ava shifted her eyes to her scrolling screen saver. She picked up her mouse but nothing happened and, flipping it over, she saw that the battery was dead.

She rose immediately and went into the kitchen.

“Where’s the best place to buy batteries?” she asked Josephine, who was standing at the counter slicing cucumbers.

“The hardware store has them. Or Walmart. The Piggly Wiggly.” Josephine pointed with her knife. “There may be some in that drawer over there.”

“That’s okay,” Ava said. “I’ll go to town. I need a break anyway.”

S
he parked outside the hardware store and went in. There were only a few people in the store, mostly contractors who stood around making small talk with the clerks, and now that she was here Ava felt foolish buying a package of batteries. She went over and inspected a collection of garden tools.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a short, red-faced man asked her, and she said quickly, “No thanks, I’m just looking.”

A knot of men lounging at the cash register watched her. She would have to buy something else now, something besides the batteries. She stopped at the battery display and then took a slip of paper out of her purse, pretending to check a list, and walked slowly along the paint aisle.

It was silly but now that she’d begun this charade, she’d have to finish it. Men in groups always made her nervous. Unlike women, they made no attempt to hide their scrutiny, speaking in loud, clear voices that were easily overheard. One of them said, “Like what you see, Bill?” and the others snickered.

She picked up a couple of paintbrushes, determined to stop this foolishness and get back to work, and as she wheeled around, she ran headlong into Jake Woodburn. He had come up behind her while she stood examining the brushes. He put his arms out to steady her.

“I thought that was you,” he said.

“Excuse me,” she said, clutching the brushes to her chest.

He dropped his arms. He was tall like Will, but broader through the shoulders, and his hair was longer, falling just below his ears. His eyes, slightly almond shaped and dark, were set above sharply jutting cheekbones. He wore a kind, bemused expression. “Do you need some help?”

The others watched them quietly. “No, I’ve got it,” she said and stepped back with an odd, graceless movement, knocking over a cardboard display of painters’ tape.

H
e helped her clean up the display, then followed her outside.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” she said.

“Happens all the time. Contractors are a clumsy lot.” She had the feeling he was laughing at her, although his expression was neutral, courteous. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

“There’s a really good barbecue place down on the river.”

She tried to imagine what she would tell the aunts and Maitland if she didn’t show up for lunch. She imagined Josephine’s pale gray eyes flickering over her, ferreting out her secrets.

“You can follow me in your car, if you like,” he said. “It’s not too far.”

“I can’t.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“If we get there early enough we won’t have to wait for a table.”

“All right,” she said.

I
t was only a short drive, but when she pulled up in the half-filled parking lot, she knew it was a mistake. Someone was bound to see her and report her to the aunts. Someone had probably seen them standing in the street outside the hardware store and was already on the phone to Josephine. Ava imagined phone lines all over Woodburn lit up like warning flares. It amazed her that she had only been here a short time and already she was beginning to care what others thought.

He was waiting for her under a sign that read
Battle Smoove Barbecue Joint
, and when she saw him standing there she stopped caring about the phone lines.

“Order the brisket,” he said as they waited to place their orders.

It was early, but already the tiny restaurant was crowded with construction workers, lawyers, and clerks. You placed your order at a long counter in the front, then took a number and sat at one of the small tables covered in red-checked tablecloths, waiting for them to call your number.

“Out or in,” the surly countergirl said.

“Sorry?” Ava said, fumbling with her wallet.

The girl sighed and stuck a pencil behind one ear. “You want it to go or here?”

“Here,” Jake said, handing the girl a twenty.

“No,” Ava said in embarrassment, but he laughed and said, “You can buy the dessert.”

They made their way through the crowd to a small table in the far corner. Ava didn’t recognize any faces but she had met so many people at Alice Barron’s barbecue that she couldn’t remember everyone. She saw a table of women near the front who seemed to take note of them as they came in.

“Why is this place called Battle Smoove?” she said, sitting in the chair he’d pulled out for her.

“Battle Smoove was a World War II veteran, a pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen who came back and opened a restaurant using his mother’s recipes. When I was a boy we used to ride our bikes out here to eat barbecue.”

“So you mean there really was a person named Battle Smoove?”

“There was. He’s dead now. His granddaughter runs the place.”

He went to the counter to get their sweet teas. His clothes were dusty in the back, as was his dark hair, and Ava remembered that someone, Darlene Haney probably, had told her he was a furniture maker.

“What do you think?” he said, sliding back into his chair and setting her tea down in front of her. He seemed completely unconcerned about his appearance, as though it were perfectly natural to go around with wood shavings in his hair.

She sipped her tea, which was strong and sweet. “About what?”

“About anything.”

“I think it smells good in here.”

