No Salt to Season

By Edward Norvell

“No Salt to Season” is the story of how a young man moved from failed love, and a broken engagement to find the love of his life and his adventures along the way. Set in the Piedmont region of North Carolina in the late 1970s. Follow Michael Slade as he makes one mistake after another in his quest for love. He almost doesn’t make it, but he finally finds true love and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Norvell
• Release date: Nov 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781458181961

Edward Norvell

Ed Norvell lives with his wife in Salisbury, North Carolina. He has two grown children and is an attorney working for non-profit land trusts across the state of North Carolina. He and his wife own a house on Ocracoke Island which is their second home. He has published Ocracoke Between the Storms, Portsmouth, Spies, U-boats and Romance on the Outer Banks, Southport, a Story of Second Chances, Shadows, No Salt To Season, and two collections of short stories. He received his undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, a masters degree in English and creative writing from the City University of New York, and his JD Degree from the Wake Forest University School of Law. He has also attended the Breadloaf Writer's Conference at Middlebury College, VT.

Book preview

Chapter One

I first met Jane Cissley in 1977 at a friend’s apartment on Howard Street in the Historic District in March when I was home in Wiltshire located in the rolling hills of the piedmont of North Carolina for spring break. I was living in New York City doing coursework on my master’s degree in English at Columbia University. It was dark, cold, and rainy as I approached the large white Victorian house divided into four apartments. Maple trees lined Howard Street where I parked my car. It had been a cold winter; I couldn’t wait for spring. I was tired of school and wanted to come home. That afternoon I talked to the editor of the Wiltshire Democrat, the newspaper where I had worked the summer before, and he offered me a job. I had gone directly from undergraduate to graduate school and was ready to get out into the real world. I had only lived in New York for a year, still had more coursework to do, and hadn’t started my thesis, but I was ready for a break from school. I decided to come back home that summer and work for the newspaper.

The apartment was furnished in wicker and white canvas furniture. The walls were painted white, and the oak floor, which was covered with a grass rug, was finished with high-gloss polyurethane. There were large plants everywhere. I didn’t know several people at the apartment.

I sat on the overstuffed white canvas sofa beside Jane and her boyfriend George Lipe, who was a year younger than me and whom I had known in high school, but not very well.

What’s your name? Jane asked me.

Michael, I answered.

My name’s Jane Cissley, she said. I heard you live in New York City.

That’s right, I answered, sliding away from her as she slid toward me. George, watching her like a hawk, frowned at us. She continued to talk to me as if George wasn’t there.

My mother lives in New York.

Really? Where? I asked.

In the Bronx with a guy from Puerto Rico. She left us when I was sixteen, and my little brother and sister were in junior high school. She left a note on the kitchen table, said she was leaving, and we didn’t see her again until three months later when she came back to get her clothes.

I was surprised she was telling me such personal history when we’d just met; we were total strangers.

Mom was sixteen, and Dad was seventeen when they got married. They had to get married. Her eyes never left mine. I liked that. They didn’t even graduate from high school. I guess she couldn’t take it any longer, not knowing what the big world was like. I’ll tell you one thing, if I ever get married, it won’t be before I’m thirty.

My father was thirty, and my mother was twenty-five when they got married, I said.

She looked down and started to pick under her fingernails with her index finger. Then she said, Sometimes I wonder if anybody is really happy in marriage.

George stood up, pulled her hand, and said, Let’s go.

George was six feet tall and lanky; his T-shirt and jeans hung on him like a clothes hanger. His unkempt brown hair fell in oily tendrils down his freckled face to his shoulders. His eyes looked green. When he spoke to Jane, he had a hard look in his eyes. His hands were large and coarse, as were his other features. She didn’t move.

I said, let’s go, he raised his voice and tugged again on her arm. He spoke to heras if no one else was in the room.

Yes, sir! she snapped and stood up.

I hope I’ll see you again sometime, she said to me smiling.

I hope so, too, I replied.

Have a good time in New York.

I will.

