by Lewis Shiner
The future was the hardest thing to talk about.
“Never thought I’d end up a banker,” Mercy said. “I always thought I’d be some kind of doctor or curandera or something. But there’s a kind of momentum gets going when you’re good at something and they keep giving you raises and the people you work with are funny and decent.”
“Is that where you see yourself in ten years?”
“I don’t look that far ahead. One day at a time is about all I can manage.” It was early Sunday morning. They’d woken up long enough to make love and now seemed to be headed toward sleep again, Robert idly rubbing her back, his sun-browned hand darker than the secret skin between her shoulder blades. “And you?” she said, turning her head toward him. “You seem to be more the master-plan type.”
“My master plan didn’t work out,” he said. “So I guess I’m with you. One day at a time.”
When the time came to leave, he stood at the front door holding her. “I can come next weekend,” he said.
“Hush now,” she said. “Don’t talk. Kiss me and go and don’t look back.”
He did look back, though, from the porch steps, to see her touch her lips with the tips of her fingers and smile before she closed the door.
*
With a churning in his stomach, he saw Ruth’s car in the driveway of the house on Woodrow Street.
He’d been thinking that he might tell her he wanted a divorce. With a few hours to work it through and prepare himself, he thought he might find the way. First he needed to be away from Mercy, so that his head would stop spinning.
Now he felt only panic. Despite the shower, he smelled of Mercy. The alibis he’d prepared seemed hopelessly futile.
Ruth was in the kitchen. She had taken the fried chicken and fixings out and set them on the counter. She was on the verge of tears. “You didn’t even eat the food I cooked for you.”
“I’m sorry, honey, I was working all weekend. I’ve only been home long enough to sleep.” He wondered if she’d already noticed that the bed was untouched.
“There’s so little you let me do for you anymore. Now you don’t want my cooking. You make me feel useless!”
Sex, he nearly said. Physical contact. Intimacy. These were the things she could have given him. He didn’t dare say the words, even in anger. What if she took him up on it?
“I’m hungry now,” he said. He got down a plate and put a cold drumstick on it and spooned up some slaw. In fact he was starving. They hadn’t found time to eat more than a few cold cuts and some eggs all weekend.
“Wait,” she said, suddenly cheerful again. “Let me heat it up for you. You go take a shower and change clothes. You smell!”
*
On Monday morning he drove straight to the job site, ready to play it by ear with Howard. He arrived to find a vacant lot.
Mitch didn’t come into work until ten. Robert followed him into his office and closed the door. “What happened to the Dreamland Shoeshine Shop?”
“I sent a crew out Saturday to take it down.”
“While nobody was looking.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t do it at midnight.”
“I thought about it.”
“And you didn’t trust me to do it?”
“I tried calling you on Saturday morning. Very early on Saturday morning.” Mitch grinned from his chair, hands behind his head. “You look different this morning, Bobby. More relaxed, somehow.”
Robert walked away.
Sitting at the drafting table he thought, This is how lives go out of control. Secrets, lies, utter disregard for the niceties of society.
He couldn’t wait for the weekend to see Mercy again. On Tuesday he called her at work, then phoned Ruth to tell her he would be late. He drove straight to Beamon Street at five o’clock and she met him at the door, already half-undressed.
*
In October, Mercy took him to meet her mother.
She lived in Bentonville, at the southern edge of Johnston County, 15 miles from the Bynum farm as the mockingbird flew, twice that distance by car. Bentonville was the scene of the biggest Civil War battle in North Carolina, as the Confederacy mounted one final effort to stop Sherman’s army on its march north from Georgia.
Thickets of historical markers grew on every corner, and it seemed that Civil War tourism was the town’s major industry. “Didn’t it make you crazy to grow up here, with all these Confederate monuments all over the place?” Robert asked her. They’d taken his Chevelle, and she was tucked into his right shoulder.
“No. All I had to do was remember what happened here. The Confederates got their asses kicked.”
In the mountains where Robert grew up, the Civil War was not the issue that it still was in the lowlands. “Ruth just calls it ‘the War,’ ” he said. As always when he brought up Ruth’s name, he felt awkward and wished he hadn’t done it. “As if Hitler and the Kaiser and Vietnam and all those other wars aren’t even worth discussing.”
Behind Mercy’s even tone he could feel her discomfort as well. “And the South was just misunderstood, I’m sure. It wasn’t about slavery, it was about economics, right? Like a cotton and tobacco economy could sustain itself for five minutes without slaves.”
“It’s one of the many things we don’t talk about.” He hated the resignation in his own voice. “Listen,” he said. “I think I’m going to drive up there today.”
“To the farm?”
“I have to tell her. Maybe if I do it there, with her family around and everything, it’ll be easier.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? They might lynch you.”
“I can’t wait any longer. I have to do something.”
“Turn here,” she said.
