by John Yount
“I got some stovewood for Grandmother,” he said. “I forgot it last night.”
“Sit down and eat then,” she said.
Again he did as he was told. It seemed to him only proper, and it cost him nothing, although he was a bit relieved to see that she had already eaten. She tied a woolen scarf about her head, but still had her dignity, even wearing the scarf with her house slippers and robe. When she took up the large silky bag she kept her makeup and toilet things in, she stopped suddenly in his line of vision. “I’m real sorry about Lester,” she said. “Hear?”
“Thank you,” he said.
If she had anything else to say, she didn’t say it. After a second, she merely nodded and went out the door.
For a long time he sat, gazing at nothing. His food was without taste, and he’d eaten no more than half of it when he heard her footsteps outside in the stiff, frosty grass and quickly cleaned his plate. It would have been a stronger thing to fast, only he hadn’t thought of it in time. But, no matter. He would make up for that too.
While she dressed for work, he set about cleaning up the dishes; and, again, before he quite knew where the time had gone, she was beside him, smelling of perfume, and somehow, of Green’s Department Store.
“Use soap on those,” she said, pecking his cheek, “and be good.”
The door closed behind her and she was outside, but he could hear her steps for a moment in the stiff grass. Then he couldn’t hear them. But some moments later he could hear the car start, the gravel pop and grind, a change of gears, and the fading sound of the motor. Then he could hear nothing more, and she was truly gone. And to some degree it was already started.
He finished the dishes as though that were a part of it, went out to the barn, carried in wood for the fireplace, and split more wood and carried it in for the stove until his grandmother said, “Merciful heavens, child! That’s a gracious plenty!”
When he had taken the slingshot from its hiding place and got back to the trailer, he sat for a long time with a piece of paper and a pencil, trying to think what to say. It saddened him that anything at all was necessary, that he lived in a time which even required an explanation. But nothing came to him, and he decided to put the pencil aside and hope for inspiration. He got his blanket from under the couch and rolled it as small and tight as he could, only to realize—kneeling on the blanket with his knees—that he had nothing to tie it with. He almost wept at his foolishness and inadequacy. Maybe some spirit was trying to show him that he was too silly even to make a bedroll, never mind anything else. Abruptly he rose and turned his back so as not to see the blanket unfurl. Patience, he told himself. Now was no time for fear, or anger, or doubt, or any of that. He went to the closet in his mother’s bedroom and got out his father’s work shoes. For a moment he pondered the tongueless, disfigured one and then took the rawhide laces from both.
The shoestrings were rotten and they broke, but he knotted them and got the blanket tied. Having the slingshot with him felt right, but he turned it in his hands and considered it further. If only he’d had teaching in such matters. He had none of the knowledge he needed. No medicine. No magic or charms. But the slingshot seemed proper. Part of it was Lester’s, part his father’s, part his. Even the transgression was his, and he suspected it should not be left behind as though he weren’t guilty. There was nothing to go by except what he felt to be true.
He needed to quit thinking. He had a book of matches, his pocketknife, the slingshot, and his blanket. He had no idea what an Indian boy might take or in what season of the year he would be asked to accept his trial. After a moment he went again to the bedroom closet and took down an old leather belt, hanging among a smattering of his father’s neglected neckties. There was nothing else he needed, nor any further reason to linger.
He picked up the pencil and wrote: I’m going off to be by myself for a while. He meant to write more, to address it to someone, to sign it, perhaps to try and explain, but anything else he imagined writing down seemed useless. Worse, in some strange way he could not quite understand, anything further seemed to court dishonesty or boasting.
He strapped the rolled blanket down the center of his back by means of his father’s belt, which he buckled across his chest. His knees burning and his stomach shaky, he let himself out of the trailer and turned south in order to keep the trailer between him and the house, at least until he reached the gully at the end of the cow pasture.
Once he’d crossed the fence and gotten to the bottom of the gully where he couldn’t be seen, he turned east toward the highest of the mountains.
