Down Home Dixie

“And then I told her, ‘Hon, I’m not going to any shower for the daughter of a woman who cut me dead when Skeeter and I had to get married,’” Voncille was telling Dixie.

“Can I have more chicken?” asked Paul, and Voncille forked a drumstick onto his plate without losing a beat in her monologue.

“You ever heard of Linda Lovelace?” Jackson asked Estill, who remained bowed over his plate and kept spooning mashed potatoes into his mouth, which appeared deficient in teeth.

“And your mother’s maiden name was what?” Frances asked Kyle with interest.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know his people, Memaw,” Dixie volunteered hastily. “By the way, this is the best cranberry relish you’ve ever made.”

“Let me tell you how I make it so you can do it yourself. I take my food grinder—that’s the old crank one that Mama had when she first married—and I wash the cranberries real good, getting all the dirt and leaves off. Then I—”

“I intended to send a present, but right off I changed my mind, money being tight and Skeeter being jobless again,” Voncille said. “Maybe I’ll just mail a card after the baby’s born, whether Jenny gets married or not.”

“Listen, dumbhead, stop kicking me under the table,” Liddy told her brother, who reached for the creamed corn and managed to spill it down the front of his shirt, whereupon Skeeter, his father, sent him to the bathroom to clean it off.

“You grind up the nuts medium-coarse, and pecans are best,” Frances went on. “Lord knows I’ve got enough pecans from my trees, that is, if the squirrels don’t get them all.”

“Did you say you were from Iowa?” Voncille asked Kyle politely.

“Get all the little pieces of shell off the nuts before you grind them. You could break a tooth otherwise.”

Kyle kept munching on his third piece of fried chicken. He’d heard that Southerners really had a way with fried chicken, but he wouldn’t have believed it could be so light and crispy.

“They’ve got this back room at the video store, it’s for adults only,” Jackson was telling Skeeter enthusiastically.

Voncille shot a warning glance in his direction and addressed him in an undertone that everyone heard anyway. “Jackson, there are children present. Please talk about something else.”

“I didn’t get any mashed potatoes, Mom. Can you put gravy on? Who’s Linda Lovelace?” Paul asked.

“Kyle shoes horses. It’s what he does for a living,” Dixie explained to someone, Kyle wasn’t sure who.

“HE SHOOTS HORSES? WHAT KIND OF JOB IS THAT?” Claudia asked, and Kyle almost choked on a mouthful of iced tea.

“Kyle shoes horses, Aunt Claudia,” Liddy said in her loudest voice.

Frances blinked off into the distance for a moment. “I had a horse when I was a child. His name was Booster. Now, how come I can remember that horse’s name when I can’t even recall where I put the pickled okra?”

“I carry everything I need for shoeing a horse around in my truck,” Kyle told Liddy who stared at him entranced.

“The horse, too?”

“No, not the horse, the horseshoes and the equipment I use to attach the shoes to their hooves.”

“Daddy, when can I have a Tootsie Roll?” Amelia chimed in.

“Hush up, Amelia.”

“You use big long nails, right?”

“Does it hurt the horse?” Paul asked.

“And then I fold in the cranberries, just so.”

“Uncle Estill, would you like to go to the video store with me sometime? Next week, maybe?” Jackson asked despite a glare from Voncille. Still gumming mashed potatoes, Estill gave no sign that he’d heard.

“I KNEW SOME KALBS OVER NEAR LAURENS,” Claudia shouted. “A BIG FAMILY. THEY OWNED A CAR DEALERSHIP.”

“No relation,” Kyle said.

“And then all you have to do is put it in the refrigerator and eat it,” Frances said, though Kyle was sure that by this time, no one was listening.

It went on like this until all the fried chicken and mashed potatoes were gone, which was when Voncille pushed back her chair. “Well, I guess we’re all finished eating. Is anyone ready for fudge cake? I brought one along.”

Estill raised his head and spoke for the first time. “I’d like some cake, Vonnie, but first I’ll have some of that pickled okra. Can you mash it up real good?”

“I told you, Estill, I couldn’t find the pickled okra,” Frances said with great patience.

“Come on out to the kitchen, Memaw, I’ll help you search for it,” Liddy said comfortably as she slid off her chair. She took Frances’s hand and the two of them disappeared.