If I had seen Jane on the street, I probably wouldn’t have noticed her. She was my age and plain looking, with dirty blonde hair that hung straight and shapeless to her shoulders. She was skinny and didn’t have much of a figure. I had never gone for skinny girls before, or blondes. But she had the most gorgeous blue eyes. There was something about her that attracted me. Maybe it was her frankness and openness. The way she bore into me with her eyes and her conversation in a room full of people with the most intimate details of her life. There was an urgency and a tragic quality about her that both haunted and attracted me.

I came home the first week in June from New York to start working at the newspaper and found an apartment two blocks from work. The first few weeks were busy as I moved my furniture from New York, unpacked boxes, and arranged my apartment. Also it was hectic adjusting to work at the city desk, doing obituaries, writing meeting notices and whatever the editor chose to give me. The time passed quickly. I told my friends that I wanted a relationship, a really hot one. I hadn’t had a real relationship since I was a freshman in college. I was ready.

On the Fourth of July, I met Dennis Jones and some other friends to go downtown to a dance on the square. It was 1976, and the local Bicentennial Committee had several events scheduled, including a Square Dance on the Square. Dennis and I had been friends since high school, and he’d just gotten a job selling furniture to stores in the area. Main Street was blocked off and filled with people. The moon made a narrow crescent in the cloudless sky, which was filled with stars. The air was warm but crisp, not muggy and humid as it usually is that time of year. A light breeze blew from the southeast. In the middle of it all was a large open circle where people danced to traditional square dance music. The musicians played on the back of a flatbed truck. Bales of hay delineated the dance area. The sweet odor of hay filled the air.

I saw Jane Cissley clogging in the middle of the dancers with a young man whose straw blond hair hung halfway to his waist. They looked like wooden figures dancing at the end of a stick, life-size marionettes made by a craftsman in the North Carolina mountains, limbs flying every which way as the craftsman popped the paddle on his knee.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Jane and her partner. They seemed lost in a trance of ecstasy and abandonment as they danced. There was so much life and energy in their eyes as they danced. Her eyes never left his as her legs and arms flew around her. I was spellbound. The Jane I remembered from spring break was shy, intense, and fragile, but the Jane I saw dancing that night was anything but fragile. She was driven by a wild energy, unaware of anyone or anything outside of herself and her partner as they danced. Clogging takes a lot of strength, energy, and concentration. I noticed the sweat on her forehead and neck and how her partner’s shirt stuck to his back. I was jealous of the guy who could get so close to her and envious of Jane’s ability to be so completely unselfconscious and uninhibited. They danced purely for themselves, as if no one else existed.

After the square dance ended, I approached Jane and the group of dancers around her. I loved watching y’all dance. You were really good, I told Jane who stood with her dance partner and an attractive blonde girl who was about her size. Jane looked hot from dancing. Her hair stuck in tendrils to her forehead, and her thin white blouse stuck to her body, wet with sweat. She didn’t wear a bra so her nipples, big, brown, and erect were clearly visible through her blouse.

Michael, this is my sister Sylvia, Jane said, motioning toward the blonde. Sylvia smiled; she was younger than Jane. And this, she turned to her dance partner, is my kid brother, Mark.

I held out my hand to shake his hand, but he did not take it.

Ya’ll look hot. I smiled.

Yeah, a good night for a swim, Jane said.

I know where we can go swimming, not far from here, I said.

Where? Jane asked; she was interested.

My parents’ house, it’s about a mile from here.

Ya’ll go on. I’m going home, Mark said to Jane and Sylvia.

Come on and go swimming with us, Mark. There isn’t anything else to do tonight, Jane said.

Mark didn’t reply; he just walked off. Jane followed him. She laid a hand on his arm, and he stopped. They talked a few moments, and then Jane returned. I couldn’t hear their discussion.

Mark said he wants to go to a party on the other side of town. He’ll take us home so we can get our bathing suits. If you can take us home afterwards, we’ll go with you, Jane said, looking at me.

Dennis, joining us and catching the tail end of the conversation, said with a toothy grin, We don’t wear bathing suits at the Slades’ pool.

You do what you want, Sylvia said, we’re wearing bathing suits.