MADELINE TALLY
The moment she pulled out of the driveway, an oddly powerful guilt over James tugged at her stomach. She should have been more sympathetic. It wouldn’t have hurt her to inquire about Lester, to ask, at least, how he was doing. It was just that she felt so harried, so completely taken unawares. Well, she’d make it up to the child, she decided, even send Lester a card or some such thing.
Just as she made that resolution, Leslie, whom she absolutely did not want to think about, popped into her mind, and she saw again the way he’d looked when he came walking into Green’s yesterday just at quitting time. He had looked so self-possessed, so distinguished and stylish, she had known in an instant what she desired and went straight up to him and said, calmly she thought: “I want you to get me one of those … what do you call them?”
Amused, his eyes twinkling, Leslie merely shrugged.
“Restraining orders,” she said. “Yes, restraining orders.”
“Why?” he said, grinning. “For what? For whom?”
“Edward, of course. And he’ll just … I can’t …”
“He’s here?” Leslie asked. “In Cedar Hill?”
“Yes,” she said, “and I won’t put up with it.” She hardly noticed the change in his face or that he’d taken her by the elbow to lead her out of the store; she was too busy blurting out the details of Edward’s sudden, shocking appearance.
“You’re his wife,” he told her once they were on the sidewalk. “If he hasn’t harmed or threatened you, you can’t ask for a restraining order. He has every right to see you.”
Why was he whispering? He released her elbow and took a step backward.
“Go get your coat,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t want all the salesladies to know your private affairs.”
She went back in the store and got her coat and her purse as though she had only just realized she’d been drawn outside in the first place. Something wasn’t quite right, but she was too concerned with Edward to be able to speculate about it, at least until she was back out on the sidewalk and got another look at Leslie’s face.
“Legally, I’m afraid Edward has very little to fear from us,” he told her. He made a sound something like laughter. “I wish I could say the same. He could name me as a corespondent, for example, and make things extremely difficult for me.” He made the sound that was remotely like laughter again, and she realized how uncomfortable he was. “He could sue me for alienation of affection and have a case I sure wouldn’t want to …”
The look she gave him seemed to take his voice away. She nodded very slowly and, once she understood perfectly, turned away toward her car.
“Maidy?” he said behind her. “Maidy wait … please.”
But she was in her little coupe and backing up.
He had stepped off the sidewalk in a lame, halfhearted attempt to follow her when she stopped and held up a forefinger as though she were calling for a point of order. She got his house key from the glove pocket, rolled down the window, and held the key out to him, but he made no move to come any closer. He appeared to be looking somewhere over the roof of her car, perhaps at the sky. “Oh Maidy …” he said, so she dropped the key, backed into the street, and drove home.
Well, she thought, coming over the crest of the mountain into Cedar Hill in the bright morning sun, she could see Leslie’s side of things after all. It simply made no difference to her, since, as far
as she was concerned, he had ceased to exist.
EDWARD TALLY
For some reason he couldn’t justify, he woke up feeling rare and with the firm belief lodged in his head that someday he and Madeline would laugh about all this. Maybe he’d only had a nice dream he couldn’t remember, but the more he thought of it, the more the notion seemed perfectly logical. Also he was ravenously hungry and didn’t have even the slightest hangover. Good corn whiskey, he decided, was very hard to beat.
He wanted a bath and breakfast. Going slow and easy, he told himself, was the key. Madeline had never liked surprises, and yesterday morning was nothing if not a surprise. He rummaged through his belongings, looking for his shaving gear and toothbrush. She just needed time to consider things. To get used to him being around.
To his delight the bathroom at the end of the hall was unoccupied and very clean. If it was necessary, he could court her all over again. After he’d washed up and had himself some breakfast, he’d stop by the hospital and see how all the Bucks were faring. He’d pick up James so he could visit with Lester, and maybe leave Madeline a present. Flowers, say. Flowers were always terrific. With a very simple note. Nothing pushy. Maybe he wouldn’t even use the word love, since she didn’t seem ready to grant him the right. Your husband, that was absolutely all he’d put on the card. A wonderful touch, he thought. Perfect.
