by Mark Dunn
She never did.
Four days later, sitting by herself, Mrs. Trestle watched as Tom of Couple Number 62 was stabbed in the shoulder by Pavel of Couple Number 88. Pavel had convinced himself that Tom had made a pass at his wife Katrina, also of Couple Number 88. It wasn’t true. Pavel had only imagined it in a sleep-deprived brain that often played tricks on him these days. Mrs. Trestle would have been happy to explain to Pavel that Tom would never have done something like that. Tom and Gloria were good kids. She would have been happy to have them for her own children. Tom collected stamps. Gloria lived with her sister, who was a beauty operator.
The following evening Mrs. Trestle came back. Both of her couples were out of the competition now, but still she returned. There were nineteen pairs barely moving on the dance floor. After that evening’s grind there would be eighteen. The couples stumbled and staggered. The sight of it saddened Mrs. Trestle. She didn’t know why she’d come.
Later that night, someone sat down in the chair next to her. It wasn’t Mrs. McLatchy. It was the girl, Gloria, previously of Couple Number 62. She came with her sister Lulu. Lulu, standing next to Gloria, was wearing her beauty parlor smock. Gloria gave Mrs. Trestle a hug. “I came to tell you that Tom will be okay. They’re hoping to send him home from the hospital in a couple of days. I thought you’d like to know.”
“I did want to know. Thank you so much for telling me, honey,” said Mrs. Trestle, who was touched by Gloria’s thoughtfulness.
“So this is what it looks like,” said Gloria, studying the couples still left on the ballroom floor.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Trestle.
Lulu bought a bag of popcorn. The three women munched in silence and watched the show. The band was playing “I Won’t Dance” by Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields, and Jimmy McHugh.
The bandleader had a sense of humor.
1936
SHABBY-GENTEEL IN CALIFORNIA
The older of the two women set the tea tray upon the table.
“Oh, it’s right lovely!” exclaimed the younger, who was a guest of the older.
“The set was my great-grandmother’s, and it was passed down to me. I made sure to pack it very carefully when we moved west. As you can see, not a single piece was chipped.”
Lois held up her cup and turned it slightly to give it a full inspection. There wasn’t a chip or scratch anywhere on it. Nor were any of the other porcelain pieces damaged in any way. Arrayed between the two women was a teapot, sugar bowl, and creamer, each with the same colorful, hand-painted design as could be found on the teacups: violets and ferns set off against an almost perfect white background.
“Not a scratch,” said Lois. “And the tea—it’s very good. Did you bring it with you from back East?”
“Yes. I can find nothing like it out here. It’s a special English blend that my family has been drinking for years.” Millicent took a sip of tea, the steam rising up from the cup and half-clouding her eyeglasses. “Where are you from, dear?”
“Booker and I come from Arkansas. He says he’s got folks in the state that go back to the original Arkansas Traveler. I guess you can say me and Booker and the kids, we’s the Arkansas Travelers now.”
Millicent picked up a serving plate upon which she’d placed several diminutive slices of shortcake. She held it out to Lois.
“Thankee,” said Lois, taking the slice resting on the top.
“Lois, my dear, how long have you and your family been here in California?”
“Not long at all,” replied Lois, shielding her mouth with her hand as she spoke, since there was masticated shortcake in there. “I reckon it’s been about two weeks.”
“And do you like it here? Do you think you’ll put down roots?”
“It’s awfully purdy. All them orchards and vineyards. I ain’t never seen a place as purdy as Californy. But it all depends on where Booker can find work.”
Millicent patted Lois’s dormant hand. “I’m sure everything will work out for you, dear. You didn’t think you’d be attending a tea party today, now did you?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t.” Both women took a sip of tea.
“More tea?”
Lois peered into her teacup. It was half drained.
“A splash perhaps—warm it up a little?”
Lois smiled. “That would be right nice.”
As Millicent poured, she said, “Clarence and I have traveled quite a bit. We’ve been to Arkansas. The mountains are lovely there. Everything so green.”
