Tammy out of Time

by Cid Ricketts Sumner

  Ernie’s car door slammed, and Barbara’s quick laugh rang out. “You’ve got a one-track mind, Ernie. So long for now, and thanks just the same.”

  Mr. Bissle said, “Healthy laugh, she’s got. There’s nothing like being healthy. For my age I’m a remarkably healthy man. You know what I attribute it to?”

  Mrs. Brent sighed faintly. “What, Mr. Bissle?”

  “Two baths daily, winter and summer.”

  Miss Renie made a little choking sound, and Professor Brent said hastily, The ancient Romans had a rather interesting water system.”

  Tammy edged along the step till she came to Pete. She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to find out before Barbara came back. “You mad with me for staying after dark, Pete?” she whispered.

  “Of course not, Tammy. Only I didn’t know where you were and I was worried. And I’d have taken you to town myself if I’d known you wanted to go.”

  “Would you, Pete?”

  “Sure. Now tomorrow—how’d you like to drive down and see your grandfather?”

  “Oh, Pete, that would be wonderful.”

  He stood as Barbara approached. “We’ll take the day to it.” Barbara waved him down again and sat between him and Tammy, her back turned to Tammy. “It’s lovely here on the steps looking out into the moonlight. We ought to take a walk, Pete.” She moved closer to him and they went on talking together softly.

  On the gallery Mr. Bissle was saying, “Didn’t have any idea they took baths in those days. Matter of fact I don’t know much about history, and tell the truth I never missed it. All they teach you in schools is facts.”

  “Indeed?” Professor Brent’s tone was chilly.

  “Well, I declare,” Tammy said. “Here I been worrying about getting myself an education and maybe it ain’t necessary at all.”

  “One man’s opinion, Tammy——” Professor Brent began.

  “I’m not saying anything against it, Professor. That’s the way you make your living, and it’s all right if you want to do it that way. Of course you’d make more money as a bricklayer, now wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but——”

  “The world pays in proportion to how valuable a thing is. If I was a young man starting out, I’d go into plumbing.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Brent said. “But you—you didn’t go into plumbing, you went into advertising, Mr. Bissle.”

  “Yes, and I haven’t done too badly. I’ve managed to keep comfortable.”

  “I should say so,” Mrs. Brent murmured.

  Miss Renie asked, “Are you just on vacation now, Mr. Bissle?”

  “Well, yes and no. Brought plenty of work along. I’m looking around for a place to retire to in a few years.”

  “Would you like a place in Mississippi?” Miss Renie leaned forward, her rocking chair creaking.

  “Aunt Renie, please!” Mrs. Brent’s voice was distressed.

  “I’m looking around. Florida’s full of robbers.”

  Mrs. Brent said, “Peter was there for some of his training.”

  “Oh? What branch were you in?”

  “Submarine service,” Peter said.

  “You didn’t get much out of that that would help you get a start in the world, did you? Just ribbons, I bet.”

  “Oh, Mr. Bissle, you should see Peter’s. And his citations——”

  Pete shifted uncomfortably and Barbara leaned closer to him. “I’ll break it up. Oh, Mrs. Brent, where is Tammy?”

  “What’s that? Tammy? Why, she’s right behind you.”

  “Oh—” Barbara looked around—“so she is. Stupid of me. I wanted to ask where you went, Tammy, and what you saw.”

  “I seen a sight of things,” Tammy said. She clasped her hands around her knees and rocked back and forth on the step, not missing how Barbara had turned the talk and how she was looking to her to keep it turned. “I seen——”

  “Saw,” Miss Renie corrected.

  “Saw. I saw a plenty—all the city, with houses so close together it’s a wonder folks can breathe, and stores and people so thick they was bumping into each other, buying things. All the signs and the movies too, and the radio between the music was telling them to buy this and that and they was doing it fast as ever they could.”

  “Ah, advertising—that’s what does it,” Mr. Bissle said.

  “But if you bought everything they told you to buy, it would take a million dollars, I reckon.”

  “Made you want to buy, didn’t it?” Mr. Bissle said, rubbing his hands together. “Pretty good for business, I’d say.”

