Free Sentimental Journey by Jill Barnett Page B

They said it was pretty far-sighted of Dina Rae to be working in a club called The Afterthought.
    He didn’t exactly understand what that meant, until Nettie explained.
    Dina Rae Ross Walker had been known to drink enough beer between dusk and dawn to try to forget she had a husband whose hands and fingernails were never clean and who reeked of oil and grease and the small town she’d always wanted to leave far behind her.
    “Billll-eeee Jooooooooe!”
    His mama called him Billy Joe, or if she was real mad, William Joseph. His daddy just called him Red. Just Red, after his full head of wavy red hair—a gift from some Ross relative, a Scot who settled here after The Clearances.
    Billy Joe or Red. What they each called him pretty much typified his folks’ marriage. That, and what they called each other when they were yelling late at night. He wondered sometimes how those two ever got together in the first place.
    “William Joseph Walker!”
    He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Coming!”
    She raised the long-necked brown beer bottle in her right hand. A gesture that looked like a toast.
    He ran toward her.
    She stood in the open doorway, her long slim arm propped casually on the splintered, crooked frame of the screen door. She was taking a good draw off that beer.
    She’d started early today.
    “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
    “Sorry, Mama.” He was out of breath and the words came out in a stutter.
    “Your daddy had to run out to the Miller place. Old Cora Miller’s DeSoto won’t start. Probably because she took a good, long gander under the hood and the engine just upped and died. Lord knows she’s got a face that’d kill a weed.” She tossed her head, then swiped a wave of hair out of her right eye. “He wants you to watch the pumps, hon, till he gets back.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” He wedged his way into the doorway.
    She stopped him with a soft hand on his shoulder. She smelled clean, like soap and the cherry-almond hand cream she always used.
    He looked up at her.
    At that moment he thought he might have just understood why his daddy put up with her. It was the same reason Red did whatever she asked him to do, the same reason he wanted to make her happy. He’d remembered his granddaddy saying there wasn’t a man alive who after taking one good look at his Dina Rae wouldn’t give her the moon.
    She brushed the hair off of his forehead with a tender touch of her hand. “You need a haircut.”
    “Aw, Mama.”
    She laughed. “Don’t you ‘aw, Mama’ me. I’ll cut it on Saturday.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. He liked his hair over his ears because they looked too big for his head. Although lately he thought he might be growing into them like his daddy said he would. But he still liked his hair longer. She always cut it too short.
    “I think we have time for one song. You want to sing with me?” She gave him a wink.
    “Sure.”
    “Go look outside that window, hon, and see if there’s anyone out front.”
    The filling station was empty, the gas pumps standing there tall as Injuns. “Ain’t no one out there.”
    She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “There’s no such word as ‘ain’t.’ “
    “But, Mama, everyone says ‘ain’t.’ “
    “No, everyone doesn’t. And if everyone shot their dog and their daddy, too, would you do it?”
    He stuck his hands in his pockets and mumbled, “I don’t have a dog.”
    “You want people to treat you with respect, Billy Joe, then you can’t talk like some old farm boy.”
    His granddaddy had been a farmer, and he was the best and the smartest man Red had ever known.
    “You remember what I tell you, now.” She walked into the house. “You use the sense God gave you and good English. You hear me?” Yes, ma’am.
    “Good.” She patted the spot next to her on a feeble, short-legged bench. “You come here and sit by your mama.”
    He crossed the room and sat down next to her in front of an old cabinet piano made of some kind of dark