“Oh.” The thought of the little piglet surviving a difficult birth only to wind up on someone’s breakfast table depressed Lily. The piglet’s plight seemed similar to Mimi’s. Lily mourned for small creatures who had no control over their destinies. She was embarrassed to feel a tear sliding down her cheek.
“You city girls get softhearted about animals, don’tcha?” Ed asked, pouring gravy over a split biscuit.
“Sorry,” Lily said, feeling foolish. “It just struck me as sad, is all.”
“Well, shoot,” Jack said, helping herself to a third fried egg. “If you’re gonna get that upset about it, I reckon Ed and Vina can just bring Lily the pig out to me after she gets weaned. I’ll pay as good a price for her as they will at the meat market, and I reckon I’ve got room on my farm for a pig.”
“You and your farm,” Vina laughed, emptying the second pan of biscuits into the bread basket.
“Ed and Vina always make fun of my farm,” Jack began. “Of course, I reckon they’ve got a right to. It’s more of a petting zoo than a farm. I’ve got half a dozen dogs — some I found on the side of the road, some I took away from people that was mistreating ’em; five cats; an old swaybacked horse I saved from getting shot; and a goat with just one horn. You oughta bring your little girl out to see ’em.”
Lily smiled. “I’ll have to do that.”
“Anyway,” Jack said as she spooned up another serving of grits, “I reckon I got room for a pig in my collection, if you and Mimi promise to come visit her.”
“I promise.”
“It sure takes a lot of money to feed all them animals without you making any profit off ’em,” Ed said, pushing his plate away.
“Aah, it’s not that expensive,” Jack said. “Besides, I gotta spend my money on somethin’. It’s not like I go out and blow it on new dresses.”
Ed and Vina laughed. Lily was amazed at how comfortable they were with Jack’s masculinity.
When they climbed into the truck to go home, Lily said, “Thank you for the pig.”
“It was no skin off my nose. I’d been thinking about getting me a pig anyhow.” She started the truck. “And I can understand why the thought of slaughtering that pig bothered you. I mean, I’m no vegetarian, but it does seem like a shame that a critter has such a hard time coming into the world, only to get taken out of it so quick.” She watched the road for a minute. “There was somethin’ I wanted to ask you, though.”
“Yeah?”
“About that joke you made when you were about to invade that sow’s privacy.”
“Oh, that. I hardly even knew what I was saying. I’m always make dumb jokes when I’m nervous.”
“Well, it’s probably none of my business. It just seemed like an odd joke for a married lady to be making ... at least for a married lady who’s married to a man.”
The biscuits in Lily’s stomach congealed into a heavy clump. How could she be so stupid as to make a joke like that? Apparently waking up before the sun wasn’t conducive to her secret-keeping abilities.
“It’s okay,” Jack said. “Like I said, it’s none of my business. You don’t have to tell me anything.
But if you ever decide you wanna talk, your secrets — if you’ve got any — are safe with me.”
What was it about Dr. Jack that made Lily decide to trust her? Was it because she was the first real lesbian Lily had seen since she hit Faulkner County? Or was it Jack’s obvious kindness — the part of her personality that made her rescue abused dogs and swaybacked horses?
Whatever it was, it made Lily talk. She talked all the way back to the house and then sat talking with Jack in her truck in the driveway.
When Lily finished, Jack breathed, “Whoa. That’s quite a story.”
Lily laughed. “You’re telling me.”
“So ...” Jack looked her square in the eye. “You lonely?”
Lily quickly broke eye contact. “Lonely? Of course I’m lonely. I lost my wife, my best friend —
but if you’re, like, coming on to me, I’m not interested. The only thing that could possibly make my life more complicated than it is now is a relationship. Besides, I’ll never find anyone I can love like I loved Charlotte —”
“Whoa, Nelly!” Jack hollered. “Let me try again. What I meant to say was you probably had lots of friends back in Atlanta ... other dykes you hung out with. I bet that now that you’re away from them, you’re kinda lonely.”
“Oh. That kind of lonely.” Lily felt like an idiot. Why had she gotten so defensive? “Yeah, I guess I am lonely. Sometimes, it’s nice, you know, just to hang out with other dykes and talk about dyke
“Yeah, I know what you mean. My friend Honey runs a tattoo shop out on Peacock Alley. She’s got an apartment out back, and Friday nights a bunch of us go out there ... just to hang out and be dykes, like you said. There’s Honey and her girlfriend and a couple of old army dykes from Fort Oglethorpe.
They’re all older than you are — on the wrong side of forty, like me — but we’d be glad to have you if you think your husband wouldn’t mind you having a girls’ night out.”
“I bet he wouldn’t. God knows he’s been having boys’ nights out often enough. So where is this Peacock Alley?”
“That’s not really the name of the road. That’s just what locals call the old highway that runs between here and Chattanooga. It’s called Peacock Alley because years ago, when it was a main road, there used to be all these roadside stands that sold those chenille bedspreads with gaudy-colored peacocks on ’em. Those bedspreads’d be hanging on clotheslines, blowing in the breeze. I guess they were tacky, but when I was a little kid, I thought they were beautiful.”