We’ll be there in thirty minutes, Jane said. She and Sylvia followed Mark to his car.

Dennis and I drove straight to my parents’ house and opened it up, turning the lights on around the pool and getting a couple of beers from the refrigerator. My parents lived in a two-story red brick Colonial style house in the Country Club section of town. The golf course ran right up to the edge of the backyard so it looked like the house was out in the country at night. An open wrought iron columned porch with a brick floor stretched across most of the back. The swimming pool was in the backyard surrounded by an iron fence and a red brick wall that separated it from the neighbors. It was very private. The aroma of fresh-cut grass filled the air. The sound of the filter system of the pool could be heard in the background. We found some bathing suits in the house and were sitting in the Jacuzzi at the shallow end when Jane and Sylvia walked up. It was a warm night. The crickets, tree frogs, and cicadas sang all around us. The only outside light was the pool light, which made the water glow soft and blue. The spotlights were too harsh and would attract insects. Jane and Sylvia wore their bathing suits under their dresses. After shucking their dresses and tossing their towels on an iron pool chair, they jumped in. Dennis and Sylvia swam to the deep end. Jane sat with me in the Jacuzzi. Sylvia climbed out of the pool to jump off the diving board. She had taken off her bathing suit. She laughed as Dennis chased her off the end of the board.

Let’s take off our bathing suits, I suggested to Jane.

No, thank you, she replied. So I kept my bathing suit on.

My parents were at the beach, where they spent practically every week during the summer. That made it convenient for me to have parties at the pool.

Are you uncomfortable being here with me like this, without George? I asked, stretching my arms across the back of the Jacuzzi.

George and I are just friends, that’s all. She paused and then laughed. He wouldn’t get upset about me being here with you. He never gets upset about anything. All he wants to do is smoke pot, drink beer, and watch television.

Y’all live together? I asked.

We share an apartment. He helps out with the expenses. I can’t afford an apartment by myself. I don’t have a job.

How do you support yourself?

Unemployment.

Oh, I said.

I didn’t want to hear anymore. Everything she said turned me off, but everything about the way she moved and talked turned me on. It was apparent from the way George treated her that he thought they were more than just friends. But according to her, there was nothing serious. I couldn’t understand their relationship. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t have a job and didn’t seem to care about working. My job at the newspaper meant a lot to me. Love was important to me. She was apathetic about both. She and I were so different; still, I was drawn to her.

Do you like me? she asked.

Yes. I paused. Do you like me?

Yes.

I placed my hand on the back of her neck, pulled her toward me, and kissed her. As we kissed, I knew that something would happen between us, but I didn’t want to think about where it would lead.

We heard a loud splash, and then I heard Dennis call out to Sylvia, Don’t leave.

Jane, let’s go, Sylvia said, walking up to us on the pool deck.

Don’t go yet. You just got here, Dennis said. Jane pinched me under the water. We both giggled. She started to beat me playfully with her fists and tried to dunk me. I held her hands so she couldn’t hit me.

Let’s go, Sylvia said, holding a towel for Jane. Jane got out of the pool and wrapped the towel around her.

I got out of the pool, dried off, went into the house, and changed clothes. I turned off the lights in the house, locked up, and Dennis and I drove the girls to Jane’s apartment. Sylvia and Dennis, in the backseat, didn’t say a word. Jane stroked my leg as I drove. I smiled and stole a glance from time to time. When I let them out in front of Jane’s apartment on Thomas Street, I wanted to kiss her. She looked at me like she wanted to kiss me. But we didn’t.

Chapter Two

Did you find my dress by the pool? Jane asked me on the phone at 8:30 Monday morning, while I was at work in the newsroom. The morning was a busy time just before deadline at the evening paper.

No, but I’ll go by my parents’ house and see if I can find it.

I dropped by my parents’ house at noon. They were back from the beach. I planned to sneak out by the pool to find the dress. My mother was eating a tuna salad sandwich in the bright yellow breakfast room. She wore a white blouse and a dark blue skirt. Daddy was not home.

