Lori Williams

Turncoat

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2026: VOL. 41.

The rural route pulled us past the gob pile, the highway melting to blacktop, narrowing through pine woods cross-scented with hog farms, deeper into the country than I’d expected, and I wondered whether I was ready for a whole weekend with Ted so soon. He smiled and slowed the car at first sight of the house: sagging gutters, mudded driveway, our destination. His citrus cologne filled the car, and the arm of his brown suede jacket brushed my neck as he reached behind me. He’s going to hug me, I thought, my body turned toward his, but instead he twisted my seatbelt to fit the duct-taped shoulder-guide. 

He gestured toward the house, said, “Voila, Mademoiselle LeAnn, mon maison de mon grandmere.” He insisted on speaking French to me since I told him on our first date that I studied French in college, but he’d only taken one semester in high school, so his sentences bumbled with errors. 

“Your house, or your grandmother’s?”

“It’s mine, or my family’s, now that she’s passed.  I’m fixing it up.”

I looked at the sloping yard, covered with brown leaves from tall, peeling sycamores.  The house sprouted abruptly in the yard’s center, bereft of foundation plantings, other than a huge tire at one corner that must have held flowers earlier, now dead stalks above the rubber treads. A peaked gable at the front door reminded me of Alpine villages, but the rest of the house seemed a low-roofed box, two small front windows with faded metal awnings like old men’s eyes, the front stoop a downturned mouth. Several outbuildings, scattered behind the house in varieties of siding, roofing, and states of disrepair, gave the house some sense of permanence, suggesting a past when chickens were kept, meat smoked, and Ted’s forebears walked a grassy path to an outhouse. 

“It’s a pretty spot,” I said, avoiding anything negative about the house. “How long has your family lived on the land?”

“Almost a hundred years, since 1900,” he said, and I knew I’d asked the right question. I didn’t expect suburban neatness in Ambrose County, one of the most forgotten parts of southern Illinois. People here conserve their resources, even if they seem like junk to outsiders, because no one gets very far from poverty in a place with few jobs, mediocre soil, and a consuming stubbornness. My own mother kept an entire shed filled with used and washed plastic containers in case she ever needed one: yellow margarine tubs, white Cool Whip bowls, wreath-shaped rounds from long-ago Christmas treats. Even as Seaver Coal tried to buy her out so they could mine under her house, she clung to the place where she’d raised me and lived with my dad until his death, hanging on to every wobbly step and plastic lid. Regardless of how someone’s home place looked, if they’d owned it long enough, the misty gleam of family heritage covered all the faults. I couldn’t think badly of Ted for that. I appreciate loyalty.

“Just let me run in and turn the heat up a bit. You can get out and look around,” he said.

I sat still in the car, engine ticking from the drive, my body tensed with the usual confusion between thought and deed. Here we were after only two weeks together for a weekend at his place. I was surprised that we drove into the woods instead of into Marion, where he went to high school and worked in the past. Like me, he hadn’t found a career based on his college degree, but who did around here? He helped his uncle with his business, he told me, and said his chemistry degree came in handy. I didn’t enjoy talking about my job at the nursing home, a temporary job while I tried to help Ma, so we’d talked about movies and weather instead of where he lived. Which was this place.

I shifted in my seat, chewed on my lower lip, wondered why I’d said yes to this. In college, my friends weren’t in a hurry to couple up. We all had careers to start. Once I came back to my hometown, though, I felt lost in the hidden eddies of the murky dating pool, uncertain of the rules for someone my age, lonely in small town life.     

Ted’s face startled me at the car window, a grin and a knock. 

“Come on in—I want to show you the house and what I’ve been working on,” he said.  He motioned for me to get out, and I did, then stepped to the back of the car to grab my things.

He took my overnight bag from me and ushered me in under the pointed front door gable. The first room was a preserved old lady’s house, with paneling on every wall and olive-green shag carpeting in a living room (surely called a “front room” in the country way). The low ceiling drew my eye to framed family pictures hung at uneven heights around the walls, above the frayed 60s couches and chairs pushed back against the walls. The whole place smelled, powerfully, of cat pee, and I saw two cats, then three, dart across into a larger back room. Ted nodded down a short hallway to a bedroom, where he dropped our bags, and then walked back to put his arm behind my back, smiling and moving me forward. I was eager to move past the granny room, and with Ted entered a larger space that seemed like a completely different building. It had once been little rooms but was now ripped out to the studs and up to the rafters, giving it a barn-like quality, with a large old metal light fixture hiked high up in the middle.  There was a table and chairs in the center, a makeshift bit of old kitchen counter standing free of the wall, and a recliner facing a TV on an end table. The space echoed, and Ted stood arms akimbo in a shadow on the empty side of the room, his boots firmly on the plywood subfloor.

