1
Grady
Sunday morning is usually a time for confessions. But while many people find themselves on a church pew singing about His glory, I find myself naked in Markie Allen’s azalea bushes. How am I sure I’m naked? Because Ms. Markie herself tells me.
“You’re naked,” she says as she nudges my foot. I crack one eye open and look up at her. She stares down at me, her white hair limned by the sun like she’s wearing a halo.
I lift my head and look south. “Well, I’ll be damned… I am naked.” I start to nod my head, but that hurts like a son of a bitch so I stop that nonsense real quick.
“And you ain’t got no clothes on, neither,” she says unnecessarily. She leans forward, getting closer to me, her brown eyes squinting. “That’s a nice tattoo you got right there beside your junk.”
I reach down and cover said junk with my palm. “Now, Ms. Markie,” I say to her, “you know it’s not nice to talk about a man’s junk in public.”
“Well, I reckon if a man is indecent enough to wave his junk about in public, I can be indecent enough to talk about it.” Ms. Markie unties her apron from around her hips and passes it to me. “Cover all that up. The neighbors are looking out their windows. Nosy bastards.”
Ms. Markie tilts her head and stares at me. She has a way of getting to the truth, and she typically does it quickly. Just one glance from her, when her eyes narrow at you, and you want to bare your soul about why you’ve bared your ass.
I rush to explain. “It’s not what you think.”
She holds up a hand to shush me. “You got no idea what I think.”
I imagine I’m probably thinking damn near the same thing she is. I’m thinking that I’m an idiot. “Yes, ma’am,” I say instead. I stand up, with Ms. Markie’s wadded up apron over my man parts. She glances down once and rolls her eyes, so I shake it out and tie it around my waist.
“Now, you feel like telling me how you ended up in my azalea bushes?” she asks. She motions for me to follow her.
I scratch my head. I cautiously pick my way across her driveway on my bare feet, but something is poking at my tender, bare left foot. I stop and lift it so I can look at the bottom, and I tug a huge thorn from the sole of my foot. I gingerly place my foot back on the ground and test it by putting my weight on it. “I don’t rightly know, Ms. Markie.” I’m pretty sure my nakedness had something to do with a Mason jar full of moonshine—and my poor, misguided, aching heart.
She turns to face me as she swings open the screen door, holding it wide with her body. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I scratch my head again. “I remember Junior Adams passing me a jar of moonshine. I remember it burned like fire going down.” I stop and think. “I don’t remember much after that.”
“Junior Adams’s grandpappy makes some strong shine,” she allows. “I got some in the cabinet. You know, for when I get down with the cough.”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum. Everybody in Macon Hills knows Ms. Markie tips back some ’shine, and she doesn’t require a sore throat or cough to give her a reason. But it’s her lie; she can tell it any way she wants.
“So, Junior gave you some ’shine. Then what happened?” She opens a kitchen cabinet and takes out a bottle of pain relievers, and if I didn’t feel like I might hurl my guts up any second, I might have to kiss her. Instead, I take the tablets when she presses them into my hand, and I turn around to the sink, turn on the faucet, and stick my face under the water, getting a mouthful of water from the running stream, washing the pills down.
There are two problems with turning around and drinking from Ms. Markie’s sink. Firstly, Ms. Markie is a fan of people using glasses to drink from. And secondly, Ms. Markie now has a perfect view of my backside. And as my backside is currently still naked, it stings like a son of a gun when she whacks me with her fly swatter.
I jump and spin around. “What did you do that for?” I say, rubbing the offended area. “That hurt!”
“Use a glass,” she says.
She sits down at the kitchen table. She kicks a chair out across from her and tosses a folded piece of newspaper into it. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want me to read it, so I sit my naked ass down on it. I tug the ends of the apron lower, knowing Ms. Markie had seen me in all my glory just moments ago but still wanting to maintain the shred of dignity I have left. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? My dignity up and left me lying in the azalea bushes.
“I should probably go put some clothes on, Ms. Markie,” I say.
“Probably should,” she responds as she looks over the edge of her reading glasses at me, and then glances back down at the crossword puzzle she’s working. “Give me a six-letter word for ridiculous.”
I search the recesses of my brain and spit out a word. “Absurd.”
Ms. Markie smiles at me. ?
?Thank you. Been looking for that one all week.”
When I was here earlier this week cutting Ms. Markie’s grass, she’d been looking for a different one.
“Finished that puzzle already,” she says.
“Stop reading my mind,” I mutter. I reach for a biscuit. There’s a heaping plate of them in the center of Ms. Markie’s kitchen table. She slaps my hand. I jerk my offended fingers back.
“Don’t touch my biscuits until you’ve washed your hands. I know where they’ve been.” She glares at me again over her glasses.
“Where have they been?” I wish someone would tell me because I still have no idea how I ended up in Ms. Markie’s azalea bushes.
“They’ve been all over my granddaughter,” she snaps, and she takes her glasses off so she can glare cleanly at me.
I choke into my fist. “What?” I sputter when I can finally breathe. Everybody knows that Ms. Markie’s granddaughter, Evie, is in town. She arrived two days ago. “Evie’s here,” I whisper.
And suddenly, the whole night floods back to me in one great big rush.
I reach down and run my fingertips over the sore spot on the front side of my hip. “I was with Evie all night.”
Ms. Markie grins at me. “Yep.”