This morning I was out by the pool cleaning up and I found this odd piece of clothing lying on one of the lounge chairs, my mother said, looking at me for a reaction. I gave none. At first, I didn’t know what it was, but then I found a nametag in it—Jane Cissley—and realized it must be a girl’s wraparound dress. Do you know a Jane Cissley, Michael?

Yes, she came over with some other people to go swimming on Saturday.

One thing I couldn’t figure out was how she got home without her dress.

Well, she didn’t go home naked, if that’s what you think. I didn’t remember her going home naked that is. She wore her dress over her bathing suit when she came to the pool. She must have forgotten it and worn her bathing suit home.

Oh.

The conversation ended, but I don’t think my mother was convinced that Jane

Cissley wore a bathing suit when she was at the pool, or that she was a very nice girl. I noticed my parents’ black maid, Viola, across the open counter separating the kitchen from the breakfast room quietly cleaning up the kitchen, taking in everything that we said, without saying a word.

I called Jane after lunch and told her I had her dress. She said she would pick it up at my apartment after work.

When I got home at five that afternoon, Jane sat waiting in a beat-up beige Studebaker parked in front of my apartment. In place of a backseat, the Studebaker had a piece of unpainted plywood covered with odds and ends of material, some old tools, and sewing magazines.

When Jane saw me, she got out of the car holding a brown paper bag. I invited her into my apartment.

You want one? she asked, pulling a six-pack of bottled Budweiser from the bag.

Sure, I said, opening the front door. I took a bottle of cold beer from her, then we walked into the kitchen. My apartment was one of three apartments in a two-story white frame house. I put the rest of her beer in the refrigerator. We then walked into the living room. Jane looked around at the two bookcases on either side of the fireplace in the living room and the metal bookcase in the adjacent room I called my study. My sofa sat in front of the fireplace. The room was painted beige, and the woodwork around the fireplace was dark. Artwork that I had collected in New York, New Orleans, and other places hung liberally on the walls. I liked to collect artwork and bought what appealed to me. Most of it was bright, colorful, and abstract.

You must read a lot, she said looking at my books. She didn’t say anything about the artwork.

I like to read, I replied.

I like to read, too, she said, but I didn’t graduate from college. I went to a community college in Cherokee for a while. I was living with my boyfriend; when Mom left, Mark and Sylvia moved in with us. She stopped and looked at me. Do you have a girlfriend?

No, I said, sitting down on the sofa. She sat beside me.

Who was your last girlfriend?

"I went out a few times in New York, and I’ve dated different girls here in

Wiltshire, but the last relationship I had was when I was a senior at Carolina."

Tell me about her.

Her name was Peggy Barnes. She was crazy. Her father had an apple orchard in the mountains. I called her my mystery woman because the first time I met her in a bar, she wouldn’t tell me her name. I have a picture of her holding an apple out for me to eat under a tree in her father’s orchard, tempting me, I laughed. When she told me she was collecting wedding china, had stopped taking the Pill, and wanted to make love, I decided I needed to move on, so we split up. I’m nowhere near ready to get married.

I’m not either.

I stood up to get two more beers out of the refrigerator. When I returned, Jane was sitting at the far corner of the brown vinyl sofa with her arms spread out and one leg propped up under her. She held an empty bottle of beer in one hand and looked up at one of the windows by the fireplace. The light from the window caught the clear part of her eyes and lit them up like smooth, round crystals. There was a sadness in her eyes. The edges of her hair glowed golden. Her calf-length skirt, decorated with green and lavender flowers, folded luxuriantly around her legs, and her gauzy white blouse hung sensuously from her shoulders, revealing the tops of her breasts. She hadn’t worn a bra since I met her. Her breasts were small but firm, and her nipples erect.

I sat down beside her and handed her a beer.

Did you like New York? she asked.

