“Shut up! Will you just shut up!” She ran outside past Canny, and sat up on Huller’s porch, on the top step, tight in the right-hand corner, where Wallace usually sat, the one spot from which you could see the bend in the road.
Canny came in and flopped down on the bed. She said she was glad Alma had taken the two girls with her and Ellie. “They just suck’s all they do,” she sighed, scratching her head with both hands.
“Watch your mouth!” Wallace said, spinning around. He grabbed her wrists. “And stop that scratching!”
“You leave me alone!” Canny suddenly shrieked up at him. Her eyes were fierce with rage as she tried to pull her arms free. “You bastard!” she screamed, writhing and kicking up at his face: “Let goa me, you stupid little prick!”
He dropped her arms and just stood there, looking down at her. He wasn’t mad or even hurt; he was afraid. “Listen to me, Canny,” he said, pulling the chair close to the bed, where she lay curled in a ball with her back to him. “I gotta tell you something. Look at me, Canny … will you just do that for me, please?”
She turned and looked up guiltily at him. He took off his cap and scratched his head, then set the cap back on. “You see.…” He rubbed his nose until the tip was red. Her eyes never even blinked or flickered away. Finally, he was the one to look away. “No more swears,” he said, gruffly.
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a small voice.
“You better be.”
“C’mon!” Dotty said through the screen door behind him. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”
Canny had already eaten her cone. Wallace could feel her eyes following every lick he made on his. “Here,” he said, handing it over the seat.
“You sure?”
“I’m all full up on Big Macs,” he assured her. “I ate mine and your Momma’s too, don’t forget.”
“You’re such a hog!” Canny laughed, starting in on his cone.
“A hog!” Wallace cried. “Who’s calling who a hog that ate two herself, asides a cone, and then mine!” He turned to Dotty, who hadn’t said two words since leaving Huller’s. He cleared his throat. “Where you feel like going?” He cleared his throat again.
“Don’t matter,” she sighed. “Anyplace’s fine with me.”
He gave it a little gas and felt the motor’s rush and all the old tappets tapping right up his leg and into his chest like a great surging heartbeat.
“Want the radio on?” he asked hoarsely.
“No.”
He winced, not daring to breathe. Not daring to take his eyes off the road; not daring to break the spell. She sat with her head back on the seat and her eyes closed.
Maybe this was it, he thought. She’d just sit there and let him drive all night. And then come morning, she’d wake up and every sign’d say WEST … WEST … to Hollywood, California. Even Canny could sense it, sitting back there on the edge of the seat, watching him through the mirror.
“Take that left,” Dotty said suddenly. Twenty minutes later, she directed him onto a highway, then through a set of lights past a college with a big statue out front.…
His hand sagged on the wheel. Ahead, the sign said, WELCOME TO STONEFIELD.
“Look familiar?” she asked, pointing him through the next set of lights.
He didn’t answer; his mouth was too dry even to swallow. His eyes burned with every street light. He crouched so low in the seat he could barely see over the wheel.
“Down there’s the graveyard. Really there’s two, one on each side of … Take that left. Jesus!” she squealed as she jerked the wheel left to make the turn.
They were on a wide, tree-lined street. Every house was enormous and all the windows glowed with lights. A young girl and boy were walking up the hill, holding hands. The boy glanced over his shoulder at the rattle of the approaching motor.
“The school’s up ahead,” Dotty said. “That’s where to turn!” She pointed. “Right before the school!”
“What school?” asked Canny. “Is it gonna be my school?”
“That’s it!” Dotty cried, as the old car lumbered around the corner. “The one with the big round porch!”
“Looks like a bandstand,” Canny said, as they passed by.
“Looks like a big old boat to me,” Dotty said, kneeling on the seat and peering back. “Like Noah’s ark with the railing all around.”
The house, long and sectioned, with black roofs at uneven heights over its peaks and ells and dormers, was no more than a streak of white past Wallace’s frozen vision.
She made him drive around the block and park at the corner. Wallace stared at the road ahead.
“How come we’re stopped?” Canny wanted to know. “Who lives there?”
