by John Yount
EDWARD TALLY
He was exhausted but wide awake, and all his senses were rubbed raw and keen by the time he entered the remote keep of the mountains and valleys where, for years, he’d climbed poles and pulled cable for Watauga Light and Power Company. Every turn of the road, every bridge, stream, dwelling, barn, field, and fence row was familiar, down to what looked like the selfsame haystacks and shocks of corn. Even the ragweed in the ditches was just as he remembered, and, bruised by man or animal or merely the wind, the scent it gave up was exactly right. And there was the scent of fallen leaves, melting frost, apples, and earth. The cold, varnished smell of fall—as well as what his nose believed it smelled of fur and feather—the wild spice of squirrel and rabbit, grouse and quail from his hunting days, and of gunpowder too, which allowed him to possess them. And all this pierced him as though it were the very soul of homecoming, as though he were returning to his true religion, whose tenets were not merely Madeline and James, but all the aspects of this early morning. Why his family and this familiar ground seemed to share a single spirit, he didn’t know, but it felt real and true.
He was sure Bertha Marshall had told him Madeline worked at Green’s Department Store, and he couldn’t think what to do except walk right in and present himself. He thought of stopping somewhere and calling first, but the idea scared him. He didn’t want to give Madeline time to remember all she held against him, and so, work up her anger and defenses. Anyway, it seemed to him that if he appeared without warning, she’d somehow be able to see his love better, in a truer light. She’d have to acknowledge its power to pull him back to her across a great distance without any pale, mechanical announcement beforehand. Anyhow he didn’t want to give her a chance to turn him down or to run off where he couldn’t find her.
It was only a bit more than eight miles to Cedar Hill, fifteen or twenty minutes, and the closer he got, the more nervous he became. His hand shook when he fished a cigarette from his pocket and shook when he lit it. He glanced at himself in the mirror and saw that his eyes were red and he needed a shave, that his shirt was wrinkled and his hair was every which way, as though he’d just gotten out of bed. He looked like a drunkard and a bum, which he feared was just the way Madeline thought of him. He rubbed his face vigorously with his hand, as though that would help, and combed his hair with his fingers. Hell, maybe she would pity him. He’d take that. He’d take anything as long as it would make her hold still long enough to hear him out. If she would do that, then he was certain everything could be saved, that his life and hers and James’s too would make sense once again.
He flipped his cigarette out the window and lit another, his last, and drove the final few miles into Cedar Hill with sweat rolling down his ribs despite the cold air pushing through the open window.
Downtown there was a parking place right in front of Green’s Department Store, and he took it, although he sat behind the steering wheel for a long, long moment before he worked up the courage to go inside. He didn’t see her anywhere on the main floor or on the mezzanine above. Finally, feeling very uncomfortable, he tapped a saleslady on the shoulder who was refolding a man’s dress shirt. “I’m looking for Madeline Tally,” he said. “Can you tell me if she works here?”
He had the feeling she gave him a quick appraisal. She seemed a little surprised and not much impressed. “I think she’s not coming in until after lunch,” she said brightly. “Can I give her a message?”
“I’m her husband,” he said without knowing why he’d said it. It certainly wasn’t a proper message, since he didn’t want Madeline to know he wasn’t in Pittsburgh until the moment she saw him; but somehow he wanted to set this lady straight.
“Oh,” she said and gave him a different kind of glance. Although he couldn’t quite read the results of this one, he could tell she was embarrassed. “Her son … your son wasn’t feeling well, I think, and didn’t go to school, and she was looking after him, so …” She blushed. “I didn’t take the call, but I can find out for you, Mr.… Tally.”
“I’ll just go on over,” he said and blushed himself as though to keep her company.
In the car again, feeling compromised, he yanked the Packard into reverse and backed into the street without looking. Luckily no one was coming, but in glancing in the mirror long after it would have done him any good, he was struck again with how seedy he looked; and the sight of his once favorite barber shop a few doors down filled him with sudden inspiration. He had time. Plenty of time.