I studied the label on my beer bottle. Yeah, but I was really lonely there. I went straight from Carolina to graduate school in New York. The only real job I’ve had was when I worked at the newspaper last summer. I want to be a writer. Some people say I should teach, but my teachers say to be a good writer I need to live and work in the real world, not get stuck in academia. I agree with that, and besides, I’m tired of school. I figured working at the newspaper was a good way to see the real world and keep writing. It’s funny, though, since I started working, I haven’t done much writing. After writing all day at the newspaper, I’m too tired to write at home. I glanced at Jane; she seemed to be just looking around and not paying much attention to what I was saying. When I stopped talking, she caught my gaze and said, Aren’t you going to ask me?

Ask you what?

To make love.

I paused.

Do you want to make love?

I thought you’d never ask.

She barely had the words out before we were kissing. Sometimes when I am with a girl, we are out of sync; my hand is in the wrong place or my lips are slanted wrong. No matter how hard I try, it is like an elephant waltzing with an alligator in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, but occasionally, I find someone with whom everything works, with whom I can let myself go completely. Every movement is right; our bodies seem to be made for each other. This was how I felt with Jane.

She unbuckled my belt, unzipped my pants, pulled my underwear down to my ankles, and started to kiss the inside of my thighs, slowly working her way up to my crotch. That drove me crazy. I slipped her blouse off and kissed her breasts, then I pulled her skirt off; she wasn’t wearing any underwear. The sofa was narrow so we slid onto the carpet in front of the fireplace. As we made love, she ran her fingernails across my back and grabbed my butt, pushing my hips up and down faster and faster.

I felt like a cannibal. Her incredibly soft skin made me want to kiss her all over. I wanted her like a wolf wants a lamb. I was hungry for her. Every inch of her body was moving, as was mine. I could smell her, taste her, feel her, see her; every one of my senses was alive and full of passion.

I suggested that we go into my bedroom. It would be more comfortable than on the floor. We stood up, but we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other long enough to walk to the bedroom. We kissed and hugged and finally dropped to the floor again. We made love in the study before we made it to the bedroom, where we made love again.

I had never met a woman who could make love like Jane Cissley, and I thought I knew a little something about lovemaking. I felt like a pimply-faced kid compared to her.

At about seven o’clock, we got out of bed and made sandwiches in the kitchen. The rest of the night was a blur as we made love, drank beer, and talked.

The next morning I got up at seven thirty to go to work. Jane looked beautiful lying beside me in bed, sleeping, so sensuous and vulnerable. I bent over and gently kissed her on the forehead. The yellow morning light filtering through the drawn shades softened her features and highlighted her blonde hair, which lay spread out over the pillow like a golden fan.

I left her alone in bed, with a note in the kitchen to help herself to whatever was in the refrigerator and to lock the door when she left.

Chapter Three

After work, I went to see my friend Muncy Reeves, who rented a small farmhouse a few miles out of town. The house was surrounded by overgrown fields and a forest that led to the Yadkin River. From the outside, it looked like a white frame house, but when you entered, it was obvious that it was a log house. The walls were thick, and the floorboards and the fireplace were wide. The windows were small and had old glass. The inside was paneled with cheap white paneling; one of the walls leaned where the logs had settled. The paneling was cut to conform to the lean. Muncy was two years older than I; we first met through some friends who attended Yadkin College, a small liberal arts college in Wiltshire.

On the screened front porch sat a black kitten on the seat of Muncy’s motorcycle, which stood in a corner. I reached out to pick up the kitten, but it jumped and ran away. Muncy’s gray Weimaraner, Hap, ran after it, chasing it under the house.

Sure is a cute kitten, I said, taking a seat on a metal chair beside the motorcycle.

Muncy sat on a lawn chair looking out at the field in front. His dirty blond hair was cut short; it used to hang to his waist. I liked it long. But now that he worked for the state as a juvenile counselor for the court system, he had to look clean-cut. He wore a blue jean shirt, white T-shirt, a pair of worn jeans with holes at the knees, cowboy boots, and a red bandana tied around his neck.

She’s yours, he said.

Uh, I stammered, I really don’t need a cat. I may not be here next year, and besides, my parents want me to take their cat.

"She’s a present. You can have her mother, too; they’re both presents. I’m sick of all these cats. I’m thinking about taking them to the