“I went right up the porch and in that front door,” Dotty was saying. “All the doors were glass and I remember there were mirrors all over the place. White rugs and mirrors and I kept seeing myself and it made me laugh and then I heard, ‘Hi, hi.’ Every place I turned you kept saying, ‘Hi, hi,’” she was telling Canny, who glanced uneasily at Wallace. “Like one of them talking baby dolls that only says one thing over and over till they wind down.… Son of a bitch!” Dotty said suddenly. “Who needs the bastard anyway. Thinks he’s so goddamn smart, calling me stupid.…” She opened the door and Wallace closed his eyes as she darted across the street.
“Momma!” Canny called. The back door clicked, but before Canny could get it open, Wallace had driven off.
When he came back up the hill, Dotty was waiting on the corner by the stone wall.
“You crazy?” Wallace shouted, as soon as she ducked into the car. “What to hell you tryna prove? You don’t give a damn ’bout nothin’, do ya?” He kept it up for miles, sputtering and shaking his head and saying things he’d never even thought of before. Canny was huddled in the back, sucking her thumb and regarding the two of them with half-closed, inward eyes.
“Just get somethin’ in your head and you do it! Don’t matter that nobody else’s ready or wants to, you just go on and do it or say it.…”
Dotty just sat there with her arms folded, stiff and pale, and dry-faced as a china statue.
11
It was late afternoon and three days into a heat wave that had shriveled the leaves on the trees and dried the grass to tinder. The big red dog panted under the porch. His eyes glowed through the dark lattice strips.
Down in the yard the three little girls sat in a sagging plastic pool with their knees drawn to their chins. They were pale and limp with the heat. Their Barbie dolls floated face down in the murky, grass-flecked water. Kelly said they were all drowned. She said their car crashed and rolled off the cliff and into the pond. Canny and Krystal had given up arguing with her. They drooped against each other in the pool and watched listlessly as Kelly tied stones to the dolls’ necks to make them sink.
“They’re all dead,” she crowed. “Whole goddamn bunch of them!” Canny rubbed the bridge of her nose at a mosquito bite that was raised and white.
Up on the porch steps were Ellie and Dotty in sweaty halter tops and skimpy shorts. Dotty sat on the top step unbraiding Ellie’s long black hair.
Alma and Wallace sat inside at the kitchen table. From time to time she glanced out the door toward the road. Jiggy had been gone since early morning. “He’s up to no good,” she said, lighting her cigarette with a butane lighter that hissed and flared so high it singed her eyebrows. Sweat matted on the dark hairs of her upper lip as she bent over the gray, shapeless bra she was mending. Wallace looked everywhere but at the bra.
Alma had been at the table since breakfast. She had spent most of the morning cutting out coupons from a stack of old magazines while she watched her favorite game shows. Every time Wallace tried to leave, Alma thought of something else she wanted him to do. After he had dried the lunch dishes he swept the kitchen floor, and then, when he thought Alma wasn’t looking, he made it as far as the porch. She called him back and insisted he sit down and rest while she got him a cup of coff
ee. That was an hour ago and he still hadn’t gotten any coffee.
“Once,” she was saying, “him and this guy he knew, they were gonna hold up a liquor store and he acted just the same as now. Mean and nervous and gone all the time.” She knotted the thread and bit it off and spit the long end onto the floor. “And when he’s home, he’s cleaning that damn gunna his all the time.” She glanced up at the clock and Wallace knew it was almost time for her soap operas. She stubbed out her cigarette and poured a glass of cherry-powdered drink. She took a sip and made a sour face. “You forgot the sugar!” she said.
“I just put half in,” Wallace answered. “Too much ain’t good for ya.”
Alma reached for the sugar bowl and tipped it over the glass. “I’ll bet your first wife hated losing you,” she said, as the sugar ran into the bright red drink. “This place is starting to look like one of them magazine pictures. So clean, I’m afraid to move.” She slid the sugar bowl across the table and Wallace centered it between the salt and pepper shakers and the ketchup bottle.
