Beyond Molasses Creek Read Online Free Page B

later.”
    I press the phone down into the cradle and darn if I don’t have to press back tears. See what he did to me? Too much to do to stop and think and talk about how I’m feeling! I bend down and pick up a box of magazines in the hallway, and when I lift it back up, a pain shoots down the right side of my rear end like hot lead. It tingles in my knee and lingers and smarts when I move. Dad-gum! I curse under my breath. This can’t be happening. I have too much to do!
    â€œKat? Kat!” I do not know why I am calling a cat. What in the world can he do for me? Sure enough, he comes, tail quivering, eyes bright. He rubs his back along my leg, then turns and rubs the other side. “I can’t move,” I tell him. Carefully, I walk into Mama’s bedroom and let the box fall several inches onto the mattress. The pain is radiating down into my right leg. Stupid pinched nerve. This happens to me occasionally when I’m stressed. It’s as if the universe knows I’m stressed and wants to make it just a little harder for me. I scowl up into the ceiling at whoever’s in charge here. I’ve got to get to my purse but it’s in Daddy’s bedroom, a whole fifteen feet away. Might as well be Mars.
    â€œKat, can you fetch? Go get my bag. Please? Fetch, boy.” Nothing. He looks at me all cute-like and lifts a paw to lick it.
    After an excruciating five minutes or so, I make it stiff-legged and gritting my teeth to my purse and take two muscle relaxers with no water. They scratch down my throat and stick there, dry lumps. I hold my breath, waiting for them to kick in. Please kick in . I just need a few minutes. I grimace as I plop down on Daddy’s foam pillows that still smell like him—as if he’s still here—moaning and deep-breathing for a good long while until sleep, blessed sleep masks all the pain.
    Bang, bang, bang, bang!
    What the—
    Bang, bang! “H’lo! Anybody in there?”
    Kat jumps off the bed and hides under it. I jerk up, fully awake now, and feel the pain in my hip. My mouth is filled with cotton. “Hold oo-on!” I roll over onto my stomach and slip one leg off, reaching with my toes to the floor. Ow, ow, ow . “Just a minute!” The movers are here? I’m not ready! Look at this place!
    It takes me a good long while to shuffle past the boxes of books and knickknacks on the floor—Daddy’s western rodeo lamp, a stack of his wool sweaters. I open the front door, never checking what I look like, though I must look like I woke from the dead. “Sorry, I—is it really time? I hurt my back.” The movers are two men, one burlier than the other, midthirties, I’d say. They look at my mess unsympathetically and confer with one another. “S’posed to be packed up. You need us to pack for you? We ain’t planned for that. Gone be extra three hundred dollar.”
    I turn and look at the house from their point of view.
    â€œWe got a truck full of stuff we got to unload first. Lemme call the boss.”
    I feel helpless and tears spring to my eyes. Dad-gum hip. Dad-gum sexy Juan Carlos. I was riding a moped through the streets of Bermuda with him when a man hit me from behind at a stop sign in 1978. I’ve had issues with my tailbone, sitting on silly round pillows for half my life because of it. Usually it’s no problem, but the stress, I tell you, it does a number.
    â€œMiss Ally?” The deep, sultry voice of an angel comes through the kitchen.
    â€œVesey, that you?”
    â€œYou all right? I heard banging this way. Come to check on you.”
    â€œThank God you’re here. Can you come round and help me with these movers?”
    Vesey lumbers around the house to the front porch and the two men sum him up as he climbs the steps. He’s twice their age and nearly as strong. I see respect in their faces at the sight of his black suspenders. “It’s my back,