“Have you eat?” Mama said.
“Yes’m,” she said and turned to the pulpit and meant to look ahead for one full hour, but Baby Sister faced the people, and Mama twisted round periodically to watch every soul come in and report it. Rosacoke would nod her head at the news, but she kept looking forward till Mama couldn’t stand it any longer and punched her and said “Hot dog!” and she had to look—because in marched Willie Duke Aycock, grinning like she wouldn’t be Aycock long, with her new friend that she set up front for all to see (and all tried except Rosacoke who read up the hymns in advance, but he had a little head, and nothing much was visible but his Hawaiian shirt with the long open collar laid out on his round shoulders. Mama said, “He must not have counted on church when he packed”). The big surprise though was all the Aycocks strutting on behind. Mama said, “They ain’t been to church since the drive-in opened.” (A drive-in movie had opened across the field from their front porch, and all summer long on Saturdays they sat in the cool and watched every movement from sundown through the last newsreel, which left them too tired for church—and ashamed to come to the picnic. They didn’t hear a sound of course—of the movies—but in no time after the opening, Ida their youngest had learned lip reading and could tell them every word.) By the time they had all settled in round the friend, it was going on eleven, and out the windows were the sounds of men coming unseen to join their folks, grinding cigarettes in sand and scraping their shoes on the concrete steps and having what they hoped was one last cough. When they came in the back and scattered down the rows (bringing cool air with them that raised the flesh on Rosacoke’s neck), even Mama didn’t turn. But Baby Sister saw them all and didn’t speak a name, not even Milo’s when he took his place by Mama on the aisle. Rosacoke could feel him turned towards her, but she didn’t meet his eyes, thinking, “Whatever he knows I don’t want to hear.” Then the preacher and the choir ladies came in and sat. Everybody quieted except Mama (who said what everybody thought), “Mr. Isaac ain’t here. He must be bad off,” and not knowing who was behind her and with no way left to find out, Rosacoke thought, “How will I get through this hour alone with nothing to look at but three white walls and a black pulpit and a preacher and ten choir ladies and the back of Willie Duke Aycock’s neck?—not a flower or a picture in sight and nothing to think of but Wesley Beavers and whether he is ten yards away or three whole miles and why he isn’t here by me.”
The preacher stood up and called for the hymn, and while the hymnals were rustling, the side door opened by the choir, and Mr. Isaac’s Sammy walked in with the black leather chair. He nodded to the people in general, and they nodded back in relief, and he set the chair where it belonged by the front of the Amen Corner, half to the preacher, half to the people. Then he went out and everybody waited, not standing, till he came again—Mr. Isaac in his arms like a baby with a tan suit on and a white shirt pinned at the neck with gold, holding Sammy’s shoulder with his live left arm (his right arm slack in the sleeve and that leg) and his face half live and half dead, with a smile set permanent by two hard strokes on the half that turned to the people when Sammy set him gentle in the chair and knelt to arrange his little bird legs. Then Sammy stood and whispered some message in the live ear and sat down himself on a pew by the chair. And the singing began, with Baby Sister leading them all to a long “Amen,” low but sure.
