“Well, let me go see him.”
“Yes’m, but Miss Rosa, is he give us all them clothes?”
“They are his to give.”
“Yes’m,” Mary said and led her in. The first thing the lamp struck was Sledge, lying back amongst his new clothes.
Rosacoke said, “Ain’t it too cold for him, Mary?”
Mary said, “I reckon it is” but kept on towards the kitchen and opened the door. The warm air met them and Mary said, “Look, Mr. Milo, we got us some company.”
Milo looked up and said “Yes” and ate another mouthful and then said “Sit down, Rosa” like the house was his.
Mary said, “Yes, Miss Rosa, let me cook your supper.”
Rosacoke said no, she wouldn’t eat, but she took the other chair at the table, facing Milo with only a lamp between them, and Mary left. Milo didn’t speak again or look up—just ate—and Rosacoke was quiet too. But she watched him (what she could see in the warm lamp-light—his forehead pale as hers though he spent every day in the weather and his eyes like hers but his hair the color that, now she noticed, was one more thing their father had left)—and with all his three days’ misery, he seemed for the only time in years like the first Milo she had run after, hundreds of miles through Mr. Isaac’s woods, laughing, before Sissie Abbott gave him secrets, before he got his driving license even, when his beard was just arriving and they would sleep together in the same big bed if company came and she would rest easy all night and wake before sunup and turn towards Milo beside her and wait till the first gray light carved out his face on the pillow and then woke up the birds that sang. Still, it wasn’t that first Milo—not after these days—but something changed, and she didn’t know to what nor what new secret he kept there in his misery. But she had sat long enough, and she thought she should speak. She said, “Milo, if you want me to—”
He broke her off—“I am not taking them clothes back.”
“Milo,” she said, “them clothes are yours to give, and I didn’t walk all this way to get them back.”
Milo looked up. He had finished eating. “Well, why are you here?”
“I just came to say that if you want me to—” But she stopped again and frowned at the opening door where Mary stood with Sledge in her arms, the image of Mildred and awake.
Mary didn’t see the frown. “You all just go on talking,” she said. “It’s chilly in yonder so I’ll feed him where it’s warm if Mr. Milo don’t mind.”
Rosacoke looked to Milo, thinking this was more than he would bear. But Milo said “Go ahead” and watched Mary walk to the stove and begin heating milk.
Rosacoke thought, “He is better than I reckoned” and stretched out her arms and said, “Mary, let me feed him. He has taken to me lately.”
Mary said “All right” and came on to hand him over, but Milo shoved back his chair and stood and laid about a dollar on the table and said, “I got to go. Rosa, are you coming with me?”
Rosacoke put down her arms. “I’m coming,” she said, still looking at Sledge and Mary and seeing why Milo had to leave. Then she stood too.
In the door Milo turned—“I’m much obliged, Mary. That money is for my supper.”
Mary said, “You paid for them eggs many times with that stack of clothes but we thank you, sir” and Milo left.
Rosacoke said, “Excuse me rushing, Mary.”
And Mary said, “Go where you are needed.”
So Rosacoke followed Milo. He was walking slow and she caught him just in the pines and switched on her light to help him see, but he speeded up and walked six feet ahead till they came to the field of cotton stalks. From there they could see the house and the light where Sissie was. Milo stopped and turned on Rosacoke. She switched off her light, knowing he spoke best in the dark, and he said, “What were you trying to tell me?”
“—That I will lay out of work if you want company.”
“That would be mighty nice,” he said and took a few steps towards Sissie’s light, but before she followed he stopped again and faced her. “Sissie’s awake,” he said.
She said “Yes” and caught her breath to say what she knew was her duty—to ease him and lead him home—but in what moon there was, he was still too nearly that first Milo so she waited.
He waited too but when he spoke he said, “Go in the house to Sissie and Mama and say Milo is out yonder but he ain’t coming in unless they give their word not to speak about clothes or baby again.”
She said she would—it was all she could say, all he asked for—and went to tell Mama and Sissie. Mama said, “This house is one-third his. Tell him to just come on and rest,” and Sissie said, “Yes do, but the baby was one-half mine.”
Rosacoke went back and signaled from the porch with her light. Milo came on and when he got to the steps, she said, “They say come in but Milo, the baby was one-half Sissie’s.”
“Making the other half Milo’s,” he said and stood in the dark, not climbing the steps. Then he said, “Did Sissie tell you to say that?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t have to, did you?”
She couldn’t answer that and he walked by her up the steps and into the house. She went in a little later and heard him in Mama’s room. He was meaning to sleep there without saying good night to Mama and Sissie upstairs. Rosacoke went to the door—he had shut the door—and said through it, “I’ll see you in the morning, hear?”
In awhile he said “O.K.”
She went up and stopped at Sissie’s door and told them he was home safe and sleeping downstairs and that she wasn’t working tomorrow. Then she went to her own dark room in hopes of sleep. But she lay in the cold awake, not feeling Sissie in the next room awake—seeing only Milo’s face at Mary’s and hearing him break down Saturday night in the hall. She heard him over and over—Milo who was asking only her to share his burden—and she pictured the baby (that she never saw alive or called by name) till the baby was almost hers. Then the burden bore down on her hot through the dark. She took it and cried and it smothered her to sleep.
