A long time would pass before Jay met Mosquito again, long after all the answers had come. He saw Rumor, though, not two weeks later on his way to the Loblolly in early evening. She waved him down from across the road and his bike skidded to a halt just past her. She smiled, a thing Jay was happy and relieved to see.
“You’re off early today,” she said.
“Came in early.” Jay climbed off the bicycle and walked it beside her. He would ask her to come with him, but knew she would never go inside the motel. He didn’t blame her.
“I’m glad,” she said. “Don’t see you too often. You’re in that diner all the time.”
Jay winced. “Wouldn’t be if I had the choice.”
She laughed. It was a strange laugh, a weightless one, as if she couldn’t understand this concept of need. But a clarity had returned to her eyes, a mood that couldn’t be tethered to the ground. Jay could read her smile in every line of her face.
“What are you doing Thanksgiving?” she asked.
“Hadn’t thought about it,” Jay winced. “But I guess it is a couple weeks away. Ed’ll probably make me work.”
Rumor shook her head. “He usually closes the diner, holidays.”
“Oh. Well, guess I’ll be spending the day at the Loblolly. You?”
She stopped and faced him. “Uh uh,” she beamed, head tilted in amusement. “Not a day like that, in a motel, alone. Why don’t you come eat dinner with me?”
Thanksgiving with Rumor… Jay turned the idea over in his mind. How long had it been since he’d passed a holiday with anyone? Anyone he knew, at least. He breathed in slow. “All right.”
Their heads dipped under nets of Spanish moss, thick and stringy beneath young oak arms. Jay crossed his arms, tried not to shiver. It was autumn after all, even here in the South. He would have to buy a jacket soon.
“Why couldn’t I have wrecked in Florida?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s getting cold,” he laughed. “And the beach is the best place to be in the winter.”
“Why’s that?”
He stared at her. “Well, I mean, it’s warmer down there, for one thing.”
Her eyes looked far away. “I’ve never seen the ocean,” she said. “I know about it, but…guess I just don’t feel the draw.”
“Really? You’re kidding, right? We’re practically on the coast now—what, maybe twenty miles away?”
She shrugged. “There’s water in the river. Tides, too. Salt and crabs, even dolphins sometimes. And sand in the soil.”
Jay shook his head, stunned. He didn’t know what to say. “You like the sand, huh?” he finally managed.
She smiled. “The way it feels in my toes.”
“Well, there’s whole beaches to sink your toes in at the ocean.”
She didn’t reply. Her lips made a narrow line, but her thoughtfulness did not dispell that earlier joy. When she spoke again her voice seemed to half-whisper the words of a song. “Seas of sand,” she said. “Seas of brine and water.”
Just who was was this girl? Something lifted inside Jay, something new and good and too-long unfamiliar.
“I’d see the ocean,” she decided.
She hadn’t changed her mind; he could read that in her features. The river, the creeks, the marshes, all were still sufficient for her desire. To see the ocean—it was a sentiment she’d allowed by choice, as if by an act of generosity.
He could not take his eyes from her. Words stuck in his throat. “I’ll take you there soon,” he wanted to say, but didn’t. “When the Buick is fixed, we’ll go, even if it’s January. We’ll see the beach together in the new year under a bright sunrise.”
Then he felt it—a twisting in his chest, a choking vine around his heart—as he often had the past year, every time he’d stayed in a place too long. The urge woke again and raised its sleepy head: to drive away for hours and hours and not stop.
Instead he gazed at her, wondering if he should ask for a kiss, or simply steal it while he had the chance. Before he could decide, she stole it from him.
At last she pulled away. He could barely speak.
“I’ll come for you on Thanksgiving,” she whispered.
“All right.”
She crossed the street and went on her way. His heart was beating. He had trouble forming thoughts in the silence all around him and growing within him.
Then the roar of a car as it sped by. A cop, Jay realized; it too vanished down Sixty-one. He had not seen the driver, but his ears and cheeks burned and the gravel ground like bitter shards under his feet.
* * *
Two weeks later Rumor knocked at his room at the Loblolly. Jay opened it, eyes widening at the sight of her. Part of him had forgotten their plans, but another part had never really expected it to happen.
“You ready?” she asked, freckles pooling behind the dimples in her cheeks.
He followed her away toward the road. The day was bright and clear, warm too, though a slight chill hung on the edge of the air. It couldn’t touch him. Their steps quickened as they reached the highway, treading now in clear, hard-edged shadows cast by the midday sun. A squirrel barked, mockingbirds rasped, a cicada creaked, but there were few other sounds on Sixty-one today.
His eyes lit up when they turned onto Coffin Road. Would he finally see her home? Meet some of her people? He tried to picture her father. A solid man, tanned dark like her, a wooden build, with doughy cheeks maybe.
They passed the ruined house and the last of the driveways. Jay frowned. She must be taking a back way, he thought; they were almost to the river.
She banked right when Coffin dead-ended, and he recognized the open place she’d brought him to before, when the tide had been high and the marsh flooded. Now the grasses were gold and stood high over the water.
The road closed itself up and hid the river. He saw houses now, large and grand, newer developments. He could see Rumor’s people in any one of them if they owned Indicum, as it seemed they did.
But she passed them all, too, making instead for the single rundown shack at the road’s end. A blue bottle tree glinted in the shade. Her fist rapped on a warped door and it opened, a vaguely familiar face filling the frame.
“Hey, Rumor,” the woman said. “Bout time.” Her eyes settled on Jay, narrowing in recognition. “You the new man at the diner,” Celia Gadsden said.