JAMES TALLY
A little more than a mile above his grandfather’s house, he crossed a highway he hadn’t even known existed, and half an hour later, when he’d thought himself in wilderness, he crossed a dirt road running through dense woods. It was only wide enough for a single car, had grass down the center of it, and he had no notion where it came from or where it went, but it was still a road. So he kept walking. It had gotten a little easier since he’d admitted to himself that he was afraid.
Some part of him wanted to keep his grandfather’s house and barn near enough, so that, if he needed, a very short hike would bring them in sight again. Even that seemed plenty scary enough. Still, another side of him knew better. If he really meant to leave his childhood behind and become, once and for all, the sort of person he wanted to be, the sort Osceola was, there shouldn’t be compromise. Yet it was Lester as much as anything—taking that terrible beating even though he didn’t know the first thing about fighting and had a damaged heart too—who kept him going. If that plane of absolute, total justice he had always sensed operating constantly and invisibly around him could be appeased, he meant to appease it. For sure Lester had accepted all sorts of pain and humiliation that wasn’t his, had substituted himself and bought James clear. It was time for James Tally, he told himself, to do whatever was necessary to buy Lester clear.
So what if he was afraid? It wouldn’t be honest to try and deny it. He should be taking his fear with him, so that, when his test and trial were over and finished, and he had become a man in his heart, he could leave his fear behind and come home without it. He was certain it would happen, and Lester would be all right too and wouldn’t die.
Nobody should suffer for the other fellow’s cowardice, and maybe cowardice wasn’t so hard to get over, just like he had already got over being cold. When he’d first started out, his feet and hands were very cold and the tips of his ears stung with it, but not any longer. There was even a little sweat down the center of his back where the blanket was strapped so tightly.
A hundred yards or so above the dirt road, he began to move through thickets of rhododendron and laurel, twice and three times higher than his head. Here and there, where the sun didn’t reach, thin patches of snow occupied shallow depressions. They were stitched with the tracks of mice, but occasionally he saw where squirrels had passed over the snow, and once he saw what he took to be the tracks of a grouse. He was at the height of the land and might have stayed if the woods road hadn’t been so near, but he feared any half measure that might put everything in jeopardy.
Through laurel, rhododendron, pine, and occasional stark and leafless hardwoods, he could see a higher mountain across a valley from him. He could not see the bottom of the valley, but he didn’t see any roads or houses or cleared fields either. He didn’t want to go downhill, but he made himself do it while a soft wind in the trees he hadn’t noticed before seemed to breathe his name. Jaaammes, the wind said. Jaaaaaammmmmesss. To have the wind repeat his name so, turned his mouth dry and his knees weak.
When he’d gone only a little way down the steep slope, his feet slipped suddenly on pine needles, and he fell and slid over the lip of a granite outcropping and into space before he could stop himself. A dozen feet below he landed on the rolled blanket strapped to his back so hard there was no breath at all left in him. He gaped like a fish out of water but couldn’t draw any air into his lungs or make a sound. His senses whirled in mad disorder at the sudden prospect of dying, and the hinges of his jaws popped. He struggled to breathe, but it was as if he no longer had lungs to fill, or as if his mouth were only a shallow pocket of stone with no entrance to them. Yet, at last, he began to make an inhuman squeaking like a windlass drawing up a heavy load. But it was a long time later before he could begin to fill his chest.
When he had his breath back, he propped himself on his elbows and found that he was dizzy but not hurt, and because he wasn’t on the ridge anymore, the wind had quit calling his name. He looked behind and above him, sobered that he had fallen so far without breaking anything. Maybe some stern guiding spirit had merely taught him a lesson in order to make him pay attention. He felt chastened and lucky, and after he pondered it for a while, he decided he was grateful. Still a bit raw in the lungs and throat, he rested a little longer, got to his feet, and went on, but much more carefully than before.
