CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sunday morning ushered in a quick shower, but the sun came out in the afternoon, bringing humidity and heat with it. The people at the edge of the lake didn’t seem to mind the wet grass one bit if they could start on their summer tan. Folks came in and out of the store all afternoon for cold drinks, beer, and snacks.
Tawny brought over her lunch about one o’clock and grabbed a candy bar and a Pepsi before going to the laundry. Dana had just finished eating when Zed pushed his way through the curtain hanging over the door from his little apartment into the store.
“Got gravy all over my shirtsleeve, so I had to get it changed. Thought I’d get a cup of hot chocolate and visit with you since things are slowin’ down and Harper can run the café without me for a little while.” Zed laid a tote bag on the counter, went to the machine, and hit the right button to shoot steaming hot chocolate into a to-go cup. “Put this on my bill.”
“Not happenin’. You aren’t payin’ for anything in this place,” Dana told him with a shake of her head. “Come on back here behind the counter and sit on this stool. I remember this bag. Granny used to keep a photo album in it. I remember seeing pictures of her and Grandpa and you when y’all were kids.”
“And lots of your daddy and then even more of you kids. She got a better camera when you were born and we put at least one roll of pictures in that book every summer after y’all left. She liked real pictures as she called them, never did go digital.”
“Can I look at it?”
“Any time you want to. It’s yours as of this day. You probably know how to go about gettin’ copies made if your sisters want some of them, but I want you to have it. Annie would have wanted that, too, so I don’t want no argument,” he said.
“None given.” She slipped the thick album from the worn black velvet bag and opened the first page. There was one picture of three little kids standing in front of a big tree.
Zed ran his forefinger down Annie’s cheek. “That tree was out there in the middle of the lake. We used to lean up against it to count off the numbers when we was playin’ hide-and-seek.”
“Granny told me that story. Her daddy came to get her to go in for supper. He’d been takin’ pictures of a dog that he’d just gotten and had his camera with him. She refused to go until he snapped a photo for her book. She said that she didn’t even have a book at the time. That started when he got the pictures back.”
Dana flipped through the pages and watched herself and her sisters grow up before her eyes. Later, she’d sit down with the book and let the memories of each summer wash over her, but right then she was too glad just to know that the album was still there.
“Not much in the way of new pictures in the last ten years,” Zed said. “A few of Brook and only a couple of Harper and Tawny, but you take it on.” He finished the last of his chocolate and slid off the stool. “Me and Annie had us some good times with the happy memories in that book.”
She rounded the end of the counter and hugged him. “Uncle Zed, this means the world to me. I will take care of it and tell Brook and my grandkids all the stories I can remember about the pictures.”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do,” he said.
“And thank you for giving Brook that comb. It is as precious as a gold mine to her.” She hugged him again. “You’ve been better than a grandfather to her and to me both and someday I hope you do walk her down the aisle.”
“Can’t you just see that? An old black man and that pretty child all decked out in white satin?”
Dana kept an arm around his shoulders. “What I see is a grandpa and a gorgeous bride. Both of them have beautiful hearts and souls.”
“You got on rose-colored glasses, girl,” Zed chuckled as he left by the front door.
Turning back to the first page in the book, Dana studied the picture of her grandmother, her grandfather, and Zed when they were little kids. Funny, as many times as she’d seen that picture, she’d never noticed that Annie was holding Zed’s hand until that moment.
Summer was pushing spring into the history books. Proof was in the fact that there wasn’t even a slight breeze that Sunday evening when Nick showed up on Tawny’s porch. She’d dressed in a cute little floral sundress that left her shoulders bare, and she’d planned on taking a light sweater with her in case it got chilly.
“You look like an angel,” he whispered as he handed her a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a pretty yellow ribbon.
“They’re beautiful. Come on in while I put them in a glass of water.” She motioned him inside.
He stepped into the room and removed his cap. Her eyes traveled from the soft dark hair showing in the V where two pearl snaps of his shirt were undone down to his slim waist and stopped there. His silver belt buckle was embossed with a Native American on a horse. When she realized that she’d been looking at it far too long, she blinked and looked up to find him smiling.
