Sweetwater Creek

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  Animals and humans were stunned. There was no yipping and scrabbling from the dog runs, as there almost always was, and the Parmenter family, assembled on the front drive to receive the Foxworths, mopped at necks and foreheads and did not speak. Even Walt Junior and Carter, preening and strutting in low-riding cutoffs and torn sleeveless T-shirts that read FOLLY

  ISA BITCHIN’ BEACH—apparently the courting image of choice in their set—stopped their muttered innuendos and simply stood there, dumb with heat. Their powerfully developed biceps and chests gleamed. At first Emily thought they had oiled themselves like muscle builders in a contest, but now she wasn’t sure if it was oil or sweat. Only her father, crisp in blue oxford cloth and pressed khaki twill, seemed untainted by the corrupting heat. His keen blue eyes were alert, fastened on the end of the driveway, where the caravansary would emerge from the woods.

  They heard it first, the rumbling, grinding, crunching of many vehicles, and then it appeared, and the Parmenters simply stared. The line of SUVs, all-terrain vehicles, trucks, trailers, and conventional vehicles seemingly stretched out of sight. Rhett Foxworth came first, in the Land Rover, Lulu hunched down in the passenger seat. Maybelle Foxworth followed in, of all things, a cherry red BMW convertible. She was smiling and waving like a car advertisement, her flawless hair shining silver in the sun. Emily wondered why she had not had a heatstroke, if she’d driven far in a topless car. Walt and Carter resumed their whispering.

  “Gon’ need a chauffeur for that baby,” one of them said. “Flip you,” the other replied. Her father glared at them, and they fell silent.

  Behind the first two cars, a shining green pickup with MAYBUD PLANTATION emblazoned on its gleaming side carried a spanking-new upright refrigerator, and the huge ATV trailer behind it, that usually carried hunting dogs, now bore standing lamps, a tall, scrolled mirror, towering green plants, and a large television set. Smaller vehicles behind them were freighted with boxes labeled books, china, microwave, sound system, computer.

  Staring foolishly, Emily could not get camels and elephants out of her mind. She furrowed her brow, trying to think why, and from his place inside her Buddy whispered, “The Jewel in the Crown. Remember? We saw a rerun of it? The big raj processions, with elephants and camels….”

  Entirely without realizing that she did it, Emily laughed aloud. Her father shot her a withering look, but behind her eyes were only dreams of elephants and camels.

  The black men who filed in and out of the upstairs apartment all wore forest green shirts and pants embroidered with capital M’s on the pockets, and might have been picked for their uniformity of physical grandeur as well as their prowess as workers. They were absolutely silent, and when the last shrouded object had been taken upstairs, Lulu got out of the Land Rover where she had been napping and thanked them all softly, and by name.

  “Miss Lulu,” they responded, nodding their heads. One of them, older than the rest and grizzled gray around his sideburns, bent over and whispered something in her ear, and she hugged him fiercely.

  “I’ll see you before long, Leland,” she said.

  “You come on back home soon’s you can,” he said.

  The line of vehicles filed away down the drive, empty.

  Maybelle Foxworth came out of the barn and tripped toward them, smiling.

  “You wouldn’t believe your little apartment,” she said to Walter. “It dressed up a lot better than I thought it would. If I were a single girl like Lulu I wouldn’t at all mind living in it. If it was a bit closer to town, I mean. We plantation people,” and she beamed at Walter, “have gotten used to living in the boondocks. But I think young girls need a bit more life around them. Well, anyway, you all come up and see it when we get it all straightened up. About another hour, I think. Lulu, aren’t you the least bit curious? The air conditioner’s going strong and it’s cool as a cucumber up there. I need you to tell me where to put the last few things.”

  Lulu nodded her head to the Parmenters and followed her mother back into the barn and up the stairs. Emily strained to hear, but she did not think that a word passed between mother and daughter.

  Rhett Foxworth had long since gone back to Maybud, pleading an appointment with a representative of the forestry service, to talk about the longleaf pines that were Maybud’s cash crop.

