Nobodys Baby But Mine

  “Is there some reason I should recognize the name Salvation.”

  “It was in the news a while back, but most of the locals don’t like to talk about it.”

  She waited for more information and wasn’t too surprised when none was forthcoming. Next to the Bomber, she was a magpie. “Do you think you could let me in on the secret?”

  He took so long responding that she thought he was ignoring her, but he finally spoke. “Salvation was where G. Dwayne Snopes settled. The televangelist.”

  “Wasn’t he killed in some kind of small plane crash a few years ago?”

  “Yeah. While he was on his way out of the country with a few million dollars that didn’t belong to him. Even at the height of his career, the town’s leaders never thought much of him, and they don’t like having Salvation’s name associated with him now that he’s dead.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “We met.”

  “What sort of man was he?”

  “He was a crook! Any fool could figure that out.”

  The nuances of polite conversation were obviously beyond his mental capabilities. She turned away and tried to enjoy the scenery, but being plunged into a new life with a dangerous stranger who hated everything about her made it tough.

  They eventually left the highway for a winding two-lane road. The gears of the Jeep ground as they headed up one side of a mountain and then curved down the other. Rusty double-wide mobile homes sitting in weedy lots at the side of the road provided a sharp contrast to the gated entrances of posh residential developments built for retirees around lush golf courses. Her stomach was beginning to get queasy from the switchbacks when Cal turned off the highway onto a gravel road that seemed to go straight up.

  “This is Heartache Mountain. I need to stop and see my grandmother before we get settled. The rest of my family’s out of town now, but she’ll kick up a fuss if I don’t bring you to see her right away. And don’t go out of your way to be nice. Remember that you won’t be around for long.”

  “You want me to be rude?”

  “Let’s just say I don’t want you winning any popularity contests with my family. And keep the fact that you’re pregnant to yourself.”

  “I wasn’t planning on announcing it.”

  He swung into a deeply rutted lane that led to a tin-roofed house badly in need of paint. One of the shutters hung crookedly, and the front step that led up to the porch sagged. In view of his wealth, she was shocked by its condition. If he cared about his grandmother, he could surely have spared a little money to fix up this place.

  He turned off the engine, climbed out of the car, and came around the front to open her door. The courtesy surprised her. She remembered that he’d done the same when she’d gotten into the car at the airport.

  “Her name’s Annie Glide,” he said as she got out, “and she’ll be eighty next birthday. She’s got a bad heart and emphysema, but she’s not ready to give up yet. Watch that step. Damn. This place is going to fall down right around her ears.”

  “Surely you can afford to move her out of here.”

  He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind, then walked to the door and slammed his fist against it. “Open up, you old bat, and tell me why this step isn’t fixed!”

  Jane gaped at him. This was the way he treated his dear old granny?

  The door squeaked open, and Jane found herself staring at a stoop-shouldered woman with bleached blond hair sticking out in tufts all over her head, bright red lipstick, and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. “You watch the way you talk to me, Calvin James Bonner. I can still whup you, and don’t you forgit it.”

  “Have to catch me first.” He plucked the cigarette out of her mouth, ground it beneath the toe of his shoe, and folded her in his arms.

  She gave a wheezy cackle and patted his back. “Wild as the devil and twice as bad.” She peered around his back to scowl at Jane, who was standing at the top of the steps. “Who’s that?”

  “Annie, this is Jane.” His voice developed a steely note. “My wife. Remember I called to tell you about her. We got married last Wednesday.”

  “Looks like a city gal. You ever skinned a squirrel, city gal?”

  “I—uh—can’t say as I have.”

  She gave a dismissive snort and turned back to Cal. “What done took you so long to come see your granny?”

  “I was afraid you’d bite me, and I had to get my rabies shots up to date.”

  This sent her into a gale of witchy laughter, culminating in a coughing spasm. Cal looped his arm around her and steered her into the house, cussing her out for her smoking the entire time.

