This Bitter Earth Part 22

"Why you wanna stay around here, Seth? It's something to do with that woman, right? She's your sister, dammit! Your own mother and father done told you so!"

That was the last straw for Seth.

"Shut the h.e.l.l up and turn off the G.o.dd.a.m.n light, Gloria!"

Seth had never raised his voice to Gloria, not once in all of the years they'd been married.

Gloria huffed one last time before turning off the light. She stood for a long time with her arms folded across her heaving chest. At that moment she hated Seth Taylor.

She didn't deserve this. She would show him. She would take the baby, take the car and leave her husband in his beloved Bigelow with his two-timing daddy, crazy mama, lunatic brother and so-called half-sister.

As far as she was concerned they all belonged together.

Gloria didn't have to wait long. Seth always fell asleep quickly. Even when he had things on his mind, he didn't have a problem dropping off as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Not Gloria though; if she was troubled she would toss and turn until the sun came up, just like she was doing now.

Gloria slipped quietly from the bed and dressed quickly. Jewel fussed some when she lifted her from the bed, but Gloria hushed her as she slipped the car keys from Seth's pants pocket and moved from the bedroom out into the hall and down the stairs.

Gloria left the front door cracked, afraid that the clicking sound of the lock would wake the occupants of #9.

She laid Jewel down in the front seat and spent a good five minutes re-educating herself on which pedal was the brake and which was the gas before she finally turned the key in the ignition and jerked the car out and onto the road.

She knocked down Ethel c.u.mmings' new white picket fence, and only someone who hadn't been behind a wheel for a long time, or ever for that matter, would not have known to go wide on the turn off Sumter Road in order to miss Casey, the cow that always seemed to wander to that spot between two and four in the morning.

Gloria grazed Casey's behind, knocking out the left headlight and spinning in a large circle before getting control of the car again, stepping down on the gas and doing eighty out of town.

She would show Seth Taylor.

There was a burning in s.h.i.+rley's chest that just wouldn't go away. She'd taken two Alka-Seltzers and still the fire raged. It had been there since she'd gotten the call from Fayline.

"s.h.i.+rely? s.h.i.+rley, she back!"

"Who?"

"Sugar, that's who!"

s.h.i.+rley's memory wasn't what it used to be and so she'd had to think for a good long time before a face formed in her mind, and then the memories followed.

"You hear what I say, s.h.i.+rley?"

The excitement in Fayline's voice irritated s.h.i.+rley.

"Yeah, I hear you."

"So what you think about that?"

What was she supposed to think? Sugar was back in town and that was that.

"Nothing, I suppose."

Fayline moved the phone from her left ear to her right. She was astonished at s.h.i.+rley's calm reaction to the return of the woman who had claimed to have lain with s.h.i.+rley's husband.

"Well, ain't you gonna go over there and confront her?" Fayline's voice was filled with disgust.

s.h.i.+rley was quiet for a while. She looked around her kitchen and wondered if she'd let the cat out for the night. "Cat? Cat?" she called, forgetting about Fayline.

"s.h.i.+rley!" Fayline screamed from the other end.

"Oh? What you screaming about, Fayline? Lord have mercy."

"I said, ain't you got something to say to that wench? I mean, she did sleep with your husband." Fayline's words dripped with maliciousness.

Herbert had been dead and gone for a good five years. Did it really even matter anymore?

"Herbert's dead, Fayline." s.h.i.+rley announced this fact as if Fayline was the one with the bad memory.

"I know that, s.h.i.+rley. I'm talking about before he died." Fayline took a deep breath. "Remember, she told youa""

"Cat! Cat!"

s.h.i.+rley's voice shot through the phone, cutting off Fayline's words.

"s.h.i.+rley!" she screamed again.

"Cat?"

A dial tone followed and Fayline was left staring at the receiver. Now that conversation and the burning in her chest had s.h.i.+rley up pacing her bedroom floor. She still couldn't remember if she'd put Cat out and now was more concerned than ever, because a car had just torn past her house doing at least a hundred miles an hour.

"Lord." s.h.i.+rley sighed as she started toward the front door. "I hope Cat wasn't on the road."

JJ was seated at the window when the cream-colored Cadillac shot by Two Miles In leaving clouds of dust and dirt behind it. He'd leaned forward and out of the window to make sure he was seeing right. "Where they going?" he asked himself aloud, happy to have something else on his mind besides the memory of the stranger that had occupied his thoughts from the moment he'd taken a seat at his bar.

"She's gone."

Seth didn't even look at her when he spoke and the words just seemed to drop out of his mouth.

It was barely six and Sugar had thought she would be able to have the quiet of the morning to herself.

She was surprised that Seth had not walked back out when he stumbled in, sleep still clinging to his eyes, and saw her seated at the kitchen table.

"Oh," was all Sugar could think to say.

"I heard her when she left. I mean, I didn't even try to stop her from going," Seth said, finally lifting his head up and allowing his eyes to settle on Sugar's face. His face was free of the stress and hate it had held the day before. His eyes were soft and his skin seemed to glow. This was the Seth she'd met ten years earlier.

