Page 23 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin’s Duet (Sins of the South)

“Well, you said nobody lives up here. What if you just came back tomorrow with— with your bomb expert person?” As she said the words out loud she wondered how Absalom even knew somebody like that.

Well, there was always a guy for something out in mountain country.

Trucks, plumbing, solar, still repairs, horse breeding, love potions, roof shingling, aphrodisiac ginseng tinctures: you name it, Appalachia had a pHD in the subject down a holler somewhere.

She had an ugly thought. “Who’s to say your guy wasn’t the one who planted that in your truck in the first place?”

“If it was my guy, it would have detonated,” Absalom said grimly.

“Great. That’s just great.”

“Back to the main event, Lorrie. And don’t try talking me out of it. Cover your ears and don’t look.”

They got down flat on the ground, into position, like they were hunting white-tail.

The forest went quiet. The plan was to aim at the package under the truck and blast it.

Hopefully Absalom had correctly estimated the distance the blast might travel.

Lorrie waited about four minutes before she realized Absalom was not going to shoot the gun.

His knuckles paled on the stock, but he didn’t shoot.

She whispered, “Let me do it.”

Wordlessly he passed her the rifle. I hate guns.

The Winchester was lighter than she expected.

She was not taking life, she reminded herself.

She was saving it. Lorrie got in position on her stomach, elbows and shoulders bracing for the recoil, and lined up the shot just like her daddy had taught her so very long ago.

It was easier than hunting ducks, or white-tail.

Her daddy used to call her Ace. In her mind’s eye she conjured up a line between her body and the target; a razor-thin line of steel that could not be broken.

The gun roared. Red and white light as bright as the sun exploded.

The sound was like a physical blow. A fierce heat rippled outward from the blast, followed by the acrid stink of metal.

A smoking piece of the truckbed slammed into the ground ten feet away.

The carcass that remained burned with a poisonous yellow flame.

Greasy smoke belched out of the tires. That smelled even worse.

It could have been us.

Before their ears stopped ringing Absalom stood up, walking towards the wreck as if in a daze. Carefully holding the Winchester, Lorrie hurried after him.

“Stand back,” he warned, stopping her with an arm outstretched. “The engine…”

That could have been us. We would have burned alive.

Lorrie remembered when a trailer in her Mama’s holler had burned down. Those screams weren’t something a person ever forgot.

“I almost got you killed,” Absalom said. He stared at the truck with a feral expression.

“Not you,” said Lorrie. “ Them .”

The firelight flickered in his eyes for a minute before her man turned and said, “Let’s go.”

“Your truck’s blocked off the road.”

“There’s another way through Mulberry; a shortcut. I want to get something at my trailer before I go back to Roman’s.” He looked down at her and shook his head, already getting back to business. “You’ll have to stay at my place. Guess I’m borrowing your car.”

“No,” said Lorrie.

“Excuse me?”

“No, you are not borrowing my car, Absalom. I’ll drive you there.”

“Lorrie—”

“Do not argue with me.”

His lips twitched as he eyed the Winchester in her too-small hands. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said.

When they got to the car he took the gun from her, set it aside and pulled her into his arms again. He kissed her softly and deliberately. She felt the heat of his body merge with hers; a rush of adrenaline began coursing through her veins as she imagined what might have happened if—

“Don’t think on it,” he said, his hands shaping her waist, her butt, squeezing up and down her arms as if making sure she was still alive and whole. “When we get to my place— we’ll talk, alright?”

Talk about what ?

She wasn’t sure what Abi meant; they had done plenty talking at Aunt Pearl’s. But she nodded. “Okay.”

“Never again,” he said. And she wasn’t sure what that meant, either, but their souls had indeed come to a silent understanding.

Absalom’s trailer lay a good ways down the mountain in Green Tree territory, so named for the apple orchards the family had maintained for over a century. There was a party going on in the trailer park over the ridge.

“I smell cracklins,” Lorrie said, sniffing the air.

“That ain’t nothing. You should see the feast we threw together up on Roman’s hill tonight.”

“The feast I wasn’t invited to?”

Absalom’s ears turned pink. “I warn you that Hiram and the rest will be there and I might have to get into a fight. Leave before midnight, that’s my only condition.”