  Jane pushed her hands into the pockets of her jacket and thought about how there weren’t going to be any easy successes for her the next few months. Now she’d failed the squirrel-skinning test.

  She wasn’t anxious to go inside, so she walked across the porch to the place where a brightly colored wind sock whipped from the corner of the roof. The cabin was tucked into the side of the mountain and surrounded by woods, with the exception of a clearing to the side and back for a garden. The way the mist clung to the distant mountain peaks made her understand why this part of the Appalachian chain was called the Smokies.

  It was so quiet she could hear a single squirrel rustling through the bare branches of an oak tree. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how noisy a town, even a peaceful suburban one, could be. She heard the crack of a twig, the caw of a crow, and breathed in the damp, chill scent of March woodlands not yet ready to leave winter behind. With a sigh, she crossed the porch to the door. She already knew enough about Annie Glide to realize the old woman would take any retreat as a sign of weakness.

  She stepped directly into a small, cluttered living room that was a curious amalgam of the old and gaudy with the new and tasteful. A rich, thick-piled smoky blue carpet held an assortment of worn furniture upholstered in everything from faded brocade to threadbare velvet. The gilded coffee table had a broken leg crudely repaired with silver duct tape, and faded red tassels held fragile lace curtains back from the windows.

  There was an obviously expensive stereo cabinet complete with a compact disc player sitting on a wall perpendicular to an old stone fireplace. The rough-hewn mantel held an assortment of clutter including a guitar-shaped ceramic vase filled with peacock feathers, a football, a stuffed pheasant, and a framed photograph of a man who looked familiar, although Jane couldn’t quite place him.

  Through a small archway off to the left she could see part of a kitchen with a peeling linoleum floor and a state-of-the-art cooking range. Another doorway presumably led to bedrooms in the back.

  Annie Glide lowered herself with a great deal of effort into an upholstered rocker while Cal paced in front of her, glowering. “… then Roy said you pulled your shotgun on him, and now he tells me he won’t come out here again without a five-hundred-dollar deposit. Nonrefundable!”

  “Roy Potts don’t know the difference between a hammer and his colon.”

  “Roy is the best damn handyman in these parts.”

  “Did you bring me my new Harry Connick, Jr. CD? Now that’s what I really want, not some fool handyman nibbin’ into my business.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I brought it. It’s out in the car.”

  “Well, go on and get it for me.” She waved him toward the door. “And move that speaker when you get back. It’s too close to my TV.”

  As soon as he disappeared, she speared Jane with her blue eyes. Jane felt a curious desire to throw herself on her knees and confess her sins, but she suspected the cantankerous woman would simply smack her in the head.

  “How old are you, gal?”

  “I’m thirty-four.”

  She thought that one over. “How old does he think you are?”

  “Twenty-eight. But I didn’t tell him that.”

  “You never told him different, either, did you?”

  “No.” Although she hadn’t been invited to sit, she fo
und a place at the end of an old velvet couch. “He wants me to tell everyone I’m twenty-five.”

  Annie rocked for a while. “You gonna do it?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “Cal told me you’re a college professor. That must mean you’re a real smart lady.”

  “Smart about some things. Dumb about others, I guess.”

  She nodded. “Calvin, he don’t put up with much foolishness.”

  “I know.”

  “He needs a little foolishness in his life.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not too good at that sort of thing. I used to be when I was a child, but not much anymore.”

  Annie looked up at Cal as he came in the door. “When I heard how fast you two got married, I thought she might have done you bad like your mama done your daddy.”

  “The situations aren’t the same at all,” he said tonelessly.

  Annie tilted her head toward Jane. “My daughter Amber wasn’t nothin’ more than a little white-trash gal spendin’ all her time runnin’ after boys. Laid her a trap for the richest one in town.” Annie cackled. “She caught him, too. Cal here was the bait.”

  Jane felt sick. So Cal was the second generation of Bonner male trapped into marriage by a pregnant female.

