The fall line, p.10
The Fall Line, page 10
“That’s what timber and gas money will buy, I guess,” Jordan said.
“And tech. I think I mentioned that Barron is the CEO of an aerospace company with a Department of Defense contract up in Huntsville. This place was a hunting and fish camp until they decided to live here full-time and build that house.”
“Monstrous mansion is more like it.” Jordan wrinkled her forehead. “Huntsville’s what, a couple of hours from here? That’s a hell of a commute.”
“Not when you have a private jet and your own airstrip.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. Just wait until you see the party barn. It’s really a barn-themed event center.” The dense tree-lined road opened into grassy pastures, providing a view of the two-story, red and white gambrel-roofed building. Perched on top of the cupola, a copper weathervane in the shape of a pig seemed to glow in the late-afternoon light. Maddie pulled into the overflow parking area, where easily more than a hundred cars were parked.
“Damn. You weren’t kidding,” Jordan whistled and closed the car door. “This looks like it belongs in a romantic Hallmark movie.” She turned her head and winked at Maddie.
Maddie’s insides did a flip-flop. “Hallmark? Wouldn’t the setting more likely be a New England town at Christmas?”
“In a snowstorm.” Jordan laughed. “And my vintage pickup truck would have just broken down outside a quaint village. You’d be the kind stranger offering me a lift into town and some hot chocolate to warm me up.”
Laughing with Jordan felt natural and good. “How about a cold beer on a warm spring evening in a fancy Alabama barn instead?”
“I’m parched.” Jordan grinned. “Sounds great.”
The crowd on the other side of the wide-open barn doors was lively. The gala always attracted an interesting mix of town and gown, and Maddie recognized members of old Oberon families and recently arrived faculty members. The shiny pine floor was dotted with tables covered in red gingham cloth, and the lights strung from the rafters gave the space a festive glow. Glass doors flanking one wall were rolled up, open to the trellised patio outside, where a band played bluesy country music.
Maddie touched Jordan’s arm lightly to get her attention and gestured to a break in the crowd. “The bar’s that way.” Keeping her hand on Jordan’s elbow, they wove their way across the room to the back of the long line, where several faculty members and their significant others greeted her.
“Hey, Maddie,” said a tall, thin-faced mathematician. His girlfriend smiled and gave a little wave.
“So nice to see you,” chimed a cheery Spanish professor. Her husband smiled and nodded. She gave Maddie a quick side hug. “I haven’t seen you since the beginning of the semester. How are you?”
“I’m great. Thanks for asking. You know how it goes. Once the students start turning in papers, I become a hermit,” Maddie said with a shrug. The Spanish professor nodded, giving a sympathetic look.
“This gala always feels like the official kickoff of the summer break,” said a pretty blond chemist. She looked Jordan up and down, smiled at Maddie, and raised her eyebrows in a silent question.
“Forgive my terrible manners.” Maddie smiled at Jordan. “Everyone, this is Jordan Burroughs, our current artist-in-residence.”
Maddie remained quiet, observing while the group talked and inched closer to the bar. Some people felt awkward around academics, but as she’d previously observed, Jordan seemed comfortable with everyone she met. She fully engaged, answering all their questions enthusiastically and asking a few in return.
While Jordan asked the mathematician if he believed in the Golden Ratio, the chemist leaned close to Maddie, bumping her gently with an elbow and whispered, “She’s cute.”
Maddie responded silently with a half-smile and soft nod as the conversation circled around to staying at Palmer House.
“Ooh. I don’t know that I could spend a night there.” The Spanish professor crossed her arms and faked a shiver.
“Why?” Jordan asked.
“Ghosts,” said the Spanish professor’s husband matter-of-factly.
The mathematician, who was always very logical, rolled his eyes. “If you hear any creaks in the night, Jordan, it’s most likely the old house responding to temperature changes.”
“The house definitely has temperature issues. But, so far, the only thing that’s kept me awake at night is a mockingbird,” Jordan said.