There was one new barber he didn’t know, but otherwise nothing had changed, and being called by name and welcomed home with surprise and cheer made him feel better. He brought in a suitcase and asked to use the back room, where he could wash up and change. The black shoe shine, who was so old his brown eyes were nearly blue, brought him soap and a clean towel, and Edward stripped himself before the sink and washed Paris Pergola and Pittsburgh away, he hoped, forever.
When he got back in his car forty-five minutes later, the man who looked back at him from the rearview mirror was much more acceptable. His hair had been washed, cut, and combed. His face had been wrapped in hot towels, lathered, shaved clean, and massaged with shaving lotion. Errant hairs had been snipped from his eyebrows, nose, and ears. And finally, eyewash had made his eyes as clear as if he’d never missed a night’s sleep or had a drink in all his days. “The works,” Roy Harris, the owner, called it and claimed it had restored many a sinner.
MADELINE TALLY
She’d had a well-deserved cry, a late breakfast, and a relaxed soak in the tub, so maybe it wasn’t such a terrible day, but one of the good kind that drew people closer and made them stronger. Anyway that was how she’d decided to feel about it until someone knocked on the trailer door a little too loudly, and she opened it and found Edward. But in that moment of complete and utter cognition, all her thinking seemed suddenly meaningless, and everything she’d said and done in the last three months seemed null and void. He was supposed to be out of her life, a thousand miles away in another world. It was as if no time had passed since she’d seen him last and what had transpired from that day forward had only been a dream. If he existed, could she? She could not speak.
“Hello, honey,” he said.
“Dad!” James said from somewhere behind her.
“Hey, squirt!” Edward said. “Your granddaddy said you’d had a little misunderstanding on the school grounds, and I see he wasn’t foolin.”
James came from behind her, brushing past her hip, not fast but not slow either, and was out the door and embracing his father. It wasn’t something she’d ever seen him do, and it stung her.
“You came home!” James croaked, his face pressed into Edward’s shirt.
Edward patted the crown of the boy’s head. “We’ll see, son,” he said.
How dare you? she thought. What gives you the right? How dare you when we’re trying to make a decent life! She felt tears coming to her eyes, but she swiped them away as quickly as they formed. “James, you run up to the house now,” she said, surprising herself that she had a voice and that it sounded so even. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Edward held James gently away, looked in his eyes, and nodded that it was all right, that he should do as he’d been told; and in spite of herself, Madeline wanted to slap them both for the understanding that seemed to pass between them so easily, when Edward had done nothing, nothing whatever, to earn it.
“Hey, I’ll see you in a little bit, buddy,” Edward said, but when he turned to her again, there was something so intimate in his eyes, she almost couldn’t face it. All the years they had been married were contained in the way he was looking at her; still, she was having none of it and stared back at him steadily and evenly until his expression faded. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“So,” he said, “how have you been?”
She wanted to tell him she’d been just dandy until a few minutes ago. “All right,” she said.
“James has grown,” he said. He laughed and
shook his head. “That’s some black eye and fat lip he’s sporting.”
She said none of the things that came to mind.
“I’d like to come in,” he said.
She stepped back and allowed him to enter.
“Well,” he said, glancing about as though he might tell her how nice the place looked but then realized how foolish it would sound. He sat down on the couch. “I talked to Bertha and Harley a little before I came out. They sure don’t change much do they? They look real good. I even got the feeling they were glad to see me.”
She said nothing.
“Jesus, honey, I drove a hell of a ways to get here.”
“Why?” she said.
He looked at the floor and shook his head. “You can hold on to being mad longer and tighter than any woman I ever met,” he said and laughed a short, bitter laugh.