“End of the trail. That’s what’s on the buckle.”
She whipped around and went to the bathroom to put the flowers into a carry-out cup from the café so that he couldn’t see her blush. “What does it mean?”
“Something of my heritage that I like very much. What do these things on your bookcase mean?”
“Each one reminds me of something that happened since Granny Annie died. I’ll keep them forever.” She brought the flowers out and set them on her desk, but she laid the ribbon on the shelf beside the red bird feather.
“You sure you don’t have some Native American blood in your veins?”
“Maybe,” she said. “With a name like Clancy I think it’s mostly Irish or Scottish, but Granny always thought there might be a little bit of Choctaw in her.”
“I’d believe it. You ready for a really good steak?” He turned around and opened the door for her.
“Haven’t eaten since lunch so that I could really enjoy it.” She picked up her purse and stepped out into the hot night air.
She expected him to walk her to his truck, open the door for her like a gentleman, and drive to his house. But he laced his fingers in hers and started toward the lake. The touch of his calloused palm in her tender hand brought on sparks that looked like a dozen falling stars shooting from the sky and landing all around them.
They followed the bend of the lake to a cul-de-sac that she’d never noticed before. A narrow area jutted back into the woods about fifty feet, and there at the end was a tiny little fire pit with a red plaid blanket on the ground beside it. He let go of her hand and motioned for her to sit.
“Talk to me while I fix our food. I love the sound of your voice.” He brought a red cooler and a huge basket from the shadows. Opening the cooler, he took out a package wrapped in white butcher paper.
“That’s a pretty good pickup line.”
Deftly, he removed the paper and tossed steaks the size of dinner plates onto the grill covering the fire pit. “Never used it before, to be honest. How do you like your steak?”
“Medium rare. And do you think there’s going to be a second date?”
“I hope so.” He flipped the top back on the picnic basket and brought out two white dinner plates, a couple of napkins wrapped around cutlery, and a couple of packages of aluminum foil that he immediately threw on the grill with the steaks.
“What makes your steaks better than any others?”
“Good beef from a butcher, not prepackaged junk from a grocery store, and open-fire cooking, but it never works unless there’s a beautiful woman to share the evening with,” he said smoothly. “Tell me about your day.”
“Not much to tell. I clean rooms, do laundry, work on the books, and then start all over the next day,” she answered. “How was your day?”
“I worked on a set of kitchen cabinets for a house we’re building. When those are finished, probably tomorrow, I’ll set them in and then go to work on putting in the baseboards and framing out the doors. The nice thing is that I love what I do, and my mama says that makes me a success.” He sat down close beside her and laid a hand on hers.
“Oh, yeah?” The electricity flowed between them so hot that she’d give up the food if he’d just sit beside her all evening.
“She put it this way—it don’t matter what kind of work you do in the day to make a livin’. If you are whistlin’ or hummin’ while you do it, then you are a big success. How about you? Do any hummin’ in the day?”
She nodded slowly. “Your mama is a genius.”
He chuckled and scooted over closer to her. “We all think so. Maybe you can meet her someday.”
“I’d like that,” Tawny whispered and then his lips closed on hers. Both passionate and sweet at the same time, it created a stirring deep inside her.
He broke off the kiss to stand and flip the steaks with a big fork that appeared out of nowhere. She crossed her legs and watched him expertly finish cooking. When the steaks were done to his liking, he pulled the cooler over in front of Tawny and set the two plates on it. Then he turned out a steak and a foil packet on each of the plates and sat down on the other side of the cooler.
“In our family we thank the father for our food. You want to do it or should I?” he asked.
You, please, she meant to say, but what came out was, “I’ll do it.”
Granny always said grace before supper. In her opinion, Zed had done the cooking and she should be thankful. She bowed her head and said a short grace for the first time in her life. Amazed that she could utter a word, she raised her head to find him smiling across the makeshift table at her.
“Amen,” he whispered and then his dark eyes seemed to crawl through hers right into her soul. “I think there must be a touch of Choctaw in you. That sounded like one of our blessings.”