“I am,” he said, suddenly awkward. He offered a hand. “Jay.”
“I remember,” she nodded.
He followed them in. Inside he caught scent of fried turkey and collards, red rice and candied yams. Who knew what else. The smells mingled and enticed. He swallowed his questions and sat with the two at a round table at the end of a narrow room.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Celia said. “He ain’t here yet.”
Was she talking to him, or Rumor? She vanished into the kitchen and he breathed deep, waiting. The house felt still. Soon she returned, setting glasses of tea with lemon in front of them. “Thank you, Miss Celia,” Jay said.
“Call me Cee,” the woman said, giving Rumor a sidelong look. “If I knew I was having three guests…”
He wondered who the third would be, then remembered Mosquito. “So—she didn’t tell you I was coming?”
Cee laughed. He couldn’t read the tone of it. Its sound was good-natured, but the lines on her face were taut, stoic, her eyes distracted. As she spoke, she slipped in and out of a deeper accent. “No, but that’s how she do. Ain’t a thing—there’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”
She slipped out back and the screen door slammed behind her. “Honey child,” she called, “you gonna help me with this turkey or what?”
Rumor smiled and followed her out, leaving Jay alone in a stranger’s house. He heard their muffled speech as they pulled the bird from the simmering oil, and wondered if he should go and help. He hadn’t been asked, though, and didn’t want to impose.
His eyes idly swept the room, the patterned wallpaper arrayed with framed family photos. He could see into Cee’s living room, too—the old console TV draped in checked vinyl, a threadbare wingback and ottoman. Against the other wall, lonely and forgotten, an upright piano, old and ornately carved. Somehow it tied together everything else.
Had he heard piano music before? He wondered. When Rumor had brought him to the river? Faint and far off… But no, just an imagined memory.
It wasn’t till he heard voices outside rising again that he realized they had fallen still.
“Ain’t him I worry about,” Miss Celia was saying, “He’ll come, or he won’t. That’s just his way.” She sighed. “But you know—I haven’t given lessons in months. Not much extra coming in these days, and the land tax…it comes due next month.”
Jay turned. He could see them through the back window, leaning against the porch rail, staring out at the river. It was an intimate scene, one he felt out of place witnessing.
Cee sighed again, heavier than before. “Don’t know why I tell you this. I’ll get the money some ways, so don’t worry about me.”
“I won’t. Where’s Gator off to?”
The woman laughed. “Ran off to chase fiddlers, I guess. Just about every time I let him out.”
Rumor was quiet a moment. “You’d have more coming in, you know, if you taught two instruments. When are you gonna play that cello again?”
Celia’s hands clenched. The air between them seemed cooler.
“I’m sorry,” Rumor said. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know it,” Celia barked, then looked away. Her brow unfurled and she spoke more gently. “Once that turkey’s set a bit, it’ll be fine and juicy. Now go get that new boy—make him bring out the dishes.”
Jay stood as the door clanged open. They carried the food out to a long wooden table. He could smell the fried oil now, and his stomach leapt, though he’d smelled it enough for a lifetime at Ed’s. Celia’s yellow lab had scented it, too; it came running up from the river as the three sat to eat.
He’d never had Thanksgiving outdoors before, but something about it felt right. The smell of the river mud mingled with the other aromas, making the food richer, more savory. Far off, Jay could make out a sign by the edge of the creek: Idle speed, no wake. It seemed to fit the day well.
“Thanks for the food, Miss Cee,” Rumor said when they had finished. Jay echoed her.
“That was a job.” Cee smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Ain’t every day I cook this much, but I can’t say it’s not worth it.” She eyed the empty chair beside her but said nothing more.
“I’ll go and wash up,” Rumor offered.
“I’ll join you in a minute,” Jay said.
He watched as she loped back to the house, then turned toward Celia, who was studying him already. “She’s amazing,” he said. “I think so, at least.”
“She’s something.” Again he saw her features soften. “I’ve known her plenty years now, and I still can’t figure her out.”
“You mean…her spells?”
She fixed him with a pointed stare and looked him over.
“That and other things…I don’t know.” She took a long pull from a flask she’d kept hidden till that moment. “Not that I think she’s hiding something. That girl, she ain’t the mysterious kind—in fact, the reverse. She ain’t hardly studying herself. She rarely thinks she’s much to study about. Least that’s how I see it. Mosquito, he could say it better.”
“But why do you think she gets that way? Is she lonely?”
“Could be.” Cee gave a wry smile. “I know her well enough, but don’t know much about her. I tell her all kinds of things, but she don’t say much about herself. Ain’t nobody but that brother of mine can hear a word she won’t say.”
Jay nodded. He stared at his empty plate and wondered why Mosquito hadn’t shown.
“I should go and help,” he murmured. Cee nodded.
* * *
Scrubbing the plates beside Rumor, Jay was struck how much all of it had touched him. Cee was hard to impress, certainly, but still he liked her. There was something tough in her that couldn’t be trod on, but wouldn’t be bitter, either.
Nor was it merely the company, either. The meal, the place itself, even the dog, Gator…it all seemed ideal. Comforting, though it made him sad as well.
But Jay couldn’t feel at home here. Wouldn’t let himself. He’d known something like it once, after all: not the same, but near enough for his liking. He had thought that it would last, and for a while it had. Before the night when all of it changed, and all of it was lost.
He felt restless fear flare up again, the need for the open road. But there was something else now, too. It didn’t erase the desire to leave, but stood against it, evenly matched. A reason to stay.