  “My Amber Lynn likes to forget she growed up dirtpoor. Isn’t that so, Calvin?”

  “I don’t know why you’re always giving her such a hard time.” He walked over to the CD player, and a few moments later, the sounds of Harry Connick, Jr. singing “Stardust” filled the cabin.

  Jane realized Connick was the man in the photograph on the mantel. What a strange old woman.

  Annie leaned back in the chair. “That Connick boy has got him one beautiful voice. I always wished you could sing, Calvin, but you never could manage it.”

  “No, ma’am. Can’t do much but throw a football.” He sat down on the couch next to Jane but not touching her.

  Annie closed her eyes, and the three of them sat quietly listening to the honey-sweet voice. Maybe it was the gray day, the deep quiet of the woods, but Jane felt herself begin to relax. Time ticked away, and a curious alertness came over her. Here in this ramshackle house lying in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains, she began to feel as if she were on the verge of finding some missing part of herself. Right here in this room that smelled of pine and must and chimney smoke.

  “Janie Bonner, I want you to promise me something.”

  The feeling faded as she heard herself being addressed for the first time by her married name, but she didn’t get a chance to tell Annie she’d be using her maiden name.

  “Janie Bonner, I want you to promise me right now that you’ll look out for Calvin like a wife should, and that you’ll think about his welfare before you think about your own.”

  She didn’t want to do any such thing, and she struggled to hide her dismay. “Life’s complicated. That’s a hard thing to promise.”

  “ ’Course it’s hard,” she snapped. “You didn’t think bein’ married to this man was gonna be easy, did you?”

  “No, but…”

  “Do what I say. You promise me right now, gal.”

  Under the force of those sharp blue eyes, Jane’s own will dissolved, and she found she couldn’t deny this old woman. “I promise that I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s good enough.” Once again, her lids closed. The creak of her rocker and her wheezy breathing underscored the smooth molasses voice coming from the speakers. “Calvin, promise me you’re gonna look after Janie Bonner like a husband should and that you’ll think about her welfare before you think about your own.”

  “Aw, Annie, after all these years of waitin’ for the right girl to come along, you think I wouldn’t take care of her once I found her?”

  Annie opened her eyes and nodded, having failed to notice either the malevolent gaze Cal shot at Jane or the fact that he hadn’t promised a single thing.

  “If I’d of made your mama and daddy do this, Calvin, maybe things would of been easier for them, but I wasn’t smart enough, then.”

  “It didn’t have anything to do with being smart, you old hypocrite. You were so happy to see your daughter catch a Bonner that you didn’t care about anything else.”

  Her mouth pursed and Jane saw where her crimson lipstick had bled into the age lines around her lips. “Bonners always thought they was too good for Glides, but I guess we showed them. Glide blood runnin’ true and strong in all three of my grandsons. At least it is in you and Gabriel. Ethan’s always been a sissy boy, more Bonner than Glide.”

  “Just because Ethan’s a preacher doesn’t make him a sissy.” He rose from the couch. “We have to go now, but don’t you think I’ve forgotten about that front step. Now where are you hiding those damn cigarettes?”

  “Somewhere you won’t find them.”

  “That’s what you think.” He headed for an old bureau next to the kitchen door where he dug into the bottom drawer and pulled out a carton of Camels. “I’ll be taking these with me.”

  “You just want to smoke ’em yourself.” She rose from the rocker with great difficulty. “When Calvin comes back, you come with him, Janie Bonner. You got a lot to learn ’bout bein’ married to a country boy.”

  “She’s working on a real important research project,” Cal said, “so she’s not going to have much time for visiting.”

  “Is that true?” Jane thought she saw a flash of hurt in the old woman’s eyes.

  “I’ll come visit whenever you like.”

  “Good.”

  Cal’s jaw clenched, and she realized she’d displeased him.