She felt as if her life, her true life, had snapped back into focus, and the question wasn’t If he existed, could she? The question was Would she ever feel quite real, quite whole without him, or would she and the whole world always feel false and made up and out of kilter? “I got over being mad a long time ago,” she said. “I’m something else now. When I know what it is, I’ll tell you.”
“You sound mad,” he said, looking at her.
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
He smiled faintly, his eyes mild, his forehead a quandary of wrinkles. “You know, I think you’ve been mad at me for as long as I can remember.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she declared, but she knew better. There was no reason to admit it because it was beside the point, and anyway, he’d earned her anger moment by moment and day by day. But it was true, she’d always been mad at him, and how odd to have married him, even so, and to have stayed with him for fourteen years. “I’m disgusted,” she said, “not mad. I can’t go back and live my life over, Edward Tally, but I can make a new one. I thought you understood that. I thought you agreed!”
He nodded.
Her voice turned suddenly pitiful, and her eyes welled up. “You said you’d give me a divorce. It’s not right for you to be here!” She stamped her foot and hated herself at once for the impotence of the gesture. “It’s not! It’s not good for James and it’s not good for me!”
“I love you,” he said.
“Never,” she said. “You never did. Don’t even say it. We count! We matter! And if you love someone …” She glared at him, unable to go on. “Oh, don’t you do it,” she said in a softer voice. “Don’t you dare do this.”
“Just let me speak my piece,” he said, looking at her in a way that carried with it all their time together, all their years of marriage, “that’s all I ask.”
She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t interested, that whatever he said would only be a trap to pull her and James back into the old life they’d led. But another part of her wanted to hear what he had to say, dangerous or not, wanted his apologies and promises if only as an acknowledgment of all his wrongdoing. It would be small payment for what she had endured, but better than nothing, because, when she’d heard him out, she’d know the decision she’d already made was the only proper one, and she could tell him what he offered was too damned little and too damned late. She let him know with her expression that she’d listen, but that was all, and he seemed to understand because he wasn’t able to look at her anymore.
He leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and pondered the floor. “It’s taken me a long time, all my life, to learn what I know now,” he said at last. “Maybe it’s not much. Maybe a fellow ought to know it from the start,” he said, “but I didn’t. I didn’t know it until you asked me for a divorce.” He looked up at her miserably, looked down again, and rubbed his hands together as though they were cold. “Hell,” he said, “not even then, because I was mad and my pride was hurt.”
His voice suddenly grew thin, as though from a blow to the throat. “Maybe I didn’t even know it all until yesterday, until last night.” He cleared his throat, but when he went on, his voice was just as hoarse and thin as before. “I love my family,” he said. For a long time he didn’t say anything more. “Without you and James,” he added at last, his voice scarcely more than a hoarse whisper, “I don’t have anything.” He shook his head as though the knowledge still astonished him. He cleared his throat again and sat with his head hung between his shoulders, rubbing his palms together.
There was nothing to fling back in his face, she realized. No apologies. No promises. Who but a man, and an arrogant man at that, would come so far to say so little? Not a word about coming home drunk time after time, about not coming home at all, about yanking them all around the country without so much as begging their pardon, abandoning them altogether whenever and wherever he chose. But even the offenses were beside the point; it was the attitude that allowed it all to happen that incensed her. Was that all he was going to say? Was he done? He could have written a postcard.
She was suddenly out of control. She knew it but could not stop it from happening. It was as though the shock of seeing him again was just now having its full effect. She could feel it inside her like a fire consuming her from her belly to the very roots of her hair, but doing something strange and icy to her genitals, weakening her thighs and knees, making her ears ring. For a moment she thought she might faint. She had to get away from him, there wasn’t any doubt of that. She looked about without knowing exactly what she was looking for until she spied her car keys and took them up, her purse, and snatched it. “I won’t … I can’t stand …” She could have pulled out her hair that he was in her life again, that he was right before her in the flesh. “I have to go to work!” she said and rushed out of the trailer. She felt deaf, dumb, and blind and had gotten in her car and started it before she realized his car was behind her and she couldn’t get out of the driveway. She thought of blowing her horn. She thought of backing into him and trying to push him into the highway; but then she realized if she pulled up and didn’t mind getting into Lily’s flowers, she might be able to miss him. She did exactly that, and although she was out of control and left ugly half-moon tire tracks through the garden, she didn’t hit the Packard and managed to slew her little coupe around into the highway. She didn’t even think of James until she was in high gear and going as fast as her car would go, but she couldn’t help that either. She couldn’t do anything except what she was doing until she got her wits together.