  “I expect you know how it is, Parmenter,” he said, shaking Walter’s hand. “If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”

  The Parmenters sat in the shade of the front piazza for a while, drinking iced tea from sweating glasses that Cleta kept refilled. Of them all, Cleta seemed the only one not curious about Lulu and her family.

  “What do you think of her?” Emily had asked her, after the Foxworths’ first visit.

  “She a pretty thing,” Cleta said. “Got real pretty eyes and hair. But she too thin and way too jumpy. Like to jump out of her skin if you speaks to her. There’s somethin’ wrong with that child. Beyond bein’ sick and tired, I mean. It ain’t normal, a pretty rich girl like her hidin’ out here all summer.”

  She would say no more, despite Emily’s attempts to engage her in chat about Lulu Foxworth.

  Maybelle Foxworth came back down the stairs out into the corroding sunlight, fanning herself. Lulu was behind her. Despite the smothering heat, Lulu looked so dry as to be almost desiccated. There were even little dry lines around her astonishing eyes. Emily was annoyed that it did not mar her spectacular good looks. Even without makeup, even with the gilt hair down her back in a single pigtail, even with red rimming her eyes and a sprinkling of freckles visible across her nose and cheekbones, she still caught the eye like wildfire. Her white shorts and T-shirt were bone-dry, and her long, muscular legs were a silky matte tan, not glistening with sweat like everyone else’s.

  “Maybe she’ll be okay up there in that air-conditioned little apartment of hers, but I’d like to see how long she lasts in the dog ring,” Emily thought with sullen satisfaction.

  “No, I can’t stay,” Maybelle trilled to Walter, who was offering iced tea and benné seed cookies. “Lulu says she needs a long nap and will shoot me if I hover over her, and I’m late for a bridge game. She’d love to show off her apartment later this afternoon; she promised me.” She slewed her eyes around at Lulu, who nodded and smiled. It was like a smile drawn by a child in spilled flour.

  Maybelle Foxworth hugged her daughter fiercely and said, “You call us tonight, remember? And you know you can come home whenever you want to.”

  “I’m fine, Mama,” Lulu said in her soft, slightly dark voice. “Thanks so much for everything you’ve done. Tell Daddy, too.”

  And she smiled again all around, murmured “Excuse me,” and vanished into the darkness of the barn stairwell. Her mother stood looking after her, a frown knitting her pale brows.

  “You all look after her for me,” she said, this time to Jenny. “She’s not as grown-up as she thinks she is.”

  “Of course we will,” Jenny said. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Maybelle Foxworth got into the little red BMW and purred away into the heat haze. The Parmenters all looked at each other. It was three o’clock Saturday, June sixteenth, and the world was entirely still.

  Lulu did not, after all, appear in the late afternoon with an invitation to view her domain. But she did come to the front door and knock softly on the screen, and when Emily answered it, said politely, “I hope you’ll forgive me for not giving you the grand tour just yet. I have some phone calls to make, and I want to edit things a little before you see it. Mama gets…overenthusiastic sometimes.”

  By that time Walter and Jenny had appeared at the door.

  “I can’t wait to see what it looks like,” Jenny said, smiling.

  “Right now,” Lulu said, “it looks like a New Orleans cathouse.”

  Emily and her aunt laughed aloud; how could you not? Walter Parmenter frowned at them and once more invited Lulu to share their dinner. Emily stared at him. Where did “dinner” come from? Supper was what they
had at six o’clock.

  “You’re very kind, but I’m going to make myself an omelette and go to bed and read. You don’t know what a luxury that is. Just try doing it in my mother’s house.”

  When she left to go back to the barn in the failing light, Elvis whined and looked up at Emily.

  “Stay,” she said, more sharply than she intended. He sat, staring up at her with soft hurt in his golden eyes. She leaned down and hugged him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I promise not to take it out on you.”

  Elvis had been given a reprieve from Walter insofar as Lulu was concerned, as she had already seen him in Emily’s bathroom, and had given Emily her promise not to tell her father about him. So he had yard privileges. But he was still under house arrest when anyone else connected with the dogs visited.