As they ordered and received their drinks, they disappeared one by one, heading outside to the terrace. The bartender’s back was toward Maddie and Jordan when it was their turn to step up to the bar. After he turned around, a look of recognition crossed Jordan’s face.
“Hi! Remember me?”
“Hello,” the bartender replied slowly, seemingly confused. He was a tanned, tall, and lanky twenty-something, with a thick, neatly trimmed and combed beard.
“Sorry. I guess you don’t. We met at the Cahaba River last week. You were coming out of the river with your kayak.”
“Oh.” He smiled and nodded. “Yeah. You asked about when the lilies would bloom.”
“Have they started?” Jordan asked eagerly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been on the river since then. Sorry.” He shrugged and pointed toward the selection of hard alcohol, wine, and beer. “What can I get you?”
Jordan eyed the beer taps. “What’s local?”
“All of them—Trim Tab, Good People, Cahaba,” the bartender said.
“What kind of beer do you like?” Maddie asked.
“Good ones.” Jordan smiled waggishly.
The bartender seemed to suppress a laugh, though it was hard to tell from under his bushy beard, but his eyes crinkled into two little half-moons.
“I like the Cahaba Oka Uba myself,” Maddie said. “You should try it for the name, if nothing else. It’s the indigenous Choctaw name for the Cahaba River.”
The bartender poured a little into a cup and handed it to Jordan, who took a sip and made a funny face.
“You don’t like it?” Maddie asked.
“No. I do. It’s good. Just unusual. It has the aroma of—” Jordan took another sip, emptying the cup. “Cannabis?”
“It’s the terpenoids,” the bartender said, swiping the edge of the bar with a cloth.
“The what?” Maddie asked.
“Terpenoids. They’re in cannabis. Hops are related to cannabis, and some hoppy beers smell very weedy.” He smiled, white teeth flashing through his dark beard. “Or so I’m told.”
They laughed and ordered two Oka Ubas. Maddie dropped a few bills into the tip jar, and they took their cold drafts outside to the terrace.
“This is quite a place.” Jordan gazed across the landscape beyond the wide terrace. The low sun illuminated the wood fences enclosing expansive pastures, ripples on the lake below the barn glinting gold, and dark stands of pine in the distance. Rows of brightly colored booths strung together with strands of lights caught her attention. “Are those carnival games?” Jordan’s hazel eyes sparkled. “Want to play?”
“Sure.”
After they walked through the mini-midway, scoping out each game booth, Jordan trotted over to the ticket booth and returned, dangling a strip of paper tickets in front of her. “Which one first?”
“How about the milk jugs?”
Jordan tore off a ticket and handed it to Maddie. “You called it. You go first.”
“Here.” Maddie held out her cup as she took the ticket. “Hold my beer.”
“I’ve lived in the South long enough to know that phrase usually comes right before someone does something reckless.” Jordan grinned.
“Standing next to me might be reckless. Watch out. You haven’t seen how badly I throw a ball.” Maddie wagged her eyebrows and exchanged her ticket for three softballs. She glanced over her shoulder at Jordan. She tossed one ball in the air to test its weight and missed catching it. “You should probably stand back a little farther.”
“You don’t have to pitch a softball well to earn your lesbian badge.” Jordan picked up the ball and gave it to her.
“You’d better hope that’s true.” Maddie laughed. She didn’t mean her words to sound as flirtatious as they came out. She felt her cheeks and the tips of her ears flush.
Jordan, beers in hand and laughing, took two deep steps backward as she gestured toward the stacked metal milk cans. “Do your best, Professor.”
Maddie threw the first ball, missing the cans completely. The second ball almost made contact, and the third grazed the can on top, causing it to rock back and forth, but it didn’t topple.
“These games are just as rigged as the ones at a county fair.” Jordan handed the cups to Maddie to exchange another ticket for the softballs. She closed one eye and stared hard at one set of cans before she threw the first ball. Her pitch was accurate, cleanly knocking over the top can. She hit the second tier of cans squarely with her second and third throws, but they only wobbled. “Definitely rigged.” She scowled at the cans. “I think the bottom ones are weighted.”