  “Now go away.” Annie shooed them toward the door. “I want to listen to my Harry without all this talk.”

  Cal opened the door for Jane to slip through. They had just reached the car when Annie’s voice stopped them.

  “Janie Bonner!”

  She turned to see the old woman regarding them through the screen door.

  “Don’t you wear nothin’ to bed, not even in the winter, you hear me, gal? You go to your husband the way your Maker made you. Stark naked. Keeps a man from strayin’.”

  Jane couldn’t summon an appropriate response, so she waved and got in the car.

  “That’ll be the day,” Cal muttered as they drove away from the house. “I’ll bet you wear clothes in the shower.”

  “It really galls you, doesn’t it, that I didn’t strip for you?”

  “The list of what you’ve done that galls me, Professor, is so long I don’t know where to start. And why did you tell her you’d come back whenever she likes? I brought you here because I had to, but that’s it. You’re not spending any more time with her.”

  “I already told her I’d come back. How do you suggest I get out of it?”

  “You’re the genius. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

  Chapter Seven

  A s they drove down off the mountain, Jane saw an old drive-in movie theater on the right. The screen still stood, although it was damaged, and a deeply rutted gravel lane led to a ticket booth that had once been painted yellow, but had faded to a dirty mustard. The overgrown entrance was marked with an enormous starburst-shaped sign outlined in broken bulbs with the words, Pride of Carolina, written inside in flaking purple-and-yellow script.

  Jane couldn’t tolerate the thick silence that had fallen between them any longer. “I haven’t seen a drive-in in years. Did you used to come here?”

  Somewhat to her surprise, he answered her. “This is where all the high-school kids got together in the summer. We’d park in the back row, drink beer, and make out.”

  “I’ll bet it was fun.”

  Jane didn’t realize how wistful she’d sounded until he shot her a curious glance. “You never did anything like that?”

  “I was in college when I was sixteen. I spent my Saturday nights in the science library.”

  “No boyfriends.”

  “Who was going to ask me out? I was too young for my classmates, an
d the few boys I knew who were my own age thought I was a freak.”

  She realized too late that she’d just given him a golden opportunity to take another verbal swipe at her, but he didn’t do it. Instead he turned his attention back to the road as if he regretted having even such a short conversation with her. She noticed that the hard edges of his profile made him seem very much a part of these mountains.

  They’d approached the outskirts of Salvation before he spoke again. “I’ve always stayed at my parents when I visit, but since I couldn’t do that this year, I bought a house.”

  “Oh?” She waited for him to offer a few details, but he said nothing more.

  The town of Salvation was small and compact, nestled in a narrow valley. The quaint downtown section held an assortment of stores, including a charmingly rustic restaurant, a shop that featured twig furniture, and the pink-and-blue caboose-shaped Petticoat Junction Cafe. They passed an Ingles grocery store, then crossed a bridge. Cal turned onto another winding, climbing road, then pulled into a lane paved with fresh gravel and came to a stop.

  Jane stared at the two wrought-iron gates directly in front of them. Each held a pair of gold praying hands at its center. She swallowed, barely repressing a moan. “Please tell me this isn’t yours.”

  “Home sweet home.” He got out of the car, pulled a key from his pocket, and fiddled with a control box on a stone pillar to the left. Within seconds, the gates with their praying hands swung open.

  He climbed back in the car, put it into gear, and drove forward. “The gate operates electronically. The realtor left the controls inside.”

  “What is this place?” she said weakly.

  “My new house. It’s also the only piece of real estate in Salvation that’ll give us enough privacy to hide our nasty little secret from the world.”

  He rounded a small curve, and Jane caught her first glimpse of the house. “It looks like Tara on steroids.”

  The gravel drive ended in a motor court that formed a crescent in front of a white, colonial plantation house. Six massive columns stretched across the front, along with a balcony of elaborate gold grillwork. A fanlight of jeweltoned colored glass topped the double-wide front door, while three marble steps led to the veranda.