Summer Haze

The bus pulls up just in time, filling the thick summer air with a haze of dust. A woman looks at herself in her compact, combing her wispy, blond hair with her fingers. She, then, stands up after waiting more than thirty minutes at the bus stop, an old gas station. The bright sun beams down on her so she lifts her hand above her forehead to block the brightness. Exhausted men step off wearing tattered jeans and baseball caps - some nod their heads politely at her as they walk past into the station. The line of men slows, then stops completely when the bus driver leaves for a stretch.

“'Cuse me, sir,” she cries out to the driver. “That all the passengers on this here bus? I'm looking for a good friend of mine.” Her eyes squint as she places both hands above her forehead.

“Well, this here is the last stop on the line,” he says frankly without any expression. “I think there's a man and a woman still left on the bus. I guess they got to get the rest of their belongings.”

She says 'thank you' quickly and paces in the lot.

“Well, I'll be,” says a young man, with high cheekbones and a narrow nose that turns upward slightly. He steps off the bus. His voice is a deep tenor and his eyes are dark. “Mary Jane, I half expected you to be out here with three or four kids and a husband.” He takes off his dark rawhide cowboy hat revealing wild chestnut hair and thick sideburns.

“Now, I know you've been getting my letters,” she says flirtatiously and drops her hands to her hips. Her pale face lights up. “I haven't so much as kept a man in my arms long enough to drag him down to the chapel let alone have kids.” Her smile broadens. He is the same quiet man, who lightly teases her, except his voice has deepened and maturity has eroded the once soft curves of his nose and chin, leaving behind a more jagged, manly face.

He replaces the hat on top of his head, fitting it so that it falls perfectly to shadow his face. “This sun ain't no trip. I can't remember the last time I've been so hot.”

Mary Jane giggles uncontrollably, blushing. He's always been hot.

“Being up in Alaska for so long, I became used to cold weather,” he begins as they climb into her old powder blue Thunderbird. “In the summer I sweat, and it would only be fifty degrees.” He lets out a hearty chuckle.

She turns on the radio and Diana Ross and the Supremes pours out of the speakers. “I swear these songs are so old. I want to hear some Donna Summers!” She steps on the accelerator and takes off down the road.

“I never took you as a girl to listen to disco. I thought you would always listen to good rock and roll. What about Jefferson Starship, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin?”

She sighs and presses harder on the gas pedal. She thinks his last remark is odd. She always listens to dance music every since she first met him in high school geometry class. For her birthday one year, he bought her a Diana Ross disco record. She realizes that he is thinking of another person, his fiancé, Sharon. Before he left to work on the Alaskan pipeline, he'd ask her for record recommendations to give her. Depending on her mood, she'd recommend a record that Sharon already had.

“Aren't you going a little fast here, Mary Jane?” The thick woods disappear as soon as they appear. Then, the car emerges onto a narrow road that takes them past wooden farmhouses and rusted out silver silos set far back from the road. He takes in the scenery and wipes the sweat from his forehead.

Mary Jane mumbles to the song on the radio, ignoring him.

“Mary Jane!” he shouts vexed.

“What, Jefferson!” she responds, hoping to maintain her cheerfulness.

“Slow down! We ain't going the right way.”

Slamming on the brakes, she veers off the road barely missing the ditch. A dust cloud erupts behind the stopped vehicle choking the two when they step out of the car. Mary Jane coughs excessively. After the dust settles, she climbs on the trunk and pulls out a crumpled cigarette pack from the middle of her bosom still coughing a bit. She lights one and draws long on it. Smoke clouds swirl about her head. “Like one,” she asks demurely with the same smile from the gas station.

Warily, he takes the pack and sniffs it. Shrugging, he takes one and she lights it for him using her favored Betty Boop lighter. He puffs on it, then takes a long draw. “Good stuff. Marlboros.” He leans on her car with his arms crossed. He never lifts his hand to take the cigarette out of his mouth until the ashes threaten to fall. The silence between them breaks when she reaches for the next smoke.

“Did she move out this way, because she never said anything about moving,” he interrupts her thoughts.

She refuses to tell him the story. “Well, you've been travelin' for a couple of days now and since workin' on that pipeline, I bet you ain't have a good home cooked meal for three years. I was just gonna take you out to my place and get you something in that belly of yours. A man like you must have a healthy appetite.” Buzzards attack her arm and she smacks it furiously.

The quiet returns except for the occasional whack. He flicks his cigarette and steps on it with his steel toed boots. Because he readjusts his tight pants, the sun rays fall and glimmer on the American eagle that resides on his big golden belt buckle.

She notices. “Those pants are a bit tight. Everything can breathe in there alright?” She tries to return her eyes north back to his face, but the urge to keep her eyes just below the buckle remains strong. He turns around and she grins. The roundness of his behind could maintain those indecent thoughts in her head as well.

Irritated, he slams the open car door and struts back to the rear of the car. She jumps and apologizes. “That was a bit inappropriate.”

“Take me to her house, now.”

She feels his eyes boring into her flesh, although they hide under his hat. “Let's not worry ourselves about that.”

“I'm not into these little mind fuck games of yours.”

She struts about the car. Her dress flaps about in the warm breeze. “Jefferson, I understand how you feel, but if she loved you then why hasn't she sent you any letters in a year?”

“How'd you know?”

She ignores the question. “I tell you why. She's been screwing around. She don't care about you.”

