The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

  “That man pisses me off,” said Luker to his sister and daughter.

  “You ought not let him bother you like that,” said Leigh. “He’s always been just like that.”

  “India, look through the window and see if you can see where they’ve gone.”

  “They went upstairs,” said India, who had already been watching.

  “He doesn’t want us to hear,” sighed Leigh. “Mama’s been doing so well—I hope he doesn’t say anything to upset her.”

  “His just coming here upset her,” said Luker. “Didn’t you see how nervous she was?”

  Leigh nodded. “Sometimes Daddy upsets her without intending to, I think.”

  “Daddy is an asshole,” said Luker finally. He remembered how many times as a child he had seen Lawton escort Big Barbara to their bedroom; the two would remain there for an hour, and Luker could hear their voices, mysterious and low and earnest, through the walls. Big Barbara would emerge tearful and wanting a drink—no matter the time of day. Things hadn’t changed, it seemed; but now that he was thirty-three, Luker had some idea of what was being said in the bedroom upstairs.

  Luker and India and Leigh sat silent on the porch; the swing chains creaked in the damp air. The Gulf was a silvering gray; pristine and cold, with a tide much higher than was usual. Now and then, when the wind was just right, they heard a word or two that was spoken upstairs in the house, by Lawton or by Big Barbara.

  “I hate it when they go upstairs like that,” said Leigh, and Luker knew that she too had those memories.

  With a newspaper to shield her head, Odessa strode across the yard from the Savage house and came up onto the porch. She seated herself in a chair a little removed from the others, drew her Bible out of a paper sack, and remarked: “Nothing much to do today but read . . .”

  “They still talking over there, Dauphin and that man?” asked Leigh.

  Odessa nodded.

  “What are they talking about? Did you hear anything?” asked Luker.

  Odessa nodded. “I heard. I was cleaning upstairs, and I heard what they were saying. I heard what Mr. Lawton said, and I heard what that other man said too.”

  “What’d they say?” asked Luker again, his interest aroused by Odessa’s hesitant manner.

  “Mr. Lawton trying to get Mr. Dauphin to sell Beldame . . .” said Odessa with pursed lips.

  “What!” cried Leigh.

  “Oh, shit!” breathed Luker in disgust.

  “Oil,” said Odessa. “They say they got oil out there”—she pointed vaguely over the gray water—“and they want all this place for setting things up on. They want to tear the houses down.”

  “Goddamn that fucker to hell,” Luker said in a low voice to his daughter, and she nodded her acquiescence in this anathema.

  “Dauphin’s not gone sell,” said Leigh to her brother. “He’s not gone let Lawton talk him into it.”

  India stood and pointed across St. Elmo’s Lagoon. “Why don’t they buy land over there? Farther down the coast? Wouldn’t that be the same thing? Then they wouldn’t have to tear the houses down.”

  Luker answered this: “Water’s shallow along this part of the coast. It’s only right here, just along Beldame, that the Gulf has any depth near the shore.”

  “They said only this place would do,” Odessa concurred.

  “So that’s why that man came,” said Luker. “Leigh, if Dauphin sells, you’re going to have enough shekels to pave the Dixie Graves Parkway.”

  “I hope he doesn’t sell,” shrugged Leigh. “We’ve got so much money now I think I ought to have me twenty-seven maids instead of just three.”

  “So,” said Luker to Odessa, “what’d Dauphin say to the man?”

  “Said he’d think about it, that’s all, said he’d think about it. And when I come downstairs, they had all these maps spread out over the table and the man was showing Mr. Dauphin stuff.”

  “That was Dauphin being polite,” said Leigh.

  “India,” said Luker, “why don’t you run get an ice pick and punch some holes in that boat out there?”

  A few minutes later Lawton came downstairs from his conference with Big Barbara and went out without speaking to his family again. India from her post at the corner of the verandah reported that he had gone in the back door of the Savage house. Ten minutes later he returned through the rain with Sonny Joe Black and Dauphin close behind him. Both Sonny Joe and Lawton took hearty leave of Dauphin, cautioned him to think things over carefully, and promised they’d all talk again when Dauphin was back in Mobile on the first of July.