“Best barbecue in Tennessee,” he said, pulling a straw out of a wrapper. He glanced around the room, nodding at someone he knew.

“Are you a furniture maker?”

“I am.” He dropped the straw in his glass. “I have a shop over on Hanover Street. When I dropped out of college, I went out to California for a while and when I came back here, I had to figure out something to do. I’ve always been a carpenter of sorts. I worked summers during high school and college on a construction crew, and I like working with my hands. So I started building furniture in my garage. Chairs and tables, simple stuff like that at first, that I sold at craft shows around the area. And then, over time, more and more people started calling me to do custom pieces, and my business kind of took off from there. Now I have a shop and do most of my sales on the Web, selling to dealers in New York and LA.”

“So you’re living the dream.”

He smiled and shrugged, and Ava marveled at the powerful force of attraction, how it could make someone ordinary seem extraordinary. “I guess you could say that.” He crossed his arms and leaned forward against the table. “What about you? What brings you to our fair city?”

She told him about her job in Chicago and how she and Will had gone to school together, and he had suggested that she come South for the summer to work on her book.

“Now, I’m just doing a little writing,” she added vaguely, looking around the crowded restaurant.

“Fiction or nonfiction?”

“Fiction.”

“Cool.”

He didn’t look at her the way others did when she told them she was a writer. A
fiction
writer. There was no stunned silence, no look of surprised embarrassment.

“So you’re staying with the Woodburn sisters?”

“That’s right.”

“How are the old girls?”

There was really nothing ordinary about him, she decided. She would have noticed him anywhere, even on a crowded city street, his height, his black hair, the almost Oriental slant of his dark eyes. “They’re fine. Fanny’s a hoot. And Josephine, well, what can I say about Josephine? She’s an interesting character.”

He laughed. “She is that.” He turned his head and stared out the window and she was struck again by his resemblance to Will. Thinking of Will brought a slight tremor of guilt, a feeling of disloyalty that was swiftly and smoothly cancelled out.

“They used to be quite fond of me,” Jake said.

“Really?”

“When I was a boy,” he said mildly.

The girl at the counter called their number and Jake went to get their food. Ava thought about calling the aunts to tell them she wasn’t going to be there for lunch but she was afraid she might get Josephine and have to explain where she was. And then she was angry with herself because she was a grown woman and she didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.

She picked up her phone and called Woodburn Hall. Maitland answered and she explained that she had stayed in town for lunch and would be back in a little while.

“Hell, take your time,” Maitland said. “There’s nobody here but us old folks and we’ll see you when we see you.”

She hung up and slid the phone back into her purse. Jake set the plates down on the table. “Do you want extra sauce?”

“No, thanks. Do you need some help?”

“Nope. I got it.” He returned to the counter and brought back a basket of condiments and several large paper napkins. “How’s Uncle Mait?” he asked.

“He’s great,” she said. She had ordered the brisket and a side of coleslaw and he’d ordered the pork sandwich with fries and slaw. She was glad now that she hadn’t ordered the sandwich because she could see that it was going to be difficult to eat. “Does he remind you a little bit of Colonel Sanders in a sports coat?”

He grinned, opening his sandwich and piling his coleslaw on top. “I never really thought about it,” he said.

They were quiet for a while, turning their attention to their food. From time to time he would turn his head and stare thoughtfully out the window.
He’s moody
, Darlene had told her.
He has a dark side.
Ava was comfortable with his long silences. She had always been attracted to men with a touch of melancholy.

“You know the aunts paid for my schooling. I’ve always been grateful to them for that.” He gave her a long, searching look.

“So you grew up with Will?”

“No. Not really. We ran in different circles,” he said, and she thought how attractive his smile was, the way it pulled the corner of his mouth up higher on the left side than the right. “Early on, Will went to private school and I went to public. And then when they decided to send him off to boarding school in eighth grade, Fanny showed up one morning at my mother’s place to see if maybe I wanted to go, too. I was a couple of years older than Will and I really didn’t want to go off to school but I’d already gotten in a little trouble with the law, nothing serious, just high-spirited, boys-will-be-boys stuff, and my mother thought it’d be best if I got out of town for a while.”

Ava chewed slowly. She had the feeling he was trying to convince her of something, to make her see things his way. “Why do you think they did that? Offered to pay for your schooling?”

He shrugged, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I think Fanny did it out of the goodness of her heart and Josephine—” He was quiet for a moment, as if considering this. “Well, I think Josephine hoped I’d look after Will.”

“And did you?”

His eyes flickered over her face, his expression sober, reproachful. “Of course I did.”

“So whatever happened between you and Will, the falling-out between you two, didn’t come until later? After boarding school?”

“I see you’ve been listening to the town gossips.”

“Just Darlene Haney.”

He groaned and shook his head. “The mouth of the South,” he said.