A Place Called Wiregrass Read Online Free PDF

Cher, who actually seemed in good spirits, I unplugged the phone and slept the best I had in months.
    My newfound rest was short-lived. I arrived at Miss Claudia’s the next day to find her actually sitting up at her kitchen table. That was good news. The bad news was she said my better half had been calling for the past hour. I licked my lips and ran my hand over the top of my pulled back hair. “Lord, I’m so sorry.”
    “He’s an impatient thing,” she said and then sipped her coffee.
    I wanted to ask if he was drunk, but then I doubted if she’d ever been around such behavior. Miss Claudia looked angelic sitting at her pine table in a cream robe with embroidered roses on the collar.
    “You might as well call him. Richard’s still sleeping, and if there’s any straightening out to be done, I’d just as soon him not hear it.” She pulled at one of the little satin roses. “His nerves, don’t you know.”
    I knew her own nerves were probably running on high, thinking my old flame was gonna come gun me down on her manicured lawn. Most likely, I’d fall over on top of one of her pink azalea bushes and shed blood on her concrete walkway. Then there’d be CNN and all the little ladies from First Methodist congregating after the unfortunate incident. Prune Face would probably stand over me clutching her purse andshaking her head. “Pure D trash,” she would say and squinch her mouth up.
    The living-room phone was the most private place for the butt-chewing I wanted to give Bozo. I sighed and entered the red-walled room. I almost couldn’t remember the phone number. But instead of worrying that it was the sign of some brain tumor or Alzheimer’s, I was relieved. One more thing I was forgetting about that place I once called home. He cleared his throat into the receiver and welcomed the caller.
    “How’d you get this number?” I imagined icicles snaking through my voice to Cross City. I wanted to scream, but I knew Miss Claudia sat in the kitchen, glued to the edge of her chair.
    “My grandbaby give it to me. Right after you left the house without fixing her no breakfast.”
    Adjusted to Wiregrass or not, I’m gonna blister that girl when I get home. “She spent the night…Look, that’s none of your business. And don’t be calling here again. I mean it.”
    “Don’t you tell me where and who…” He sighed. “Fine. I just got one thing to say to you. Either you get your tail back here by the end of the month, or I’m getting me a lawyer.”
    I wondered if Bozo would get that quack who represented Suzette the first time she got arrested for dealing drugs. That man with long nose hair and a bright yellow tie that ended at the crest of his big belly. “Well, hallelujah!”
    “Listen, I mean this thing. Me and your mama done talked it over, and she knows I’m—”
    In the background at my former home, a female voice mumbled something about eggs. The clanking of a spoon hitting the frying pan rankled in my ear. I could hear Bozo trying to conceal the evidence by muffling the phone receiver.
    Funny, I thought. He never tried to hide it before. “Which juke joint did you find her in?”
    “Don’t you never mind. Hey, I got rights, you know. Don’t you forget them adoption papers list my name as Cher’s daddy. I can get you for custody, gal.”
    The one bullet I didn’t think he’d fire. I giggled, the type of giggle that said, “Kiss my butt” and “You’re an idiot” all in the same octave.
    “And just what judge would put some thirteen-year-old girl in the same house with a wife-beating, whore-hopping drunk like you?” I was too loud with that one and was sure Miss Claudia heard every word.
    But it worked. Bozo went off like a cherry bomb. “Hey…hey, she ain’t no…Hey…Hey…anyhow a man got needs. Any judge knows that. And how’s about you…”
    “Send my best to your whore there. Tell her she better learn how to handle that frying pan, ’cause sooner or later she’ll need