EDWARD:
He held half a dozen red roses wrapped in fancy paper in one well-scrubbed hand and knocked on the trailer door with the other. He’d really wanted a dozen roses, but after he’d thumbed through the contents of his billfold, he’d had to reconsider. “Hey, squirt!” he’d called, “you in there?” When there was no answer, he tried the door.
The trailer was spotlessly clean and seemed inhabited solely by a piece of notepaper on the table. The message gave him a start until he realized it wasn’t Madeline’s hand. James had written it.
“Huh,” he said and began looking for something to hold the roses. He didn’t want to take them out of the paper, which looked so festive and official. Finally he found his favorite iced-tea glass, half filled it with water, rolled back the paper enough to stick the stems in, and pressed the card open so she would see at a glance: “Your Husband.”
Back at the house he rapped gently on the kitchen door before he pushed it open to see Bertha working the dasher of a churn. “You wouldn’t know where James got off to, would you?” he asked her.
“Well, he was right here just a little bit ago. He’s not down to the trailer?”
He shook his head. “Huh,” he said. “His buddy’s doing better today, and I thought James would be anxious to see him.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Looks like I’m a little out of step with everybody this morning. I guess I ought to get Roy home so he can milk, but I’ll come back by.”
Mild and friendly and without missing a single beat at the churn, Bertha said, “All right, and if I see that young’n before you get back, I’ll just sit on him till you get here.”
“Thank you,” Edward said.
“You might take a look out to the barn,” she said behind him as he was closing the door.
He didn’t see him at the barn, but he called his name and, after a moment, cupped his hand around his mouth and twice made a bobwhite whistle.
A swift, tumbling river with a few mossy rocks sticking out of it occupied the floor of the valley. It smelled sweet and woodsy, but he needed to find a way across, and he walked a long way upstream before he found a place that looked broad and shallow. He’d wanted to get across it and stay dry, but he’d seen no blow-downs that came close to reaching across the river and no s
pot, either, where he could cross jumping from rock to rock. After pondering the riffles and eddies and smooth, slick spots for a while, he stripped to the waist, tied his shoes together, stuffed his socks in the toes, and used his father’s belt to strap his britches, underwear, and shoes to his bedroll. Holding his belongings under his arm and already dithering with the cold, he stepped into the water.
It was frigid, and when it reached his knees, it was pushy and tried to climb him. His teeth rattled, and his legs felt stiff and numb by the time he got halfway across; still, the river didn’t look as if it would get any deeper.
But somehow the very next step dunked his genitals, and while he gasped and grunted and struggled to keep from going any further, he took another step to his waist. He lost his footing and almost went down completely before he recovered. But even so, his shirt got soaked almost to the armpits, he dunked one end of his bedroll, and filled one dangling shoe with water. After that, all caution left him and he floundered toward the bank on feet and legs as senseless as if they were made of brass.
Once on shore he shucked quickly out of his shirt and undershirt and dried himself on the driest part of the blanket. Luckily his britches and underwear hadn’t gotten wet; and, stiff with cold, he stumbled and hopped about, pulling them on over the diminished knob of his penis and a scrotum small and hard as a walnut. He checked for his slingshot, knife, and matches and found them all safe; but when he took up his shoes, he discovered that his dry shoe still had a sock snuggled in the toe, but the wet shoe was empty. Had he glimpsed something pale and limp floating away when he’d almost fallen? Just out of the tail of his eye? But he’d been fighting to keep from going under, and whatever it was had had no power to distract him.
He wrapped the blanket about him like a robe and went off down the bank looking for it, thinking maybe a long limb could fetch it in. But when at last he saw the sock, much further downstream than he thought it would be, it was barely afloat and in the very middle of the river. But even that disappointment didn’t matter long, since when he got close enough to be certain of what he saw, the sock was riding a little sluice of water dropping down between two rocks, and at the bottom it got sucked under. The pool where the sock disappeared looked deep, and it was crazy to consider shucking out of his clothes to swim out and search for it.
