Part 24 (1/2)
Chapter Thirty-Three.
Dawn, who in the city would be cal ed a sporty femme, sat slightly inside the wide, dark doorway of her garage. If someone had asked Jefferson what a sporty, or tomboy, femme was, she would have mentioned girls' softbal and basketbal and power tools. She would have described a woman not afraid of a chal enge, who could also fold clothes neatly, cook wel , and make a butchy woman feel powerful even as she gave over her power to the sporty femme.
”What's this one going to be?” asked Jefferson.
Dawn was whittling with an old green Girl Scout jackknife. She held the carving up and laughed. ”A bird. Doesn't look like much, does it? I'm trying to get the wood to curve as smooth as a woman's hip.”
Jefferson raised one eyebrow, but Dawn didn't notice. Although Dawn's conversation was not without s.e.xual references, she hadn't expected her to say something that sounded so butchy. This rural Amerasian librarian was so unique that she was fascinated.
It was a mostly sunny day. Every now and then a dark cloud blocked the light enough that Dawn set the bird down. Jefferson couldn't help but wonder if country femmes seemed butchier than city femmes because they had to be more self-reliant. Once she would have checked this notion out, but these days she was about as interested as that wooden bird would be. Her life had a certain skeletal feeling right now that both scared and comforted her.
Without the complications of juggling relations.h.i.+ps, she felt free, but she had no clue about how to live unenc.u.mbered, with only herself to consider. These new friends, like this cheerful tomboy femme-she hadn't built much history with them, had no commitment to them, hadn't made love with them. She was stil a free agent.
Her cel rang. She popped her Bluetooth headset into her ear and retreated to the side of the garage. It was someone rescheduling an appointment to look at a house.
”Shannon Wiley!” Dawn said when the stringy, shambling surfer-dude d.y.k.e strode into view, pus.h.i.+ng her bike. The sun fol owed Shannon, who wore a silver-and-blue Xena T-s.h.i.+rt.
”I got a flat a block from here,” her visitor said, pul ing a smal tool kit from the saddle bags and flipping the bike onto its handlebars. ”Here.” Shannon took a bunch of forget-me-nots from a pocket inside her jacket and handed it to Dawn, cheeks dimpling in an obvious struggle not to smile too widely.
While the flowers weren't a blatant courting gesture, they were more than what most friends would do. Instead of accepting them, Dawn lifted her black hair, with its strands of gray, up from her eyes, and said, ”Would you fil the jel y jar on the shelf over the sink and stick them in it? I'm feeling too lazy to get up.”
Shannon always did what Dawn told her to and had the jar of flowers by her feet in seconds, then walked to the other side of the driveway and rol ed a tree stump over to her bike, sat down, and started fiddling with the flat tire. Dawn looked at the flowers and shook her head, smiling at Jefferson. She held out her hands, one with the bird, one empty, as if to say, ”What can I do?”
To get past her awkwardness about Dawn making a co-conspirator of her, Jefferson asked, ”Where'd you get al these stumps? There must be a dozen.”
”When I moved here, the back lot was ful of them. It'd been logged off decades ago, from the looks of it. I hired a little backhoe and dug them out. The next year, when they were dry, I used my chain saw to flatten the bottoms. I like them for sitting and for chopping wood, for drying flowers, for sawhorses, to look at.”
Jefferson had never met anyone like Dawn, so feminine yet unafraid of guys' work. ”And you learned to operate a backhoe where?”
”My dad has one at the farm,” Dawn replied, intensely sanding a b.u.mp on the bird's tail.
Shannon said, ”Geeze, my father won't let me near his circular saw, much less heavy equipment.”
”I was the eldest. I got to teach the boys when they came along.”
”Are al country girls like you?” Jefferson asked Dawn.
”Why? Do you need a couple?”
”A couple of country girls?” Jefferson asked, trying to pa.s.s herself off as an innocent.
Someone laughed, and Dawn looked up under her gla.s.ses at Jefferson with a smile. ”I was offering tree stumps.”
When Jefferson said thanks anyway, Dawn tried Shannon. ”How about you?”
