It would take some doing to get Annie moved to Princeton. Probably they’d have to wait till after the holidays. Oh, he knew it would be hard for her to leave the farm, but she had Chet and her brothers here to take over for her. And her Aunt Liza would care for the boys. Hell, he’d hire a live-in house keeper to help Aunt Liza if necessary. Or the whole gang could come live with him, though he couldn’t imagine that ever happening. It would be like the Clampetts moving to Princeton. All he knew was that it was time someone took care of Annie, and Clay thanked God it was going to be him.
Would they get married?
Of course. There was no way her family would allow her to live with a man without the bonds of matrimony. And Annie would want that, too, Clay was sure.
How did he feel about marriage? Hmmm. A few days ago, he would have balked. But now…Clay smiled. Now the idea of marrying Annie seemed ordained. Perfect.
So everything was all set. He and Annie would go out to night on a date. He would propose. She would accept. They’d make plans for the wedding and the move to Princeton. And a honeymoon…they’d fit a honeymoon in there, too. Perfect.
The only problem was that Clay kept hearing the oddest thing. Somewhere in the house, a radio was playing that old Elvis song, “Blue Suede Shoes,” but every time Elvis would belt out a stanza that was supposed to end in a warning not to step on “my blue suede shoes,” Clay kept hearing, “…don’t you step on God’s big toe.”
If Clay was a superstitious man, he would have considered it a premonition.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
Clay had showered and shaved with a disposable razor he’d found in the bathroom. Then he’d unhesitatingly entered Chet’s room, where he borrowed a clean set of clothes, including a pair of new underwear straight from the package. This family owed him that, at least. Okay, he owed them a lot, too, he was beginning to realize…like a new life.
But now, Aunt Liza had forced him into a chair at the kitchen table, where she’d placed in front of him a half dozen platters heaped with bacon and sausage, hotcakes dripping with butter and maple syrup, scrambled eggs and leftover biscuits from last night (also dripping with butter), slices of scrapple (which he feared contained pork unmentionables, like noses and things), black pudding (which Aunt Liza told him without blinking was blood sausage), coffee, orange juice, and a glass of cold milk with a head of pure cream.
“All I ever have for breakfast is coffee, juice, and an English muffin or toast,” he demurred.
“Well, you ain’t in New Jersey now, boy. So eat up. I got some oatmeal cookin’ on the stove, too, to warm up your innards.”
He groaned. “If I eat all this, I won’t be able to move.”
“You ain’t goin’ anywhere anyhow, sonny. You’re stuck here on the farm with a gimp leg, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“But I have work to do…calls to make—”
She slapped a couple of pig-nose slabs on his plate and glared at him till he finally gave in. He pushed the pig-nose slabs to the side, though, and gave himself modest helpings of eggs and biscuits, one sausage link, two slices of bacon, and one hotcake, but before he knew it his plate was overflowing.
Despite all his protests, the food was mouthwateringly delicious, and he told Aunt Liza so. She smiled graciously at the compliment and sat down at the table with him, sipping a cup of coffee.
“When did everyone leave for Memphis?” he asked as he ate…and ate…and ate.
“’Bout nine,” Aunt Liza said, nibbling on a buttered biscuit slathered with strawberry jam, while she continued to drink her coffee. “They wanted to get an early start today…hopin’ the Christmas shoppers and tourists will be out early.”
Clay nodded. “Why didn’t they leave Jason here with you?”
Aunt Liza’s shoulders slumped, and her parchment cheeks pinkened. “I can’t be on my feet too long. Gotta take lots of naps. And sometimes I don’t hear the baby when he cries.”
Clay wished he hadn’t asked when he saw the shame on her wrinkled face. He decided silence was a better route to take…to shut his big mouth. So he tentatively tasted a piece of the black pudding, which was surprisingly palatable.
“So when you gonna make an honest woman of our Annie?” Aunt Liza asked unexpectedly.
His milk went down the wrong pipe and he sputtered. He probably had a cream mustache, to boot. “I haven’t done anything to make Annie dishonest,” he asserted, wiping at his mouth with a napkin.
