Shiloh and Other Stories

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  As they drive home, he says, “What can I do to make you happy?”

  Georgeann doesn’t answer at first. She’s still blasting aliens off a screen in her mind. “I’ll tell you when I can get it figured out,” she says slowly. “Just let me work on it.”

  Shelby lets her alone. They drive home in silence. As they turn off the main highway toward the house, she says suddenly, “I was happy when I was playing that game.”

  “We’re not children,” says Shelby. “What do you want—toys?”

  At home, the grass needs cutting. The brick house looks small and shabby, like something abandoned. In the mailbox, Shelby finds his reassignment letter. He has been switched to the Deep Springs church, sixty miles away. They will probably have to move. Shelby folds up the letter and puts it back in the envelope, then goes to his study. The children are not home yet, and Georgeann wanders around the house, pulling up the shades, looking for things that have changed in her absence. A short while later, she goes to Shelby’s study, knocking first. One of his little rules. She says, “I can’t go to Deep Springs. I’m not going with you.”

  Shelby stands up, blocking the light from the windows. “I don’t want to move either,” he says. “But it’s too awful far to commute.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t want to go at all. I want to stay here by myself so I can think straight.”

  “What’s got into you lately, girl? Have you gone crazy?” Shelby draws the blind on the window so the sun doesn’t glare in. He says, “You’ve got me so confused. Here I am in this big crisis and you’re not standing by me.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  Shelby snaps his fingers. “We can go to a counselor.”

  “I went to that marriage workshop and it was a lot of hooey.”

  Shelby’s face has a pallor, Georgeann notices. He is distractedly thumbing through some papers, his notes from the conference. Georgeann realizes that Shelby is going to compose a sermon directed at her. “We’re going to have to pray over this,” he says quietly.

  “Later,” says Georgeann. “I have to go pick up the kids.”

  Before leaving, she goes to check on the chickens. A neighbor has been feeding them. The sick chicken is still alive, but it doesn’t move from a corner under the roost. Its eyelids are half shut, and its comb is dark and crusty. The henhouse still smells of roost paint. Georgeann gathers eggs and takes them to the kitchen. Then, without stopping to reflect, she gets the ax from the shed and returns to the henhouse. She picks up the sick chicken and takes it outside to a stump behind the henhouse. She sets the chicken on the stump and examines its feathers. She doesn’t see any mites on it now. Taking the hen by the feet, she lays it on its side, its head pointing away from her. She holds its body down, pressing its wings. The chicken doesn’t struggle. When the ax crashes down blindly on its neck, Georgeann feels nothing, only that she has done her duty.

  THE OCEAN

  The interstate highway was like the ocean. It seemed to go on forever and was a similar color. Mirages of heat were shining in the distance like whitecaps, and now and then Bill lost himself in his memories of the sea. He hummed happily. Driving the fancy camper made Bill feel like a big shot.

  Finding the interstate had been a problem for Bill and Imogene Crittendon. Not trusting the toll roads, they had blazed a trail to Nashville. They figured it was a three-hour drive to Nashville, but it took five, including the time they spent getting lost in the city. After driving past the tall buildings downtown and through the poor areas on the outskirts, Bill finally pulled over to the curb and Imogene called “Hey!” to a man in a straw hat who was walking along thoughtfully.

  “Which way’s 65!” she yelled.

  The entrance to it turned out to be around the corner. The man’s eyes roved over the big camper cruiser as if in disbelief.

  “We’re going to Florida,” Bill said, more to himself than to the man.

  The man told them I-65 wasn’t the best way to go. It wasn’t the most direct.

  “He’s not in any hurry,” Imogene said.

  “Yes, I am,” said Bill. “Going through Alaska to get there wasn’t my idea.”

  Imogene hit him with the map.

  “I didn’t recognize a thing in Nashville,” Bill said a little later, as they sailed down the vast highway.

  “It’s been thirty-five years,” said Imogene. “Hey, watch where you’re going.”

  “You can’t talk about all the wrecks there’s been out here. You don’t know the history.”

  Imogene had a habit of telling the history of the wrecks on any given stretch of road. There was one long hill east of town, and whenever they drove down it she would tell about the group of women who hit a bump there and scattered all over the highway. They were all killed except one woman, who insisted on going to work anyway, but she was in such a state later that they had to take her home.