  Emily agreed. It was better than nothing.

  When she and her father went out to the kennels and runs at eight o’clock the next morning to feed the dogs and puppies, Lulu was already there, sitting on a sack of Eukanuba puppy chow with an armful of Daisy’s puppies. They were squirming and wagging their stumpy tails and licking her face, and she was smiling as blissfully as if she had had a vision of heaven. Her eyes were closed, and her face shone with soap and puppy spit. In the early-morning light she glowed golden, like a well-rubbed amulet, and a faint curl of English lavender soap hung about her. Even in frayed cutoffs and hollow of eye and cheek, she was just as beautiful as ever, and Emily wondered sourly what it would take to diminish that impact. She wondered, also, how it would feel to know that you were so wonderful-looking that you could just forget about it. Emily thought little about her own looks, but it was not because she knew she was beautiful. As long as her looks were out of her mind, her steady ripening did not frighten her.

  “I hope I’m not doing anything wrong,” Lulu said to Walter when he and Emily arrived. “I just couldn’t resist.”

  “No,” he said, beaming. “Actually, small puppies like these need to get used to people early. It socializes them. Play with them whenever you want to. It will give poor old Daisy a rest.”

  Emily simply looked at her father. He had never allowed the puppies who were to be trained to the gun to enter the house. It spoiled and confused them, he said. Instead of responding to just one person, as a good hunting dog should, they’d learn to respond to everybody—disastrous for a flushing spaniel.

  He looked down at Emily and reddened slightly.

  “I just finished that book by the monks of New Skete, that everybody says is so great,” he said. “They train some of the best dogs in the world, and they’ve convinced me that a lot of contact is probably a good thing after all. I was going to suggest to you, Emily, and to the boys and Rouse if he ever turns up again, that you should all spend as much spare time as you’ve got just being with the very young ones. Pet them, groom them, play with them. They need to get used to being indoors, too. I can’t have them all over the big house, but I’m thinking about making a sort of living room out of that big empty storage room in the barn. Sofas and rugs and lamps, a radio, stuff like that. Maybe a Mr. Coffee and an ice maker for you all. The pups could learn a lot about what not to do in there, like chewing electric cords and, ah, urinating on the rug. It would be a good early start to housebreaking. Maybe all of you could take turns spending an hour or so with them there after work.”

  “Oh,” breathed Lulu Foxworth, “let me do that. The rest of you have other chores, I know, and I would love to have the puppies for a little while every day.”

  “We’ll give it a try; see how it works out,” Walter said. “Meanwhile, you could take one or two at a time up to your place, if you’d like to. Only I’d hate to think of what those little teeth could do to all your pretty things.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Lulu said.

  Even on that first morning, Lulu proved to be a natural with the dogs. Emily was working with four ten-week-old puppies from Ginger, who was a sweet-tempered and patient mother, and whose puppies Emily had never had trouble communing with. She knew she would not tell Lulu Foxworth that most of the time she could just think with the dogs; Lulu would think her totally insane. She had decided she would show Lulu the conventional way that Sweetwater started their pups off, and see if she caught on. After thirty minutes, it was clear that she did. Emily had begun teaching Bandit, a big, happy male puppy, to sit by pushing his behind down gently and saying firmly, “Hup.” Her father had once told her that it was the traditional spaniel sit command, but she had never had to use it. Also, she raised her right hand, so the puppy could get used to visual signals that would serve him well in advanced training. Lulu watched her every move.

  “You need to do it this way while she’s here,” Emily thought to Bandit. “We’ll go back to the other after she’s gone.”

  Bandit looked at her gravely, and then faultlessly sat, grinning.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Lulu said. “The very first time. They’re smarter than most people, aren’t they?”

  Emily gave her Molly, who, unlike her serene mother, was a first-class canine diva-in-the-making if Emily ever saw one.

  “Now let’s see Miss Perfect in action,” she thought meanly.

  Lulu sat down on the grass in front of Molly and looked at her. Molly looked back, whites showing around her yellow eyes. Presently Lulu rose and put Molly through her first “sit” paces as if she had been doing it all her life.

