Carolina Girl by Patricia Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

cheerfully sprouted bouquets of
color. Tires painted white brimmed over with red petunias and begonias.
Trellises loaded with roses and morning glories and jasmine climbed up to porch
roofs. Mailboxes propped by old plows, adorned with painted pictures of
daisies, sprang up all along the roadside.
    Clay slowed as he spotted three deer crossing one yard.
Realizing they were some kind of lawn ornament, he roared on, discovering more
anomalies the farther he drove. Brightly colored glass balls atop preposterous
concrete structures reflected the blinding Carolina sun. Blue concrete
birdbaths decorated with red concrete cardinals stood tall in the midst of
flower gardens, and nestled among the flowers he began to notice colorful
gnomes, or were they elves? He didn’t know the difference.
    A concrete Madonna held out her hands in supplication inside
a cast- iron bathtub cut in two and turned on edge to form a shrine. Concrete
rabbits and squirrels posed beside vegetable gardens. He almost fell off his
bike swiveling to stare at a tree dangling colored bottles and Easter eggs.
    He’d lived in L.A., cruised the beaches of southern
California, and had seen eccentricities of every shape and color. He’d
just never seen an entire neighborhood dedicated to cheerful bad taste.
    He finally spotted a mailbox painted with a row of purple
pansies and JENKINS neatly printed above them in red. The mailbox post grew out
of the middle of an enormous vine sporting a riot of yellow flowers. He turned
his bike up the narrow drive hedged by sprawling shoulder-high azaleas. A tunnel
of moss-draped oaks overhung the azaleas, blocking all view of the house. He
felt as if he had exited the real world into a fantasy one.
    Rounding the bend past the oaks, he knew he’d fallen
through a space warp into another universe. An entire yard—more like
several acres—of concrete lawn ornaments stretched out as far as his eyes
could see. Unpainted statues and birdbaths marched in neat rows toward a long
aluminum-sided building in the distance. Along the drive, beneath the bushes,
painted gnomes beamed playfully at him. Or in some cases, scowled.
    A neat double-wide trailer with white siding, black
shutters, and rampant azaleas at its base sat in the midst of a yard full of
painted concrete figures. A towering robed statue of a pagan goddess dominated
a vegetable garden on one side. Gnomes, elves, and fairies frolicked between
gardenias and camellias. Glittering witch balls rested in concrete hands or on
pedestals wrapped in concrete vines. Birds splashed in fountains taller than he
was.
    Stunned, appalled, and fascinated all at the same time, Clay
parked his Harley in a gravel parking space and started down the shell path
toward the front door. Once the bike’s roar died out of his ears, he
could hear the melodious tinkle of a symphony of wind chimes. A soft hum wove
through the music of the chimes.
    Following the path behind a towering camellia, he located a
woman sitting on a bench, painting a Disney-esque dwarf. She seemed oblivious
to his approach, although the Harley could probably be heard for half a mile.
    The artist wore a crinkly gauze lavender shirt that blew in
the breeze, revealing a clingy purple knit top with spaghetti straps and
generous cleavage. A skirt in the same crinkly fabric of the shirt blew about
shapely bare ankles. She was barefoot, although he could see her sandals lying
on the path where she’d kicked them off. Her toenails were painted a pale
shade of frosty pink.
    Banded in a purple scarf, her straw hat shadowed her face,
but all Clay’s hormones and pheromones had already kicked into life to
scream in unison, This one! We want this one! Puhleeeze!
    Nearly crippled by the impact of the unexpected assault on
his senses, Clay halted to steady himself. He wasn’t the kind of man
easily bowled over by lust, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the
roundness of freckled breasts exposed by the artist bending over to paint a