She slept till somebody’s hand woke her in the clear early morning. It was Mama bending over and whispering fast, “Get up. Milo is up already and wanting to go. He wouldn’t eat with me and Baby Sister but said he would wait in the yard for you so come on and feed him.” Rosacoke raised up and stared out the window. He was standing halfway to the road with his back to the house, but the day was so bright against him she could see his hands at his sides that opened and shut on themselves and, beyond him, one white sycamore straight as diving. She threw back the cover but Mama said, “Let me say one thing—Sissie don’t know I am speaking to you and wouldn’t want me to if she did, but I have sat by her three whole days, and I know how she feels.” Rosacoke stared on at the yard. “He is your brother, I know—he is also my oldest boy—but that don’t make him ours. He belongs to Sissie Abbott, like it or not, and what has he said to her since the funeral except ‘Good night’?”
“What are you asking me?”
“I don’t know what to ask you. If it was just me I wouldn’t say nothing but, ‘Ride with him to Atlanta, Georgia if he wants to, just don’t let him take up drinking’—he is too close kin to his Daddy for that—but Rosa, there is Sissie lying yonder—” She whispered that but she pointed to the far wall.
Rosacoke looked to the wall with sudden fear as if Sissie herself had broke through plaster and stood before them. She said, “Listen here, Mama. Milo is an adult man that is old enough to know his mind. He has called on me for help. He may be Sissie’s but Sissie can’t help him flat of her back, and anyhow I have known him a good deal longer than Sissie Abbott so what do you want me to do?—say ‘No’ when he needs company?”
Mama only said, “Go with him today if he wants to go but keep him off liquor, and if there comes a time—Rosa, make a time—say to him, ‘Milo, Sissie needs you bad.’”
Rosacoke nodded to make Mama leave. Then she dressed and went down past Sissie’s shut door.
She called up the man she worked for and asked to have a few days off because of death. He of course said “Yes” but hoped she could come back soon. She said she would try but things were in right bad shape. That left her free for Milo to use however he needed so she went to the door and called his name. He turned where he was—just his face—and she waved him in, but he stood, his fingers still working at his sides. She waited in the cold and thought, “Mama and Sissie are upstairs listening, and now maybe he won’t come after what I said last night.” Then she went to the kitchen and began cooking on faith, and soon he was there, stopped in the door, looking to test her face. She knew and turned full to him—the way he looked had lasted the night—and said “Come in.”
He came and sat quiet at the table while she cooked, and they ate in quiet till he said, “Did you sleep good?”
“It took awhile but yes, I managed all right.”
“That’s good”—he stood and went to the window—“because I was thinking we could take us a trip today, it being so bright.”
“Where to?”
“Well, if we went to Raleigh, we could get Mr. Isaac’s Christmas candy.”
Before she could answer, Mama’s footsteps passed in the hall overhead so she said, “Don’t you reckon we ought to stay closer-by than Raleigh?”
He turned to her. “Look—are you sticking with me or not?”
She looked and said “Yes.”
“Let’s go then.”
She scraped their dishes and left them in the sink and said, “I’ll get my coat.”
“Where from?”
“My room.”
“All right, but come straight back.”
She went up and got it and came down quiet past Sissie’s door. Milo was waiting in the hall, and they went towards the front together. But Rosacoke stopped in the door. “Don’t you reckon we ought to say where we are going?”
“You ain’t expecting no Registered Mail, are you?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go.”
They went through the yard with their backs to the house, not speaking, and just at the car they heard a knock behind them. Milo didn’t wait but Rosacoke turned to the house, knowing where to look, and there was Mama in the window of Papa’s old room upstairs. She hadn’t raised the glass to speak and she didn’t knock twice, but her knuckle rested on the pane it had struck. Rosacoke thought of the dishes she had left and opened her mouth to explain, but Milo cranked up and when Mama saw the smoke of his exhaust, she nodded so Rosacoke just gave a little wave towards the house. Then she got in and they rolled down to the road and, still quiet, headed left for the paving and the store. Milo stopped at the store. There was nobody in sight but some trucks were already there. He said, “Step in please and get the mail.” She went, seeing he didn’t want to answer folks’ questions, and the only letter was one that had just then come from Norfolk. She took it to the car, and Milo drove off while she read to herself,
November 18
Dear Rosa,
I just got home from work and found your letter lying on my floor with them Special Delivery stamps all over it. They really had me scared for a minute! But I have recovered and want to say I was mighty sorry to hear about Milo and Sissie’s bad luck. I had been looking forward to seeing their baby at Christmas as Milo told me last summer it would come in time to be in the show at Delight and him and me counted on being Wise Men with Rato if he comes home. Maybe you will think it is a little funny that I am not sending Milo a sympathy card or anything and am just writing to you but you never said what you meant that night about Milo being mad at me so I don’t know where I stand and sure don’t know why he was mad unless he has X-ray vision through trees at night. Anyhow I have always thought a whole lot of Milo and his foolishness and I hope whatever he was holding against me has blown over and that you will pass my sympathy on to him and Sissie. Sissie must be extra-let-down, toting it through all that hot weather so tell her too I am sorry.