Aunt Liza gave him a sidelong glance of skepticism. “That whisker burn she was sportin’ on her cheeks this mornin’ didn’t come from a close shave, honey. Besides, Roy and Jerry Lee was sayin’ somethin’ ’bout ‘pink and flustery’ and ‘guilty as sin.’ Don’t suppose you know what they was talkin’ about?”
Clay hated the fact that his face was heating up, but he wasn’t about to cower under the old buzzard’s insinuations. He raised his chin obstinately and refused to rise to her bait.
“We got one loose chick hatched on this place, and I don’t want no more,” Aunt Liza went on. “Randy roosters and footloose hens are runnin’ rampant these days.”
Clay didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. Roosters and hens and chicks?
“Now I don’t countenance loose behavior none, but you’d best be keepin’ these,” she said, pulling a small box out of her apron pocket and shoving it his way, “just in case the devil sits on your shoulder sometime soon.”
“Wh-what?” Clay stammered as he realized that Aunt Liza had handed him a box of condoms. Oh, man! A woman old enough to be my grandmother is giving me condoms. “Where did you get these?”
“The supermarket.”
“You…you went into a supermarket and bought condoms?”
“Yep. Durn tootin’, I did. ’Bout caused ol’ Charlie Good, the manager, to swallow his false teeth.”
“You bought condoms for me? But…but I just got here yesterday.” Clay’s head was reeling with confusion.
“Don’t be an idjit, boy. ’T weren’t you I bought those suckers for.” Aunt Liza took another sip of coffee, ignoring the fact that he was waiting, slack jawed, for her next bombshell. “Chet learned his lesson good, I reckon, with that little chick of his. But I was figurin’ on havin’ a talk with Hank. That boy’s headed on the road to ruination sure as God made Jezebels and hot-blooded roosters.”
Hank? She bought the condoms for Hank? That makes sense. I guess. Whew!
“This whole generation’s goin’ to hell in a handbasket, if you ask me.” Aunt Liza made a tsking sound, piercing him with a stare that included him in the wild bunch. “I blame it all on the tongue business.”
The tongue business? Don’t ask. Don’t ask. “What tongue business?”
“Tongue kissin’. What tongue business didja think I was gabbin’ about?” she answered tartly, as if he should have known better. “When courtin’ couples start tongue kissin’, the trouble begins. Next thing ya know they’re buyin’ Pampers by the gross.”
She narrowed her eyes at Clay, and he just knew Aunt Liza was going to ask him if he’d been giving Annie tongue. Before she could speak, he put up a halting hand. Time to put some brakes on this outrageous conversation.
“Aunt Liza,” Clay said in the calmest voice he could muster, without breaking out in laughter, “Annie and I have not had sex.” Yet. “But even if we had, what ever happened or didn’t happen or is about to happen is between me and Annie.”
“Well, that may very well be, Mr. Hoity-Toity City Feller, but if there’s a weddin’ to be planned, I gotta commence makin’ a menu, and preparin’ food. Everyone in the whole county will wanna come to Annie Fallon’s weddin’, that’s for sure. I don’t wanna be goin’ to all that trouble for a bride with a belly what looks like she swallowed a watermelon seed nine months past.”
I’m going insane. I just discovered I’m falling in love, and already she has me making babies and walking up the aisle, in that order. And, good Lord, does sh
e think we would get married in a farm house? With pigs’ noses and cows’ blood and other equally distasteful stuff on the wedding menu?
Now that was unkind. She’s only being concerned. You really are being hoity-toity, if that means the same as poker-up-your-butt snobbish. C’mon, Jessup, stop acting like you’re in Princeton.
“Aunt Liza, if and when Annie and I decide to marry, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Oh, I know, all right,” she said, leveling him with a scrutiny that saw right through his facade. “I knew the minute Annie brung you through that door yesterday. I knew when the radio kept bopping on and off all day with Elvis’s music that his spirit has come into the house. I knew when you gawked at Annie all durin’ dinner last night, and couldn’t keep the love out of your eyes. I knew—”
“Enough!” he said with a laugh of surrender. “Pass me the pigs’ noses.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Clay was waiting on the front porch when Annie got home at five.
