Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [34]
“Hmm.”
“Where’re we going, anyway?”
He glanced over at me. “Now you ask,” he said. “I was starting to think you had something missing.”
“Missing?”
“Some nut or bolt or something. Not to wonder before now where we was headed.”
“Well, I had no idea we were heading to some point,” I said.
“You thought I was doing all this driving for the fun of it.”
“Where are we going, Jake?”
“Perth, Florida,” said Jake.
“Perth?”
“That’s where Oliver lives. My friend from training school.”
“Oh, Oliver.”
“See, his mother moved him to Florida to get him out of trouble. Opened her a motel there. A widow lady. She never did think much of me, moved Oliver clean away from me. Now we’re going to look him up, with a stop-off first in Linex, Georgia.”
“What’s in Linex?” I asked.
He started rummaging through his pockets. First his jacket, then his trouser pockets. Finally he came up with a piece of notebook paper. He held it out to me. “What’s this?” I said.
“Read it.”
I unfolded it and smoothed the creases. The writing had been done with a hard lead pencil—one of those that leaves the other side of the paper embossed. All the i’s were dotted with fat hearts.
Dear Jake,
Honey please come get me soon! Its like a prison here. I had been expecting you long ago. Didn’t you get my letter? I called your home but your mother said she didn’t know where you were. Do you want for your son to be born in a prison?
Love and xxx!
Mindy
I read it twice. Then I looked at Jake.
“Now, that I couldn’t abide,” said Jake.
“What’s that?”
“My son to be born in a prison.”
“What’s she in prison for?”
“She ain’t in prison, she’s in a home for unwed mothers.”
“Oh, I see,” I said.
“Her mother is this devil, real devil. Sent her off to this home her church runs, never let me hear word one about it till Mindy was packed and gone. Mindy is a minor,” he said.
I was slow: I thought he meant she worked in a mine. I saw a rich, black, underground world opening at my feet, where everyone was in some deep and dramatic trouble. I felt too pale for all this and I drew away, folding the letter primly. “She’s too young to have a say,” said Jake, but even after I understood I kept picturing her in someplace dark. “She’s not but seventeen years old. But in my estimation they should have let her decide for herself, and me as well. I mean me and her been going together for three whole years, off and on.”
“Well, wait,” I said. “Three years?”
“She was fourteen,” said Jake, “but right well developed.”
“I never heard of such a thing.”
“Okay, Miss Priss, but it wasn’t my fault. She just set her heart on me. She just fixed on me and wouldn’t let go. See, she lived down the road from me and my mom a ways, Route Four outside of Clarion on the Pimsah River. Know the place? We’d been half acquainted for years, but not to speak to. Then her and her family come to watch this derby, and it just so happened I was driving in it and won. I guess in her eyes that must have made me some kind of a hero. After that she commenced to following me around, calling me on the telephone and bringing me picnic lunches and beers she had stole from her daddy. Her daddy was Darnell Callender, owns a feed store, you may have heard of him. Always wears a Panama hat. Well, at first I thought she was too young and besides I didn’t like her all that much but I couldn’t seem to shake her. She was forever hanging around and didn’t take offense when I sent her away but went off smiling, made me feel bad. Just a little gal, you know? It was summer and she wore these sandals like threads, real breakable-looking. Finally it just seemed like I might as well go on out with her.
“But we weren’t never what you would call steady,” he said. “I would oftentimes be seeing other girls and all. I would ask myself, ‘Now how did I get mixed up with this Mindy anyhow, what’s the point of it?’ She talked too much, and not about nothing I cared for. Sometimes it seemed like she was so boring I just couldn’t find enough air to breathe when I was around her.