So she had Mr. Isaac to watch through that long hour—the still half at least to take her mind off whatever people were behind her—and she started by thinking back quick as she could to the way he scared them when they were children, not by meaning any harm but by stopping his truck in the road whenever he saw them and calling out “Come here, girl” (or “boy”—he never said names). They would creep towards him and stand back a little from the truck, making arcs on the dust with their toes till he said, “Whose girl are you?” (meaning who was their mother), and they would say “Emma Mustian’s.” He would say “Are you sure?” and when they nodded, hand them horehound candy out the window to eat with the blue lint of his shirt pocket stuck in it and then drive away, not smiling once. But the permanent smile was on him now, tame as something made with needle and thread, that didn’t have a place in the ways she remembered him—like the day he stopped in the road and not smiling once asked Milo, “How old are you, boy?” Milo told him “Thirteen” and he said, “If you rub turpentine on your thighs, it’ll make hair grow” (Milo tried it and nearly perished with the stinging) or before that even, the day they found his spring—her and Milo and Mildred and the others, coming on him sudden in the woods with his ankles in water and the look on his face showing he wasn’t there behind it that made them turn and leave without waiting for candy—and the evening her Daddy was killed and Mr. Isaac came and stood on the porch and handed her Mama fifty dollars, saying, “He is far better off” (which was true) and the day he came to see her Papa in the hospital and Papa, just rambling, said, “How come you never got married?” and Mr. Isaac said “Nobody asked me” and smiled but soon fell back into looking the way that covered his heart like a shield and kept you guessing what he was thinking of—his age? (which was eighty-two now) or his health? or all the money he owned in land and trees which he didn’t spend and which, since he never married, would go to Marina his sister who cooked his food but was too old herself to offer him love and care?—the only thing that loved him being Sammy his man who had grown from the lean black boy that drove him on the land in a truck to the man who carried him now in his arms.
She stopped her thinking for the second hymn. (Willie Duke’s friend more than did his share of that.) Then she bowed her head for the prayer, but once the preacher was underway, thanking God for everything green but weeds, Marise Gupton’s Frederick tuned up to cry from the back of the church. Rosacoke and Mama looked quick to Milo to stop him from mentioning busts in the mouth, but Marise stopped the crying and Milo just smiled and they all bowed again. The prayer went on about doctors and nurses and beds of affliction, and Rosacoke looked to Mr. Isaac. She had to. He was somebody that didn’t know Wesley, except by name. His head was up and the dead right eye was open, bearing straight to the opposite wall, but Sammy was bowed like everybody round him. Towards the end of the prayer, Mr. Isaac’s live hand flickered on the arm of the chair and tapped Sammy’s knee one time. Sammy didn’t look up (though the live side faced him) and the hand tapped again. Sammy knew and, still bowed, reached in his pocket and took out two pieces of horehound candy that would keep him happy till the end. Mr. Isaac put one in his mouth and hid the spare in his hand, and Rosacoke looked all round (except behind) to see had anybody else watched that. Everybody was bowed, including Baby Sister who took prayer serious to be so young, and Rosacoke said to herself, “I have seen it alone so maybe the day isn’t wasted.”
Thinking that kept her fairly calm through collection and the sermon and the final hymn—right to the last few words the preacher spoke. He looked at the people and smiled and said, “We are happy, I know, to welcome old members who are with us today from the great cities where they work, and I know we will all want to greet our visitor who descended last night from the clouds!” Then he spoke a benediction and before it was out of his mouth, Willie Duke shot her friend through the side door like something too delicate to meet. Rosacoke thought, “At least I have got out of speaking to Willie,” and Mama said to her, “Come on and speak to Mr. Isaac.” (A dozen people were waiting already to shake his hand.)
Rosacoke said, “Mama, don’t bother him today” and faced the people that were streaming out. Wesley wasn’t there. Those visitors from the clouds were nothing but Willie Duke Aycock and her friend so Rosacoke followed Mama, and they stood their turn to greet Mr. Isaac.
He was still in his chair with Sammy behind him now, and when people spoke he didn’t speak back or hold out his live hand that was clenched in his lap but bobbed his chin and let the half-smile do the rest till he saw Rosacoke. She came up in line before Mama and said, “Good morning, Mr. Isaac. I ho
pe you are feeling all right.”
He tilted his eyes to her face and studied it, still as before. Then he spoke in the voice that was left. “Whose girl are you?”
She held back a moment and said “Emma Must-ian’s,” not sure that was what he meant, and pointed at Mama behind her. But he looked to his clenched live hand, and it opened enough for them both to see the one piece of candy that had hid there since the prayer, damp and soft. Then he clenched it again and looked back at her. No one had seen it but them—not even Sammy—so he matched, on the live side of his face, that lasting smile. Rosacoke smiled too and thinking he finally knew her, told him goodbye and went on quick out the front before Mama caught her and started commenting, and there of course all but blocking the door stood Willie Duke and her friend.