Kyle caught Dixie’s eye and was surprised to recognize an amused glint there. He smiled back, and she shrugged lightly as if to say she couldn’t help it, this was her family and she loved them.

Though he was lacking in family himself, her attitude struck Kyle as really important. Some people would be embarrassed by the carryings on and eccentricities of the people involved. However, Dixie had made it plain that she was not. Maybe more than anything else, Kyle liked this about her.

WHEN THE TWO OF THEM arrived back at Dixie’s place after dinner, Kyle wished she wouldn’t go inside right away. He had no desire to spend the rest of the evening alone contemplating the sexual sparks that seemed to fly between them.

“I had a good time,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Oh, we’re a fun bunch, all right,” Dixie said with an amused laugh. “Life wouldn’t be the same without my family especially now that my sister’s moved away.” She seemed pensive as she pulled a jacket closer around her in order to fend off the cool night wind that soughed through the pine trees.

Impulse took over, making him bolder. “Let’s walk out on the dock and you can tell me how your sister happened to marry Luke Mason,” he said. He liked Luke Mason’s movies, which generally consisted of snappy dialogue, an attractive cast and a couple of improbable car chases. Plus, a discussion down on the dock might lead to something far more interesting.

He was delighted when Dixie said, “If you like,” though he cautioned himself against getting his hopes up. They walked together across the grass, past the flower bed he’d cleared earlier and onto the dock. Several loose boards could use nailing down, he noticed in the light of the full moon, and certainly one or two needed to be replaced.

When they reached the dock’s end, they leaned companionably side by side on the railing where the moon path on the water rippled toward the opposite shore. The air was fragrant with the scent of green growing things and another indefinable fragrance that Kyle suspected was Dixie’s shampoo.

“Would you really like to hear about my sister and Luke Mason?” she asked.

“Of course,” he replied easily. Suddenly it seemed as if everything about her interested him.

With a wistful half smile she said, “Carrie and Luke Mason are a love story that was meant to be. She didn’t figure it out right away, it took her a while. Oh, when she realized—well, she blossomed. Bloomed.”

Kyle was slightly uncomfortable with this topic because love had certainly never done that for him, but he’d rather not destroy Dixie’s romantic notions. He wasn’t required to comment, however, because she went on talking.

“Luke Mason was here to film a movie, Dangerous. It’ll be released next summer. It’s about our local stock-car-racing hero, Yancey Goforth, and how he came out of nowhere to become one of the greatest race-car drivers of all time.”

“I’ve read something about the movie. Doesn’t it have a more serious plot than his earlier films?”

“Carrie says he may be nominated for an Academy Award, it’s that good.”

“He’s an underrated actor, in my opinion.”

“They filmed part of the movie in Smitty’s, my sister’s garage, because it offered the ambience of the era when Yancey was getting started in stock-car racing. In fact, Yancey and my grandfather were friends. A couple of weeks before Carrie signed a contract with the movie company, I tried to talk her into converting the garage into a real estate office so we could go into business together, but she refused. Our dad left her the garage and the home place and me enough money to take a real estate course and put a down payment on my house.”

“How can your sister keep her business if she’s married to a movie star?”

“She sold Smitty’s to her mechanic. She retired so she could travel with Luke, and she wants to bear his children.” This was said dramatically, though Dixie was smiling. “Who wouldn’t?” she added wryly.

“You’ve got a point there,” he agreed.

“How about you, Kyle? Ever been married? Have any children?”

He shook his head. “No, unfortunately.” The last angry quarrel with Andrea two weeks ago still rankled; she’d informed him that even if they got married, which according to her was most unlikely, she didn’t want kids.

Dixie gazed out over the water, and he began to suspect that she didn’t discuss personal things with strangers. Why she’d chosen to so honor him, he couldn’t imagine, but something inside him opened to her.

“I’ve never been married, either,” she said. “I wish—but you don’t need to hear about that.”

In his time, Kyle had lent an ear to women who bemoaned the fact that they weren’t getting any younger but hadn’t found the right partner yet and to several others who belatedly wished they’d borne children in marriages that had ended in divorce. Usually he tried to steer them away from the topic. However, with Dixie, he was eager to learn more.