“This is my project. I want to make it more modern. I ripped out all the walls, the old kitchen and bedrooms, to make this big space.”

“Wow, that must have been a lot of work. How long did it take?”

“Oh, I’ve been at it for three years now.”

“What do you do for cooking?”

“I manage. I’ve got a microwave, and I eat at my uncle’s house a lot.”

“There’s no refrigerator, or sink.”

“I just try to do without anything refrigerated. I have a cooler, though.  And the bathroom’s still here. There’s a sink in there.”

He walked to the back of the large room, showing me an old bathroom with a kitchen dish rack on the formica counter, right next to his toothbrush. This didn’t seem sanitary, to me, washing dishes in the bathroom, but I felt lucky that I wasn’t going to be asked to use that old outhouse I’d seen. Clearly Ted didn’t mind roughing it—three years living like this!—and I thought that I’d do OK for the visit if I could just get past the cat pee smell.

“The cats—how many are there?”

“I have three now, but my grandma always had cats.”

“Are they friendly?”

“No, they’re pretty shy. You probably won’t see much of them.”

But I did smell them. I didn’t know what to think about Ted, now that I’d seen his house.  The attachment to home seemed familiar, the work on “modernizing” was creative, but the idea that he’d been at it for three years troubled me. And the cat thing seemed downright alarming.

“We’re meeting my aunt and uncle, Gary and Cindy, for supper in 10 minutes.”

“Oh, well, let me change, first.”

“You don’t need to change. It’s just the VFW in Piney Bush.”

“I thought we’d be going into Marion. That’s where Nancy said you were from.”

Nancy Manker, an old high school friend, had introduced us at a basketball game. I remember her hefting the latest baby on her hip as she left us sitting together on the bleachers, wood slats vibrating with her steps as she called back that he needed changing. She had a big ole smile on her face, delighted with her ruse to pair us up. Married herself just after graduation, she thought I needed matchmaking after I broke up with Clyde, my first steady boyfriend since I’d moved back home to Ephesus. She thought Ted should be the second. 

“No, that’s just where we shop and where the consolidated high school is. My home town is actually Piney Bush.”

This shouldn’t have bothered me, but it seemed like an important bit of information about Ted that he’d neglected to tell me. Piney Bush was even smaller than Ephesus—we had a little grocery store, a pizza place, and a bar. We still had a high school. As far as I knew, Piney Bush had only three or four empty storefronts, two churches, and apparently a VFW. I’d only driven through town years ago, never stopped. He hadn’t mentioned Piney Bush when he invited me for the weekend, just that he wanted me to see the house he was working on and go out dancing. I think I pictured dancing to a band or DJ at a bar in Marion, not the VFW in a town of 250.

 “I guess I’m OK as is.”

“You know you are, cher LeAnn,” and Ted leaned over to kiss me. I liked how his arms felt, and I tried to concentrate more on my lips, the warmth of his strong arms, and less on the echoing cold in the room.

Outside, as we got back in the car, I noticed how the place seemed gloomier as the sun left the sky. The lone outdoor light, high on a pole next to the dirt driveway, receded behind us as we drove away.

“We need to pick them up, my aunt and uncle. It’s just up the road here.”

The drive to Gary and Cindy’s happened so quickly that I jolted in the passenger seat at the unexpected turn onto a pine-tree-lined gravel drive leading up to a brown house: brown wood siding, brown shutters, brown packed dirt front yard, even a brown satellite dish sprouting from the roof. In the clearing across from the house sat a white trailer, with bushes planted next to it and a sturdy deck built for the front door. As we pulled up, a man opened the door of the house, smiling, and a few seconds later, a woman appeared in the doorway of the trailer.  The man looked fortyish but had a neatly trimmed beard, shined brown cowboy boots, and a brown leather jacket. He waited in the space between the house and trailer while the woman, with wavy blond hair reaching her shoulders, shut the trailer door quickly to keep her cat from escaping.  She paced toward him in her own red and black boots, adjusting her black leather jacket that, though fitted to her short, curvy frame, seemed to echo his look. They met in the middle and stopped for him to kiss her cheek.

I turned to Ted, saying, “They live…?”

“Yep, they live in separate houses.  It works better than when they were married. The boys stay in the house with Gary, and Cindy gets her own space.”

Gary opened the back passenger door for Cindy, and as she got in, they both introduced themselves to me.  “Hello, LeAnn. Nice to meet you.”

Ted said, “LeAnn, this is my Uncle Gary and my Aunt Cindy.”

“Well, LeAnn, I hope you’re ready for a Friday night in Piney Bush,” said Gary.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” said Cindy.  “We like it, but it’s just Piney Bush.”

“If it’s anywhere near as exciting as a Friday night in Ephesus, I think I’ll like it just fine.”