  Luker, Leigh, and India received the parting politenesses of the two men with reserve that bordered on rudeness. Big Barbara did not come down to see her husband off; she remained in the bedroom upstairs.

  As their boat sputtered away in the direction of Gulf Shores, Luker remarked: “Maybe if the rain keeps up, it’ll wash away the stink.”

  Dauphin reassured them that he had not committed himself in any way to Mr. Black, who was a very nice man, and that he had no intention of selling or leasing any of the land that he owned along the Gulf; he agreed with his wife that he had plenty of money without that addition.

  “But, oh, Lord,” said Dauphin, “Lawton was all for it, and said I’d be dealing a death blow to the entire Arab world if I sold off Beldame. He pulled me over and he told me that with what the oil companies would pay me for Beldame I could afford to buy me five counties in South Carolina.”

  “You’re a fool to listen to that man,” said Luker. “He’d lick your balls if it put another dollar in his pocket. I hope you told him to fuck off.”

  “Oh, Luker,” said Dauphin, dismayed that he should talk so before three women, “I couldn’t say any such thing. I like Lawton. And I don’t want to ’tagonize him. See, I’ve got to keep him on my good side so that I can convince him it’s a good idea for me not to sell or lease Beldame. And then I’ve got to convince him that it’s also a good idea for him not to sell either.”

  “What!” cried Luker. “He couldn’t sell unless you did, he—”

  “But he could,” said Dauphin. “Lawton owns this house free and clear, and if he sold it to the oil companies, I couldn’t stop him. They’d tear down your house and put up a dock, and then the place would be just ruined, and I’d end up selling too . . .”

  It was feared that Lawton had left Big Barbara in a bad way. Those on the porch downstairs delegated India to go up to her room and ascertain her condition. India knocked on the door and from within Big Barbara called, “Who is it?”

  “India!”

  “Oh, child, come on in!” Big Barbara sat up on the bed, leaning against the headboard, studying her tear-stained face in a hand mirror.

  “Are you all right?” India asked politely. “They sent me to find out.”

  “Child,” smiled Big Barbara, “I’m just so fine you wouldn’t hardly believe it!”

  “Really?”

  “Really and truly.”

  “What did Lawton say to you?”

  “He said that he thought I was making wonderful progress and that he was sure I was gone be just fine and if I was gone be just fine then there wasn’t any need for a divorce and everything between us was gone be just fine from now on, forever and ever. That’s what Lawton said to me. I tell you—I’ll admit it—when he said he wanted to talk to me, I was sure he was gone set a date for me to come up and sign divorce papers. But instead he made me feel so good, I volunteered to go back with him today. I said I’d ride all the way to Gulf Shores in that teeny-tiny boat, even if I had to sit in his lap—but he said no, I ought to stay here and get to feeling real, real good before I came back to help him with his campaign. All you children underestimate Lawton. You don’t accord him his true worth.”

  “I suppose we don’t,” remarked India drily.

  “I know you don’t. And I suppose everybody’s sitting down there out on the porch waiting to hear how I am, aren’t they?”

  India nodded. />
  “Well you go tell them I’m just fine—”

  “Why don’t you come down?”

  “Looking like I do, when I’ve been crying? Luker sees I’ve been crying, he won’t believe I’m happy. You tell them I’m up here strumming a harp, and then you come back up and talk to me.”

  India did as she was told, and as his mother had predicted, Luker could not believe that it was good news that Big Barbara had received at Lawton’s hands. “She’s just putting on a brave front,” he said to the others.

  “I don’t think she is,” said India. “She seems real happy, and she wants me to go back up and talk to her.”

  “I’ll go back up and talk to her,” said Luker. “That man didn’t speak a word of truth the entire time he was here today, he—”

  “Don’t go,” said Leigh when her brother stood from the swing.