She felt the now familiar feverish heat envelop her the minute he came into view. It was the strangest, most wonderful, scariest feeling in the world to drive up in the pickup and see this man she’d come to love in such a short time, just standing there waiting for her to come home.
Leaning against a porch post, he was dressed in his neatly pressed suit, the sides of his jacket pulled back over his slim hips by hands that were tucked into the pockets of his slacks. One crutch was propped beside him. It was a casual pose, but Annie could see he was as nervous and excited as she was.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly, coming up the steps.
“Hi,” he said back, his eyes crinkling with amusement as they skimmed over her, from bouffant hair to Blessed Mary robe.
She stopped midway up the steps, an attack of timidity overcoming her. All day she’d been thinking about him, the wicked things he’d done to her last night, how he’d made her feel. Now, all the thoughts she’d wanted to share with him stuck in her throat. What if he’d changed his mind? What if his heart wasn’t racing as madly as hers? What if he didn’t really want to take her out to night? What if he didn’t love her?
Clay uncoiled himself from his leaning position and stepped forward, slowly. One hand snaked out to grasp her by the nape and draw her closer. “I missed you,” he said in a husky voice.
“Oh, God, I missed you, too. But I look awful,” she said, waggling her fingers in a flustery fashion to indicate her caricature appearance. Flustery? I’m probably pink, too. Roy and Jerry Lee were right. Flustery and pink.
Clay chuckled. “Just shows how far gone I am. You’re beginning to look good even as a sixties Madonna.” He dragged her close and lowered his head toward hers. Annie watched, mesmerized, as his eyelids fluttered closed and his lips parted.
Then she forgot everything, too engrossed in the kiss, which seared her already feverish body to her very soul. When he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, she felt his heat, and knew the fever had overtaken him as well.
She moaned against his open mouth.
He moaned back.
A sharp rapping noise jarred them both from their kiss, ending it far too soon. It was Aunt Liza, using her wooden spoon to knock a warning on the kitchen window, which looked out over the porch. “There’d better not be any tongue business goin’ on,” Aunt Liza called out. “Remember what I told you, young man.”
Annie leaned back, still in the circle of Clay’s arms, and peered questioningly up at him.
He laughed. “You don’t want to know.”
“Hey, Clay,” Chet greeted him. Still dressed in his Elvis/
St. Joseph gear and high, duck-tail hairdo, Chet had just come from the pickup truck, where he must have been gathering the baby’s paraphernalia, which was looped over one shoulder. The baby, which he held in the other arm, was wide-awake and gurgling happily, swatting at Chet’s nose with a rattle. Chet must have heard Aunt Liza, because he waggled his eyebrows in commiseration and commented, “Aunt Liza gave you the tongue lecture, right?”
“Oh, no!” Annie groaned, putting her face in her hands.
“We made eight hundred dollars today,” Johnny informed him cheerily as he skipped up the steps, Elvis hair bouncing up and down. His sheepskin shepherd outfit was in sharp contrast to his duct-taped sneakers. “Annie says I can get a new pair of athletic shoes for Christmas if we keep going at this clip. And see, Annie? I didn’t say one single word about ‘pink and flustery,’ just like you warned.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Annie asked Johnny. “There’s milking to be done.”
“I know, I know. Don’t get your dander up. I have to go to the bathroom first. They can start without me,” he whined, pointing at his brothers.
Roy, Hank, and Jerry Lee, still dolled up as Elvis wise men, were unloading the donkey and two sheep from the animal van, alternately smirking toward him and Annie and trying to get the stubborn donkey to move. At one point, Roy and Jerry Lee were shoving the donkey’s butt while Hank pulled on a lead rope. The only thing they accomplished was a load of donkey manure barely missing their feet.
“I swear, Annie, I’m butchering this donkey come Christmas,” Roy vowed.
Clay tasted bile rising in his throat. They wouldn’t really eat donkey, would they? Hell, they ate beef blood and pigs’ noses. Why not donkey? “Hurry and shower so we can go out,” he whispered to Annie. “I have big plans for tonight.”
