Read Online No Daughter of the South by Cynthia Webb - Free Book Online

drink before my next encounter with my beloved family.
    The parking lot was heavy on motorcycles, pick-up trucks, and those cars that appear to be a material manifestation of pure testosterone.
    A few moments passed before my eyes became adjusted to the dark interior of the bar. The first thing that took shape for me was a man standing up at the bar—losing his hair, tall, in fairly good shape, but with that little paunch around the belt line men get as they approach middle age. His features were boyish and good-natured while his skin was lined and leathery.
    I walked up to the bar, placed my order, and told the barkeeper, who looked vaguely familiar, to give the man another beer.
    The bartender did as he was told and, right on cue, the man looked over at me.
    I sat on the barstool as he made his way over. He set his beer bottle on the bar and took the stool next to me without a word.
    The barkeeper was back, wiping the bar with a cloth. “Lucky guy,” he said. “Not so often a lady buys a gentlemen a drink around here.”
    The man grinned.
    “So happens,” I said, “that I’m not a lady. Furthermore, this is no gentleman, this is my ex-husband.”
    The barkeeper suddenly found something he had to do at the other end of the bar.
    Johnny laughed until he nearly choked. I took a long swig out of my bottle, and then I thought, what the hell, and I laughed too.
    I got control of myself first. Johnny was winding down when he got the hiccups. Grabbing his beer, he took a long swallow, then said, “Your momma told me you were coming back for a visit, but I didn’t dream I’d be lucky enough to run into you.”
    You have to love a man like that. After what we did to each other, you’d think he’d act like he didn’t care, that he wasn’t affected by me. I looked around the crowded bar, filled with guys I considered rednecks. Most of them wouldn’t let a woman know he appreciated her if she was down on her knees in front of him. And Johnny wasn’t ashamed to let me know he still cared about me, right off, before I even said a word. Damn. What was I doing in this place, this bar, this town, this state, this state of mind? What was I doing here, anyway?
    Unwanted images filled my head. Johnny and me in bed, Johnny and me screwing in a rowboat, Johnny and me in a cow pasture searching for psilocybin mushrooms. My heart beat and my skin tingled. Then something in me clicked and my mind filled with a completely different set of pictures. Johnny yelling at me for not doing the dishes, me heaving a greasy frying pan in his direction, and it hitting the wall instead of him, leaving a ragged hole with splashes of dirty bacon grease all over. Johnny choking me the same night he called me a dyke the first time, and then Johnny sitting in the bathtub with all his clothes on, crying for days. That was the day I called his father, told him to come see about his son, then packed up and left town.
    There sure as hell ain’t no place like home. And sometimes I feel that there aren’t any mistakes like the ones I make. Right then, looking up Johnny felt like the last in a long series of mistakes.
    “Places to go,” I said, “things to see, people to do.” I got up off the stool. “Not leaving angry, Johnny, just leaving.” I turned away, and Johnny reached out his hand and touched my arm, gently, carefully. The contact reminded me of Sammy somehow. I stopped for a moment, completely still. Everything between me and Johnny was in the past. But me and Sammy, that was now, and I had promised her I’d do my best to find some answers. Just because I’d screwed up and broken promises before, that was no reason to let Sammy down now.
    I turned around and faced him. “I’m gonna tell you something a long time overdue, Johnny. I’m sorry. I’m as sorry as a person can be about what happened between us, and I am fully aware that I behaved about as bad as person can, and a little worse than that, too. Which isn’t to say you