  Molly sat after one try.

  Lulu smiled up at Emily from the grass, where she was hugging Molly.

  “She’s so smart! They all are! Imagine two of them getting it on their first try,” she said. For the first time since Emily had met her, Lulu did not seem clenched or masked. Her smile lit her dry face like a candle. Wherever the changeling lurked, it was not here, not now.

  “Well, sit is the easiest one,” Emily said primly. “Most of them get it the first time. Wait until we get into the advanced parts.”

  “What are those?” Lulu asked. Emily saw that there was a flush along her cheekbones, and the dry mustiness was gone from the fire-blue eyes.

  “They’ll learn ‘stay’ and ‘heel’ next. And ‘down.’ ‘Heel’ is usually not easy for most of them. Then ‘come when called,’ and next the tough stuff like basic dummy retrieving, introduction to gunfire, and introduction to water. The last ones will probably come up after you’re gone, but we can start on the first ones.”

  “Gunfire,” Lulu said thoughtfully. “Is that hard?”

  “For them or you?”

  “Them,” Lulu said, looking coolly at Emily. “I’ve been shooting since I could hold a shotgun.”

  “Oh, so you hunt?”

  “No. I never have. But other people are going to, and their dogs should be trained as well as possible. For the dog’s sake.”

  It was so nearly what Emily thought herself that it made her even more resentful.

  Silently, they put the other two puppies through their first paces, and except for one bobble with Molly on Lulu’s part, it went flawlessly.

  “That’s it for today,” Emily said. “We’ll have as many sessions as it takes, but they’ll be short ones. Puppies have short attention spans.”

  “So what’s next?” Lulu said, wiping the puppy drool off her shorts with her long, tanned hands.

  “Next we exercise. Some of them in the ring, but most of them on leash. The older ones need a lot of it, but they have to stay on their chains.”

  “And then?”

  “Well,” Emily said, “then lunch. And after that, we clean the kennels and put down fresh straw, and look in on the new mothers to see if they need their tits massaged, and feed them, and wash down the concrete floors of the pens. And we check everybody over to see if any of them might need the vet.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we go home for the day,” Emily snapped, losing her temper with this shining paragon. “You’ll be so ready for a bath and a nap you won’t believe it. The boys take the intermed
iate and the upland retrievers in the afternoon. Daddy usually does the real finishing stuff.”

  “Could you teach me to do that, too?”

  “I could, but I won’t. That’s Daddy’s specialty. He’d go ballistic if he caught anybody messing with his superadvanced dogs. He doesn’t even know I can do it.”

  “How did you learn?” There was only interest in the blue eyes.

  “Hid and watched,” Emily said shortly.

  “I can’t imagine your father going ballistic,” Lulu said, smiling a little.

  “Well, it’s his version of ballistic. Believe me, you don’t want to see it.”

  They said no more to each other while they exercised and fed the older dogs. When they parted for lunch, Emily into the house and Lulu up her stairs, they only nodded to each other. Emily heard the window air conditioner go on in the apartment, and slammed the front screen door sulkily. Nobody in the big house had an air conditioner. Even on the sweatiest, most sheet-rumpling nights, Emily endured heat as a necessary, if disagreeable, part of plantation life.

  “The river gives us all the air conditioning we need,” her father was fond of saying. But Emily thought for the first time what it must be like to come in out of the blinding noon heat and turn on a machine and feel cool dry air pour over your body.

  “I bet she stands in front of it naked,” she thought. And then, unwillingly, “But she’s pretty good with the dogs. I wonder if she thinks with them too? It sort of looked like she did.”

  This would be the last blow to Emily’s already bruised ego. She shoved the thought out of her mind and went upstairs to wash the doggy sweat off her face and bangs and hug Elvis before she went down to lunch.

  Elvis was not in his spot on the rug beside her bed, and he was not in the bathroom where his water bowl was. Emily clumped down the stairs into the kitchen, where Cleta was serving lunch.

  “Has anybody seen Elvis?” she said, sliding into her chair. It stuck unpleasantly to her bare thighs.