Willie said, “Rosa, come meet my aviator.” Rosacoke looked at him. “Rosacoke Mustian, this is Heywood Betts, my boy friend who flew me down.”
Rosacoke shook his hand and said, “How do you do.”
He said, “Good morning, I’m fine but scrap metal is my work—flying’s just a hobby.”
Willie Duke waved at some Gupton girls in the yard—her nieces—and said (not looking at Rosacoke), “I kind of thought Wesley would be here today, not being home in so long.”
Rosacoke said “Did you?” and looked round as if she had just noticed his absence.
Heywood Betts said, “Maybe he’s laid up after our pasture landing.”
“Shoot,” Willie Duke said, “nothing don’t bother Wesley, does it, Rosa?”
“Not much.”
Heywood laughed. “He looked plenty bothered yesterday when you talked me out of landing at Warrenton airport.”
Willie Duke said, “Nothing don’t bother Wesley. He just didn’t have his sweet thing to show off like I do you”—and squeezed Heywood tight.
Rosacoke looked towards the car where her people were waiting and then towards the sun. “Sure is bright,” she said. “I better be getting on home. When are you all leaving?”
Willie Duke said, “Me and Heywood’s definitely leaving this afternoon. But I ain’t sure about Wesley. He’s took Monday off so maybe he’s leaving and maybe he’s not.”
“Well, happy landing,” Rosacoke said and went to the car for the little trip home. Milo drove it fast as he could, and nobody spoke, not even when they passed Mr. Isaac’s stripped cherry trees and his pond again that had shrunk in the sun but was so hard-blue it seemed you could walk on the surface like Jesus and not sink. But when they were home and climbed out slowly, Mama put her arm round Rosacoke’s waist and forced their eyes to meet—“Rosa, go rest a little. You don’t have to eat.” That hit Rosacoke like something filthy across her mouth, and she ran out of Mama’s arms to wash her hands for dinner.
And everything went all right for awhile at dinner. There was a lot of laughing about Willie Duke’s man. Mama said, “He’s rich. He didn’t give a cent when the plate was passed,” and Milo said, “Well, rich or poor, Willie Duke has sure took hold—and in the right place.” But Rosacoke almost welcomed that. There were worse things now than Willie Duke Aycock, and it looked as if the family knew her feelings and were honoring them—even Milo—till Sissie finished all she could hold. Sissie had come down to dinner late and hadn’t heard the news about church so she blurted out, “I thought you would ask Wesley to dinner, Rosa.”
Rosacoke looked at her plate.
Milo said, “Hell-fire, Sissie. How are we going to ask him—by homing pigeon?”
“I’m sorry,” Sissie said. “I just thought he would be at church and come home with you all—specially since your mother stayed up half the night cooking this mighty spread.”
Mama said slowly, “Sissie, Wesley, as you could tell from his name if you had thought, is not a Baptist.”
Milo said, “No, but he put in pretty good attendance long as he was interested in the Baptists he knew.”
Mama said, “I hope he was at the Methodists’ with his mother. That’s where he belonged.”
Rosacoke spoke for the first time. “Looks like to me all this isn’t any of you all’s business.”
“Listen, Weeping Willow,” Milo said, “if you could see the way you look—pale as ashes right this minute—you’d agree it was time somebody took a hickory stick to Wesley Beavers and made him behave.”
“Well, don’t let that somebody be you,” Rosacoke said. “I can take care of my own business.”
“Yes, and you’ve made a piss-poor job of it, honey. He landed here Saturday evening. You ain’t seen him for what?—two months? You still ain’t seen him and he’s setting on his own front porch, not three miles from this oak table.”
“All right,” Rosacoke said, “tell me one magic word and I’ll have him here, dressed for marriage, in ten seconds flat if that’s what you want.”
“Magic ain’t what you need.”
“What is it then? God knows I’ve tried.”
Sissie, not meaning harm, had started it all so she poked Milo and said “Hush up.”
But Milo was rolling. “What you need is a little bit of Sissie’s method.” He turned to Sissie and grinned, and she shoved back her chair and left the room. He called after her, “Sissie, come tell Rosa what your uncle said was the way to get old Milo.”