I am also sorry you won’t be coming for Thanksgiving with me and my friends because I reckon what you need more than anything now is a little cheering up but I see what you mean about staying home awhile till the coast is clear. When it is though and you feel the need of a change, come on up here. Just give me fair warning! And speaking of the coast being clear—I hope you aren’t having any more old or new worries about our deer hunt and that the coast is all clear there too. Is it? Time enough has passed so it ought to be. I am stopping now to get this on the train.
Good night Rosa from your friend, Wesley
She folded it carefully and thinking she would never read it again, sealed the flap with what glue was left. Then she laid it in her lap with the writing down and looked at the flat road before them. She didn’t know what she had read. Her mind was like a bowl brimmed with one numbing thing—Milo’s burden he had asked her to share—and what Wesley said was oil on the surface of that, waiting. But looking ahead she could feel Milo throw curious looks towards her so to stave off questions, she faced the window at her right, and if it was the letter Milo wondered about, he took her meaning and drove on quietly till he had to speak—“Do you reckon Sissie meant what she said last night?”
“I wasn’t there to hear her.”
He waited almost a mile to answer. “She said I could get me somebody else to take my children from now-on-out. Reckon she meant that?”
“I can’t speak for Sissie,” she said, still turned to the window.
“Well, thank you ma’m for trying,” he said, but he left her alone with her burden, whatever it was, while he went on, watching both sides of the road for anything cheerful to mention. It took awhile to find such a thing, but when he did he took the chance and pointed past Rosacoke’s face to the window—“Have you eat any pecans this year?”
She said “No,” not seeing.
“I thought you was a great nut collector.” He slowed down a little.
“That was in olden times.”
“Well, we can get us some right now.” He stopped on the shoulder of the road and said “See yonder?”
She looked gradually, at nothing strange, at things she had passed every November of her life and not seen, things that had waited—the rusty bank thrown up by the road and gullied by rain and, beyond in the sun, a prostrate field where nothing stood straight, only corn with unused ears black from frost and stalks exhausted the color of broomstraw, beat to the ground as if boys had swarmed through with sickles, hacking, and farther back, one mule still where he stood except for his breath wreathing white on the bark of a tree that rose up over him straight and forked into limbs with nuts by the hundred and twitched on the sky like nerves because a boy stood in the fork in blue overalls and rocked. Then Wesley’s meaning sunk through her mind like lead.
But before she could swallow her awful gorge and speak, Milo jerked at her arm and said, “Come help me shake down some pecans.”
“Milo, we better go home.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Nothing. You ought to be home with Sissie.”
“Sissie don’t want to see me now, and Rosa, you said you was sticking with me.”
She turned from the window to her lap, but the letter was there so she faced Milo suddenly—that first Milo, not changed. “I ain’t studying Sissie, Milo. Take me home.” He didn’t answer that and with nowhere else to hide her face, she turned to the window again and the boy rocking yonder in the tree, and Milo took her home round miles of deadly curves not slowing once, staring only forward in mystery and anger with not one word for Rosacoke who could feel Wesley’s burden grow in her every inch of the way, nameless and blind.
At home Milo stopped sudden in the road, and the tan dust from his wheels rolled past them. Rosacoke sat for a moment, facing the house but not seeing where they were, and Milo didn’t move to help her out. He sat with his feet nervous on the gas and his hand on the gear-shift and his eyes forward, and when he had waited sufficient, he said “You are home.”
She looked and said “I am home” but not as if being home was a comfort. Then she opened her door and left him, and before she could get through the yard to the porch, he had turned and roared off the way they came. But she didn’t see him go or hear his noise. She was listening to hear some sound inside her maybe, but all she could hear was her feet in the crust of the ground and—when she went in and climbed the steps easy, hoping to pass unnoticed—the thud of her heart in her ears like wet dirt slapped with a spade.
Mama stood ready at the top by Sissie’s door. “Where is Milo?”
Rosacoke looked behind her and pointed with the letter in her hand as if he was there on the steps. “Gone to Raleigh—to get Mr. Isaac some candy.”
“I thought you was riding with him.”
“No’m, he just took me to the post office.”
“You said you was riding with him, didn’t you?”
“Mama, Milo is all right. Just let me go.”
“Are you sick or something?”
“I’m not feeling good.”
“Well, do you want a aspirin?”
“I don’t want nothing but quiet, thank you, ma’m,” and she went to her room and shut herself in and sat on the bed and not taking off her coat, said to herself, “I have asked time off for death so I can’t work today. I have got to just sit here and think.” But when she had closed her eyes, she was seized by a shaking that started at the back of her neck and flushed down through her. At first she thought, “I will build me a fire,” but the shaking went on and she dug both hands in her thighs and clenched her jaws and thought, “The room is not this cold,” but that didn’t calm her so she slackened her jaws and gave in to it and it rattled her teeth and passed on off.
A Long and Happy Life Page 12