“We lived in the southern part of the state,” said Lois. “It’s purdy flat. We had us a cotton farm.”
“Did you lose your farm, dear? I’m hearing that some of our farmers these days are losing their farms from all that wind and dust. You can’t grow cotton or anything else, I’d imagine, in fields of dust.” She smiled, then sighed contentedly. “Of course, there’s no dust out here. Smell how clean the air is. You just toss a seed over your back, and voilà! An orange tree sprouts up just as easy as you please. Have you ever had a California orange, dear?”
Lois shook her head.
“Juiciest, tastiest orange there is.” Millicent licked her lips and closed her eyes. “I wish I had orange slices to put out today, but they aren’t quite in season yet. Have you ever smelled an orange blossom, Lois?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t reckon I ever have.”
“Most luscious scent in the world. How many children do you have?”
“I got the two boys, Oren and Les. They’s six and eight. And then a little girl, Viola. She’s five.”
Millicent bent slightly forward in her seat, intrigued. “Is she that new little girl I’ve seen running around—the spittin’ image of Miss Shirley Temple?”
“Some folks say Viola looks a little like Shirley Temple, though I cain’t quite see a hard resemblance.”
“If that’s the little girl I’m thinking of, she’s just as cute as a button. You and your husband ought to be very proud. And while you’re here in California, you should try to get her seen by one of the studios.”
“Studios?”
“Movie studios. I’m sure that’s what Miss Shirley Temple’s mother and father did—just marched her right up to the gate of Twentieth Century Fox and said, ‘Well, here we are. Open up that gate, if you please!’”
Millicent chuckled. Lois laughed along with her. “I’ll talk to Booker about it. Be nice not to have to worry about money for a change.”
Millicent’s expression suddenly turned solemn. “Has the Depression been hard on you and your family, child?”
Lois nodded. “We don’t need much to get along, but it’s a real trial tryin’ to get along with nothin’.”
“Poor dear.” Millicent patted her guest’s hand again.
“Well, I best be gettin’ along now,” said Lois. “Booker’ll wonder what’s happened to me if I’m not around when he gets back.” She stood up and reached out to shake Millicent’s hand. “It was very nice. It was the nicest tea party I ever been to.”
“I’m glad you liked it. We should do it again.” Millicent poked her cloth napkin at the corners of her mouth.
“I’d like that, but I don’t think we’re gonna be here much longer. If Booker comes back and says there ain’t no work in these parts, we’ll have to be movin’ on to someplace else.”
Millicent nodded. “Lots of places need good pickers these days, I understand.”
“Booker’s got to get work soon or I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“You wait right here. I want to give you something.”
A moment passed. In Millicent’s absence, Lois quickly snatched up three of the remaining rectangles of shortcake and slipped them into the pocket of her dress. It was a floral print dress, dirty and frayed. She was ashamed of it and at first didn’t want to accept her hostess’s invitation on account of not having anything better to wear. But she’d given her hair a good combing and had taken a water bucket and scrub-rag to her soiled face and arms and legs, and
made herself halfway presentable, given the circumstances, and Millicent had welcomed Lois to her tea table without even batting an eye over her appearance.
“I want you to have this,” said Millicent on her return. “It’s my lucky half dollar.”
“Oh no, Miss Millicent. I cain’t possibly take your lucky coin.” Millicent opened Lois’s right hand and placed the fifty-cent piece on her palm. Then she closed Lois’s fingers around it. There was dirt beneath all the nails. Lois’s fingers were thin and withered like those of an old woman.
“Goodbye, Lois, and good luck.”
Once outside, Lois opened her hand to look at the coin. It was a 1920 “Walking Liberty” and it glistened in the bright, afternoon sunlight. A moment later, Lois felt a hand upon her shoulder. “I been lookin’ for you,” a man said. “You weren’t around the tent. Who’s lookin’ after the children?”
Lois turned to peer up into the face of her husband Booker. It was ruddy from the sun. He had been out with three other migrant men driving through the valley looking for work, and had returned without prospects.
