“I heard you playing,” she said and pointed behind her to the woods. “I have been to Mary’s to take that baby’s picture, but he was scared of me, and I thought I would just take a walk to here—it being so warm—and call up Milo to come get me. A half a mile back I heard you playing. But I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were air-borne by now.” She grinned and his answering laugh whined through the harmonica and made her say, “If you managed everything good as you manage a harp, wouldn’t none of your friends ever be upset.”
“I never studied it,” he said, “—harp-playing, I mean. Just what I picked up in Norfolk.”
“That’s where I reckoned you were tonight—else I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“I got tomorrow off,” he said.
“There were three folks in that plane going back.”
“I know that,” he said. “I surrendered my seat to Willie’s Mama. Anyhow, I won’t riding back with Heywood Betts. He drives a airplane about as good as I tap-dance. I been laid up airsick till this evening.”
“Have you? Mary said Estelle saw you in the road last night.”
“Yes she did,” he said and tightened his lips, not as if he had made a joke but as if he had ridden that track as far as he intended and wouldn’t she like to throw the switch?
“Well, can I use the phone?” she said. “I better be calling Milo so they won’t think I have died.”
“I can carry you home.”
“Thank you but my stomach hasn’t been real easy lately, and I won’t trust it to a motorcycle ride tonight.”
“The motorcycle is in Norfolk. You didn’t think I brought it down here in a airplane, did you?”
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Say Rosacoke.”
“Why?”
“Just say it please.”
He said “Rosacoke” like an answer for a doctor that asked to see his tonsils.
“Thank you,” she said. “That is my name. I bet you ain’t said it since late July.”
“I don’t walk around talking to trees and shrubs like some folks if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not what I mean but never mind. You are Wesley—is that still right?”
“Unless the Law has changed it and not notified me.”
“I was just checking. I know such a few facts about you and your doings that sometimes I wonder if I even know your right name.”
“Yes ma’m. You can rest easy on that. It’s Wesley all right and is Wesley riding you home or ain’t he?—because if he is, he will have to get the keys.”
“If nobody else is wanting the car, I’d thank you,” she said, thinking her last chance might be coming, thinking she might find the way to give him whatever he wanted to calm him down—thinking she knew what he wanted. She would do her best but maybe Wesley didn’t want anything she had, not any more. “He must give a sign first,” she said to herself, and when he went for the keys, she made up what the sign would be. There were two ways Wesley could turn when they got to the road, and the way he turned would be the sign. If he went right—that was the bad road but the quickest—they would ride all the way past dead open fields and be at Rosacoke’s in no time. But if he turned left—that was the long circle way that would take them first through an arched mile of trees and then past Mount Moriah and Mr. Isaac’s bottomless woods where the spring was and the deer had been and, beyond, Delight Church and the pond and the Mustians’.
Wesley came out of the back yard in the tan Pontiac with no lights on and waited while she got in. It was full night but they coasted down the drive in darkness like thieves and stopped when they came to the road. Then Wesley turned on the bright lights, and the car headed left slow as if it turned itself. That was the sign and Rosacoke waited for what would come after. But they ran through the darkest mile in silence with Wesley gripping both hands to the wheel and watching the road like foreign country and Rosacoke catching little glimpses of him in the dashboard light as he passed up every chance to slow down or stop—ruts and holes and even the hidden turn-in that had been his favorite stopping place when she first knew him, where they had sat many an hour other nights (not talking much, to be sure, not needing talk then), and on past Mount Moriah, lit up and full of black singing, and when that died behind them and they commenced the first long curve of Mr. Isaac’s woods, Rosacoke said, “I might as well be behind you on the motorcycle for all the talking we have done.”
“What do you want to say?”
“Wesley, you are at least half of this trouble, and you said you would talk. In that last letter you said I was getting you out of your writing depth and hadn’t we better talk when you got home.”
“I don’t remember everything I say in letters.”
“Well, I sure to God do. I learn them by heart just trying to figure out what you mean.”
“God A-mighty, Rosa, I don’t mean nothing by them. I just say whatever—” but they had pulled round that first curve, and the headlights shot forward unblocked. Wesley said “Sweet Jesus” and Rosacoke said “Stop” because their light struck a deer the moment it flung from the woods on the right, broadside to them in the air with its hair still red for summer and the white brush of its tail high and stiff, holding in the leap for the time it took to see them coming, then heaving its head and twisting the leap back on itself to where it started in the dark—before they could speak again. But when it was gone (from their eyes, not their minds) with crashing enough for a herd, Wesley stopped where they were and said, “He is the first one I ever seen try it.”
“Try what?”
“Try to get his does across the road to water, I guess. It ain’t too late for that.”
“Was it a buck then?”
“Didn’t you see his horns?”
“I guess I did—he was so sudden.” They sat on, still, a moment. Then Wesley reached for the gears, and quick as gunfire Rosacoke said, “I saw one once before way behind Mr. Isaac’s spring—Mildred and me, nine years ago. It wouldn’t have been this same one, would it?”