  “No. It’s wicked. It makes people into barbarians that worship the idols of the market place. I read about it in a book, dusting.” Barbara laughed and Pete said, “What book, Tammy?”

  “It said Bacon on the outside, and that’s the kind of barbarian I was telling you about on the Ellen B.”

  “Oh!” Pete said.

  “Sounds like nonsense to me,” Mr. Bissle said. “Barbarian—why, you’ve got it backward. That’s civilization—mass production, nationwide advertising.”

  Mrs. Brent broke in before Tammy could speak. “Ernie had no business taking Tammy all the way to Jackson. He drives too fast.”

  “He didn’t take me to Jackson. It was Fairville we went to.”

  “I didn’t realize there was another large city in this state,” Mr. Bissle said, distracted from his argument.

  “Oh, yes,” Tammy told him quickly. “Pop. sixteen fifty.”

  “Sixteen fifty?”

  “It means there’s that many population,” Tammy said, pleased at knowing something he didn’t. “That’s what the sign said. It’s a big place all right.”

  “What else did you do besides look at people?” Barbara asked, choking on the question.

  Tammy studied her a moment, seeing there was some other reason, under her words, for all this asking. But she was tired of hidden meaning, she was plumb sick of double talk. “I’ll tell you,” she began.

  “Skip it, Barb.” Pete spoke out of the side of his mouth.

  “But I really want to know, Pete.”

  “Like hell you do,” Pete muttered.

  “Well—” Tammy looked across at her thoughtfully—“Ernie bought me some dog meat. It didn’t taste bad but I kept thinking about dogs and how they wag their tails at you so friendly. It cost a lot, too. At the drugstore.”

  Mr. Bissle said, “Is the meat shortage so——”

  Barbara laughed. “Oh, Cousin Al, it was a hot dog, of course. Go on, Tammy.”

  “Ernie took me to the movies, too. There was a lot of courting going on there.”

  “Thought they had a Western on Saturdays,” Pete said.

  “It was real people courting, Pete. Ernie said that was what they did at the movies. The picture was a lot of men riding and chasing each other, and there was a girl. She danced on top of the table where they was all sitting drinking. Didn’t have much clothes on, but more’n the naked one in the store window.”

  “What do you mean, Tammy?” Miss Renie asked.

  “In the store window. It was a false figger and they put a dress on her whilst we was watching. I saw a sight of things in the store windows—hats and dresses and ways to do your hair, and many inventions that would be a mighty convenience. Like the bedpan and——”

  “Well!” Mrs. Brent interrupted. “I’m sure you saw enough to tire you out. You really should go to bed, Tammy.”

  “But I’m not——”

  “Just turn on the back hall light as you go through, please, and I’ll put it out later.”

  Tammy stood, her heart pounding hard, her eyes blazing down at Barbara. She knew now what Barbara had been doing—holding her up to scorn, mocking, like the children that ran after Elisha shouting, Go up, thou bald head. “Oh, I wisht I could call the she bears out of the wood,” she cried.

  Mrs. Brent said, “What on earth, Tammy? Are you out of your head?”

  “But of course,” Miss Renie cried. “The she-bears that t
are the forty-two children for Elisha.”

  “Yes,” Tammy said, with a gulp. “It used to be I thought he was being purely cruel, but now I see he was mightily provoked.”

  “In any case,” Mrs. Brent said with severity, “there are some things we just don’t talk about.”

  Pete sprang up and came to Tammy as she stood in the light from the hall, saying, “Sorry, Mother, but you’re wrong. Tammy was asked to tell what she saw. You——” He put one arm round her shoulder. “Don’t mind, Tammy.”

  “Aw, Pete, don’t take it so seriously, for heaven’s sake.” That was Barbara, trying to make up to him, seeing she’d gone too far, “I was just——”

  “I know what you were doing.” Pete’s voice was cold.

  “Well, my goodness—” Barbara turned toward the others—“you know how Pete hates to have anybody talking about his medals. I was only trying to turn the conversation.”