“She loves me! We're gonna get married!” he almost pants.

Mary Jane remains calm. The cogs slowly turning as she searches for her next move. He's almost subdued. A lone car passes by and a young child stares out of the open window. “Did you expect her to wait for you after three years?”

“No.” His voice trembles and is barely audible.

“Did you?” she asks again, although she is sure that she heard him.

“No, but I thought...” He speaks a bit louder.

She cuts him off abruptly. “Well, did Sharon tell you anything?”

“Like what?”

“Maybe the fact that she got married.”

“Married?” He rips the hat off his head and she sees his dark rimmed eyes and the formerly jolly countenance wear a look of despair. His chest rises and falls rapidly. He kicks her tire rim so hard that it dents.

“Are you hyperventilating, Because I learned some techniques down at the hospital,” She rushes to his side.

He lets out a barbaric yell, then pushes her away to the ground. The gravel tears up her delicate knees and the dust brings on her second coughing fit. “You can't blame the person who tells you bad news. Surely you wouldn't go to the weather man and knock his lights out when a tornado comes through your trailer!” She uses the car to pick herself up, then she furiously wipes her ashen skin.

“Why didn't you tell me?” He slides down the side of the car and comes to a rest on the ground.

“Why didn't she tell you? You were her fiancé. Cowardly girl ran off with some Mexican to Texas and didn't even have the heart to send you 'nother letter. Those letters you sent just piled up at her mother's house. Her mother really did want you to marry her. Lord knows, she nearly had a heart attack when Sharon showed up with that Mexican and a marriage certificate.” The blood trickles from the open bruise on her knee to wrap like a snake around her ankle.

“In those twenty or thirty letters you sent me, you could have told me that she got married.”

“How could I've told you, Jefferson? You were madly in love with that girl. We were 'fraid you were never coming back here.” The sweat drips from her forehead and drifts down her neck into her well-worn sundress. It sticks to her. She tugs at it to let air through it. “Your mama promised me not to tell you 'til you got back. Maybe, you would see how awful she was.”

His voice wavers and he accidentally lets out a little snot as he tried to begin his next sentence. He wipes the snot off with the back of his hand, and continues, “If my father saw me now. He told me never let a woman play me for a fool. I guess I got played for one.” His voice breaks some but he exhales deeply to make it go away. “I can't believe that my life is ruined. I planned everything neatly.”

She pats him on his back gently. “What did you plan?”

“First off, I saved up $45000 to come back and buy a house and a nice car straight out.”

“Good gracious!” Mary Jane exclaims.

“I'd get a job at the factory welding or something just like my father. I'd raise my two boys and a girl just right in the church of course. One day, I'd send them off to college. Finally, I'd retire with a nice pension happy with my love, Sharon. She wouldn't have had to work a day in her life. I'd be there to take care of her.” He shakes his head in disbelief.

“Well, that sounds mighty nice except they closing the plant down in a year.”

“What?” he responds confused. “The plant? That can't be. They've been around here for as long as anyone can remember.”

“Come on, Jefferson. I guess being all the way up in Alaska you miss a lot of things. Nothing ain't like it used to be.”

Using the wheel, he stands up slowly, shaking his chestnut hair. Then, he fits his cowboy hat on his head and readjusts his pants. “I knew she had me got, when she stopped sending those letters,” he begins with an eerie casualness that slightly unnerves Mary Jane. Knowing him for so long, she expects him to pick up a tire iron and smash out the windows on her father's old Thunderbird. Instead, he says, “You've been a good girl to me for a long time. You, mama, and her mama, I guess, had good reasons for not telling me. Women work in such strange ways, but I can't take the fault out on y'all. I went crazy after six months of not hearing from her. No phone call, no letter, nothing. I near 'bout killed a man.” His breathing is labored now. “Give me another cigarette.”

Her face flushes with guilt. She knows the awful truth, the scam she put together to get him and his money in her possession, but she never planned for the emotions that flood her heart now. With a deep breath, she returns to his side to give him the emotional support that is necessary to carry it out. “Now I want you to get out of this funk and get in the car. We got to get you fed,” she says as she hands him another one. Her own cigarette is nearly at an end, so she pops one more in her mouth, then lights both.

“I ain't in no funk. Don't go 'round telling nobody that I'm in no funk.” He cuts his eyes at her, then bites down on the cigarette. “You got a mouth on you.”

She chuckles, then she strolls over to him. “I'm going to take good care of you. I got some food at home that I've got just for you.” She rubs his back gently, and she feels his sinewy muscles relax. He turns about and faces her.

“You've been a kind woman to me,” he smiles at her. “Always a good friend. The only person I could count on since high school.” Finally, laughter escapes him. “You have any of those candied yams that I like?”

“Oh, of course! Only the best.”

“Alright, we'll go back to your place.”

Walking closer, she smells his cologne of sweat and determination. Her hands feel the roughness of his hands as she rubs them. He leans in for a kiss. Paying her friend in the post office to give her Jefferson's letters to Sharon was the best idea ever. She keeps those letters in a box buried in the yard. Sometimes, she reads them, fantasizing her name on the envelope. “Wait, till we go back to my place.” She teases with a wink of the eye.

They climb back into the car as the clouds grow blacker and denser and takes off before the first lightening strike. The engine backfires, leaving behind a thick haze of dust and smoke.