Surprise nearly ran her off the road. “I can come with you for real?” She chose to ignore the last part of his statement.

“We nearly died today, might as well live it up tonight.” He stared at the road. “You’d have gone to heaven.”

“It’s not too late to change.”

“Even for a rascal like me?”

“You’re more bark than bite, Abi.”

“Don’t tell the boys that. I have to be a bastard from here on out. Aw!”

“What?” she said, startled.

“I wish you drove as well as you shoot, Lorraine.”

“Excuse me?”

“You nearly run over that possum.”

“What possum? There was a possum?” Lorrie slammed on the brakes.

Absalom groaned and rubbed his neck. “Want me to drive?”

“No, look! We’re almost there.”

Absalom’s trailer was small and tidy in comparison to his neighbors.

He kept a vegetable garden in front, and a peach tree he had carefully been pruning for the past two years despite its refusal to bud.

Something shaggy and yellow dislodged itself from the porch and came trotting up as the car approached.

“Is that your dog?” Lorrie exclaimed in disbelief. “He came back?”

“Sure is,” said Absalom, equally surprised. “The rotten sucker. He had me worried sick, but does he care? Look how fat he’s got!”

“Here, Lucky! Here boy!” Lorrie called excitedly, honking the horn.

The dog bolted up to the car as they climbed out and started chasing his stumpy tail in excitement.

Absalom knelt and scratched his shaggy ruff.

“The little bastard. I adopt him. I bathe him, I pick all them ticks off him, get him that flea stuff, get him snipped, buy all that fancy chow, and what does he do but run off and leave me there holding my ass?”

“Aw, did Absalom want to keep you locked up in that trailer, boy? Yes he did. Absalom is a big ol’ meanie who needs to lighten up, right? Good boy.”

“Yesterday I find him halfway across town, cozying up to Saverin Bailey,” Absalom said.

“I try calling him and he ignores me. Won’t stay inside.

Won’t stay in a kennel. He comes for his food and then he’s gone with the wind.

What’s the point of a dog that don’t listen?

” Lucky yelped in happiness and Absalom tackled him gently to the ground.

Man and dog spent a minute or so rolling around while Lorrie laughed in spite of herself.

Finally Abi got up and snapped his fingers at Lucky, who followed him happily inside after he unlocked the door. But he didn’t let the dog past the screen-door landing. “Not today, my friend. You might got fleas or something. Gotta give you a rinse, I think.”

Lorrie snorted a laugh and followed with her pecan pie and tote bag. At the doorway her good humor died a little; she held her breath, wondering if she would see evidence of Abi’s new bride all over the trailer. Wondering what she would do in that case. Throw something else at his head?

But the trailer was exactly as she remembered. Not a whiff different. She saw no signs another woman had been busily about, redecorating.

“Sorry, Lucky,” she told the disappointed dog, who gave her a woebegone look as she left him in the landing. But then he started scratching his ear a little too vigorously. Fleas indeed.

Inside, she set the pie down in the kitchen, still on the lookout for feminine touches that had not been there before. “You always keep it so clean, Abi.”

“Home sweet home,” her man grunted. He went straight to the couch and sank into it, holding his head.

Then he leapt right back up again with a curse and went to the kitchen, passing Lorrie on her way to the living room for further inspection.

Lorrie heard the sound of dog food hitting the bowl, the landing door opening, and Absalom going, “Sit. Stay. Leave it. Yes, good boy.”

When he came back inside, Lorrie joined Absalom on the couch and put her arms around him. “The prodigal son has returned,” she quipped.

“I kept a bowl of food out for him every night hopin’ he’d come back.

One time I found four raccoons circled around it feasting like hogs.

I come out and you know one of the little menaces starts running off with the bowl?

Holding it with both hands and running like— like—” Absalom snorted and Lorrie dissolved into giggles.

“Just keep Lucky in here, then,” she suggested.

“Hmph. Maybe I should get him a buddy so he doesn’t mind staying here alone. A cat or something.”

In the following silence they looked at each other and said at the same time, “That’s a terrible idea.”

Absalom laughed again and drew Lorrie against him, kissing the top of her hair.

She turned on the radio, away from the lotto recap of the night before to the slow country station. To those soft tracks she rubbed Absalom’s shoulders out until he made a deep low sound of satisfaction.

