1972 in a town just outside of Utica, New York.
***
I lifted the last of the plants into the back of the station wagon under the watchful eye of Mrs. Birdsall, and after I closed the back securely I brushed my hands together and rubbed them on my jeans.
"There you go, Mrs. Birdsall!" I announced loudly in my deep bass voice. "All set."
"What time do you get out?" the woman whispered, even though nobody was near enough to hear anything that was said.
"Not till six," I said softly, and the pained expression on her face that she made after I spoke made me sad as well.
"How about tomorrow?" she asked.
"Till nine tomorrow night," I said, but quickly added that I didn't have to come in until one.
"Do you want to - tomorrow before work?" she asked hopefully.
"You know the answer to that," I said, and the woman with the sad blue eyes and the usually forlorn expression perked up when she heard my reply.
"He leaves at 7:30," Mrs. Birdsall said.
"I'll be there at 7:35," I replied.
"No, I'll pick you up," Mrs. Birdsall said. "Don't want you walking all that way. Nine o'clock - usual place?"
"Can't wait," I replied, and as she always did, she made a big show out of putting a dollar bill in my hand as a tip.
"Thank you ma'am," I responded in my usual hammy way, nodding at her before heading back in to work.
I would look at the note that was under the dollar bill later, when I was alone. It had a little heart drawn on it, with a short but sweet line written underneath it.
"Love you Zeke," was all it said, and after I glanced at it a few more times during the course of the workday, eventually I would throw it out like I had the rest of them.
No good could come of anybody seeing that note, even if it was unlikely anyone would know who wrote it to me. You see, this was 1972, and in the rural area we live in, notes like this wouldn't go over well.
You see, in the first place married women weren't supposed to write notes like that to single guys, especially if the woman in question was 48 years old and the guy was less than half of that. If the married woman's husband was a county sheriff, well, that just made it a whole lot worse.
What really made the whole scenario unacceptable, and downright dangerous on every level, was that the hand that had passed the love note I've described to you was lily white, and the hand that had accepted it was as black as night. That, dear readers, was a combination that was not only unacceptable, but potentially lethal for both of us.
So as I sit here thinking about tomorrow, anticipating my meeting with Kathy Birdsall, the sheriff's wife, I'm also thinking back to that first day, back in the spring...
***
I had delivered out to this house out in the sticks before. It was a big old farmhouse that had been renovated, and the woman was a good customer of the Agway that I had been working at since I returned home from college.
"Be nice to Mrs. Birdsall," the store manager had cautioned me. "She's the sheriff's wife. He's good to us."
What that meant was that he ripped up tickets that drivers got while making deliveries, and overlooked little things that go on during the course of business.
Of course, I was nice to everybody, so I didn't need the warning. I was pretty popular, especially for a black guy in these parts. I especially liked the ladies, and they seemed to like me fine too.
I guess being good at sports helped my popularity when I was back in high school, and for a time in college, for as long as that lasted until I bombed out in class. I was a good athlete, but not good enough to warrant the special consideration that an All-American would get who had a 1.8 GPA, so I ended up back home after a couple of years, waiting to get my draft notice along with everybody else my age.
So when I arrived at the Birdsall place, Mrs. Birdsall was there waiting. She was a rather plain looking woman who made little effort to make herself as pretty as she could be. She had a decent figure, as far as I could see given the bland clothing she wore, but what struck me from the start were her eyes.
Mrs. Birdsall had pale blue eyes, but instead of being sparkling and vibrant, they were dull and empty. It was as if they, like the rest of her, had been drained by some sinister force, robbing her of life and the urge to live. Her hair was red, but the color was muted, like the woman herself.
All she seemed to have was her gardening, and her land was a direct contrast to the woman responsible. The flowers and shrubbery was flourishing; alive and blooming brightly, which was such a direct contrast to their caretaker.
I felt bad for the woman, which was pretty pathetic given that we were in such different worlds, and she was so much more prosperous than me.
"Zeke," Mrs. Birdsall said as she met me while I got out of the truck in her driveway that day. "So good of you to come over so quickly."
"Happy to oblige," I said, pleased that Mrs. Birdsall had called me by my nickname instead of the clumsy sounding Ezekiel as many in the town still did, most likely because they knew I didn't like it. Not so much the name but in the way they said it, dragging it out to make my name sound as stupid as they were.
Mrs. Birdsall showed me where to stack the stuff in the barn, and after I shooed her away when she tried to help unload the decorative bricks and various stuff she had bought, I unloaded the truck alone.
Mrs. Birdsall watched me from the patio in back as I moved back and forth with the hand truck, and when I was finished I had worked up quite a sweat. Carrying the itemized bill over to her, she ushered me inside her kitchen so she could sign it.
Inside it was refreshing compared to the steamy outside, and I felt the sweat cool on my body, the perspiration stains practically covering the entire uniform shirt.
"My word, Zeke," Mrs. Birdsall exclaimed. "You're drenched."