“Mrs. Jordan, from the tent next to ours—she said she’d keep an eye on ’em ’long with her own young ’uns.”
“Where’d you get that half dollar?”
Lois tossed her head in the direction of the structure behind her. Its sides were constructed of sheets of rusty, corrugated iron and strips of tattered roofing paper. The “roof” itself was made of old canvas, as if cannibalized from a tent that had been ripped apart and put to slightly less transient use. For a door there was a hanging gunny-sack. Likewise, there was a paneless window next to the door, curtained by flour sacks. In front of the makeshift house were two crates (for “night sittin’”). Between them was an improvised flowerbox containing field flowers. The tiny shack looked as if someone—in all likelihood, Millicent—had tried her best to make of it something tidy and pleasant. There was even a welcome mat of sorts made from automobile floor carpeting.
“What are you doin’ takin’ money from folks just as bad off as we are?” asked Booker, pocketing the coin that had been offered to him by his wife.
“She wanted us to have it.”
“Why?”
“She likes me, I figger. We had a nice visit. We had a tea party.”
“You had a what?”
“A tea party. I ain’t never been to no tea party before and it was right nice.”
Booker thought about this and then said, “I heard about her, that Mrs. Tengle. Met her husband. He’s got his hands full. She’s a might tetched.”
“She didn’t seem tetched to me a’tall, Booker. She seemed refined.”
“Well, don’t you go takin’ no more of her money. Not that you’re gonna get much of a chance anyways. We’s heading out tonight. Couple of the fellas said there’s better chance for work farther north.”
“Are the Tengles comin’ too, do you reckon?”
Booker shook his head. “Tengle, he says they’ll stay here a mite longer. He’s still got stuff of his wife’s he can sell. She’s got family things worth a bunch of money.”
“I hope she don’t have to sell her tea set.”
The two started back to their tent. It was little more than tarpaulin stretched down to the ground in lean-to fashion from the raised side of the back of their truck—a 1926 Hudson Super-Six sedan conversion. The children were waiting for them next to the tent. Each was barefoot, the two boys dressed in torn shirts and patched blue jeans held up by single suspenders. The girl wore a faded plaid school-day dress with a trace of what had once been a frilly white collar.
“We’s hungry,” said Oren, the oldest boy and spokesman for the trio.
“I’ll boil up the rest of them potatoes,” said Lois to her husband. “Oh, I almost forgot—” She pulled the crumbling pieces of shortcake from her pocket and divided them among the children.
Booker chuckled a little to himself.
‘What’s got you so tickled?” asked Lois, handing the water bucket to her son Les. “You take that down to the creek and hurry right back, y’hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Booker reached over and kissed his wife on the forehead. “You goin’ to tea parties and all. Woulda never believed it.”
“I couldn’t rightly believe it neither. But it was nice, Booker. It was so very, very nice.”
1937
DEPILATED IN OHIO
Dewey and Florence Hurd adopted the girl from nuns when she was three. Joanna was the illegitimate daughter of a woman who had worked in Chillicothe in one of the town’s shoe factories. Joanna’s mother fell on hard times at war’s end and began to sell her body and dissipate herself. She eventually left Ross County under a cloud of shame and disgrace, and ended her life in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles in 1930, an empty morphine-injecting Pravaz at her side.
Joanna had been grateful that the Hurds, who had no children, had taken her in and brought her to live as their daughter in their simple cream-colored century-old rectangular stone house, which stood embowered by white oaks and black walnuts on the Cincinnati Pike west of Chillicothe. The house and surrounding farm were situated in the valley of Paint Creek, within easy walking distance of hills thickly wooded by hickories and beeches and ashes. It was during all those solitary sylvan rambles that Joanna grew into the shy young woman of sixteen she had this year become. And it is to these woods that Joanna fled when her adoptive father and mother flung their angry barbs at one another in each new chapter of that all-too-familiar tale of protracted marital discord to which the girl was daily witness—evidence of a rocky union that would not be dissolved, for neither husband nor wife could afford to live without the other in a devil’s pact of prolonged mutual destruction.