  Tammy looked up at him, feeling his arm across her shoulder, comforting and kind. Her anger melted; she felt a sorrowfulness enter into her bones. Pete was kind, kind as he would be to any odd, lost one, blundering and ignorant. “Must be I talk too free,” she said.

  Barbara had risen. “Forget it, Pete. I’m sorry. Come on, let’s take a walk—it’s a gorgeous night.”

  Tammy moved from Pete’s arm. “I will go to bed.” She turned and went in by the open front door, walking with dignity to hide the ache inside of her.

  In her room she undressed slowly, not turning on the electricity, but moving by the light of the moon. When she lay down on her bed, she tried to stop thinking about Barbara. She had a sight of other things to think about—all she had seen and heard in town, and there was Mr. Bissle who did not believe in education. That was really something to puzzle over. And tomorrow—tomorrow Pete was going to take her to see Grandpa! But just the same her mind kept worrying at Barbara, like a dog with a bone.

  After a while she heard voices on the ell porch. Professor Brent saying, “These stairs are rather steep but if you’ll just follow me. Your room is right up here, Mr. Bissle. Coolest room in the house.”

  There were more steps and talking, but all far away. Then the house grew quiet. Tammy turned and tossed and could not get to sleep. It must be the moonlight, she thought. She got up and sat in the low chair by the window. Under the trees the shadows were black and motionless. In the open places the moonlight was still on the grass, not leaping and dancing as it was on the river. After a while Tammy leaned forward, catching her breath. Two people were coming through the gap in the far hedge. They moved closer together, they stopped in the shadow—Barbara lifting her face and Pete bending down.

  “Goshamighty,” Tammy breathed, “that there is the outkissingest woman! Her lips drop honey. But I bet her end is bitter as wormwood.” She stood up, hands clenched at her sides. “One like that’s got no right to Pete. She ain’t good enough.” Then she turned away and climbed into her bed. She could not bear to watch them walking back toward the house, moving close together in the moonlight. The real trouble was, Pete wanted Barbara. He was caught by her beauty, he was snared by her shapely limbs and her fair speech. “I reckon I’ve got a body, too,” she said and hid her face in the pillow.

  14.

  IT WAS a bright day early in the morning, warm and full of a Sabbath feel, as if the earth had memories of the Seventh Day, its finished birthday, and wrapped a holy stillness about itself, remembering. The morning came to Tammy lying in the carved bed in Miss Renie’s little room. She opened her eyes and took in the light and savored the stillness. It rebuked her for her anger of the night before. Be still, the morning said to her, and fret not thyself, the sun is risen.

  Tammy stretched herself under the sheet and pushed back her dark hair from her face and let her hands, like another’s, move from her throat down over the gentle mounds of her breasts, along the smallness of her waist and the firm outcurving of her thighs. Amid the confusion and the diverse stirrings of strangers, she was yet one, whole and discreetly contained within herself, her soul bound pleasantly by her body. Yes, like she was thinking last night, she had a body too. But it would shame her to use it to entice a man. “This is me,” she whispered, “me out in the world, but still me.” Being herself was what held her back from being wily and cunning in the ways of the flesh. And yet, she reckoned, there might be ways you could put a man in mind of it, in seemly fashion. Else how had women been making out all these years?

  This was the day Pete was going to take her to see Grandpa. All at once she was filled with strength and resolution, and the day stretched ahead of her, rich and filled with promise. She rose and the smell of the morning drew her to the window, the sparks of dew invited her. She dressed quickly and went out by the small passageway and the ell porch, her bare feet making no sound. The bricks of the garden walk were cool and smooth as water, the sweet shrub by the path had been breathing sweetness all night long and now the dew on every leaf was scented. Gather it up in a bottle, Tammy thought, and there would be perfumery fit to sell in a drugstore.

  When she came from the little house back of the kitchen behind its decent screen of vines, the loose plank walk rattling under her light step, she stopped to look up at Pete’s house. It was really two houses, the ell being the first built and complete in itself. Then later the front part had been set up at right angles to it. Now the morning sun was behind the ell and the green tops of oak trees showed above its roof that was still black with the night’s dew. It looked cool and gray and beautiful with the two galleries one above the other and both laced with black iron railings. No wonder people came from far to look and admire.