“You are so fuckin’ pretty,” he said, his country drawl getting thicker, showing the exhaustion he’d been fighting so hard to suppress since the night before. “How did I ever get one so pretty?”

“I liked your grits, that’s all.”

He leaned back in the couch and stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Makin’ you miss work. Being a dick about it. Being a dick about everything. Having to leave right now and go play General.”

“Abi, you should really get some sleep.”

“I’d like some of your Auntie’s pecan pie, if you can spare it.”

Lorrie cut him a generous piece of the sticky pie and returned to the couch, cuddling next to him.

She dug the fork into the slice, meaning to feed it to him since he looked too exhausted to move, but he surprised her by taking the plate and setting it on the center table.

What he said next surprised her even more.

“You are for real the love of my life, Lorraine.”

She inhaled. “You like pecan pie that much?”

His laughter rang out like music. He stood up, drew the blinds, and sat next to her again.

He squeezed her thigh with a large hand.

The hair on the back of his hand and on his arms was standing up.

Absalom was charged with something; a humming energy that hadn’t been there before. Something was eating at him.

“What?” she asked softly.

“You asked me why I didn’t marry you,” he said.

“The truth is I’d already got you a ring.

About a year ago.” He spoke to their intertwined hands, more rapidly than his usual measured speech.

“I never went through with it. Too much was going on— I was a self-absorbed fool. But you were right. You’ve always been right about us.

” He shook his head. “Lorrie, if you’ll have my name, my life…

I’ll give you more than words. But will you take me still, after everything? Will you marry me?”

“When?” Lorrie croaked.

“In two weeks,” he said. Time enough to get the annulment , Lorrie thought.

Absalom added, “We can have a ceremony in a couple months when things settle down. However you want. Bring up your girls from Rowanville— I’ll cover it all.”

“You know I’m a simple girl.”

“You deserve the finest,” he said. “And now we won’t have to struggle. I got money. We’re set.” He shook his head. “I know it ain’t exactly romantic, but giving you my name and my assets is most important, if anything should happen to me—”

“I accept.”

He pulled back, clearly stunned she’d answered so quickly. “You do?”

“If I can live truly as your wife and your woman, with no fear and shame,” Lorrie said slowly, knowing she must speak from the heart in this precious, fragile moment.

“If you take care of me, and if you suffer me to take care of you the way you need. If you promise never to kill another soul again, not even for my behalf, then I will have you, Abi. For always.”

“Life is too precious to waste,” he said; one of his lyrical riddling replies. “I see that now. I will always take care of you and cherish you.”

“What about killing people?”

He hesitated. “What I did at the Greasy Hog was foul. I’ll never put you through that again.”

He still hadn’t answered her question but it would have to be enough. Absalom got up and went to his bedroom. Lorrie’s heart beat swiftly. This was happening. For real.

He came back with a small jewelry box the color of wine. His face and the tops of his ears matched the shade exactly.

They stared at each other.

He said gruffly, “I should kneel—”

“Er— okay. Yeah.”

He got down awkwardly on one knee and shook out his shoulders, making Lorrie laugh in spite of her uneasy acceptance of his compromise. He took her hand. “Wait– ain’t it the other one?” he muttered.

“No, you’ve got it right,” she giggled, again. Why couldn’t she stop giggling like an idiot? But her cheeks felt wet.

Absalom cleared his throat. “Lorraine Denver, I—” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair before restarting, “Lorrie, for five years you’ve been my best friend and you held my heart in the palm of your hand.

There’s been no other since I first laid eyes on you all those summers ago.

Now, this is the last summer that’ll pass without me doing what I should have done— hell, I’m no good at this. ”

How strange to see Absalom fumbling for words. But Lorrie couldn’t speak at all. Outside a swallow coo-cooed. There was a buzzing against the window, like bees. The dog Lucky whined in his sleep behind the screen door.

“I love you,” Absalom said. “I loved you then. I love you now. I am sorry for ever taking this for granted. I swear on my own life’s blood that nothing will ever keep us from each other again. Lorrie, you are the wife of my soul and the only one I could spend the rest of my days with.”

Then as he leaned forward and kissed her, without resistance he slipped the two-carat diamond on her finger.