“They must be,” Maddie said. “Your aim was true.”
“At least it’s for a good cause.” Jordan shrugged and pointed to the next booth. “Want to try the ring toss?”
Two beers later they’d worked their way down the avenue of booths, having exhausted their supply of tickets by tossing rings at Coke bottles, throwing darts at balloons, spinning roulette wheels, fishing rubber ducks out of a tub, and tossing bean bags in a spirited round of cornhole that ended with Jordan jumping up and down, fist-pumping, and claiming victory. Jordan’s enthusiasm and good-natured competitiveness was charming, especially after she took the large teddy bear and a plush green alien with large, black, almond-shaped eyes she’d won to the Toys for Tots donation booth. Maddie hadn’t won a thing but didn’t care. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had so much fun. The evening itself was a win.
“I’ve worked up an appetite. How about you?” Maddie asked.
“I’m famished. Based on what everyone’s told me about this gala, barbecue is what’s for dinner.” Jordan read the banner hanging above the buffet in the barn. “Maxfield’s Whole Hog Natural BBQ—as in Barron Maxfield?”
“The one and only. It’s his most recent business venture—farm-to-table barbecue restaurants—and they’ve been wildly successful. He’s buying produce from local organic farms, and the hogs are pasture-raised out here somewhere. I hear it’s quite the operation.”
“That’s good to know,” Jordan said as they got into the service line. “I won’t feel guilty about eating barbecue tonight. I try not to eat meat from animals that were raised on industrial farms. They use massive amounts of energy and water, and the sheer volume of waste they produce is almost unbelievable. And it all has to go somewhere. It’s not good for the environment, waterways especially. Water pollution and fish kills happen all the time, and the big companies just pay the fines—if they even get fined—like it’s a regular part of doing business. And I guess it is.” Jordan sighed. “It’s only about making money. The companies don’t care about animal welfare. Most consumers don’t care either. They just want cheap meat.”
“I can’t help but think about the individual animals,” Maddie said. “Pigs might have it the worst. They pull out their tusks, chop off their tails, and keep pregnant sows in gestational crates for months. Imagine being pregnant, uncomfortable, and not even able to walk or turn around? And chickens don’t fare much better,” she said. “They’re confined to small cages and pushed to lay eggs at such an unnatural rate, their bones break from calcium deficiencies. When they can’t produce any more eggs, the owners gas the whole building—”
“What?” Jordan looked horrified. “Gas?”
“CO2. They say it’s humane, but I don’t see anything humane about suffocating to death. And then they’re trucked off to a landfill or a factory to become pet food. Factory-farmed meat is like eating misery. It’s one reason I have backyard chickens.”
“You eat them?” Jordan’s eyes widened.
“Oh, no. I meant that I keep them for eggs.”
Jordan laughed when she recognized her misunderstanding. “What’re the other reasons?”
“They’re good for the garden, and they’re funny creatures, very entertaining to watch.”
“Sounds like ‘cheep’ therapy to me.” Jordan bit her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows. It didn’t take Maddie long to get her joke.
Maggie laughed. “They’re cheaper than a therapist, too. Well worth the price of a sack of feed once a month.”
“Holy smokes,” Jordan said as they approached the long buffet table laden with mounds of pulled pork, ribs glistening with a rich sauce, hearty cubes of corn bread piled high on platters, chopped collard greens, an oil-and-vinegar slaw, and a deep tray of gooey macaroni and cheese. She put a bit of everything on her plate and stopped in front of the dessert table. “Lemon-chess bars or brownies?”
“Why choose?”
“I like how you think,” Jordan said.
“How about I get a brownie, you get a chess bar, and we’ll share them.” Maddie pointed her chin toward an empty table on the edge of the patio. “And then let’s go to that empty table over there.”
