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

you’d gone for counseling from the Reverend Andrews...”
    I tuned her out for a few minutes. I knew she could go on indefinitely about my ex-husband, Johnny Berry, and I couldn’t bear to listen. I tuned back in again when I thought I’d let her ramble enough.
    “...you know, if you got your hair fixed, Mary Sue down at the Clothes Carousel could help you pick out some nice clothes, and you’d be a fine police chief ’s wife.”
    “Police chief ’s wife? Me? Who’s the chief of police?”
    “Why Johnny, of course. Your daddy and I did a lot of politicking for the new mayor in the last election. So did Johnny’s folks. After the election, old Billy Thompson retired, and, why, Johnny got promoted.”
    I felt certain now that this was an alternate universe, and one where the air mixture didn’t suit my breathing, and the gravity had strange effects on my limbs. In New York, I was a happy person, a funny, bright-colored fish on a coral reef full of other bright, exotic creatures. I fit right in, and had a great time swimming around. But here, in this dark and dangerous world, I’d just discovered that my ex-husband was the god-damned chief of police of all things. I had a funny feeling that meant, among other things, he wouldn’t like me going around telling the story of how I taught him to smoke pot. Or the time we drove through the night at a hundred miles an hour, all the way to Key West, just to steal the sign that says “The Southernmost Point in the US.” And then drove back, singing songs and drinking Tequila Sunrises out of a gallon thermos.
    Why did I have to go and think about that? Why did I ever have to think about Johnny again? Now, it’s Johnny my family feels sorry for. But here’s the god-awful truth. I got hurt mighty bad there, too. I haven’t really ever gotten over it, and I don’t think I ever will.
    By the time I was twenty-two, I’d been married and divorced, so I wasn’t being arbitrary when I said that I wasn’t cut out for any kind of long-term monogamy. It was what you might call a field-tested proposition.
     
    Momma said that Daddy was out in the Gulf, fishing. I knew I wasn’t supposed to take it as an insult that he wasn’t there to greet me. Everyone knew that when the fish were biting or the hunting was good, the men would be gone, business or family be damned. There was even a nightly fishing report on the local news station, ending with the slogan, “Remember, if you’re too busy to go fishing, you’re just too busy.”
    My own Daddy wasn’t the worst, not by a long shot. We knew some families where the men left for their hunting camps before Thanksgiving and didn’t return until after New Years. Other men, “real good family men,” drove up to their own houses in the late afternoon on December 24th, in their bloody, dirty, camouflaged shirts and pants, with muddy boots, reeking of whiskey. Good sports, they tried to be patient with the childish Christmas rituals. Their patience lasted until about 9:30 Christmas morning. They’d be sitting in their recliners, surrounded by ripped-open boxes, and messy piles of wrapping paper. Noisy, over-excited children begging for batteries and for help in putting together their new plastic toys. The women were busy in the kitchen, but the comforts of dinner were hours away. It was too early for a beer or a bourbon.
    Sometimes the well-meaning patriarch would let it slip that “Hell, Christmas would mean a lot more to me if it didn’t come right in the middle of hunting season.” My father once said something like that. It didn’t seem to bother my brothers, intent on their presents from Santa. They had G I Joe’s at first, and toy guns. Later there were b.b. guns, and not long after that real shot guns. I’m still bitter that the boys each got mini-bikes on their thirteenth Christmas, while I got a pink bicycle with a white wicker basket on the front.
    When I realized I was sitting there, filled with rage for