“Try me,” he said, gazing down at her.

“I could have married young, to my high-school boyfriend. I sent Milo away, and he never came back.” She seemed pensive but stoic in the manner of someone who had given a great deal of consideration to whether she’d done the right thing.

“That’s too bad,” he said automatically, but was it?

“A marriage between us would have been a disaster,” she said.

“That depends on if you’d been able to grow together,” Kyle suggested mildly.

Dixie slanted a glance up at him. “Do you consider that important? Learning and growing with a life partner, I mean?”

“Of course,” he answered, unable and unwilling to stop himself. “Shared experiences are the glue that holds two people together.”

Dixie leaned closer, which might have been by accident or design, he couldn’t tell which. Or maybe the rough railing was sticking a splinter into her arm, a distinct possibility if a person wasn’t careful.

She easily resumed the thread of conversation. “Take my cousin Voncille and her husband, Skeeter, for instance. They got married when she was seventeen, and she dropped out of school to work until their baby was born. She’ll tell you herself that when they started out, she had a lot to learn about marriage and children. Even though they don’t have much money, there’s a lot of love in that family. Together Voncille and Skeeter are both better people than they would have been apart.”

Kyle didn’t often get the chance to state his own opinions about relationships and how they worked. He usually left that to someone else. But if he had been in the habit of saying what he wanted or needed from a woman, he would have said that two people together should be halves of one whole. That each of them should help the other become the best person he or she could be. Dixie’s understanding of this principle not only surprised him, it validated his thinking. He was silent for so long that Dixie studied him out of the corner of her eye for a long moment before speaking.

“I haven’t said anything to offend you, have I?” she ventured.

He cleared his throat. “No.”

“For a while there, I wondered.”

“I, uh, well. Of course I’m not offended,” he said. Where have you been all my life? he was thinking.

He liked her way too much, and maybe she was assuming things that she shouldn’t. He wasn’t ready to enmesh himself in another situation where there was no getting out, yet he was thirty-two years old and ready to settle down.

Dixie was gazing up at him, the moon reflected in her blue, blue eyes, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows across her cheeks. He longed to run his hands under her sweet-smelling hair, press his body close to hers and whisper her name softly in her ear. Don’t do this, he told himself. Stop it. Don’t. Not that any relevant part of him was listening.

Dixie saw his intent, and she did not back away. Even though he’d known her only a bit longer than twenty-four hours, even though when they’d met, he’d been wearing a Yankee uniform, even though she knew nothing about him other than what he’d seen fit to relate.

“Oh, Kyle,” she said, exhaling his name on a long breath. Before she could tell him to stop, he did what was possibly the stupidest thing in his life, considering that he quite possibly still had a girlfriend back in Ohio. He swept Dixie Lee Smith into his arms and kissed her.

Chapter Three

Dixie’s desk was situated at the very front of the Yewville Real Estate Company’s office where she could watch people walking past and greet them when they came in. That’s because she had started out as an administrative assistant to Jim Terwilliger, the broker in charge, and his wife, Mayzelle, who liked to help out around the office too often to suit everyone else. Mayzelle meant well and had a kind heart, everyone agreed. They just could do with a good bit less of her advice and company.

Right now Mayzelle was on the phone with Glenda at the Curly Q Beauty Salon discussing what to do about her botched hair color, which was supposed to be Desert Dream, but had turned out more like Copper Kettle. She was trying to talk Glenda into working her in immediately.

“Maybe Rose Inglett would switch with me? She’s done it before when it suits her,” Mayzelle said. “I mean, most people would give anything for my Friday slot?”

Dixie, who was inserting new pages in her listing book, tried to concentrate on her task. It wasn’t easy, considering Mayzelle’s distracting conversation and the fact that last night Dixie had been kissed by possibly the best kisser she’d ever encountered. Who knew that Yankees could kiss like that? It pained her to learn what she’d been missing all these years.