  “Leave her alone for a while,” said Dauphin.

  Odessa nodded her agreement with this advice.

  Luker shook his head ruefully. “You know that whatever it was he said to her, he was lying. And she took it for gospel, the way she always does. Why she—”

  “If she’s happy about it right now,” said Leigh, “then don’t spoil it. She’s got enough to think about, just climbing up on the wagon. When you’re coming down off liquor, you don’t need to be told that your husband’s lying to you—and Luker, you don’t know for sure that he was!”

  “Go on back up then, India. Go talk to her, if that’s what she wants,” suggested Dauphin.

  India returned to Big Barbara and sat at the foot of the bed.

  “Child,” she cried, “you have brought in all kinds of sand, and now you have got it all over my sheets! Stand up and brush it off!” But this without anger.

  India climbed down from the bed and carefully brushed the sand off the sheets. Then she emptied her shoes of it, turned out her cuffs, and flapped the tails of her shirt. A little circle of sand was scattered around her at the side of the bed.

  “India, I never saw anybody that attracted sand like you do!”

  India had not left the house all morning. How had sand found its way into her cuffs and shoes? Of this, however, she said nothing to her grandmother, but rather began to tell Big Barbara somewhat of life as it is lived on the Upper West Side.

  CHAPTER 14

  They were not happy at Beldame in the hours that followed Lawton McCray’s visit with Sonny Joe Black. It was not simply the prospect of change for themselves that distressed them, the returning to Mobile solely for Lawton’s benefit and convenience when they were entirely happy at Beldame, but that Beldame itself—Beldame considered as a place or a thing—might be doomed was almost more than they could bear. Luker told his sister he might still live in perfect contentment if he went away tomorrow and never returned—as long as he was assured that Beldame remained as it was; but if he learned that the place had been substantially altered or destroyed, his life would be considerably diminished. To them all, Beldame represented the fair and possible reward for distress, misfortune, and labor in this world—it was to them a heaven on earth, and resembled the other, preached-of heaven in that it was bright, remote, timeless, and empty. And that in so imperfect a world such a perfection as Beldame should be endangered by Lawton McCray, that crass conniving son of a bitch, was an affront to every man that had some vision to treasure.

  The very perfection of Beldame wore down their anger and alarm. The rain continued the afternoon and the night; but the next morning was bright and hot, and steam rose in a thousand funnels off St. Elmo’s Lagoon even as early as seven o’clock. Dauphin vowed that no harm would ever come to Beldame as long as he was alive, and the others comfortably allowed themselves to believe him. By the afternoon, when Big Barbara complained that it was hotter than a boiled owl, no one thought any more of Lawton McCray; and if anything distressed them, it was the thought of returning to Mobile in a week’s time. They might well come back to Beldame after the Fourth, but they all knew that the real charm of a vacation was broken by such an hiatus.

  Of them all, Lawton McCray’s visit affected India the most. She was young and didn’t understand the subtle language of threat and persuasion and inference among Southern businessmen and was certain that Lawton McCray could override the objections of weak-willed Dauphin, and Beldame—on which she now projected a yearly visit for her father and herself forever and ever—would be razed. Her photographs of the houses would then be found on the pages of the new edition of Lost American Architecture. It was a little comfort to think that Luker would eventually be made rich by the transaction with the oil companies, but then she began to fear that her grandfather would find a way to deprive his son of his just share of the proceeds. By the others, Lawton McCray was cheerfully damned to hell; but to India he rose from that place with black skin and red wings and his malodorous shadow covered all Beldame.

  India McCray liked to have an enemy. At school she usually had one child in her class whom she half despised and half feared; whom she treated at once with contempt and respect; whom she alternately spat upon and cringed before. This pattern of behavior became so apparent to her teachers that they called in Luker, explained the situation and advised him to put India into therapy. Luker that evening told India that she was an uncomplex little fool, and that if she wanted to hate anybody she should hate her mother (whom they had seen on the street the week before). India accepted this advice, and when that woman appeared no longer to pose any threat, she gave the place to the superintendent of the building next door who maltreated small animals; but he was forgotten in Alabama, when there wasn’t yelping and screeching to remind India of his reprehensible pastime.