  “That happened twenty years ago,” Bill would say when Imogene told the story. “I remember her. She was the one that prayed. How do you know the others didn’t pray too?”

  “Well, that’s what they always said. Of course, she’s dead now too,” Imogene had said.

  Bill was getting the hang of interstate driving. He hummed awhile, then burst loudly into an old song he remembered.

  Don’t go walking down lovers’ lane

  With anyone else but me

  Till I come marching home

  The song made him feel young and hopeful. He pictured himself with his hands in his pockets, whistling and walking along. He couldn’t wait to be walking along the beach.

  “He’ll never do it,” Imogene had always told all the kinfolks. “He won’t set foot off this place for the rest of his born days. He’s growed to it.”

  But he had. He had shown everybody. He had fifteen hundred dollars in his billfold right this minute and more in the bank. All the big money made him delirious. He spent hours adding figures, paying this, paying that. He had always carried a wad of bills with him, but not to spend. He just had them handy. Now he was spending right and left. The figures danced in his head.

  Bill stopped at a roadside rest area, and they ate potato salad and fried chicken Imogene had made that morning.

  “This place ain’t big enough to cuss a cat in,” she said when they bumped into each other.

  She opened a new jar of her squash pickles.

  “Don’t expect this grub to last,” she said. “I can’t can on the road.”

  “You won’t have to,” said Bill.

  “You’ll be wanting some field peas and country ham,” said Imogene.

  After eating, they lay down to rest, with the fan going and the traffic whizzing by. Bill studied the interior of the mobile home. He was not really familiar with it yet. He had bought the luxury model to please Imogene. He could live in a truckbed himself. He stretched out and shaded his eyes with his Worm-and-Germ cap from the feed mill.

  A large family arrived at the rest area and noisily hauled out a picnic. They were laughing and talking and Bill couldn’t get comfortably into his snooze. He got up and watched a boy and his dog play Frisbee. The boy was about eighteen, Bill guessed, and wore cut-off jeans. Bill was afraid the dog was going to run out in the road. It made him nervous to watch. Once the Frisbee sailed near the road and Bill had to fight to keep himself from racing after the dog. The dog did wild leaps trying to catch the Frisbee. Bill had seen dogs play Frisbee on television. Bill had never played Frisbee. He missed having a dog.

  They drove on. The scenery changed back and forth from hills to flatlands, from fields to woods. Bill couldn’t get over the fact that he was really going to see the ocean again. He just wanted to sit and look at it and memorize it. He drove along, singing. He liked the way they could sit up high in the camper, looking down on the other cars. He loved the way the camper handled, and the steady little noise of gasoline flowing through the carburetor.

  Imogene sat with her hands in fists. When cars passed she grabbed the han
dle in front of her. Bill pointed out that with these wide highways she didn’t have to worry about meeting traffic head-on, but Imogene said the cars sneaking around you were worse.

  “I always heard when you retired you could start all over again at the beginning,” said Imogene. “But my nerves is in too bad a shape.”

  She had said that over and over. She had cried at the sale and cried when she gave away her belongings to Judy and Bob and Sissy. She said it was her nerves.

  “You’re a lot of fun,” said Bill in an exasperated tone. “I oughtn’t to have brought you along.”

  “I’ve got this hurtin’ in my side,” she said.

  Bill passed Volkswagens and Pintos and even trucks. He felt exhilarated when he passed another camper. He had a queer feeling inside, as though his whole body might jolt apart.

  “You’re going over fifty-five,” Imogene said after a while.

  Bill was an expert driver. He knew every road and cow path and Indian trail in the Jackson Purchase. If he was late coming home, Imogene always thought he had had a wreck. But he had never even been in a ditch, except on the tractor.

  Imogene said, “Gladys had a hurtin’ like this and come to find out she had kidney disease. She had to go to the bathroom every five minutes. At her husband’s funeral she had to set by the door.”

  “Are you going to bellyache the whole way?”

  Imogene laughed. “Listen to us! We’ll kill each other before we get there. I’ll be to bury. Or you’ll have to put me in a asylum, one.”

  Bill laughed. A truck slowed him down, and he shifted gears. “You couldn’t do this in China!” he exclaimed suddenly.

  “Do what?”

  “Go taking off like this. In China you can’t go from one county to the next without a permit. And if you could, you’d have to go by bicycle.”