Jefferson realized her hands were hot and glanced around. Who was setting off her desire alarm? It had to be Dawn. She stuffed her hands in her hoodie pocket. Dawn? Real y? She wasn't ready for this.
Shannon was saying, ”I have real sawhorses and real lawn chairs, thank you very much.”
”How can you fit al that in that cabin you're renting?” Dawn asked, an edgy sharpness to her teasing. She wondered if they were exes.
Shannon looked down. Was she embarra.s.sed about where she lived? ”My landlady lets me have s.p.a.ce in the old barn.”
A cloud b.u.mped the sunlight. The day was both cool and not cool, kind of indecisive, the way spring could be. Shannon was fol owing Dawn's hands as they whittled. The poor kid might start drooling if she was deprived of those hands another minute.
”Kil er carving,” Shannon said. ”Can I see it?”
”Not til I'm done.”
”I can live with that,” Shannon quickly said, pursing her lips and nodding, while obviously thinking the opposite.
They sat in silence while Dawn gently carved shavings from the bird's breast. Now and then Jefferson cupped a hand underneath and caught them.
They smel ed like something from her past; she couldn't name what. She could see Shannon's attraction to those delicate yet sure hands. But a librarian?
Maybe the stereotype put her off, but as much as she liked Dawn, she couldn't think of her as a lover. The truth was, she didn't think of anyone as a lover.
That part of her was stil dormant.
Shannon's hair, Jefferson thought, must real y get noticed in conservative Pipsborough. Shannon had told her she'd moved back to the lake from Nashua less than a year ago. Jefferson suspected you could be a little weird in a town that size, but not here. If Shannon stayed in Pipsborough with long brown hair for the rest of her life, she wouldn't live down the impression of wildness her current do gave. Here or anywhere on Sat.u.r.day Lake. Lake people seemed to have a memory for anything different, unless you were actual y from the lakes, like Dawn, who had told her that her family had a farm over near Stil water Lake. She'd promised to drive Jefferson out to see the farm and Jefferson was curious, but very leery of getting closer. She could feel Dawn's interest coming off her like waves of warmth from a woodstove. Dawn wasn't interested in Shannon, the one who wanted her. She smiled: lesbians were the same everywhere.
Rayanne came around the corner, ignoring the stop sign. She parked her silver PT Cruiser wel away from the other cars. Rayanne and Dawn had met at UNH Plymouth about a thousand years ago, Dawn had said, and had a thing going, but Rayanne was a squabbler, so they graduated not speaking to each other. A few years later, after Rayanne's agency decided to open an office in Pipsborough, they ran into each other outside the post office and got in the habit of having lunch on a bench by the water in good weather and at the Oar Stand, a breakfast and lunch place, al winter. Rayanne, Dawn told Jefferson, had turned out to be a good friend.
”Greetings and salutations, comrades,” Rayanne cal ed. ”If I'm at Dawn's, it must be Sat.u.r.day afternoon.”
”Hi, girl,” Dawn said.
”What is that article of clothing you've got on?” Shannon asked. ”It looks like a cross between cutoffs and capris.”
”She thinks she's the fas.h.i.+on maven,” Dawn pointed a thumb toward Shannon, ”because she's seen the world.” At Jefferson's raised eyebrows, Dawn explained, ”In the National Guard.”
Rayanne had hips like the handles on a bowling trophy. When she walked, the hips seemed to rol her along. Her oversized T-s.h.i.+rt read ”Olivia x.x.x Leisure Dept.”
”They're Sat.u.r.day-afternoon-at-Dawn's pants.”
”Apres-mowing is what they look like,” Shannon said. ”What did you do, fal on your b.u.t.t in the clippings?”
Rayanne struggled to walk a stump into the shade of the garage. Shannon got up to help her and placed the stump between Dawn and Jefferson.
”Where's Yolanda?” Shannon asked.
Dawn answered with a laugh. ”Getting the beer, probably.”
An earnest look appeared on Shannon's face. ”Should we be worried about her drinking or what?”
”Shan,” Rayanne said, ”because you and Jefferson don't drink, the rest of us aren't necessarily drunks.”