“I’m worried about my cat,” May said.
“I know.”
“What do we do?”
“We can’t bring him inside with us. I’d be too risky.”
May remained stoic, and sighed, “I know.”
She picked the cat up, stroked his blue-gray coat several times, and set him down gently. He meandered away, heading toward the woods just beyond the barn.
“If it’s clear, we can set a bit a food out for him, somewhere in the barn, maybe.”
“You’d do that for him, Winston?”
“Of course.”
She reached across Medusa and clutched tightly onto his hand. They shared another moment of reflective silence until Winston cleared his throat and said, “strange, isn’t it, how the crickets are hushed?”
She hadn’t noticed, but it was true — the male crickets were usually busy chirping their love songs to the females or warning other males that might invade their territory. Tonight though, the crickets were quiet, as if they had become extinct. May and Winston trained their ears into the cool of the night, hoping to find some sort of solace in a sound that would normally be unpleasant.
“I think they’re jes’ as scared as us.”
Suddenly, a mortar round thundered uncomfortably close by, perhaps only five or six miles away. The long procession of vehicles clogging I-75 North only yesterday was now a slow trickle, with barely a vehicle passing by on the highway every ten minutes or so, folks who probably intended to wait out the invasion in the comfort of their own homes, only to be shocked by the scope of the PLA’s invasion.
“We should probably sleep in the apartment tonight,” Winston advised.
They both looked toward the growing flashes of light off in the distance.
May nodded.
They cleaned up what mess they had made earlier in the kitchen, performed their usual evening routine that included brushing teeth and putting on pajamas as if they were merely going down the hall to bed. Instead, when they were ready, they walked out of the house they shared for nearly forty years together — the house that May’s great-grandfather had built in 1904 — locked the door behind them, walked into the barn, closed the makeshift door, and disappeared into the tiny apartment hidden behind the false wall. It was a cozy space — a most special place, built out of love, for love.
Mick
To the rear of Calef’s Country Store stood a five-acre orchard planted with straight rows of McIntosh and Red Delicious apple trees, and though the harvesting season had only begun, the Johnsonville residents had picked every tree bare. The sickly sweet aroma of apples decaying on the ground around the trees wafted throughout the acreage as squadrons of ignorant honeybees and yellow jackets flittered from rotted apple to rotted apple, sucking in the fruit’s succulent, sweet syrup.
At the rear of the orchard, a full eighth of a mile from the store, Julie Calef rested her back against a post of the split rail fence that enclosed the orchard, her face turned upward toward the cloudless sky. With her lavender cotton panties coiled around her left ankle, her purple sundress hiked above her hips, her legs splayed as wide as they could go, her boyfriend Mick’s tongue was buried deep inside of her, flickering in and out. The sun’s warmth on her face was as hot as Mick’s tongue. He was young, but he was skilled, especially since Julie had forbidden intercourse until the couple was married. Oral sex was permissible, however, and they partook in a lot of it. Julie had already taken care of Mick — his semen seeping into the quickly browning grass — and this was his reciprocation. As she climaxed, tugging on Mick’s brown tufts of wavy hair and pulling his mouth hard onto her, his tongue as deep as it could go, she let out a wail that caused a descent into a fit of laughter, pondering if anybody had heard her come.
Julie drew Mick to her lips and kissed him passionately, still giggling at the racket she had made and tasting her own salty nectar. She was twenty, Mick eighteen. They met in high school when his parents moved from Atlanta. He was a sophomore, she a senior. Mick’s real name was Michael, but he preferred Mick in homage to his personal hero, Mick Jagger. They were polar opposites as far as couples went — Julie the bright star, destined to leave Johnsonville to attend Savannah College of Art and Design when the occupation was over, and Mick struggling to find his way in a world that only confused and evaded him. Mick played guitar, but could not sing nor compose lyrics, while she excelled at nearly anything she attempted. The one thing Mick did excel in was pleasuring Julie, whether by tongue or the gentlemanly manner in which he treated her. She pulled her lips away from his and became sullen.
“Why do you have to go, Mick? Why can’t you just stay here with me?” she asked.
“My father says it’ll be safer out in Lafayette.”
“You probably can’t even get there what with the traffic jammed up and all.”
“We’re gonna take the four-wheeler trails — through the woods.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“Look, Julie, please don’t be angry. I got something I wanna ask you.”
Mick shifted his position onto both knees, pulled up his dingy jeans and dug into the front pocket, and produced the tiniest of diamond engagement rings — so small that the cut was impossible to identify with the naked eye. He shifted again — this time onto one knee.
“Whatchya got there, Mick?” she asked.
“Julie Katherine Calef, will you marry me?” Mick asked in a quivering voice.
She held out her ring finger and Mick slipped the ring on. She gazed at the single sparkling gemstone and back to Mick.
“Oh, Mick, I love it.”
“Well, is that a yes? You wanna marry me after this shit is done?”
“Yes, Mick, I do, I do!” she exclaimed, and pulled him into an embrace, her back still fixed against the fence. Her voice and excitement trailed off as she asked, “but what about Lafayette?”
“I gotta go. Daddy says anybody that stays in Johnsonville is a fool.”
“Please don’t go.”
“Come with us! There’s plenty a room in the truck! We can be together!”
“Daddy wouldn’t go for that. Besides, he needs me at the store.”
“Damn that ol’ store to hell. Ain’t nothing left on the shelves, anyway! He can look after the store hisself!”
Mick hoisted himself to his feet, walked five paces away from Julie, and folded his arms across his chest. Julie stood, pulled her panties on, and walked to her man-child. She hugged him from behind.
“That damned ol’ store brings a lot a comfort to the folks ‘round here. And we gotta finish boarding the house up. I’m sorry, Mick.”
“I gotta go,” he said, and with a sad smile, he took Julie by the hand and led her back toward the store, which was nearly seven hundred feet away.
“Daddy says it’ll only be for a week or two,” she said as she pulled away from Mick and danced and twirled, skirting in and out of the apple trees. Her smile was infectious and Mick cheered up, just a little, and walked slowly toward the store.
“Oh, Mick, I want the prettiest, whitest wedding dress ever! And you’ll look so handsome! And we’ll dance the night away!”
Julie stopped suddenly. “Wait!” pondered a moment and then pranced, “where do you want to honeymoon? The Caribbean? Hawaii? How about Europe?”
“I was thinking more like Vegas.”
“Gross?”
Mick laughed, “I don’t care where we go just as long as we’re together.”