Her mother’s house was on the far side of town, hidden in live oaks and high grass. The wood-frame structure was covered in orange and black asphalt shingles, the kind of house that Robert had passed a thousand times on rural roads and associated with a desperate poverty impossibly distant from his own life. All his attempts to prepare himself didn’t prevent the shock. This is what it means, he thought. If you’re black in the southern US, this kind of house is somewhere in your family.
Mercy’s mother was in her fifties. She’d had Mercy late in life compared to many of the girls of her generation. She’d never been married, never had a steady man, never, according to Mercy, showed much desire for the opposite sex or had regrets about the lack. “Something,” Mercy said, “I did not inherit from her.”
Her mother must have been watching for them, because she came out the front door before Robert finished parking in the rutted dirt driveway. She was thin and powerful, with shiny, defined muscle groups in her arms. She wore khaki slacks, a sleeveless blouse, and a white kerchief around her head. Mercy had told the truth about her face. It was beautiful, a dark, lined version of Mercy’s.
She took Robert’s hand and smiled and said, “Come inside.”
The house had few windows and was dark even in the bright autumn sunshine. Oil lamps stood on the tables, and Robert realized with a mild shock that there was no electricity. The room had an earthy, musky scent, faint and not unpleasant.
“Sit down, sit down,” she said. “I’ll bring some lemonade.”
Instead Robert was drawn to an altar in the corner. There he found images of the Virgin, from Byzantine to cloyingly sentimental, black and white and color, torn from books and pamphlets and magazines. There were bottles and tin cups and plates, holding rum and bits of cake and other substances Robert couldn’t identify. There were tangles of wire, candles, bits of ribbon, chunks of wood, rocks, dime-store jewelry, all heaped together on a wooden table that could have dated back to “the War.”
“You know not to touch, right?” Mercy whispered behind him.
“Yes, baby,” Robert said. “I know.” He reached back for her hand. It was hard for him to be in the same room with her without being in physical contact.
&nb
sp; Other objects covered the walls. Pieces of tin with nail-hole patterns forming hearts, crosses, birds. Old farm tools. A painting on wood, highly stylized, of a voluptuous woman carrying a jug on her head with stars all around her.
“Where did that come from?” Robert asked.
“I brought that to her from Haiti. It’s Erzulie.”
Her mother came in with a tray of mismatched glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. “You have so many beautiful things,” Robert said.
“Thank you,” she said. She seemed wary, and Robert didn’t blame her. Mercy had told her everything: that he was married, that he was white, that they were in love. On the face of it, he had to admit, he didn’t sound like a good bet.
They all sat on the couch. Mercy asked about her mother’s bunions, her mother asked about things at Mechanics and Farmers. Finally Robert said, “I should go.”
“He’s got an errand he’s got to run while we’re up here, Mama.”
“You seeing your wife’s family?” she asked. The look she gave him was frank and unemotional.
“That’s right,” Robert said, trying to sound casual. “The Bynums.”
“The Bynums.”
“You know them?”
“Everybody around here knows Wilmer Bynum.”
Robert waited, but there was no more.
“Will you be here for supper?” Mercy asked.
It was not yet eleven in the morning. “I would think so. I could call if I get held up.”
Mercy shook her head. No, of course there was no phone. “Expect me,” he said, “but don’t panic if I’m not here.”
As sick with nerves as he felt, it was a relief to have made up his mind. The thought of being able to come home to Mercy every night gave him strength.
It took the better part of an hour to work his way through Bentonville, up to West Smithfield, then over to the Bynum place. He drove the entire way with his jaw clenched and both hands gripping the wheel.
Turning from the paved highway onto the dirt road into the farm, Robert saw that the house had begun to sprout another cancer-like growth upstairs. The roof extension was covered in tarpaper and the exterior walls were nothing but empty 2 × 6 framing.
As always, the house swarmed with activity. Children ran through the fallow fields, some barely old enough to stagger, others in their teens, some with baseballs and gloves, others apparently running for the sheer hell of it. Ruth’s mother was hanging washing on the line, and two old men sat on the long front porch in rocking chairs. Ruth herself was perched on a child’s swing at the side of the house, watching her cousin, Greg Vaughan, lead his dog through a routine of tricks.
Robert parked in a field adjacent to the house, next to a collection of old and new pickup trucks, Ruth’s Buick, an ancient Packard, and a ’57 Studebaker with headlights like jet intakes and a rocket body that ended in tail fins.
When Ruth saw him she ran up and hugged him and gave him a smacking, theatrical kiss. “What a nice surprise! What brings you all the way out here?”
Robert shrugged. Greg eyed him suspiciously, and his dog, a big-chested German Shepherd, growled and looked ready to attack. Greg was in high school now, tall and gangly, his hair cut so short it had no apparent color. He wore faded blue jeans with iron-on patches over the knees, a white T-shirt, and high-topped basketball sneakers. “Greg,” Robert said formally.
“Mr. Cooper.”
“Your dog doesn’t seem to like me.”
“Funny about that. Usually he only acts like that around colored folk.” He gave Robert a penetrating look. “You been around colored? Maybe he smells them on you.”
