Gone to Green (Green (Abingdon Press)) by Judy Christie

Author:Judy Christie [Christie, Judy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2009-04-30T15:00:00+00:00

13

Bayou Lake is low due to the recent drought, but spirits

are high because Billy Ray Cyrus will be here performing

his hits from the early nineties at the Bouef Parish Fair.

—The Green News-Item

One day I dashed into the post office, and my car wouldn’t start five minutes later. “It's the heat,” Tammy said, pulling out jumper cables. “It drains the battery faster than anything.”

Another day I went out to the parking lot and a long crack had appeared on my windshield, from the bottom almost to the top. “It's the heat,” Tom told me. “If you have a little nick in your windshield, it spreads when you have your car shut up on these hot days.”

Despite the lack of rain, the heat settled on you like a damp blanket, with humidity soaring. The only laugh I got that week was when Tom said, “You just have to get used to the humisery.”

Temperatures topping one hundred and humidity to match consumed conversations—from Bud and his agriculture report to the ladies from the garden club who watered their flowerbeds twice a day.

“You’re going to be shocked by the light bill,” Stan said one morning.

“I’m wilting on my route,” Rose said, moving slowly at the Holey Moley. “My new hobby is tracking how hot it gets in my mail truck.”

High school football practice was moved to 5 a.m., and still parents complained. I heard from Iris Jo that Chris had lost lots of his catfish. They died or were too fishy smelling when he took them in to sell.

The lake was so low the beautiful homes at Mossy Bend were sitting up high and dry.

“Having lived through July in Louisiana,” I told Marti on the phone, “I thought I could live through anything. I hadn’t counted on August.”

My yard was cracked and brown, and my flowers barely held on. The hydrangeas that had been so beautiful earlier in the summer wilted and begged for water. When I went out to water, the mosquitoes got after me, apparently the only creatures that flourished in these temperatures. My air conditioner ran nonstop, and I found myself dreading small errands.

Katy proved to be a bright spot during these hot weeks. Since the downtown festival, she had become downright chatty, occasionally popping up in the newspaper parking lot or dropping by my office. Sometimes she would ask me a question about the paper, trying to act as though the answer didn’t matter. At other times, she would tell me something going on in Green, something the kids talked about or that she heard at church.

“You coming back to our church?” she asked one day.

“I don’t know … maybe one of these days when things settle down a little. What brought that up?”

“Pastor Jean asked about you the other day. She saw me and Molly talking to you at the festival, and she asked if we were friends and if I might be able to talk you into visiting the church again. Said we sure could use you.”

I made a joke and changed the subject.

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