Understanding Women by C.W. Smith

Author:C.W. Smith [Smith, C.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780989632942
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

Darlene Darling led me through a locked steel door and down a hall laid with green-and-white checkered linoleum. One side had high windows, the other empty cells—no catcalls, cons banging cups, no tattooed forearms waggling like tentacles through the bars. Eventually we turned a corner, and I followed Darlene's gaze to a cell where Aunt Vicky was sitting on a bunk with her elbows in her lap and her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shuddering, and I heard something like a kitten mewling.

Before she could look up, Darlene yanked me back around the corner and said, much louder than necessary, "Now you just wait right here, James. I'll go get that cup."

I waited, surrounded by empty cells. I listened closely, heard shuffling, then the unmistakable sound of a woman blowing her nose softly and gently.

"Aunt Vicky?"

"Yes. Is that you, James?" Her voice sounded high and trembly but almost merry.

"I brought you something." I peered around the corner holding up the bottle of Orange Crush. She was standing now, dabbing at her cheeks with a handkerchief. She smiled. Behind her glasses, her eyes were a net of red lines and her makeup was smeared. She daintily pressed her fingerpads against her eyes as if to squeegee tears from under her lids.

"Thanks! I am very thirsty."

"Deputy Darling's wife had to get a paper cup. They won't let you drink from the bottle."

"Afraid I'll cut my wrists, I guess."

She sighed and sat on the bunk. The cell had an outside wall and a very narrow window of glass blocks high up near the ceiling, and when she turned the back of her head to me. She appeared to be looking at it. It took me a minute to realize she was composing herself.

"Nice place you got here," I said.

She laughed, then started bawling. She fairly sobbed for a while with her face in her hands, then banged on her thighs with her fists to make herself stop. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she burbled, laughing through her tears. "I know this makes you uncomfortable. Waylan sort of writhes when I cry. I'm only relieving the tension. You understand?" Her lips, quivering, curved unevenly in a ragged smile. Her face was soaking wet. "It's been a hell of a day, the whole last twenty-four hours."

Darlene arrived with a little Dixie cup you unfold to use. "Sorry, this is the best I can do."

When she left, Aunt Vicky held the cup through the bars and I poured it full three times in a row. She drank it so lustily that it dribbled an orange trail down her chin and neck and mixed with her tears in the hollow, and she had to dab at her throat with the handkerchief.

"My God, I'm a mess!"

"I called Uncle Waylan."

"What'd he say?"

"I didn't talk to him directly. I had a call put out to him in the field. Mrs. Darling said he'd have to post your bail before you could get out."

"Well, thanks, James. I knew sooner or later I'd have to call him or Jack.

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