JAMES TALLY
He climbed the stile and went on toward the house where he’d been sent. Although it wasn’t cold, he was shivering; and the heat from the wood cook stove in the kitchen would have felt good, except he dreaded his grandmother. She was such a strong, steady, dignified woman, she would be shamed and grieved by what was going on. It wasn’t likely that she’d ask him any questions, but he didn’t want to be around her or his grandfather either. It would be painful and embarrassing. He didn’t even want his grandfather looking out the window of the post office and catching sight of him. Trembling from excitement and fear, he crept up on the porch and sat on its front edge by the quince bushes, where an obtuse triangle of sunlight still reached the floorboards and warmed them.
He hugged his knees to his chest, awed by the sight of his father’s car in the driveway. Could it really be there? Right there? It was all milky down its sides with road film from having brought his father such a great distance to be with them, to be with his mother at that moment. Maybe this time it would work.
But as far back as he could remember there had been some persistent, incomprehensible trouble between his mother and father. Even in the good times he’d always been able to feel it lurking just under the surface; and sooner or later, he’d hear its edge in his mother’s voice or glimpse some dark hint of it in his father’s eye. And sometimes, when the trouble broke through and they fought, they fought about him, James, so he knew he had a part in it too.
All his shivering seemed to have shaken so
mething loose inside him so that he could feel it vibrating in the center of his chest like a tuning fork. “Please,” he said and began to rock himself back and forth, “please, please, please.” He knew better than to think into words what he wanted. For sure it wouldn’t happen if he spoke it aloud or even thought it. Something powerful seemed to haunt him just in order to see to it that what he most needed and desired never occurred, and he could feel it sniffing around him now, so he cleared his mind and rocked himself to-and-fro.
Thinking it might betray him even to be caught looking at his father’s car, he wedged his chin against his knees and stared at the quince bushes. He could see a bit of his cheek puffed up into his line of vision, and he could see his own eyelashes because his eye was so swollen. His eyelashes looked as big as tree limbs, were incredibly tangled and disorganized, and seemed safe to think about. So was his lip, which felt heavy and tight and itchy as though it had been stung by a bee. But that led him to thinking about Earl and how afraid of Earl he’d been and how he hadn’t followed his father’s advice at all; yet he’d gotten a beating just the same. Not facing up to a bully, just as his father had warned, never worked. It made his stomach hurt to think that if he’d stood up to Earl from the beginning, he would have paid no bigger price, but he’d have been brave. So, after all, what right did he have to hope for anything?
He tried not to think of that. He rocked himself and tried not to think of anything at all, as though if he could empty his head of all thoughts, he might be insignificant enough to escape proper justice, might be invisible enough for fate to ignore. But the devastated musette bag of fishing equipment in the closet came into his mind. Sure he’d asked his mother if he could borrow some hooks and sinkers that first time, but he’d never asked again, and little by little, through carelessness and waste and by giving away what didn’t belong to him, almost everything had disappeared. And in that same closet sat his father’s shoes, one of their tongues brutally cut away. He’d asked no one if he could destroy the shoes because he’d already known what the answer would be, and so he was twice guilty, guilty before he’d even committed the act, which was far worse. He had no rights at all. He knew nothing was going to turn out well because he’d been pushing everything the other way, and there was no one to thank but himself.