We all chuckled at that one since my hometown doesn’t exactly swing on Friday night or any other night. Cindy leaned forward while the guys talked to say softly to me, “I’m glad you came. It’s nice to have another girl.”

“We girls have to stick together,” I whispered, though I felt a bit ridiculous at 23 calling myself a girl. 

In just 10 minutes, we reached Piney Bush, nothing more than a few buildings on a state route. The VFW snugged up against empty buildings on either side that must once have been stores, back when small towns had stores. It had a false façade, like in old Western movies, that made it seem two or three stories tall, when actually it was just one big open space with a dusty stage at one end stacked with folding chairs. I couldn’t imagine they’d had a live band or any other kind of show for a long time. The ceiling, high enough to make the place feel larger than the rest of Piney Bush, had embossed tin and globed hanging lights from 100 years before.  Everything below looked like the 1960s, probably the last time any money had been spent on metal stacking chairs, paneling, plaques that honored heroes from different wars, and a large bar down the south side. I scanned the people in the room, expecting to see a few brown faces, as in Ephesus, or a lot, as in Marion, but everyone was white. Most of the crowd looked older than us, a not-unusual small-town mix of farmers in jeans, wives and girlfriends in, well, jeans, and truckers or teachers or prison guards, all looking happy to hold a bottle of beer on another Friday night.

Ted held his hand in the small of my back, steering me toward the bar, where a cacophony of voices greeted, laughed, or called for drinks from the two women tending bar, both middle-aged and efficient, grabbing cold bottles or settling plastic cups under the tap.  It was a beer crowd, wanting to stretch out their drinking over the evening with light yellow American beer that went down like water. 

Cindy leaned in to say in my ear, "Everyone will want to meet you," and I could see that they did, eyes of several people glancing over and four or five actually lining up along the bar next to us. 

Ted said, "This is LeAnn, everybody." A stream of people introduced themselves and Ted stood next to me, smiling, smiling. After one asked, "Where you from?" Ted said, "Oh, down the road a bit, Ephesus," and they all smiled and nodded.

"What about your people? They work at the mine?" asked one woman with a narrow face and the mouth lines of a chronic smoker.

"No, we don't," I said, almost ready to say something about my mother's house, the coal company's mistreatment of her, but stopped myself. Too many people in this area work for the mine, or used to, or have relatives who work there. The mine reaches out bony fingers and dirties us all.

"Not miners, huh?"

Ted spoke up, "Raylene, LeAnn works at the nursing home now, but she went to college.  She's looking for a better job."

Raylene pulled her head back, the others––it felt like the whole of Piney Bush, listening—hovering on the edge of our conversation. "Oh, like a teaching job or such. Sounds good, sounds good. I should've done that, and then I wouldn't have to depend on Seaver like everybody else."

Ted nodded, then leaned in to say, "the music's starting. Let's go."

He pulled me out on the floor, an old, clean-swept circle with tables and chairs gathered at the edges like grass clumps at the edge of a farm pond. The music, CDs fed into a simple sound system by the bartenders, started with "Sweet Home Alabama.” Other couples drifted out to join us, two-stepping to electric guitar thumps.

"I'm not so good at this," I said, as I felt Ted's breath, sweet despite his gulp of Miller Lite, touching my cheek, his feet moving in time to the rest of the couples.

"But I am good at this, so it'll be fine. Let me lead," he said. It felt good to have my feet and body follow his, the two-step slowly becoming more natural, his confident fingers steering me so that we ringed the floor with everyone else. When Willie Nelson came on, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” the couples slowed to tinier circles. Older couples just held each other, rocking and stepping in one spot. 

I stepped easily into Ted's full clasp, my head reaching his shoulder, and I leaned in with the urge to sigh. While it hadn't been all that long since I'd been held in a man's arms, I’d forgotten how comforting it felt. He spoke into my hair, "Hey, how are we doing?"

I looked up and smiled, "Fine. I'm fine."

Soon after, a couple of the older men asked me to dance, holding me at a courtly distance, covering my inexperience with practiced steps. There was a raucous song with a chorus that called out the number of times the singer caught his girl lying. “Two times,” the dancers yelled, boots stomping twice on the dance floor. Several songs drew a unison “Hey” or “Yeah” at the right point in the song from everyone but me. Piney Bush isn’t all that different, or far, from Ephesus, but we didn’t have a VFW, and every little town has its own character that twists in just its own way, no matter how much it might have in common with the little town up the road. We live in our own circles, ringed by others that seem familiar but have their own waves, ripples lapping the shore separately but just seconds apart. This was Piney Bush Friday night, done Piney Bush style, and I enjoyed riding the wake. 