“Good choice,” Jordan said after they sat. “This far away from the band we’ll be able to hear ourselves talk.” A familiar tune blasted toward them. “How many times have they played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’?”
“At least three.” Maddie rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll hear it three more before they’re done.”
Jordan smiled at her first bite. “This is so good, I can see why so many people want to come to this event. I didn’t grow up eating food like this. It’s still kind of exotic to me.”
“What was Sunday dinner in the Catskills like?”
“Usually my mom’s pot roast. She’d make it in a big Dutch oven, and we’d have leftovers for days.”
“I’m picturing a large family gathering like those depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings. Do you have a big family?” Maddie broke off a chunk of corn bread and popped it into her mouth. It was tender and rich.
“It depends on how you define big. I have an older brother and sister. I’m the youngest. How about you? Any siblings?”
“Just one, a sister. We’re very different.”
“How so?”
“She’s an attorney at a big New Orleans firm. She’s working hard to make partner, so she puts in a lot of hours, and all the superficial things matter—the kind of clothes she wears, the type of car she drives, what neighborhood she and her handsome husband live in, the school her kid attends. It’s very different from the environment we grew up in.”
“What was that like? New Orleans is mythic to me, a setting for a book or movie.”
“The Chalmette neighborhood was rough around the edges, working class, but it had its charm and a sense of community. I liked that. We lived above the small bakery my parents used to own, and it seemed like we knew everyone in the neighborhood.”
“You say that in the past tense. Are they retired?”
“No. They lost their business and our home to Katrina. We were fortunate compared to others, though. We evacuated early, before the levees breached. We were safe, but it was an awful time. All we had was what we’d packed into a few suitcases and the car. We thought we’d go back a week or two afterward to clean up the mess and pick up where we left off. Instead, everything changed. We lived in a hotel for a month and then Houston for a year, staying with some cousins. I hated it there.”
“Given that sixteen-year-olds tend to hate everything,” Jordan’s tone was gentle, “I imagine you were a pretty angry teen.”
“I’m not proud of my behavior at that time of my life. My parents seem to have forgiven me, but my sister still holds a grudge.” Maddie paused. She hadn’t talked about this period of her childhood with anyone in a long time. She felt vulnerable but safe with Jordan. “We moved back to New Orleans when my dad got a position at a commercial bakery and became the breadwinner. That’s our family joke. But nothing was the same—not the city, or where we lived, or my friends. All of them, including my first girlfriend—first ex-girlfriend by then—were scattered all over the place. I was miserable.”
“Is that why you went so far away to college?”
Maddie poked at a fat macaroni noodle and nodded. “Books were my refuge, the one constant in a sea of change. And they were a great way to escape my fucked-up reality, too. I got lost in them and found myself.” Maddie looked up to see Jordan watching her with a tender expression that made her chest ache. “School was a refuge, too. I was a very good student and applied to colleges everywhere. The best scholarship offers came from schools in the Northwest. Eventually, I migrated back to the South.” She sipped her beer. “Funny how it happened. I didn’t really plan on it. Do you think you’ll ever live in the Northeast again?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. I think about it sometimes, but I do like it down here. It’s not just the warmer winters. There’s so much to discover in the environment, and so much of it is threatened by development and industry. I feel like my work here can help raise awareness more than if I still lived in the Northeast. Everyone in my family is so busy with jobs and kids. I visit them for the holidays, and we usually rent a big lake cabin for a week or two in the late summer.”
Maddie wanted to ask Jordan more about her family, but the band had stopped playing, suddenly derailing her attention. Screechy feedback through the speakers made them both look toward the stage, where Barron Maxfield, dark hair slicked back and dressed in chinos and a red polo shirt, stood center stage clutching the microphone.
“It looks like Barron is going to give a speech,” Maddie said.
“Hello, everyone!” His baritone voice boomed through the speakers. “Thank y’all so much for being here tonight and for supporting such a worthy cause. My lovely wife, Tammi, and I are deeply honored to host this annual event.” He grinned and wiped a trickle of sweat away from his hairline.