Dewey Hurd had been an English professor at an Indiana college when he inherited the farm from his uncle and decided to have a go at the agrarian life. Florence had once worked as a children’s advocate in New York City, loving every child that she discovered hungry or ill-clad or homeless or unloved, though once a child—in this case, her own adopted daughter Joanna—was rescued from the dire vise of societal neglect, it was nothing for her to show (as it was with her husband) that side of herself that was not compassionate, but grasping and snide and brutally competitive, as evidenced by participation in a marriage that was nothing if not a daily rivalry of biting wit.
At times Joanna felt that her two parents were competing for her exclusive endorsement. At other times, she was the invisible child, hardly noticed when it came time for an exchange of the harsh, bitter words and sly machinations that defined and defiled the marriage.
Aside from the metaphorical storm of hymeneal strife that blew in regular gusts through the simple stone house beneath the oaks and the walnuts, the weather in its truer meteorological sense had been especially unkind to Ross County, Ohio, over the past three years. In 1935 a flood had left the corn crop and the garden choked out by rampant Johnson grass. The winter of 1935–36 had sent temperatures plummeting to twenty-two below, killing the winter wheat and rye. The drought that arrived the following summer was one of the worst on record, and when it was over, all that was left for the Hurds was a harvest of scarcely a single bushel of corn nubbins and a field of defiant wild cornflowers. Sometimes Joanna thought of herself as the cornflower surviving in the midst of the ugly landscape that was her tempestuous family.
For Joanna was very pretty indeed. She had beautiful long, tawny hair that she allowed to cascade luxuriously down her back. But where was the defiance, the filial insurgence?
In those moments in which mother and daughter found temporary tranquility in the company of one another, putting up vegetables in the cellar, for example, or making a pie, or together gathering the eggs in the henhouse, all was well and good, and Joanna felt only love for her second mother. Likewise, there were times that left Joanna alone with her father and there was commensurate tenderness and quiet bliss between these two as well. The morning in late April on which the sheep-shearer
was to come for his annual visit was not, however, to be counted among those times. In fact, the morning brought one of the worst rows between her parents that Joanna had ever witnessed.
Mr. Hurd had risen earlier than usual to get the milking and other morning chores out of the way. He had looked in on his small flock of eighteen ewes, which he’d penned together at dusk the night before so that they would be ready for shearing when Mr. Talbot arrived. It had rained in the night and the upper doors of the shed had been left open and several of the sheep were now wet. Who had opened the doors?
Mrs. Hurd confessed. It was too stuffy in the cramped shed, she said, and she didn’t think that close confinement would be too healthful for the animals, whose fleeces had grown uncomfortably thick over the previous hard winter.
“It’s quite apparent to me that it’s only the wool you care about—having enough to sell to the Cooperative,” Florence railed from her new electric range, which she was still struggling to learn to use. “But if those sheep should all drop dead from heat exhaustion, where will you get your wool to sell then?”
“I’ll have to ask Talbot to return on some other day,” Dewey muttered in reply as he pushed his plate of ham and badly charred biscuits away. “Or else we’ll have to write off the fleeces of all those ewes who took an unexpected shower last night thanks to your thoughtlessness.”
“Why can’t you simply dry the drabbled fleeces on the floor of the corn crib after they’ve been sheared? Didn’t you have to do that a couple of years ago—the time that you left the upper doors open?”
“I’ll do what I have to do. And I’ll do it without breakfast. You burned the biscuits again. When are you going to learn how to use that new stove you forced me to buy? The stove we could hardly afford?”
Florence swung around to face the stove so that her husband couldn’t see her cry. Her hand fell on the handle of the frying pan. She wheeled back around, her reddened eyes burning with fury. “I should be like one of those hardened women who live in the shacks in the hills. I should take this iron skillet to your head and be done with your constant carping and cruelty.”