“Not hardly,” he said and the car didn’t move.
“What water would he be taking them to?—the spring?”
“Not hardly—that’ll be clogged up—but there’s creeks all back in there if you go far enough.”
Those were the most peaceful words they had said since late July. Rosacoke took them as one more sign and saw a way to keep them going. “Reckon will he try to cross them over again?”
“I reckon so if he don’t see no more lights for awhile. He’s watching us right now from somewhere back there, waiting till we go.”
“Pity we can’t see them cross,” she said.
“He may not try again right here, but we can wait up yonder in the tracks to the spring if you ain’t in a hurry.”
She knew Mama and Milo would already be standing on their heads with worry, but she said, “I can wait. All I got to do is go to work at nine o’clock in the morning.”
Wesley turned off the lights and when his eyes had set to the dark, there was a little moon to show him the grown-over tracks just ahead that used to lead Mr. Isaac to his spring. He eased the car towards them and backed in to face the road. He pulled up the brake and lowered his window and leaned his arms on the top of the wheel and pressed his forehead on the glass to see the trees beyond the road and whatever they held. Rosacoke reckoned that was a temporary position—that in a minute he would move in as far as she let him. To pass the time she looked ahead too, but not the way Wesley did. He only waited—nothing else crossed his mind but seeing that deer and how many does he would have. Rosacoke thought, “Him and that deer are something similar. Not but a few things wait like they do. Most things are busy hunting”—she thought that last so clearly she couldn’t swear to not saying it. But if she said it Wesley just waited harder. He didn’t move. So she closed her eyes for the next thinking to begin, but a picture came instead—of that cool November day seven years ago and the path and the pecan tree with Wesley up it like an eagle sh
aking down nuts at her request, not hungry enough to want them himself—old enough though to want her (other boys that young had wanted her) but not even caring enough to ask her name, much less for anything better, just waiting nicely till she left him alone with what he could see from the fork he stood in, sweeping nearly all Warren County with his eyes and telling her he saw smoke to make her leave—and him so hard to leave even then with the threat of being grown hung on him like thunder. With her eyes still closed she ran through all her time with Wesley till finally she could say to herself, “Mama lived with my Daddy fifteen years and took his babies and his drunks, and now she don’t recall him but as a little serious boy in a picture. That is the way I recollect Wesley—like that first November day. Every other way is like that—him waiting for something to happen to him, daring somebody to do something nice such as come up and touch him just so he could say, ‘Why in the world did you do that?’ and hold on tight till whoever bothered him vanished—and nothing about him since has ever surprised me. I knew from the first, young as I was, what was coming. Take a child like Mildred’s—you can look at him and say if he is a pretty or ugly child. You can’t see what he will look like when he is grown though. But that first time—wasn’t Wesley standing plain as day in a clear shadow of his grown man’s body that sat out around him like a boundary he had to fill? I saw it and young as I was, I saw there wasn’t no room for Rosacoke Mustian in what that boy would turn out to be. So he went on filling out his boundary lines and getting the face I knew he would, and while he was getting it, he came to me all those times and I let him have me to kiss and touch, and I said to myself, ‘He has changed and this is love.’ But all those times I was no more to him than water to a boat—just a thing he was using to get somewhere on, to get grown so he could tear off to Norfolk, Virginia and the U.S. Navy and every hot hussy that would stretch out under him and tell him ‘Yes’ where I said ‘No.’ And just because of that Rosacoke went out of his mind completely. I knew from the first it would happen, but that didn’t make no difference. I hoped he would change but he didn’t change, and that didn’t make no difference.” She said it out loud—“Wesley, do you reckon on ever changing any?”
He didn’t look round. He whispered gently as if he was asking a favor, “Rosa, no deer is going to walk in on a round-table discussion of Wesley Beavers’ personality.”
“Yes sir,” she said but she had thought all she needed to think. She had made herself see what she had to do. So she waited—not to see the deer and his does but knowing if they crossed to water, they would be her chance to save Wesley from running off again. She waited by staring at her dark lap and her hands that lay flat and nearly unseen on her flanks.
And they crossed—the deer, a little above where the buck had showed before. She didn’t see their first steps or hear them, so dainty on the packed road, till she felt Wesley’s whole body stiffen forward—not by him touching her but through the springs of the seat. She looked to where his brow pressed hard on the glass and turned herself along his gaze to where she caught them the moment they sank into Mr. Isaac’s woods—three deer moving careful as clock wheels so close together she couldn’t see which was the buck and was leading. But they drew her on behind them. Wesley felt that too (he had seen them longer than she), and he strained so hard to see their last that she whispered, “There’s safety glass between them and you, Wesley, and you are about to poke your head right through it.” But when the deer were gone, Wesley gave no sign of taking the chance they offered. He only said, “Now you have seen two does getting led to water” and reached for the key to crank the motor.
Rosacoke laid her hand on his wrist. “Since it’s a warm night how come we don’t wait and walk in behind them and see is it the spring they are after?”