Dixie had done her share of making out in her time, and she’d even had a serious boyfriend or two or three. Well, okay, make that four. First Milo Dingle, the boy she’d been engaged to be engaged to in high school. Then Rob Portner, the guy who delivered firewood to everyone in town. And after that, Thad Ganey, who’d gone and enlisted in the navy. Last, and definitely least, Sam Hodges, who’d run off with Tattin Kelly when they were all staying in a rented condo at the beach last Fourth of July. The thing with Sam still rankled, since he’d neglected to pay his share of the condo rental. Plus, Dixie had loaned Tattin her best beach cover-up for the weekend and never got it back. If she’d known those two had the hots for each other, she’d have made sure Tattin borrowed the cover-up with the peach-juice stain down the front.

“Dixie Lee,” Mayzelle said, interrupting her reverie. “I’m going to run over to Glenda’s for a bit? I should only be an hour or so. You don’t mind answering the phones, do you?”

“No, Mayzelle, you go right ahead.” Anything to get Mayzelle out of the office for a while; she tended to drive everyone crazy with her high voice and the annoying habit of ending almost every sentence with a question mark.

Mayzelle woke Fluffy, her elderly poodle, who slept under her desk, and with the unresisting dog tucked firmly under her arm, she exited the office, leaving Dixie alone.

Dixie intended to write letters to a couple of friends who had shipped out with the Guard unit. As it turned out, all she did was replay last night’s kiss in her mind. She took out a pen and paper. She even addressed the envelopes. Before she had a chance to get started on the letters, the phone rang.

“Dixie,” said her friend Joyanne calling from California where she’d lived ever since getting her big break in the Luke Mason movie and embarking on a new career as an actress. “I only have a minute before I leave for an audition, but I heard Milo Dingle is back in town. Have you seen him yet?”

“No, and I don’t expect I will,” Dixie said, pulling up her e-mail screen on the computer. Sure enough, there were two messages with Milo’s name in the subject line, so the Yewville grapevine was in gear.

“Don’t be so sure. Milo told my cousin Norm’s wife, Betty, that he’s going to renew his acquaintance with you. He asked her to get your phone number.”

“Milo knows where to find me, not that I care,” Dixie said. “Right about the tenth pew, lefthand side, in church every Sunday. In fact, that’s exactly where he left me twelve years ago.”

“Milo didn’t leave you,” Joyanne said. “I distinctly recall that he asked you to marry him shortly after the collection plate passed by, and you said no. Milo was ambivalent about joining his father on the family peach farm so he moved to Kingstree to help his uncle grow daylilies for Wal-Mart is all. Since you declined to go with him, that does not qualify as leaving you.”

“I’ve never regretted my decision.”

“It would have been a beautiful wedding,” Joyanne said wistfully. “All those daylilies.”

“I was ready to go out with other guys,” she told Joyanne, not that this was real news.

“Speaking of guys, have you heard from Sam?”

“Sam the Mooch and Tattin are planning their wedding. They’re having two singers, eight candelabra and a string quartet at the First Baptist Church in Florence.”

“Has Sam paid you his share of the condo rent yet?”

“He never will, the cheapskate. He liked to let me cover the tab at the Eat Right Café, and I filled his SUV with gas more than once. I wonder why I put up with it for so long.”

“It was only a couple of months, Dixie.”

“A couple of months too long. It’s some consolation that Tattin will have to deal with him for the rest of her life.” She paused. “How are things going with you?”

“I’m up for a part in a family drama for the Lifetime channel,” Joyanne said. “It’s a cross between Little House on the Prairie and Little Women.”

“All that ‘Little,’” Dixie said. “I hope it’s not only a little money.”

“If I get the gig, I’ll be able to buy my own place.”

“Good for you, Joyanne,” Dixie said warmly, finding gig an odd new word in her friend’s vocabulary.

“What’s up with you? Anything important? How did your tooth whitening go?”

“Good. I got two fillings, as well.” She didn’t mention Kyle Sherman.

“Is that the end of your self-improvement program?”

“I’m not sure. Now that I’ve got a new wardrobe for my job, my hair professionally highlighted and my eyeliner tattooed on, I may be through.” Dixie didn’t believe she was vain, exactly, but she was twenty-nine years old and competition for husbands was stiff these days. She’d merely done what she could to maximize her chances in a town where for every hundred females over the age of eighteen, there were only seventy-one males, many of them away in the military or way over the age of sixty.

Joyanne chuckled. “You couldn’t be anything but gorgeous, trust me. Look, I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon, Dixie. Call me if you hear from Milo.”

