Turning around in my seat, I glare at Bettie in the back.
“What? I’ll make sure you’re okay first before I point and laugh, like any good friend does.”
She holds her hand out for a fist bump and I ignore it, shifting my body back around to face forward, looking out the front window at the passing landscape of farmland, my leg bouncing nervously in my seat.
“You’re lucky I’m not sitting back there with you, or I’d open up the door and shove you out into oncoming traffic,” I mutter.
“See? That’s the spirit! But FYI, we’re literally in bum-fuck nowhere. We haven’t passed another vehicle or human being since we left Emma Jo’s house,” Bettie reminds me.
“Fine. I’ll push you out in front of a tractor, you cow,” I grumble.
“Alright, children. Don’t make me turn this car around. It’s going to be fine, you’ll see,” Emma Jo reassures, giving me another pat on the arm before putting her hand back on the wheel to turn down Leo’s road.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I should have called first. Given him some kind of warning,” I mutter, adding my second leg to the nervous bouncing until Baby Cecil is flopping around on my lap.
“Never give a man a warning. If he can see what’s coming, that just gives him a chance to run. A sneak attack is always the best maneuver,” Bettie states.
The next few miles pass in complete silence, aside from Bettie singing the song “Danger Zone” under her breath, making my nerves skyrocket and I contemplate asking Emma Jo to turn the car around.
If you would have told me when I first got back to Bald Knob that I’d never want to go back to Chicago and actually wonder why I left in the first place, I would have called someone to have you committed. There is no one more shocked than me that I’d come to that conclusion long before Bettie and Emma Jo kicked my ass out of bed the other day, I just hadn’t realized it until they called me out on it. My decision was cemented when I got out of the shower and joined my friends downstairs to find out that Emma Jo wasn’t lying. Half the town really had shown up to her house to try my coffee.
I spent the rest of the day showing people how Baby Cecil works, making everyone coffee, letting them see pictures of Liquid Crack that I had on my phone, talking about the franchise and just getting to know the people I’d grown up with all over again. When the gathering got to be too crowded for Emma Jo’s house, Starla invited everyone over to her backyard saying, “It’s probably best we don’t go out to Emma Jo’s yard and party on top of the spot where Jed was whacked in the head. Even if dancing on his grave does sound like a fine idea.”
There was a tense moment of silence where everyone looked at each other nervously. Then, Emma Jo laughed and everyone else joined in, making comments and jokes about someone finally putting Jed out of Emma Jo’s misery and how everyone should have been given a chance to punch him in the face one last time before his body was carted away.
This is a town full of sick assholes, but they’re my sick assholes and I’d never been happier to claim them.
Roy Pickerson ran to his bar and brought back a few cases of beer, Andrea Maynard had the owners of The Hungry Bear shut down early and bring over some food, Bettie lit a fire in Starla’s fire pit, and we all sat around listening to Caden Jefferson and his garage band play for us all night. They actually didn’t sound too bad after a few beers, and we all had a great time together. Well, until Buddy was called to the house because after a few beers, Starla thinks she’s a stripper. He stopped by at the end of his shift and it took him twenty minutes to convince her to put her clothes back on, go in the house, and sleep it off.
The best part of the whole night, was when the party disbanded and Buddy stayed behind to help Emma Jo clean up the mess. When I got up around three in the morning to go to the bathroom, I looked out the window and saw the two of them still sitting by the fire talking.
The worst part of the whole night was me constantly looking over my shoulder, hoping Leo would walk into the yard. Buddy tried to explain that he was swamped at the station with all of the paperwork from the murder investigation, as well as getting the farm ready for sweet corn season, but I could see it written all over his face that he didn’t come because I was there.
I startle out of my thoughts when the car slows and turns into Leo’s driveway. We pull off into the grass on the right, parking next to a whole row of cars that have pulled in to buy their sweetcorn for tonight’s dinner.
On the left side of the drive is a long white tent lined with a few strands of large clear bulbs, that were just turned on since the sun is starting to set over the fields on either side of the farmhouse a few acres away. A couple of long tables are lined up under the tent, one holding a cash register and a pile of plastic grocery bags, and I smile when I see the table next to it still holds row after row of boxes of vintage candy. Behind the tables are several huge bins, filled to the top with sweetcorn that was just picked fresh today.
The stand and the land it sits on, as well as the huge white farmhouse off in the distance takes my breath away, but not as much as the man I see walking down to the stand from one of the fields. Our car is parked in between two other cars on the opposite side of the yard where he is and his attention is focused on the stand, which is a good thing. I can take a few minutes to stare at him without him knowing, and boy, what a nice few minutes it is. He’s wearing a pair of tan cargo shorts and a white t-shirt, his hands in his front pockets as he walks until he gets up under the tent and starts shaking hands and greeting the people in line for corn.