By the time Gary claimed his dance, sweat trickled down my back, and I said, “Maybe I should sit and rest first for a bit,” but he pulled me back toward the dancers, shaking his head for no, his face flushed from the steady parade of plastic cups he’d drained of beer. He seemed a little drunk, but I only saw a redder face and wide smile. 

“Just this one more, then we’ll all have another drink and sit a while.”

Gary and Cindy had danced together earlier, well-matched steps melding them despite no longer being married or living together. I’d watched them while dancing my way around with various partners, Ted’s amused face passing from time to time. I couldn’t match Cindy’s easy coupled steps, especially with Gary’s muscles loosened from liquor, and we had to pause, often, to keep from stumbling. His beard masked his expression a bit, but he kept a patient hand on my waist and steered me around the floor. There was a slower part to the song, and we turned to dance more easily, giving me a chance to slip in a word or two.

“So, Ted works for you. What’s that like?”

“It’s good. I like having him in the business.”

“And you do some kind of chemical testing?”

“Yes’m, for safety at High Muddy.”

“Wait, what? You work for Seaver? You work for the mine?”

“Naw, we work for ourselves, but we test at the mine. Inda, Indent, Independent contractors,” he said, as he spoke the syllables slowly to get them right. 

The song ended, so I didn’t have a chance to reply, but my face fell when Gary told me what they did. They might call it “independent,” but testing at the mine meant they worked at the pleasure of Seaver Coal Company, same as any coal miner who worked the seam or surface hauled or whatever. Ted knew that my mama had fought Seaver to leave her in peace, to fix her property, to stop mining under her house, but he hadn’t said a word about working for them. It wasn’t a lie, but he hadn’t told me the truth, either.

I wish I could say that I saw my loyalties clearly at that moment, that I pulled myself back from the direction the evening was surely headed—back to Ted’s house and to his bed. It’s possible to make choices based on our consciences, and sometimes I do what I know is right.  My mama’s house stood that very night, in the dark with the crickets humming, hiked up on blocks delivered and placed by Seaver Coal flunkies. She’d suffered because of her determination not to move. She’d decided to hold out to protect her house, her home with my dear departed Daddy, no matter how much money Seaver offered or pressured. I should have held out, as well. 

But when Gary and I reached the table where Ted sat with Cindy, I sat next to Ted and let him scoot his metal chair closer to mine, let him slide his muscled arm around my shoulders, let him pull my cheek tight to his face. I smelled the beer more now, though he wasn’t drunk. His aftershave clung to our joined heads, a lemon and sweat incense as he whispered in my ear, “Whatcha think, mademoiselle? Are you ready to head home?” His lips reached my cheek, holding me there, linked. Cindy smiled at us, maybe thinking we looked romantic with our heads together. I reached for my Solo cup of beer—my third, sour and full—draining it. It takes a little push to be a turncoat, to sleep with the enemy, but not much. A plastic cup of beer at the Piney Bush VFW shouldn’t have been enough, but it was.

“OK, if you’re ready, let’s go.”

I made my choice, and I knew I’d follow it through the rest of the night—the drive to drop off Gary and Cindy at their two houses, the evening after with Ted in his half-remodeled homestead, the sex that we’d been anticipating. My body still wanted it, if my mind did not. It seemed easy for Gary and Cindy to accommodate their differences, not married or living together in theory, but coupled firmly in fact. Gary walked directly to Cindy’s trailer when we dropped them off in the dark, the moonlight revealing that they still took comfort in sleeping together. I thought it was like Ted and his reluctance to tell me that he worked for the mine. He and Gary could call their business their own, but if they worked with Seaver then they were in bed with Seaver. 

As we arrived at Ted’s house, he opened the door and we walked inside. He pulled me close and kissed me, said, “Vous-etes bonne, ma petite,” and I noticed that he didn’t know the familiar “tu” to call me, and maybe that was O.K., because even as we walked down the hall to get into bed, a cat running past with a yowl to leave us the dark bedroom, I knew I wasn’t good.  I wasn’t his little one. I wasn’t planning to make him my second boyfriend since college. I just wanted to be held, to feel skin on skin, to take some comfort from an evening of dancing, drinking, and pretending to be Ted’s girl. The ammonia scent of cat piss filled my nose, and I grimaced in the dark, but I set my mind not to think about the smell. Whatever had given my mama the strength to stand up to Seaver Coal, I didn’t have it. I pulled my shirt over my head, let myself be pulled into his arms, closed my eyes to darkness, and opened my mouth to his.

Lori J. Williams lives in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she has taught at Parkland College. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University. The Sewanee Writers’ Conference awarded her a Tennessee Williams scholarship in fiction, and she attended Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference as a fiction contributor. She has published in The Los Angeles Review and The Hudson Review, where she won their 2021 Short Fiction Contest.