Page 20 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin’s Duet (Sins of the South)
NINE
LORRIE
Far from sitting in a dusty old cabin and twiddling her toes, as soon as the sun came up Lorrie stepped out and followed the tire tracks of Absalom’s truck back to the road.
Her breath came out in white clouds. When had a July morning ever been so cold?
The mist skirting the trees reminded her of the other side of Florin where she’d been raised, where the shadow of the mountain blocked out the sun and every day felt like the first day of Fall.
Except in winter, when the teeth of the wind sank into your flesh, straight down to the bone.
Wearing Absalom’s jacket inside-out to hide the bloodstains, Lorrie walked right out of the forest to the main road, where she then got her bearings.
She hadn’t been back to Florin in years but you never really forgot your first home.
Without any concrete plan or idea where she was headed, her feet pushed her forward step by step until two hours later she crossed into Black Florin.
The small area of town was just a shadow of its former self.
It had been dying for years as folks sought better fortunes and more tolerant places elsewhere.
Two years of relative peace between white and black folks was not enough to erase the past. The past ran too deep, like an old stain.
After the civil war, there came a reckoning.
Black Florin tried to get on its feet, but the enemy was powerful.
Hatred always seemed more powerful than love.
So Black Florin struggled. Its people endured.
But the battle was fiercer than anything.
Not always the drama of crosses burning and strange fruit, but sometimes it was simply not getting work, your daughters harassed, your sons beat up, your trash left out in the road, and having your social world confined to the refuge of church…
sometimes those were enough. More than enough.
Hatred hampered progress. It had done so to Black Florin.
Lorrie passed the candy store her Aunt Pearl used to own, where she’d first learn to make caramel and chocolate. The place was boarded up and had been for nearly a decade.
Is anyone left here at all ? she had to wonder, as long minutes passed without seeing a soul.
Well, the crazy man sitting on the corner petting a yellow dog with no tail seemed familiar; she thought he might be her cousin Jonah.
But she didn’t call out to him because maybe it wasn’t.
She just kept walking, step by step, until she reached Ned Street.
Did Auntie Pearl still live here? She still had those Cosmos and Dahlias out front…
Lorrie rang the bell and waited. In short order the curtains at the window rustled and a face peeped out. And then somebody opened the door.
“Little Lorraine? It can’t be!”
“Hi Uncle Julius,” said Lorrie shyly.
“Baby girl! Come in, come in.” Owl-like eyes blinked up at her behind thick plastic glasses. Her Uncle Julius had seemed to Lorrie a giant once. Now she towered over him and his fine little afro was completely white.
“PEARL!” her Uncle bellowed over his shoulder. “PEARL! LOOK WHO’S HERE!”
They were conservative church folks but they were country, and so in spite of her disheveled appearance and their opinions about her Mama, they welcomed Lorrie with open arms.
Before she knew it Lorrie found herself sitting at a table with plates of eggs, sausage, bacon, cornbread, grits and biscuits piled before her, with her baby cousin Franklin Junior in her lap. His Mama Lakeisha was at work, so Auntie Pearl and Uncle Julius were watching him.
She ate slowly, picking at the meat so as not to be rude. It was warmer in the house than outside by a mile.
“Let me take your jacket, baby,” Auntie Pearl offered. “Why do you have it on backwards?”
“Um. I fell into some mud by accident.” Lorrie did not give her the jacket. Aunt Pearl’s hand dropped and she blinked at Lorrie.
“I can’t believe you walked here from– where did you say you walked here from?”
“Um— camping with a friend.”
“Camping? Was it a man friend?” said her aunt, pursing her lips. “I do believe that is a man’s jacket.” She looked about to pass judgment but she restrained herself. “I can wash it for you. We just got a dryer put in,” was all her aunt said.
“I’ll do it,” Lorrie said, standing up fast and handing over the baby. “And I’ll wash the dishes, too.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I insist,” said Lorrie quickly, not wanting her aunt to see the bloodstains. “It’s an old jacket and you need to wash it with a special touch.”
Aunt Pearl leaned on her cane. “If you insist, but then you have to sit down and come talk to us old folks.”
As soon as her aunt left the laundry room Lorrie stripped off Absalom’s jacket and rustled through the laundry room until she found the Hydrogen Peroxide.
She tossed the liquid over the worst stains and stuffed the jacket in the washing machine with a heaping spoonful of Mrs. Cinderella’s Clean Soap Powder.