He looked at her hand, not her, and saw what she meant. “If you want to,” he said, “but we ain’t coming near that buck.”
“If we went gentle maybe we could.”
Wesley reached in the back seat for a flashlight and opened his door. He came to her side and stood while she got out. They walked a few loud steps through weeds that were dead from the frosts and then struck into the trees with hands at their sides, separate and not swinging till they walked so close their fingers brushed and their hands went together so natural you couldn’t say who took whose. Then the walking was quiet because there was pine straw under their feet and darker because they were under black pines and Wesley didn’t once switch on his light. It was early November and the snakes were gone. They knew the path. And they both knew where they were headed—which wasn’t to the spring because when they came to the spring and Rosacoke held back on his hand (thinking she should mention deer) and whispered “Are they there?” Wesley just breathed out through his nose to show he had laughed (he was too dark to see), and Rosacoke said, “Throw your light on the spring and see is it clean,” but he led her on where the path gave way to the thickness of leaves and soft old logs that powdered beneath their feet and the deer passed out of their minds completely, and Rosacoke thought of nothing but “Where will we stop?” till a briar bush stopped them. Wesley was one step ahead when the briars took hold, and Rosacoke walked up against him. That was when the light came on (Wesley must have done it but without a sound) and showed them piece of a broomstraw field. Wesley pulled out of the bush, and the light went off without them seeing each other. They walked on hip-deep in straw another few yards before any sound was made. Rosacoke said, “Don’t let’s go no farther” and they stopped again. “Listen,” she said.
They listened awhile. Then he said “Listen to what?”
“I thought we might hear them,” she said. “It was a field like this where Mildred and me saw that other deer.”
“It wasn’t this field,” he said.
“How come it wasn’t?”
“This is my private field. Mr. Isaac don’t know he owns this field. Don’t nobody know this field but me.”
“I never knew it,” she said, “and I been walking these woods my whole life.”
“You know it now.”
She said “Yes I do” but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see at all. She thought she was facing Wesley though nothing but her seemed to breathe, and she thought they were standing on level ground. Her left hand was still in those other hard fingers, but when she offered her right hand, she only touched straw that sighed. She drew back in sudden terror and said to herself, “I don’t even know this is Wesley. I have not laid eyes on his face since we left the car.” So she spoke again, calm as she could—“Would you switch on the light so I can see your field?”
“You ain’t aiming to take no pictures, are you?” He was facing her and he sounded like Wesley, but from that minute on, she wouldn’t have sworn just who she was giving up to.
“I left my Kodak in the car,” she said. “It don’t work at night.”
“Then if you don’t need no light, I surely don’t,” he said and took her other hand and pulled her gentle under him to the ground. The straw lay down where they were and stood up wherever they weren’t, and Rosacoke reached behind her head to grip her hands in its dryness. The last clear thought she had was, “If it was light it would all be the color of Milo’s beard.”
But Wesley didn’t need any light. He started above her and even if the sun had poured all over him, she couldn’t have seen the one thing she needed to see, which was down to where he was locked already at the center of what she had started, where he was maybe alone or, worse than that, keeping company in the dark with whatever pictures his mind threw up—of some other place he would rather be or some girl he knew that was better. But he didn’t speak to tell her where he was. He only moved and even that was a way he never had moved in all the evenings she had known him—from inside the way he did everything but planned this time fine as any geared wheel, slow at first and smooth as your eyeball under the lid, no harder than rocking a chair and touching her only in that new place, but soon taking heart and oaring her as if he was
nothing but the loveliest boat on earth and she was the sea that took him where he had to go, and then multiplying into what seemed a dozen boys swarming on her with that many hands and mouths and that many high little whines coming up to their lips that were nothing like words till the end when they came so close they broke out in one long “Yes,” and what he had made, so careful, fell in like ruins on them both, and all she had left was her hands full of broomstraw and one boy again, dead-weight on her body, who whispered to her softer than ever, “I thank you, Mae” (which wasn’t any part of her name) and not knowing what he had said, rolled off her and straightaway threw his flashlight on the sky. The beam rose up unstopped and she turned away to keep him from seeing the things he had done to her face—the look he had left there. But he didn’t notice. All the light went up and he studied that awhile. Then he said, “Did you know this light won’t never stop flying?” She didn’t answer so he laid the back of his hand on some part of her that was dry as peach-skin still and said, “There ain’t a thing to block it. It’ll be flinging on when you and me are olden times.”
But now that their moving had stopped, the chill of the night set in, and Rosacoke shuddered beneath his hand before she said, “Is that something else you learned in the Navy?”
“Yes’m,” he said. “Ain’t I a good learner?” And with his hand he asked again for what she had given so free before but she held him back.
“Why?” he said, thinking naturally he had the right.
“I got to go home.”
“What you got at home that’s half as good as what I got right here?” He pulled her hand through the dark to where he was ready.
A Long and Happy Life Page 9
