Page 4 of The Party Line

She didn’t answer, so I had no clue. I glanced over at a stack of mail on the credenza and promised that I would go through it the next day after church. Since we had a Poteet address, went to church in Poteet, and I’d ridden the bus for thirteen years to Poteet schools, I figured that gave me bragging rights to say I was from Poteet when anyone asked. That sounded better than telling folks I was from Ditto.

I went on up to my office, which was really the fourth bedroom. I stood at the double doors that opened out onto the balcony and stared out across the land. Only a few houses remained in the community of Ditto—now barely even a community, much less a town. Aunt Gracie’s two-story place—with four bedrooms upstairs and a living room, kitchen, and dining room on the first floor—was the biggest house in the area. Mama’s small place was down the road a quarter of a mile, and Jasper’s was in the backyard. A couple or three more were scattered between our little part of the community and Poteet, but not many. The last time a census was taken in Ditto, the population was somewhere around twenty.

That evening, when I had finished my work, I went out to the back porch expecting to see Jasper. His front door was open, and I could see the blue light from his television. A loud voice was announcing an upcoming ball game. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I went back inside, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and carried it to the front porch. By the time I finished it, I had had my fill of crickets and tree frogs announcing that it was now spring and strawberry season was about to be in full swing. I went inside and had a long bath, read several chapters of a book, and went to sleep earlier than usual.

That night I dreamed that I was riding the bus home from school, and we passed the sign at the edge of town that read WELCOME TOPOTEET, BIRTHPLACE OFGEORGESTRAIT. Mama loved his music and played it so much that I used to tell myself that the man was really my father, that Mama had just made up the story about my dad not sticking around. In my dream, the King—that’s what Mama called him—was waiting for me when I got off the bus at Aunt Gracie’s house, and he held my hand all the way from the end of the lane back to her house. He called mePrincessand then disappeared.

I woke myself up giggling. If there was ever a princess in Ditto, Texas, it dang sure wasn’t Lila Matthews. I got out of bed thirty minutes before my alarm went off and headed down to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee.

I popped a couple of breakfast pastries in the toaster and wished for a bowl of Mama’s soup or maybe even some cold lasagna. When the cinnamon-flavored carbs popped up, I carried them and my cup of coffee to the back porch and sat down on the top step. Jasper looked up from his Bible and waved, but he didn’t motion me over. I waved but didn’t intrude on his meditation.

The fields to the west of the house were red with strawberries. My first good, solid memory was a beautiful spring day when Aunt Gracie and Jasper took me out to the edge of the twenty acres to pick the first big, ripe ones. They let me eat half a dozen or more right off the plantsbefore we carried a full basket back to the house to make a strawberry shortcake.

Way back before I was born, Aunt Gracie had leased the final twenty acres of what she had inherited to Otis Thurman. He had always let her gather what she wanted for her own use, so she made strawberry jam with some of them and froze several bags to put on the top of ice cream or to eat for dessert.

Like most small towns or communities, everyone knew everyone, and the family history that went with each person. Take the strawberry field, for instance: When Otis died, the lease was passed down to his son, Everett. He and his wife had one son, who hated the ranching business and instead chose the military life. Everett’s wife died a while back, and his only grandchild, Connor, had come home last fall, according to Aunt Gracie. Everett had always reminded me of a scarecrow—tall, lanky, with a crop of unruly hair, and he always wore bibbed overalls. A person would never guess that he owned most of the town of Ditto and had more money than a mile of the golden streets of heaven.

I swatted flies, ate my breakfast, and drank my coffee in peace and quiet—something I had missed in the city. I noticed a streak in the sky and almost made a wish on it, but then I realized that stars falling out of the sky didn’t show up in the daylight. What I had seen was the trail of an airplane, most likely flying south out of San Antonio.

The few times I had seen a falling star, I wished that party lines were still around so I could listen in on other people’s conversations and learn their secrets—maybe I would even hear what Mama called “the big secret of Ditto.”

Aunt Gracie was old when I was a little girl, and she wasn’t really my aunt—but in the south, the wordauntis kind of an honorary title given to a kinswoman who is elderly. I could never figure all that cousin-so-many-times-removed stuff out, either, so in my mind, she was my aunt, my surrogate grandmother, and my friend.

A picture of the three people—my mother, Jasper, and me—gathered around Gracie’s wooden casket the afternoon of Valentine’s Daycame to my mind. The preacher had read Psalm 23, said a quick prayer, and then each one of us put a rose on her casket. I had always given her a homemade valentine—complete with lots of hearts decorated with glitter—and a lollipop on the holiday, so I put the one I had ready to give her on the casket with the roses. We had followed her directions to the letter, except for the valentine. There was to be no big funeral at the church, where she had gone her whole life. No family dinner afterward. She wanted the three of us to be there, and the preacher to do exactly what she had written down. Then we were to go back to her house and hear her lawyer read her will.

We had done just that. I had been shocked to learn that she’d left everything—house, bank accounts, and her stock portfolio—to me and not my mother or Jasper. I signed papers for the better part of an hour. She had left Mama a nice big sum of money, and, according to the will, Jasper had the right to live in the little house for as long as he wanted or until he died. Mama was glad she didn’t have to deal with Gracie’s house or all its contents. Two weeks later, I had moved into the house and set up an office in one of the bedrooms.

The old golden housephone that hung on the kitchen wall startled me when it rang. I grabbed it and said, “Hello?”

“I’m not going to church this morning,” Mama said and then sneezed. “I think I’ve just got hay fever, but it could be a summer cold. I don’t want to spread it.”

“Why didn’t you call my cell phone?” I asked.

She coughed. “Sorry about that. I did try your cell, but it went straight to voicemail.”

“It’s under my bed, and I can’t reach it. I’ll have to take a broom up there and fight the dust bunnies to get it,” I explained. “I should have called you last night. I promised Jasper I would go with him this morning and then take him on into Poteet for a hamburger afterwards.”

“Aunt Gracie gave him rides to and from church all the time,” Mama said and sneezed again. “They were a strange pair, but they’d been best friends since ... well, way back when.”

“Did Jasper ever work anywhere else?” I asked.

“If he did, Gracie didn’t mention it,” Mama said. “Before Gracie’s daddy, Clarence, died, he sold off all his oil business and land to Otis Thurman ...”

I jumped in. I didn’t have all that much time—coffee was waiting. “Aunt Gracie filled me in on all that news, and I’ve always known that they were good friends.” I took a couple of steps and figured out that the phone cord did not reach to the coffeepot.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just drop him off and go on to our church?” Mama asked.

“No, I think I’ll stay with him.”

Mama sneezed a third time. “I’ve got to go find a box of tissues. The one beside the sofa is empty. Don’t come down here until I figure out if I’m contagious.”

“Want me to leave some chicken soup on your porch?” I asked.

“I’ve got a can or two in the pantry.” She sneezed again. “Bye, now. If I get to feeling better, I may have you pick up a pizza—but don’t get it until I call you.”

“Will do, and if you need anything, I’m right here,” I told her.

I was dressed and waiting in my SUV when Jasper made his way slowly around the house. His black suit hung on his frail body, and he leaned on his cane more than I remembered from the funeral, but he had a smile on his face and his Bible tucked under his arm.

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