“Lookit you,” she laughed. “Mr. Neatfreak himself!”
Ellie’s voice carried in from the porch. “I got a heart-shaped face,” she said. She had pulled her hair back from her face and was looking up at Dotty. “Which is the best kind … well, easiest for different hair styles, that is.”
Dotty’s reply came in a strained voice. Alma shook her head. “All she thinks about is that hair of hers.” She lit another cigarette. “Spoiled brat,” she said, through a cough.
Ellie came inside then. In a cold voice she asked Alma if she could borrow the scissors. They had barely spoken since Alma caught Jiggy and Ellie splitting a six-pack while they watched the late show together. Of course, Wallace had gotten another version from Canny. What Alma had come upon in the middle of the night was her sister fast asleep on the floor next to Jiggy with the “Twilight Sermonettes” flickering from the television, revealing Ellie’s bare bottom through her nightie. Jiggy had looked up at Alma standing over them, her foot poised, ready to kick her sister’s back again, and he said, “Kick her again and I’m gone.” This, Canny had reported eagerly, adding, “If only he’da gone, Poppy, we’d be all set. We’d be gone now too.”
“What do you need scissors for?” asked Alma, rolling her eyes for Wallace’s benefit.
“For my hair,” said Ellie, picking up the scissors from the coffee can that was Alma’s sewing kit.
“Your hair! You ain’t cut your hair since you was ten.”
“Just the ends,” Ellie said. “Dotty said they’re all split and shitty looking. She’s gonna trim ’em for me.”
“She oughta trim something else while she’s at it,” Alma muttered. Ellie stalked outside and slammed the door.
Wallace got up and headed for the porch. He was sick of being stuck in here all day with Alma. He wanted to sit on the cabin steps and watch Canny in the wading pool. As foul-mouthed and mean as the Huller girls were, he still enjoyed watching Canny play with them. He loved the way her voice curved through the hot dusty sunlight as lightly as wings.
“You better plunge that tub again,” Alma said, as he opened the door. “Last night’s water still ain’t down.”
He closed the door. Ellie was back on the steps. Dotty had begun to snip the ends of her hair. From time to time their heads moved close and the giggly buzz of their talk seemed to drain Alma. She sighed when Wallace came out of the bathroom and told her the tub had already emptied.
“It’s hard being the oldest,” she said. “’Specially to that one.” She shook her head. “Wild! That girl was born wild. If she was mine, I’d tie her in the cellar till she was calmed down or old enough to know better. Course, she don’t listen to a word I say. It’s a good thing Dotty’s here. Least she’ll listen to her.”
She got up and turned on the television, then padded back to the table. Her soap opera was starting. She leaned on one elbow and squinted in at the set. “That’s Myra,” she said, nudging Wallace. He leaned forward and pretended to look, but from this distance the screen was just a smear of color. “She’s the doctor’s wife,” Alma said in a quick aside. “The one that used to be a go-go dancer.” She covered her mouth with both hands and made a whimpery noise. On television, a woman wept. “She’s had magnesia,” Alma whispered. “She can’t remember the past. No matter how hard she tries, it’s all a blank.” Alma made the same whimpery noise again. “Can you imagine?” she sighed. “Not remembering anything that ever happened to you?”
All at once this picture came to mind. It was just like television in his brain. He was seeing Hyacinth when she was a pinch-faced, weedy little thing who used to work next to him on the jar line at the pickle plant. None of the other workers liked her, but then none of them had ever been very nice to him either. At first he and Hyacinth hardly ever talked. For four years, they had worked side by side, packing the dills eight to a jar, cut sides in, with their conversation consisting mostly of hellos and looks like rain, mebbe—with her doing most of the conversing and, eventually, the proposing, though it had been on his mind for months previous, he confessed after they were married in her uncle’s twelve-pew church.
“Well, why didn’t you say something?” she wanted to know.