  At Beldame, the enemy had been Odessa, not because Odessa had done anything bad to her—or even because India instinctively disliked her—but only because it was inconvenient to dislike any of the others: Luker, Big Barbara, Leigh, or Dauphin.

  India had always thought of herself as politically liberal—as Luker was—and with that liberalism came a discomfort with servants. Other appurtenances of the rich didn’t bother her, and she had often benefited from the largesse of some of Luker’s friends: weekends in large houses, rides in limousines and private planes, Beluga and Dom Perignon, private screenings and empty beaches—and had enjoyed them all without guilt. But servants walked and talked and had feelings and yet weren’t equal, and India thought that to deal with them was a practical impossibility. She asked nothing of Odessa, and would have prepared all her own food rather than be waited on by the black woman—except that Odessa insisted that she have the kitchen entirely to herself. India could not use the kitchen at the McCray house, for there the gas and the refrigerator had not even been turned on.

  But Lawton McCray succeeded in triumph to the place that Odessa had held but tenuously in India’s imagination. The man was a perfect enemy, in fact, as perfect as her own mother had been: contemptible, cruel, powerful, and directly threatening. Thus, on the very evening of Lawton’s visit, the others noticed a difference in India’s treatment of Odessa: a smile that had never been displayed before, a willingness to work at the jigsaw puzzle with her, a special and cordial good-night.

  One rainy night, India lay in bed waiting for her father; it was their custom to speak for a few minutes at the last of the day, after all Beldame was still. The lights in the McCray house had been extinguished, and none were to be seen across the way in the Savage house either. The Gulf at low tide was rough and distant. For the first time since her arrival, India needed not only a sheet but the chenille bedspread, and still she shivered once or twice. Rain blew through the open windows and spattered on the floor of the room.

  India had moved her bed after her first night there, and now, if she sat up, she could see the bedroom windows of the third house. But that was in good weather and on nights when the moon shone; now beyond the window all was blackness.

  Luker wandered in, and stood by the window that faced the water. “Goddamn!” he said, “I cain’t e
ven see the fucking Gulf!”

  India, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, could just see that her father had moved away from the window, and leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. “Did you know that your accent comes back when you come down here?” she asked.

  “No!” he laughed, “does it really?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “No, I cain’t.”

  “Well,” said India, “for one thing, you say cain’t instead of can’t. And you start to talk the way Big Barbara does. In New York, you don’t have an accent at all, nobody can tell you’re from Alabama. The only time you have an accent in New York is when you’re talking to somebody from Alabama on the telephone. Then it comes back.”

  “When I went to Columbia,” said Luker, “everybody thought I was dumb because I had a Southern accent, and it took so much time proving to people that I wasn’t an asshole that I decided to get rid of the accent, and I did.”

  “How did you do it? Get rid of the accent I mean?”

  “I just said to myself: ‘I’m not gone talk that way any more . . .’ And I didn’t.”

  “I sort of like it,” said India.

  “Um-hmm,” said Luker from the darkness.

  “Tell me about Odessa,” said India.

  “What do you mean? What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. Just tell me about her. Tell me about her daughter that drowned.”

  “I wasn’t here then, but Leigh was. That was ten, eleven years ago or something—I was married by then. Odessa and her common-law husband Johnny Red had one child, a little girl called Martha-Ann. Big Barbara was right, Johnny Red is no good. The Savages sort of take care of him, for Odessa’s sake. They live together off and on, mostly off. Anyway, Martha-Ann used to come out to Beldame with Odessa and she’d help out around the house, but mostly she came out here to play. Well, you’ve got to remember that ten, fifteen years ago, things weren’t as loose in the South as they are now—”