  There was a stirring of pans in the kitchen, the creak of the coffee grinder. Osia had come. She was cooking breakfast. The rest of the house was shuttered and sleeping, holding those who slept.

  Pete’s father and mother were in the big bedroom back of the library in the front part of the house. Mrs. Brent would be still from her buzzing, her perpetual beating about. She was all day like a busy bug, a lightning bug, cupped around by her life. Sleep would have to pierce her sharp as a pin, holding her against her will—sleep that was cousin to the thing she feared. Professor Brent would be lying beside her with his long feet making a finish to his length. All his long words would be folded within his mind and his manners would be keeping him well to his side of the bed.

  Tammy came through the gate and latched it behind her, looking up again at the house. Miss Renie was in the other big room across the passageway from Tammy’s, with the tester overhead and Picasso curled at her feet. Maybe she was dreaming, going in her dreams to all the far places she had never got to in her waking. Barbara was in the downstairs ell room, next to Tammy. She would be smiling in her sleep, with her smooth cheek snuggled low and her arms around a pillow, snuggling into it, dreaming maybe of a couch that was perfumed with myrrh and aloes and cinnamon.

  Pete—Tammy’s lips shaped to a smile. She knew how Pete slept from how he lay when he was sick on the Ellen B.—one hand flung out and one drawn close against his breast, holding in with one hand and giving with the other; his lips relaxed to show the sweetness he kept strictly hidden within himself. She let her mind rest tenderly on Pete as she moved between the sweet olive trees. Their fragrance came to her shyly. It was not bold like the sweet shrub, it was delicate and fine. It was less than air but it was more penetrating. It surrounded her, it passed through her, as if all her body breathed it in. It was like her thinking of Pete, for that was of her body too.

  In the big upstairs ell room beside Pete’s room, was Mr. Bissle, making a high mound with his stomach under the bedclothes, keeping his head stiff and cautious on the pillow, even in sleep. He would not be one to dream. Nothing so fragile and fair as a dream could come through the thick white dome of his bald head.

  That was all the house held. Her eyes fell on the bed of cornflowers and verbena against the house wall. Old Prater had worked hard to weed it but he hadn’t finished this part. Maybe she
could do it before breakfast while everyone was sleeping.

  She had a big heap of grass and weeds on the walk beside her when she heard a shuffling step on the upper ell porch. It couldn’t be Pete—he would never walk like that. She sat back on her heels and looked up. It was Mr. Bissle in a blue-and-white-striped robe not wide enough to meet around his middle. It showed his sleeping suit that was made of pale-blue silky stuff. He looked as if his mamma had forgotten he was grown and had dressed him in baby blue. He was a bald-headed baby, got out of his crib too soon in the morning.

  He had come to Pete’s door now. He opened it softly, looked in, closed it again. Then he went the length of the porch to the last door, to the room that was to be Mr. Fernan’s, and did the same. Then he came down the stairs, placing one foot carefully and the other beside it till he got to the bottom. Then he stood, looking as if he wanted to go somewhere and didn’t know where.

  “It’s out younder back of the kitchen, by the plank walk,” Tammy called, and bent quickly to her weeding again.

  “Humph,” he grunted and scuffed his slippers down the steps and along the walk, not looking her way. When he came back Tammy did not turn. It was more seemly not to, considering where he had been. But his shuffling steps halted by the flower bed, so she said, “Good morning, Mr. Bissle.”

  He scowled down at her as if he had the sun in his eyes, though the sun had not yet come over the house. “Outrageous,” he rasped. “Didn’t they know who I am? Didn’t they know I’d have to have a private bath?”

  Tammy sat back on her heels, lifting her head. “I wouldn’t be alooking. Nor anybody else.” Her eyes went over his shape. “Wouldn’t anybody want to see you. Besides you could keep your door shut.”

  “I’m not inviting anybody to see me.” He looked up at the house as if he would like to shake it. “Five dollars a night and they don’t give me a bath.”