“I dunno,” he said softly, his brain all mushy and fogged with love and tenderness. He could feel the warmth of her hand on the armrest between them. Before her, he could remember the touch of no other human being. He couldn’t stop grinning at his new bride, Hyacinth Wallace. He was part of something. He had no sense of her belonging to him. It was more that he now was hers. He would settle into her life with the same eager trust that had so long before allowed the heavy metal brace to be fastened to his leg and would, in the years to come, propel him up and down countless highways, with Dotty beside him, her eyes as wild as her laughter, and between them, sleeping with her head on his lap, would be the tiny little girl, Canny, who would love him and trust him and believe in him more than anyone else ever had or ever would.
Hyacinth had looked at him, her hand no longer on the armrest, but white-knuckled on the lunch box she had packed for them to eat on the bus. They were on their way to Burlington, their honeymoon trip. A weekend at the Green Mountain Boys Motor Lodge; breakfast included and all the ice you wanted. He had had two bags delivered before he realized he had as little use for ice as Hyacinth had for him.
“Why’d you make me do all the finagling?” she had persisted.
“I dunno,” he answered truthfully. He had no idea why she had ever spoken to him in the first place one day at the time clock when they were both punching out. He had no idea why she had walked down the steps with him, then kept walking along the bright dusty road, all the way into town to the shoe shop, where he had lived upstairs in the same dim room all the ten years after the Home; lived there alone without ever once in all that time having had a visitor or having heard a voice within those hard, airless walls but his own; had lived not only alone, but lonely, so lonely that he had begun to imagine that parts of him were breaking off, falling away, and missing. He was conscious of his thousands of different pieces. His brain had grown staticky and sore with the effort of having to keep track of all his parts. The sense of loss he felt was both strange and frightening. And sad. When he slept, he would dream the saddest dream of all, the dream of the missing brace, that one most conscious part of him that kept him whole and safe. In his dream, he would float right up off the bed, through the ceiling and the roof, drifting like a balloon through the thickest clouds and thinnest air, unanchored and weightless, clear off the face of the earth, with nothing or no one to yank him back.
And so she had asked him one more time—in the motel room right after they had tried to do it and had failed. He had known about that part of it, what it was they were supposed to do together. What he had not known for sure was how actually to get that part of himself inside her. Since neither one of them would touch anything with their hands, it wouldn’t work. He had felt bad. Especially be
cause Hyacinth seemed so mad. She asked him again. “How come you never let on? How come you never said nothing about us marrying and let me do all the chasing? Was your plan, wasn’t it?” she cried, pummeling his back until it was black and blue. “To make me look foolish … to make them all laugh and say how my mother was right.…” She had pushed him off the bed and onto the floor, where he spent the rest of the night.
It hadn’t taken long for a clever girl like Hyacinth to root out his limitations and his faults, which weren’t so much things he did, but all those things he was incapable of doing. Most of her unhappiness began when she got pregnant and had to quit work and make do on one paycheck. She started hating the room they lived in over the shoe shop and hating not having a car, and went on to hating his mumbling and hanging his head when they met her people after church, to hating the smell of his feet and the brine in his hair and the way he gripped his fork, until, finally, she admitted how she had made a terrible mistake. It was him she hated, and, more than that, the fact that she knew he’d never change, couldn’t change; because what she’d gone and done was thrown her whole life and all her chances (the few a homely girl like her’d ever have, she cried) away on a retard. And he wasn’t to cry and feel a bit bad because it wasn’t his fault. That’s just the way God had made him, was all.
It was all her fault, she bitterly admitted. Her fault for wanting to get out from under her mother’s thumb so bad, she’d gone and done exactly what her mother’d warned her against—thinking the first man who treated her decent was the one. She was the one to blame, not him, she wrote in all her goodbye notes, and had to print so that he could read them. She wrote the third note longhand and he was too ashamed to show it to anyone, so he just folded it up and slipped it into the secret compartment of his wallet.
Three times that first year she ran home to the Flatts. Twice he went after her and sat out on her family’s front steps until she finally came out and said she’d go back with him. The third time, her daddy, big mean Hazlitt Kluggs, came after him, secured him a job with the county road crew, and moved them and the little they had into the four-room house renting dirt-cheap across from the Kluggs place.
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