Sissie hollered from the living room, “Milo, I got you honest and my uncle didn’t tell me nothing.”
So Milo sang it himself—
Pull up your petticoat, pull down your drawers,
Give him one look at old Santy Claus.
Mama said, “Milo, leave my table,” and Rosacoke ran up the stairs to her room.
Half the room was covered with yellow sun so the first thing she did was pull the shades, and when she had made it dark as she could, she stepped to the middle of the floor and commenced taking off her dress. She checked every button for safety and tested a seam and stepped to the high wardrobe to hang it there in the darkest corner as if she was burying it. She unstrapped her wrist watch and stepped to the mantel and laid it there (but she kept her eyes off the propped-up picture) and kicked off her shoes and, still standing, peeled down her stockings and held them against a shaded window for flaws. Then she fell on her bed and cried over Wesley for the first time in her life. But the tears gave out and the anger, and behind them there was nothing. Plain nothing. She couldn’t think. As a girl, when she was sad, she would shut her eyes and cast her mind to the future, thinking what a month from then would be like or when she was old, and she tried that now. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t think what an hour from then might be or the next day (which was Monday and work), much less a month or twenty-five years. She turned on her back and stared at the yellow goat’s head stained on the ceiling. Her Papa told her it came from him keeping goats in the attic that peed. But he was joking. Everybody she knew was always joking. So she said it out loud, “What must I do about Wesley Beavers? And that’s no joke.” It was the second time she had asked the question, and the only answer anyone had offered was Milo’s jingle that clattered behind her eyes right now. Milo was the closest kin she had that was grown (Rato being grown from the neck down, only), and he had sung that to her.
To cover his song she listened to the only sound in the house that reached her room—Baby Sister on the porch, putting paper dolls through her favorite story at the top of her voice. There was a daughter-doll who worked and one evening came home to tell her mother she had lice. The mother-doll said, “My own flesh and blood and you have lice!” It was the worst thing Baby Sister knew of. Rosacoke thought she would lean out the window and tell Baby Sister to talk a little quieter please or hum a tune, but her own door opened and Mama walked in, knocking down coat hangers as she came.
Rosacoke raised up and squinted to try and show she had been asleep. “Mama, I have asked everybody to knock before they enter.”
“Don’t make me mad,” Mama said, “before I have spoke a word. I walked up fourteen steps to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“I wanted to show you this old picture I found when I was cleaning out Papa’s chest.” Rosacoke gave her a look that meant couldn’t it wait, but Mama raised one shade a little and came and stood by the bed. Rosacoke took the stiff tan photograph. It was two boys in pitiful long low-belted summer clothes on a pier with a wrought-iron rail behind them and, beyond that, water. The oldest boy might have been ten, and he had on white knee-stockings. His hair seemed blond and covered half his forehead like a bowl. His eyes were wide and full of white, and his mouth cut through his face in one perfectly straight line. He didn’t frown but he didn’t smile. He just held on tight as if he had something grand to give but the camera wasn’t getting it—not that day. The boy who held his hand was smaller—maybe seven—and laughing with his mouth open wide. He had laughed till his face was blurred and the one sure thing about him was an American flag in his right hand and even that was flapping.
Rosacoke said, “Who is it of?”
“The biggest one is your Daddy.”
“Well, Lord,” she said and turned it over. There was her father’s name and “Ocean View, July 1915.” “I never saw him so clear before,” she said.
Mama still stood up. “I didn’t believe there was a likeness of him in the world, and then I come across this. It must have been the time your Papa took them all to water for the day. It was the one trip he ever gave them, and it ended awful because he put a five-dollar bill in his shoe in case of emergency and then walked ten miles up and down the sand. About leaving time, emergencies arose—one was your Daddy wanting a plaster of Paris statue of Mutt and Jeff—and when Papa took off his shoe for the money, it was just little soggy pieces. He had wore it out! He talked about that for thirty years.”
A Long and Happy Life Page 7