“I work with black people,” Robert said, instinctively protecting his relationship with Mercy. Only then did he see the racist trap Greg had led him into.
“Duke here has been showing me some of his tricks,” Ruth said. She stood three feet away from Robert, hands behind her back. “He can dance, and he can roll over while he’s in the middle of running, and all kinds of things.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” Robert said. “You trained him to do all that?”
“Not really,” Greg said. “More the other way around. Everybody’s got their behaviors and instincts. You pay attention, they’ll show you what they like to do.”
“Well, don’t stop on my account,” Robert said. “I’d like to see his tricks too.”
Greg had never stopped staring at him. “I think he’s tired now.”
To break the uncomfortable silence, Robert said, “What year are you now, senior?”
“Junior.”
“You going on to college?”
The boy shrugged. “I have some hopes.”
“Greg is the star of the South Johnston High basketball team,” Ruth said. “He’s got his eye on a basketball scholarship to Duke.”
Greg virtually cringed with embarrassment. “It’s bad luck to talk about it.”
“Well, I wish you luck with it,” Robert said. “College would at least keep you out of the draft.”
He half expected an argument, given the boy’s conservative politics. Greg only nodded. “Uncle Wilmer says not to worry. He says he has a feeling I won’t get picked.” Wilmer’s feelings were reliable; he was certain to have connections at the draft board like he had everywhere else in the county. He had officially adopted the boy a few years ago. Greg’s mother had been a distant cousin of Wilmer’s, and nobody ever mentioned his father, who had apparently abandoned the two of them.
The same way he was about to abandon Ruth, he thought guiltily.
“Your Uncle Wilmer is a powerful man,” Robert said.
“You can’t have too many friends, that’s what Uncle Wilmer says.”
“Well, I’m glad you don’t have to go over there.”
“Uncle Wilmer says they’re making a hash of it. Politicians won’t let the Army win. He doesn’t want me getting killed because of a bunch of damned liberals over here. Besides, he needs me on the farm, when my basketball days are over.” He looked at Ruth with unmistakable love. “He went and had all those girls and no sons, and there needs to be a man around here, somebody to learn from him.”
The boy was spoiling for a fight, verbal or otherwise. Robert had to remind himself that if Ruth was the prize they were competing for, he no longer wanted it.
Greg waved a farewell to Ruth, ignoring Robert. Then he whistled to Duke, the dog, and walked away. Duke had a final growl for Robert and a look that said, “I’ll be back for you later.”
“That boy’s in love with you,” Robert said.
“Little Greg?”
“Little Greg’s hormones are in full flower. He wanted to club me over the head, throw you over his shoulder, and take you to his cave.”
“I think it’s sweet that you’re so jealous.”
“I’m not—” Robert reigned in his irritation and reminded himself why he was there. Merely being around Ruth made him slip back into defensive jabbing. “I’m not jealous,” he said.
“Is everything all right? You never come out here anymore.”
“Yes, everything’s—no. No, it’s not all right. We have to talk.”
“Go on.” She looked vulnerable and afraid.
“Look, I don’t have to tell you this marriage isn’t working. We never spend any time together. You’re out here every weekend. This is where your heart is, not with me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know it is. When was the last time we made love?”
“I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”
“New Year’s Eve. You’d had some champagne. That was over nine months ago.”
“You make me feel pressured. I feel the pressure for sex all the time. I can’t relax and be myself.”
Robert felt his resolve bog down in absurdities. He took a deep breath. “I want a divorce,” he said.
She ran to him and threw her arms around his chest. “No, Robert, no! Don’t say that! It’s not true.”
“Ruth, I—”
“I love you. You’re my husband. We have our beautiful little house and our life together, and we’re happy! I don’t know what’s bothering you all of a sudden, but you can’t throw away the happiness we have because you’re having a bad day or a bad week.”
The intensity of her belief was so strong that it nearly infected Robert. He took her by the upper arms and held her away from him. “It’s been years, Ruth. Years. Understand that. The last three years I’ve been with you I’ve been miserable.”
“Then I’ll change! Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Anything!”
He felt as if he were torturing a puppy. Her eyes were full of innocence and love and pain. “I can’t ask you to be someone you’re not,” Robert said.
“Is there—is there someone else?”
Robert had braced himself for this, had meant to tell her the truth, but now, at the crisis point, he didn’t have the strength. “No,” he said. “This is about you and me. The marriage doesn’t work. I want out.”
“If there’s nobody else, then you can at least give me a chance. Give me a month. I’ll make you happy. Remember how it was in Jamaica? It can be that way again.”
He did remember, and standing there in the autumn sunlight, with her so close, he couldn’t deny that he was still physically attracted to her. He hesitated, and Ruth saw it. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him under the ear. “Stay the night. I’ll give you what you want. Remember our first time? It was here at the farm, right upstairs.”
He was aroused, painfully so. He found himself wondering if they could sneak inside now, tiptoe up the stairs. He imagined them naked, imagined himself thrusting into her, and then…