“You are really proud of your heritage, aren’t you?” She cut off a bite of steak and popped it into her mouth.
“Yes, I am.”
“And what would your mama think of you dating outside your heritage?”
“That the heart knows no color. It only knows love,” he said.
Tawny had to meet this woman, even if there was never a second or third date with Nick. She sounded so much like Granny Annie.
She cut off another bite of steak, convinced that the second one wouldn’t be as tasty as the first, but she was wrong. “Oh, my goodness! You were right to tell me that your steaks beat anything that you can get in a restaurant.” She undid the foil to find whole green beans, little red potatoes cut into chunks, and tiny tomatoes all covered with melted butter. “You are an amazing cook.”
He reached across the cooler and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. The tingling sensation started at her earlobe and went all the way to her toes. “I make this meal and a real mean bologna-and-cheese sandwich. That’s the extent of my culinary skills. Oh, and I can whip up an omelet that’ll take the edge off a hungry lady, but that’s it. You cook?”
“Very little,” she answered truthfully. “But I can make a frozen pizza in the microwave without burning it, and I bet my bologna sandwich can beat yours.”
“We’ll have to have a contest sometime,” he said.
“And the winner gets?”
He wiggled his dark eyebrows. “Anything they want.”
Millions of stars dotted the sky around a quarter moon that Sunday night as Zed took up his regular place on the bench to smoke a final cigarette of the day. His chest felt heavy that evening, as if there was even a bigger brick sitting on it than usual. He attributed it to the weather getting warmer. Summer had not been his friend since the doctor put a name to his ailment—congestive heart failure. Of course he had congestion. He’d smoked for more than fifty years and his lungs were probably the color of Dana’s fire pit after a marshmallow roast. Heart failure—he didn’t doubt that one bit. Since Annie had passed on, he often wondered how it had the strength to keep beating.
He heard Tawny’s tinkling laughter long before he saw two silhouettes walking so close together that they looked like one. “She’s happy, Annie. Our baby girl has found her place. She had to do that before she could get into any kind of relationship.”
Nick walked her to the door, lingering long enough to give her a few kisses before he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the palm. She went inside, but in only a few minutes she came back out and sank down in the chair.
Zed put his hand in his pocket to be sure the ring was still there and rose to his feet with a groan. He was almost to her porch when she noticed him. She jumped up and motioned for him to sit in her chair. “Uncle Zed, I’m so glad you’re out for a smoke. I feel like I’m floating on the clouds right now. Nick cooked steaks, and we talked and talked. I’ll go out with him again.”
“He’s a good boy,” Zed said. “Comes from good, sturdy stock.”
“I don’t deserve all this,” she sighed.
“Don’t you waste a single minute feelin’ like that. If we got what we deserve in life, we’d all be paupers,” he told her. “I’ve given the other girls a little something.”
“I know. Harper cried when she told me about the recipe book. She’s come a long way, hasn’t she, Uncle Zed?”
He nodded and fished the ring from his pocket. “You all have, and here’s what I want you to have.”
“You don’t have to give me anything. You being here with us is a gift from the angels,” she said.
He reached out his hand and opened it up to reveal a small band in his palm. “This is made from a nickel. My daddy didn’t have the money to buy my mama a real wedding ring when they first got married, so he melted down a nickel and fashioned this ring to put on her finger when they went to the courthouse that day.”
“I can’t take that, Uncle Zed. It’s too priceless.”
He picked up her hand and slid it on the third finger of her right hand. “It’s still got a lot of wear in it, and when you look at it, you think of an old couple that was in love their whole married life.” It fit perfectly and before he withdrew his hand two big teardrops had already christened it. “Don’t cry. Be happy.”
“They’re tears of joy, Uncle Zed. I am happy, and I think it may be for the first time in my life,” she said.
“Some folks never find joy or happiness. You are a blessed child.”
She knelt in front of him and put her head on his knee. “Yes, I am, Uncle Zed. I’m so blessed lately that I think I’m dreaming.”