“Elvis? Are you ready for lunch?”
Usually the mention of food brings him running.
A quick check shows his bed empty, his second-favorite spot under the washbasin vacant, and the back door wide open. Running around the small yard yelling for my dog, I see my custody battle turning in favor of Jack.
Panicked, I race inside and dial his cell phone. He answers on the first ring and I don’t know whether to come clean about Elvis or cry.
I do both.
“Sit tight, I’m on the way.”
Holy cow! Now here I am, my good intentions and my willpower taking a powder while the man who knows how to turn every surface in my beauty parlor into a pleasure playground roars this way with eight hundred pounds of horsepower between his legs. I might as well strip and throw myself across the pink vinyl cushions on my love seat.
With the distant roar of his Screamin’ Eagle putting goose bumps the size of hen eggs all over me, I make a mental list of every reason I should hate him.
There are about eight hundred and seventy-five, so this could take a while. Topping the list is that I don’t even know who he is. Sure, he says he’s an international business consultant named Jack Jones, but he also said—in French, mind you—that his parents were diplomats in Paris and couldn’t come to the wedding, which proved to be a big fat lie. Turns out he’s an orphan who was such a hell-raiser, nobody would adopt him. And I didn’t find that out until three years after I’d said I do.
On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, just when I despaired of ever finding a hero, Jack Jones rolled into Mooreville in a silver Jag and started spreading money and charm like it was oil and he was a rich Texan. Which is one of the many states he claims to hail from. Texas. Idaho. New Hampshire. North Dakota. Georgia. Maine. And he can speak in every one of the accents. Plus Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese in addition to French.
He seduced me in six languages, then tied me in a knot and delivered me to the altar with the promise of house, dog, and family. He delivered the house (my current abode, which, thank goodness, he’s not fighting for) and the dog (Elvis, whom he’ll get over my dead body).
“When I can settle down we’ll have kids,” he kept telling me. Then he proceeded to run all over the country doing Lord knows what.
“You look good enough to eat,” he says, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
There he stands—Jack Jones in the tightest black jeans I’ve ever seen, a black T-shirt that shows every muscle he’s got and a bulge in his pants that’s either “happy to see me” or his Colt .45.
“Don’t you even try.”
He bends me backward over the love seat, then runs his left hand over my lips, down my neck, and into the front of my blouse while I’m trying to decide whether to slap his face or unzip his pants.
“As tempting as you are, I have other things on my mind today, Callie. Finding my dog, for one.” He releases me and I land in a heap on the love seat. “How did you lose him?”
“That’s just like you, Jack. Standing there making accusations instead of finding Elvis. He could be in Timbuktu by now.”
“Not the way he moves. Come on.” We head outside and he tosses me a helmet. “Put that on.”
“I’m not getting on that Harley.”
He picks me up, tosses me aboard, then roars off while I hang on. If I could hit the side of a barn, I’d shoot him. With my blue jean skirt hiked up past decency, I look like a gun moll. And I don’t even want to think about my Ferragamo sandals. The left one has come untied. It’ll probably catch in the wheels, jerk me off, and smash me against the highway. I’ll look like roadkill. Even Uncle Charlie won’t be able to repair the damage.
I don’t have much time to worry because Jack comes to a screeching halt at one of Elvis’ favorite haunts, Fayrene’s convenience store, Gas, Grits, and Guts. (She added the Guts part after she started selling fish bait.) Usually she has a flea market going in the parking lot and kids hanging around, happy to share a hot dog and scratch behind the ears of a dog who thinks he’s famous.
“Nope,” Fayrene tells us after we inquire about Elvis. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. But I’ve been so torn up I wouldn’t have noticed a herd of elephants. I’m suffering from acid reflex and fireballs in my useless.”
Translated, that’s acid reflux and fibroids in the uterus. Fayrene is Mama’s best friend and the queen of malapropisms and green polyester. I’ve tried to steer her to a more flattering color but she says she likes green because it’s the color of money.
I console her over her imaginary ailments and she says, “I’m glad to see you’re back with Jack.”
Jack winks at her. “So am I.”
I flounce out and straddle the hated Harley. “I’m not back with you.”
“Not yet.”
He revs up and we check the rest of Elvis’ stomping ground: the Mooreville High School ball field where he loves to sit on the sidelines and howl along with the band or watch ball practice, the barbershop that features a red-and-white-striped pole he regularly anoints, and the used car lot whose owner has a big black 1960s Cadillac that Elvis considers his.
All these places are within easy walking distance of Hair.Net. Mooreville is not much more than a wide place in the road. Two roads, actually. The four-way stop in the heart of things is at the intersection of Highways 178 and 371. That’s not saying much because both are two-lane roads.
If the state ever adds more lanes I’ll be too worried to buy shoes. My dog is an escape artist. If a hound dog wants to wander, even my almost-ex can’t keep it fenced in.
“We might as well go back,” I say.
“There’s another place I want to check out.”
We peel out of the used car lot, race four miles south on 371, and hang a hard right on the narrow lane across from Wildwood Chapel Cemetery, dominated by Daddy’s black African marble obelisk, Aunt Minrose’s (Lovie’s mom) soaring pink Italian marble angel, and our Valentine grandparents’ replica of the Pearly Gates.
Jack screeches to a halt in a wooded glade overlooking Mama’s lake on the hundred-and-sixty-acre farm where I grew up.
Dreams gestate in the beauty of this land. When we were sixteen Lovie and I sat side by side on an overhanging limb of the massive blackjack oak and planned our futures. At the age of eighty, she was to be an even more famous musician than her mother, while I was going to be in my own house surrounded by sixteen great-grandchildren, an adoring husband, and a faithful dog.
At the rate I’m going, the only part I’m going to end up with is a faithful dog.
Now I’m telling Jack, “Oh no, you don’t,” but he just grins and plucks me off the Harley.
The minute my feet touch that beloved, almost sacred ground, I’m a goner. And I can’t say I’m all that sorry, either.
Much, much later, as I brush grass off my skirt I tell Jack, “Don’t think this means you’re going to get custody of Elvis.”
He swats me on the butt, tosses me onto his Harley, and roars off.
But I’m not fixing to start feeling guilty. Love makes fools of us all, and that’s all I’m saying on that subject. Besides, dallying with my ex is better than being roadkill.
“Callie, you have grass in your hair.” Lovie’s sharp blue eyes never miss a thing.
“Oh, shoot.” I reach up and brush the bits and pieces out, hopefully before Uncle Charlie or any of the Latons