“What’cha doing, sweetie?”
LuAnn jerked around and stared into Beth’s face. The older woman expertly juggled plates full of food in both hands.
“Nothing much, just counting up all my fortune,” LuAnn said.
Beth grinned and looked at the steno pad, which LuAnn quickly closed. “Well, don’t forget the little people when you hit the big time, Miss LuAnn Tyler.” Beth cackled and then carried the food orders to the waiting customers.
LuAnn smiled uneasily. “I won’t, Beth. I swear,” she said quietly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was eight o’clock in the morning on the day. LuAnn stepped off the bus with Lisa. This was not her usual stop, but it was close enough to the trailer that she could walk it in half an hour or so, which was nothing to her. The rain had passed and left the sky a brilliant blue and the earth a lush green. Small clusters of birds sang the praises of the changing season and the exit of another tedious winter. Everywhere LuAnn turned as she tramped along under the newly risen sun there was fresh growth. She liked this time of the day. It was calm, soothing, and she tended to feel hopeful about things.
LuAnn looked ahead to the gently rolling fields and her manner grew both somber and expectant. She walked slowly through the arched gateway and past the patinated sign proclaiming her entrance into the Heavenly Meadows Cemetery. Her long, slender feet carried her automatically to Section 14, Lot 21, Plot 6; it occupied a space on a small knoll in the shadow of a mature dogwood that would soon begin showing its unique wares. She laid Lisa’s carrier down on the stone bench near her mother’s grave and lifted out the little girl. Kneeling in the dewy grass, she brushed some twigs and dirt off the bronze marker. Her mother, Joy, had not lived all that long: thirty-seven years. It had seemed both brief and an eternity for Joy Tyler, that LuAnn knew. The years with Benny had not been pleasant, and had, LuAnn firmly believed now, hastened her mother’s exit from the living.
“Remember? This is where your grandma is, Lisa. We haven’t been for a while because the weather was so bad. But now that it’s spring it’s time to visit again.” LuAnn held up her daughter and pointed with her finger at the recessed ground. “Right there. She’s sleeping right now, but whenever we come by, she sort of wakes up. She can’t really talk back to us but if you close your eyes tight as a baby bird’s, and listen real, real hard, you can kinda hear her. She’s letting you know what she thinks about things.”
After saying this, LuAnn rose up and sat on the bench with Lisa on her lap, bundled against the chill of the early morning. Lisa was still sleepy; it usually took her a while to wake up, but once she did, the little girl wouldn’t stop moving or talking for several hours. The cemetery was deserted except for a workman LuAnn could see far in the distance, cutting grass on a riding mower. The sounds of the mower’s engine didn’t reach her and there were few cars on the roadway. The silence was peaceful and she closed her eyes tight as a baby bird’s and listened as hard as she could.
At the diner she had made up her mind to call Jackson right after she got off work. He had said anytime and she figured he would answer the phone on the first ring regardless of the time. Saying yes had seemed like the easiest thing in the world to do. And the smartest. It was her turn. After twenty years filled with grief, disappointment, and depths of despair that seemed to have endless elasticity, the gods had smiled upon her. Out of the masses of billions, LuAnn Tyler’s name had turned the hat trick on the slot machine. It would never happen again, of that she was dead certain. She was also sure that the other people she had read about in the paper had made a similar phone call. She hadn’t read anything about them getting in trouble. That sort of news would have been all over, certainly in as poor an area as she lived in, where everyone played the lottery in a frantic effort to throw off the bitter hopelessness of being a have-not. Somewhere between leaving the diner and stepping on the bus, however, she had felt something very deep inside of her prompting her to not pick up the phone but, instead, to seek counsel other than her own. She came here often, to talk, to lay flowers she had picked, or to spruce up her mother’s final resting place. In the past, she had often thought she actually did communicate with her mother. She had never heard voices; it was more levels of feelings, of senses. Euphoria or deep sadness sometimes overtook her here, and she had finally put it down to her mother reaching out to her, letting her opinion on things having to do with LuAnn seep into her child’s body, into her mind. Doctors would probably call her crazy, she knew, but that didn’t take away from what she felt.