Lorrie got the water temperature up as hot as it would go, then walked back to the kitchen and started on the dishes.
Aunt Pearl eyed her crop top and daisy dukes and said mildly, “You want some more clothes in this cold weather?”
“It ain’t no bother,” said Lorrie, but Aunt Pearl left the room and came back with a very old but clean flannel shirt. “That was your daddy’s,” she told her niece quietly.
Lorrie took the shirt with a polite thanks that gave away none of the emotion which suddenly overwhelmed her. She didn’t have anything of her daddy’s. Mama had burned his things when they broke up and he died not long after that.
Baby Franklin started crying, so Lorrie took him from his little playpen and, balancing him on her hip, started filling the sink to do the dishes.
Unlike most older folks her Aunt and Uncle had no television.
They had only one daughter who was always working— Franklin Junior’s Mama.
They seemed content with the peace and quiet.
Lorrie longed to put on the radio or something, anything, to distract herself from the bad thoughts swirling around her mind.
She buried her nose in Franklin Junior’s head when she suddenly pictured what Absalom had done to that man yesterday.
She hoped none of that bad energy could spread to the baby.
“It’s been a long time since we saw her,” Aunt Pearl was saying in the other room. “Maybe ten years.”
“She never knew our side of the family too well; you can blame Wilbur for that,” Uncle Julius replied.
Wilbur was Lorrie’s father.
“Ain’t she pretty, though, Julius?”
“Not like my Pearl in her day.”
“You know she looks just like her mother, but she’s got Wilbur’s eyes.
We should ask her to stay the night. I don’t know when Lakeisha’s coming for that child but I bet it’ll be another excuse.
You see how he doesn't cry when Lorraine holds him? And what about this child they found on that roof in Rowanville this morning? Buck-naked, too. He was that little boy that went missing. Remember?”
“Naked babies on rooftops? Say what?”
“That’s what my cousin Sheryl told me. She lives in the neighborhood. Said this poor baby was up there wavin’ his underwear around like he was landing a plane. Apparently he’d been kidnapped!”
“This country is going to hell in a handbasket,” grumbled Uncle Julius.
Lorrie kissed the top of Franklin’s fuzzy head and the baby nuzzled closer in his sleep. People can be so wicked.
“You want some shrimp and grits for dinner?” Aunt Pearl popped her head in to ask. “It’s either that or split pea soup.”
“Soup sounds nice, thank you Aunt Pearl.”
“Saves me work, I just need to put the crock pot on.” Aunt Pearl began puttering around the kitchen as Lorrie finished the dishes.
Shrimp and grits, thought Lorrie. Did everything have to remind her of him? What was he doing right now?
Don’t even think about it.
One of the few times they ever spent a night together Absalom surprised Lorrie by offering to cook.
He went out to the grocery store and came back with a huge paper bag just laden with stuff.
As Lorrie sipped some $10 wine, she watched him peel the frozen shrimp, clean it, then season it with lemon juice and Tony Chacheres.
While that marinated, Absalom sauteed shallots in a pool of yellow butter.
When they got all soft and shiny he added the shrimp to the skillet with a pile of fresh garlic and fried them up quick, deglazing the whole thing with a splash of her wine and chicken stock.
To the grits he did nothing but cook them up with more butter and salt.
The grits went in a bowl, the sauce went over it, with gleaming red-gold shrimps on top and some minced chives, fresh thyme, parsley…
Just where the hell did you learn to cook like that?
TV, he replied.
Liar.
A man’s got his secrets, Lorraine. Then he had smiled at her and tweaked her nose. She wished it could always be like that between the two of them, but of course...
Little Franklin started to fuss so Lorrie took him outside.
She blinked back her tears in the sunlight for a minute and forced Absalom from her mind.
If he loves me so much, why does he make me cry?
The tears flowed back to the crack in her heart.
On her walk up here she had come to terms with the sad truth that Absalom had rejected her and it was simply time to move on with her life.
Lorrie had just started rinsing the soap suds down the drain when her phone rang. Who else could it be? She ducked into the empty laundry room and answered, “What?”
“ Where are you ?”
Lorrie examined the freshly washed jacket. Nothing like Mrs. Cinderella’s Soap Powder. “I went to see some family in town, Absalom. If I’m going to miss work and get fired, I might as well make a day of it.”
“You’re not getting fired. I already called whats-her-face,” Absalom said.