“Uh-huh.”

They hung up, and Dixie opened her e-mails. One was from Voncille, who had typed a few lines about Skeeter’s running into Milo at the Eat Right that morning. Another was from Milo’s sister, Priss, who invited Dixie to stop by her house for coffee next Saturday. Dixie was quite sure this was no mere coincidence since she hadn’t seen or talked with Priss for ages.

So back to last night. She and Kyle had kissed with the moonlight beaming down so bright it hurt her eyes, which was why she’d closed them as his lips met hers. He had the softest lips. They were firm, too, and he used them to elicit the most exciting sensations. She’d swooned into the kiss, every part of her body primed for more as he used his mouth to tell her how much he wanted her without saying a word. It was a long kiss, that first one, followed by several more, or perhaps it was one kiss broken into several parts because once they’d started neither of them tried to stop. She’d been tipsy only a couple of times in her life, and this reminded her of that loose, dizzy, confused feeling. It was even better though, because instead of falling asleep as she always did after too much to drink, this time, she was fully alert, aroused and ready.

It probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to be deeply kissing a man she’d just met. She’d told herself to put a stop to it right then and there. Only, what harm was there in indulging herself for once in her life, as she did by eating a chocolate bar now and then? Kyle T. Sherman would soon be on his way back to Ohio, and she’d never see him again. Never kiss him again.

Last night she’d instinctively looped her hands around Kyle’s neck, pulling him closer until their bodies came into contact. Electrified, she made no objection when he tangled his fingers in her hair, when he cupped her face, his big hands rough against her cheeks. She couldn’t remember ever kissing anyone with so much feeling and longing. Certainly it had never been that way with Milo or Sam or any of the others. She’d let them take the lead, but with Kyle, she’d be satisfied with nothing less than the whole sexual experience. Longed to lie naked with him in the shadows of the oaks near the edge of the lake. Anticipated guiding him into her and being possessed by him, his flesh hammering her into total surrender. It was bewildering to feel such a strong yearning, one that seemed likely to deprive her of all control.

So if they’d kept on kissing, where might it have ended? However, as things were heating up to the next level, they heard a raucous cry, then a large bird swept out of nowhere, its wings nearly brushing their cheeks as it passed. They sprang apart, both startled.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Kyle said ruefully. His hand still rested on her shoulder, but the mood was broken and they had awkwardly moved apart.

Due to the untimely interruption, good sense returned, and she’d told Kyle that she’d better get a decent night’s sleep because she had clients to meet the next morning. When they reached the end of the dock, he shook her hand, which was really laughable considering their passionate kissing only a few moments past. He’d told her again how much he’d enjoyed spending the afternoon with her family. Then, her lips still tingling from his kisses, she’d fled into the house, where she leaned against the back door and fanned herself into a semblance of normality with a church program.

She hadn’t seen Kyle this morning when she’d headed to work. What he chose to do with his day was no business of hers. Except now that she’d developed a craving for his kisses and a hankering to learn not only how far she’d go but how far he would, she was determined that they’d both have a chance to find out.

While she was still lost in remembrance of last night, Dixie’s boss returned to the office and inquired how her two showings that morning had gone.

While she was filling him in, Mayzelle walked in with her poodle and started heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave in the break room. Two other agents arrived, excitedly discussing the current ad for the old textile mill in the Wall Street Journal, and Dixie fielded a call from a man who had discovered one of her listings on the Internet and asked if the house had a bonus room where he and his wife could raise Maine coon cats. Never a dull moment, Dixie told herself as she headed out to show one of the new houses up on the lake to the man with the cats.

Just the same she sure wished she knew what Kyle Sherman was up to.

AFTER HE CLEANED OUT the remaining three flower beds and fired up the Weedwacker to trim the overgrown grass at the edges of the driveway, Kyle treated himself to a long cool drink of water from the artesian well on Dixie’s property. The water bubbled up out of a pipe sunk into the earth and into a pool made by piling rocks in a circle. The water was clean and cold and pure, though some of the rocks had crumbled or were missing. They needed to be replaced and arranged in a downhill pattern so the pool could become a pretty little waterfall. He’d like to do that for Dixie if he stuck around long enough.