"I wanted her to go. I mean, I love my wife... my baby. They didn't need to be here. I shouldn't have asked them to come... but I thought Mama... I ..." Seth threw his hands up in the air and then dragged them across his face. "That Gloria, she something else. Something else," Seth said, shaking his head.

Sugar just nodded her head.

"She can't drive worth a lick, you know? I doubt she'll try and make it all the way to New York. She got people over in Ashton. She'll probably stay there until she cools off."

He turned toward the window and the morning sunlight gleamed in his eyes.

"I thought about you a lot."

Sugar did not want to hear those words and yet she wanted so much to hear those words. He's your brother, the voice inside of her reminded her.

"I mean, I thought about you so much it made me sick to my stomach. I tried to understand what went wrong. What happened." He cleared his throat against the emotion that was swelling inside of him. "But I could never come up with an excuse that made me feel better."

Sugar opened her mouth to tell him to stop talking, stop saying those things. But she didn't; she just pressed her lips closed again.

"You knew, though. I mean you knew that my daddy was your daddy. You knew, right?"

His voice was pleading; his eyes begged her for an answer. Sugar looked down at her hands and then toward the empty field the absence of #10 had left behind.

"I didn't know until afterwards." She sighed.

"Yeah." Seth's tone turned sour. "But Daddy knew."

"He didn't know, not then."

"Well, maybe not then, but he found out soon after and still didn't say nothing."

Seth laid his hands flat down on the table and his tone mellowed again.

"Well, he knew at some point and still didn't say."

Sugar considered his words for a moment before she spoke. "He was scared, Seth. Haven't you ever been scared? You, Miss Pearl, your brother, y*all his whole life. His saying it would have torn all of you apart."

Seth pushed himself away from the table. Stood up and walked over to Sugar. "My wife is gone, Sugar, so what you think it's doing to us now?"

If there were liquor in the house Sugar would have drunk it. Would have emptied every bottle there was, but there wasn't any, not even the plum wine Pearl used to keep in the cabinet over the sink. So Sugar stepped out onto the porch, settling for the intoxicating warmth of the Arkansas morning air.

Joe was the one concerned about Gloria. It didn't seem to bother Pearl too much when Seth told her she'd left and taken Jewel with her.

"Uh-huh," was all she said before asking him if he wanted his eggs scrambled or sunny side up.

"I think we should go out looking for her," Joe said as he paced between the kitchen and the living room. "She got the baby and all. And Seth, you said she wasn't much behind the wheel."

Seth had his elbows up on the table and his head in his hands. "Daddy, she'll bea"they'll be fine," he said in an exasperated tone.

Joe looked at his son for a long time. Sugar thought he was going to say something else, but his mouth just twitched.

"You want some eggs, baby?" Pearl was speaking to Mercy, who sat staring down at her plate.

"Don't she ever say nothing?" Pearl asked Sugar.

"No, she hasn't said a word since St. Louis."

"Poor thing," Pearl said, her voice filling with pity.

"But she'll eat whatever you set before her," Sugar added.

Pearl reached out to touch Mercy's head and Mercy jerked away from her.

"She a lot like you, Sugar," Pearl said before giving Mercy one last pitiful look and then walking back over to the stove.

"Lord!" Pearl shouted out and threw her hands up in the air. Her outburst startled everyone; even Mercy jumped a bit.

"Mama?" Seth's face was filled with concern as he and his father slowly raised their bodies from their chairs.

Sugar gripped the edge of the table and wondered if this was how Pearl's spells began.

"Oh, Lord, I forgot to call JJ." Pearl wiped her hands across her ap.r.o.n and hurried out of the kitchen and into the living room to where the phone was.

"I guess she want you to meet the whole family," Seth mumbled under his breath as he eased himself back down into his chair. "Daddy, too bad your parents dead, we coulda taken a drive down to Jacksonville, introduce her to them too."

A bitter laugh tumbled from Seth.

Joe just looked at him and shook his head in disgust.

Sugar looked down at her plate and tried to wish herself away.

Chapter 22.

J didn't want to go over to his parents' house. He wanted to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes the man from the bar was sitting and grinning in the darkness behind his lids.

He knew that grin, but couldn't quite place exactly where he'd become familiar with it. The town of Rose kept coming to mind. JJ had spent some time there years before he'd finally decided to come back home to Bigelow. It was an unpleasant visit and he'd tried hard over the years to erase the memory of it from his mind.

"You just come on over here for a minute. I got somebody here that I want you to meet."

His mother had sounded so excited and he hadn't heard her voice ring in years. Well, at least not since Jude.

"I'll be there in a little bit," he heard himself say before resting the phone back in its cradle.

"Hi."

Seth gave his brother a solemn greeting. JJ knew Seth wanted to disappear when he was around. JJ saw Seth's leg twitch when he pulled up and saw his hands grip the arms of the chair and the quick swivel of his head toward the door.

JJ knew Seth wanted to get up and walk into the house and avoid him, but what he didn't know was that there was someone in the house Seth was trying to avoid too.