“No,” Willa replied. “As long as she likes, I suppose. I’ve made it clear she’s welcome.”

“Of course. Does Margaret know she’s with you?”

Willa sighed. Her itinerant daughter was always difficult to pin down.

“I left word,” Willa said. Which was often the most she could do.

“Well, I can’t believe Jiminy’s all grown,” Jean remarked. “You remember what you were doing at her age?”

It seemed several lifetimes ago. At Jiminy’s age, Willa had been a young mother, struggling to make a life on the farm with her husband Henry. By the day’s standards they hadn’t been well off, but they’d felt full of promise.

“Just gettin’ by, I s’pose,” Willa replied lightly.

“Remember our river parties?” Jean asked with a laugh.

Every Saturday night the people who farmed along the Allehany River had gathered at one or another’s place and soaked up the company and relaxation that had eluded them the rest of the week. Jean and her husband Floyd had always been the life of those parties, organizing dances and stories and games. One memorable night, Floyd had hooked a dead snake to Henry’s trouser leg with a fishhook and wire, then pointed out the snake with a warning yell. Henry had leapt and yelped and darted every which way to evade the rattler—everyone knew how much he despised snakes—but he of course couldn’t escape. Lathered into a panic, Henry finally dove into the river. It wasn’t until he noticed the uncontrollable laughter of friends who would normally be much more sympathetic that Henry caught on to the prank.

Willa smiled as she recalled this and other river gatherings, then sobered abruptly as she remembered why the parties had ceased. The river had become host to much more horrible events. She still couldn’t bring herself to visit its banks, and it had been over forty years.

“ ’Bout ready?” she asked Jean.

Willa herself was far from it, still stuck under her scalp fryer. She sat up straighter and felt the burn of it on her forehead, perversely grateful for the more manageable pain of the present.

 

On the grassy lawn of the courthouse square across from Trudi’s Tresses, Bo Waters lay half-hidden in the shade of a hickory tree.

He was Lyn Waters’s great-nephew, the grandson of her late husband’s sister. Bo had left Fayeville four years previously, immediately after graduating high school, determined never to return. But now that he was done with college and studying for the MCATs, the lure of free lodging and long, slow-paced days had made him reconsider. He’d decided to come back to Fayeville for six weeks, just to study and save money, and he planned to lie low as he did both.

He’d tried reading in the tiny library catty-corner to the courthouse, but quickly found it stifling. Too many new ideas were crowding themselves into his brain, and he needed something fresher than trapped air to process them. So he’d set up camp with his books outside, in what used to be the center of town.

The stores along Main Street were all dead or dying now, mortally wounded by the opening of the monolithic HushMart Supercenter a half mile away. Bo understood he should mourn the murder of small town commerce, but at the moment he appreciated the quiet. He hadn’t even minded the collection of old broken-down men sitting on the benches between the courthouse and the post office until they’d started talking.

“Reckon Trav’ll throw a big to-do if his boy makes it?” one of them rasped.

“Yep, reckon he will.”

“That’s ’nough to get my vote. Haven’t set foot on Brayer Plantation in five years, must be.”

“Trav don’t call it that no more. It’s Brayer Farms now.”

“News to me.”

“S’posed to help with the colored vote or some shit.”

“Shit sounds ’bout right.”

Bo willed himself to continue staring at his book. Do not look up, do not give them that satisfaction, he told himself. He wasn’t even sure he was denying them glee to begin with. Did they even see him here? Had those comments, that tone, been provoked by his presence, or, had he been elsewhere, would they still have landed like spittle on the parched grass browning in the sun?

This was why Bo had decided to leave Fayeville; he didn’t have time for this. He sighed and tried hard to keep his attention on the diagram of the amygdala on the page in front of him as he wondered whether he was stressed enough to cause his own amygdala to jump-start his adrenal glands. There was no need to get worked up. He had to concentrate. There was a point to his studies, and distractions were only as successful as one let them be. Bo had learned to be strict with his. Forcing himself to stay calm, he focused anew.

The sound of a car horn immediately interrupted him.

“Bo Waters! Is that you?”

He looked up to see two blue-haired old ladies staring at him from the open window of a gigantic Buick. They looked like Martian poodles out for a space cruise. He blinked and registered them.

“Miz Hunt, Miz Butrell, hello,” he said as he rose quickly to his feet.

He could feel the benched men staring as he crossed the grass to the waiting car. His MCAT book was heavy and unwieldy, and it made him self-conscious. He turned the cover around so it was facing his leg, away from the gaze of the women before him.

“I thought that was you,” Willa said triumphantly. “I didn’t know you were back. Why haven’t you been to see us?”

Bo smiled politely. He liked Willa Hunt, but knew better than to indulge in any true familiarity. That same old hesitation always hooked him, even with the nicest people.

“I’ve just been home a couple weeks,” he replied good-naturedly.

“Well I’m gonna have to take a switch to your great-aunt Lyn for not telling me so!”

Bo forced himself to smile at this. He thought he saw something flicker in Willa’s eyes, perhaps remorse for her choice of phrase? It was too late regardless; her only option was to steamroll ahead. Jean Butrell seemed oblivious, content to let the two of them find their own way out of the quagmire of this already awkward conversation.

“I haven’t been able to see nearly any of the people I’d like to yet,” Bo said. “I gotta catch up on my catching up, I guess.”

Willa smiled, a little gratefully, Bo thought. Though it could have been his imagination.

“Well, the yard’s all grown up as usual, so if you wanna make a little money while you’re here, just stop on by,” she said graciously.

Bo did want to make a little money, but he’d budgeted his time with only the MCATs in mind.

“If I can get a break from studying, I’ll be sure to head on over.”

“You taking summer classes?” Willa asked. “I thought Lyn said you’d graduated.”

She said this kindly, like she’d be nothing but supportive if Bo had failed to stick to the normal schooling schedule. College was a lot to take on, after all.

“I’m all done with regular classes, but I’m taking the MCAT at the end of next month in order to apply to medical school, so I’ve gotta buckle down for that.”

“Oh!” Willa exclaimed, her mouth a perfect O of surprise.

Bo couldn’t tell if she was happy to hear this or not.

“Well my, my, that is something’,” she clucked. “Good for you.”

Bo nodded, but said nothing more.

His decision to stay silent led to an uncomfortable pause, something unfamiliar on these Southern streets when ladies of a certain age and breeding were involved. Willa smiled even more widely to cover it up.

“Well, stop by and see us, ya hear?” she said.

Bo promised he would and raised his hand in goodbye. As the car pulled away, Bo could see Willa and Lyn glance at him in the rearview mirror and burst into chatter, and though an acute muscle spasm coursed through his tensed shoulder, he didn’t lower his arm until they had disappeared down the road.

 

Jiminy scratched her shoulder absentmindedly as she skimmed another almanac. She’d discovered a pile of them in a dresser drawer in a little room at the back of the farmhouse, and had spent a delightful hour thumbing through the decades-old books, marveling at how sure they purported to be about things nobody could possibly know, such as the weather on a particular day, eleven months away. How accurate had these predictions ended up being? she wondered. Were the people who planned their lives by them idiots, or optimists, or both? And what use were the almanacs once their year had past? They became irrelevant, already proven prophetic or off-base, already gone to seed.