Cold Tea On A Hot Day. Curtiss Matlock Ann

Charlotte,” Leo said, taking the cup she handed him and sipping. “Well, I gotta get goin’ now.”

      “Yes…you do.” She followed him to the doorway and stood there as he slipped into the delivery van and drove off down the alley, watching with the eyes of a woman in love with a man she could never have.

      Up on Church Street, Winston Valentine was glad to be able to manage the job of getting out the front door of his house with the aid of a cane, while carrying two folded flags under his arm. One of his lady boarders, a piece of toast jammed in her mouth, came after him.

      He told her with poorly tempered impatience, “I’m all right, Mildred…you cain’t help me and eat toast at the same time!”

      She had already dropped jelly on her ample bosom; Winston didn’t want her to get jelly all over his flags. He felt guilty for having the thought that she could in that minute drop dead and he would gladly step over her. He was relieved when she got more concerned about her toast and jelly than about helping him.

      He got himself down the front steps and over to the flag pole in the front yard, where he raised the Confederate flag, followed by the Stars and Bars. He could still raise his flags, and once more all by himself, thank God, and he wasn’t yet pissing in his pants, so the day looked good.

      Across the street, his neighbor Everett Northrupt, younger by better than ten years, was raising his flags, too, only the Stars and Bars of the U.S. of A. was on top and a lot bigger. Everett was from up North.

      Both men stood at attention as music, a mingling of “Dixie” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” blared out from speakers from each man’s home. Winston, not wanting Everett to have anything on him, stood as straight as he could and saluted the flags and the day.

      Then, as most days, he saw Parker Lindsey jogging down the street. Parker, a single fellow who no doubt had plenty of pent-up energy, would jog from his veterinary clinic at the edge of town, cut through the school yard and behind houses along a path that came out east of the Blaine’s house, then go down Church Street to Porter and make several jogs to get to the highway and back east to his own place. It was a distance of five miles. Winston played a game of judging the younger man’s state of sexual energy by how hard he was running when he went past.

      “G’mornin’, Doc,” Winston called to him, remembering what it was like to be a virile man in his prime. He admired Parker Lindsey, who was going at a pretty good clip this morning.

      “’Mornin’.” Puffing, Parker raised a hand in a wave and kept on going.

      From the opposite direction came Leo, Jr., pedaling past with his teenage legs on his Mountain Flier. “’lo, Mr. Winston!” he said and sent a rolled newspaper flying into the yard and landing two feet away.

      “Bingo!” Winston called back with a wave.

      He bent carefully to get the paper, considering it exercise. When he came up, he saw a woman in bright pink on a purple bicycle pumping along toward town. It was his niece, Leanne, who sometimes jogged and sometimes rode a bicycle. A professional barrel racer, Leanne worked to keep her legs strong.

      “’lo, Uncle Winston!”

      Winston waved back, while averting his gaze from the sight of her. Leanne wore the skimpy attire so popular with women these days, and being her uncle, Winston did not consider it polite to stare. Leanne was a fine specimen of a woman. It was a little too bad she liked to display that around a lot. Winston felt women today had forgotten mystique. He liked to watch women on exercise shows on television, though.

      Walking stiffly, but grateful to be walking, he went around the side of the house, where he clipped blossoms from his dead wife’s rosebushes. I’m keepin’ on, Coweta. He would miss his wife until his dying day.

      Further up Church Street, Vella Blaine, wearing a lilac flowered apron and a big straw hat over her greying hair, was out in her backyard, snipping fresh blooms from her own rosebushes. She held each to her nose to inhale the delicious, soothing scent. Her very favorite were the yellow Graham-Thomas blossoms. She was so proud of her roses this spring.

      Hearing a car, she looked up to see her husband behind the wheel of his big black 80s Lincoln as it chugged away, carrying him onward to his twelve-hour day at his drugstore.

      Perry had not bothered to tell her goodbye. Again.

      Gripping the stems of the cut roses so tightly that the thorns pricked her hands, Vella walked purposefully up the back steps and went inside to prepare a fresh pot of coffee for herself and Winston, who had, with the arrival of balmy spring, begun once more to join her for an early-morning chat. She got out the blue pottery mug Winston seemed to favor. In the mirror hung on the inside of the cabinet door, she paused to put on lipstick.

      

      Down on Porter Street, the sun had risen high enough to shine its first golden rays on the roof of a small house dating from the forties that Realtors called a bungalow. In bed in the back bedroom, Marilee James, who was definitely not a morning person, was awakened by her eight-year-old son.

      “Maa-ma…”

      Marilee managed to crack an eyelid.

      “Maa-ma…” He peered into her face, his blue eyes large behind his thick glasses.

      Marilee tried to focus enough to see the clock. Willie Lee simply had no sense of time at all. He woke up when he woke, and slept when he slept, never minding the rest of the world…or his mother, who had not had a decent night’s sleep since Miss Porter had suddenly and fantastically thrown the newspaper management into her hands and run off with a husband.

      Was that red numeral a five or a six? She was going to have to get a bigger clock. The thought caused her to close her eyes.

      “Ma-ma, can I have a dog?” Willie Lee spoke in a whisper and slowly, carefully pronouncing each word, as was his habit.

      “Not right this minute,” Marilee managed to get out with as hoarse a voice as she used to have when she smoked a pack and a half a day of Virginia Slims.

      She gathered courage and stretched herself toward the clock. The red numerals came in more clearly. It was 6:10. Giving a groan, she rolled over and thought that she could not get up. That was all there was to it. She would not get up.

      “I want this dog in this pic-ture.” Willie Lee shoved a book in her face.

      Marilee, who could not respond in any way, shape or form, stared with fuzzy vision at a picture of a spotted dog in one of her son’s picture books.

      Willie Lee, not at all bothered by not being answered, sat back on folded legs and said, “I will ask God for this dog.”

      Marilee’s sleepy gaze came to rest upon her son, upon his head bent once more to study the picture book. His short white-blond hair stood on end in all directions, as was usual.

      Her Willie Lee, who had put up a mighty struggle to enter the world and ended up with brain damage that cast doubt still upon his future ability to lead anything resembling a normal life without someone to watch over him.

      Her heart seemed to swell and her heartbeats to grow louder…thump…thump…thump…echoing in her ears, broken only by the clink of dishes from the kitchen, where Corrine was no doubt readying the table for breakfast, as she had each morning since coming to stay with them.

      With the aroma of coffee floating in to reach her, Marilee pictured the slight figure of her young niece at the counter. Likely she had to pull a chair over and stand on it in order to fill the coffeemaker.

      Two of them, two little souls, depending upon only her, Marilee, a mere woman alone.

      The idea so frightened her that in an instant she had flung back the covers and gotten to her feet, moving in the manner of generations of women before her who had struggled with the overwhelming urge to run screaming out of the house to throw themselves in front of the early-morning garbage truck. The saving answer to that urge was to propel herself headlong into the day of taking