“Big plans? Oh, my! I certainly hope so.”
“Before you shower, we’d better go out to the barn and breed Mirabelle. She’s not gonna be in heat much longer. I don’t think we wanna wait another twenty-one days for her to go in heat again.” Clay hadn’t realized that Chet still stood on the porch, behind them. “Here,” Chet added, handing the baby to Clay, “take him in the house for me. We’ll be back in a half hour or so.”
“What? Who? Me?” Clay said, staring at the wide-eyed baby who gaped at him as if his father had just delivered him to King Kong. Clay was holding the kid gingerly with hands under both his armpits. Just when Clay thought the baby was going to let loose with a wail of outrage, Jason gave him a slobbery smile and belted him on the forehead with a rattle.
Clay could swear he heard Aunt Liza giggling on the other side of the kitchen window. She probably considered it just payment for tongue.
A half hour later, Annie hadn’t returned to the house. Aunt Liza had changed baby Jason after Clay had performed the amazing feat of feeding him a bottle. The kid, who was really quite precious, was now cooing contentedly from his infant seat in the kitchen, where he was pulverizing a piece of melba toast.
Clay decided to check out this cow-breeding business.
What he saw when he entered the huge barn stunned him. First of all, there was the overpowering smell: cow manure, the hot earthy scent of animal flesh, and fresh milk. A cow belched near him and he almost jumped out of his wing-tips. The sweet reek of the cow’s breath that drifted toward him on the wake of the bovine burp was not unpleasant, but strange. Very strange.
There was a center aisle with about sixty black-and-white cows lined up in stalls on both sides. Jerry Lee was washing down cow udders and stimulating teats, while Roy was hooking the teats up to automated milking contraptions, six cows at a time.
Hank was shoveling feed in the troughs for the big cows, which must have weighed about 1500 pounds, at the same time ministering to the sixty or so young stock at the far end of the barn. The whole time he was addressing the cows by name. Florence. Sweet Caroline. Aggie. Winona. Rosie Posie. Lucille. Pamela Lee. On and on, he chatted with the cows. How he ever remembered all the names, Clay didn’t know.
Johnny was sitting off to the side, bottle-feeding a half dozen baby calves. “Hey, Clay, wanna help me?” he asked.
“Uh…I don’t think I’m dressed for that,” he declined. Besides, he wanted to see what Annie was doing at the other end of the barn. She and Chet were in a separate, larger stall with one humongous cow about the size of
a minivan. That must be the breeding section.
“Where’s the bull?” he inquired casually, as if he strolled through barns every day to view cow sex.
Chet and Annie jerked to attention. Apparently they hadn’t heard him come up behind them. Well, no wonder. With all these cows mooing, he could barely hear anything himself.
“We don’t have any bulls,” Annie answered. “We butcher or sell off all the male stock.”
“Why?”
“Bulls are too darn ornery, that’s why,” Chet answered. “They’re not worth the trouble, believe me.”
“But…but how do you breed the cows then?”
“Artificial insemination,” Chet informed him. “This is the nineties, man.”
It was only then that he noticed Chet was holding the cow still, even though it was tied by a loose rope to the front of the stall. Annie, on the other hand, stood there with a big brown apron covering her Virgin Mary gown. On one arm, she wore a plastic glove that reached all the way to the shoulder. In the other hand, she held a huge syringe-type affair, more like a twenty-inch caulking gun. My Lord!
“You’d better step back,” Chet warned him.
Clay’s eyes bugged and his mouth dropped open at what he saw then. Almost immediately, he spun on his heels and rushed outside…where he proceeded to hurl the contents of his stomach, which Aunt Liza had taken great pains to stuff all day long.
I wonder where this ranks in the God’s-big-toe category?
Clay had almost botched things, big-time.
At first, it had seemed as if their blooming relationship had been slam-dunked back to step one, or zero, with his disastrous reaction to that scene in the barn. He still shivered with distaste at what he’d seen, but he was doing his shivering internally. The sooner he could erase that picture from his mind, the better. In time— maybe ten or twenty years—he would, no doubt, forget it totally.