  “I think we might be in China before long, at the rate we’re going. You’re over fifty-five again.”

  “We’ll be just like the Chinese if our goofy President has his way!” said Bill, ignoring Imogene’s remark about the speed.

  “What’s this business about China again?” Imogene never read the papers, but Bill read the Sun-Democrat every night and watched NBC.

  Bill tried to explain. “Well, see, after the war, the Chinese government was forced over to Taiwan, which was Formosa. And the rebels set up another country on the mainland, but China was on the island of Formosa. That was the true China. The ones that stayed back were Communists. The United States supported the true China.” Bill looked at Imogene. “Are you listening?”

  “Unh-huh. Go on.” Imogene was clutching the sides of her seat. A Greyhound bus was passing them.

  “And so the United States has a treaty with Taiwan, to protect them from the Communists.”

  “And so we broke the treaty,” Imogene finished for him.

  “That’s right! And now our peanut President decides to be buddies with the Communists and he’s going to have us in a war before you know it!”

  Bill got upset when he thought of the President, with his phony grin. Bill couldn’t stand him. He could see through every move he made. Bill had known too many like him.

  “He gave Taiwan away, just like he did the Panama Canal,” Bill said.

  “I still want to see Plains,” said Imogene.

  “So you can see Billy Carter?” Bill laughed.

  “I’d just like to say I went to the President’s hometown.”

  “Well, O.K. We can probably get there tomorrow.”

  “Billy’s always showing up somewhere—on a special or a talk show,” said Imogene. “I bet he don’t spend half his time in Plains anymore.”

  They looked for a campground. Imogene studied the guidebook and tried to watch the road at the same time. She located one that seemed reasonable, but Bill missed the turn.

  “I think it was right back there,” Imogene said. “Quick, turn around.”

  Bill made a U-turn, crossing the grassy strip. A car honked at him.

  “Maybe you weren’t supposed to do that,” said Imogene, looking behind her.

  The campground was pleasant. Music was playing and there were large shade trees and lots of dogs. Bill walked around the park while Imogene made supper. Being in a far-off place, wandering among strangers with license plates from everywhere, made Bill feel like a kid, off on his own. He nodded to a young man who hurried past him. The man, wearing rubber thong sandals and carrying a plastic shopping bag, had murmured a faint hello. For a moment Bill felt a desire to stop and have a conversation, a desire he felt only rarely.

  Imogene made pork chops, butter beans, corn, slaw, and corn bread for supper, and they ate during the news. Bill made a face when the President came on.

  “The days is getting longer,” he said later, looking out the window.

  “We’re further south,” said Imogene. She finished the dishes and sat down. “I don’t hardly know what to do with myself. Without Mama to feed and watch over. Her complaining every ten minutes. I was thinking about her suppertime. I would go in there with her tray, her cornflakes and a little applesauce. And then get her ready for bed and bring her milk of magnesia and make sure she was covered up.”

  “Do you wish we had her along?” Bill asked, teasing. He knew Imogene would keep on if he let her. “We could have started out five years ago. I could have slept here, and you and her could have that bed.”

  “Oh, quit it! It hasn’t been a month since we put her in the ground.”

  “I just thought you probably missed her snoring.”

  She shook her fist at him. “I tell you one thing. None of my younguns is going to have to put up with what I put up with.” Imogene belched. “I’ve eat too much,” she said.

  Bill had a hard time sleeping. First the dogs barked half the night. Then a man kept hollering in the distance. And at one point during the night a motorcycle came roaring into camp, setting off the dogs again. Bill lay half awake, thinking of the ocean and remembering the rocking, cracking old ship that he had feared would sink. The U.S.S. Shaw was a destroyer that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor and then raised and re-outfitted in an amazingly short time. He still heard the sounds of the guns. They woke him sometimes at night. And he would occasionally catch himself somewhere, standing as though in a trance, still passing ammunition to the gunners, rhythmically passing shell after shell. He had sailed the Pacific, but the Atlantic was connected—or it had been until Carter gave the canal away, Bill thought in disgust as he rolled over on the narrow bed.

  “We might get there today!” Bill said when they got up at four. No one else in the camp was up.

  “You thought it was milking time,” Imogene said. “I couldn’t sleep either. I was too wound up.”

  After a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and cereal, they drove awhile, then stopped for a nap.

  “We’ll never get there,” said Bill.

  They drove south to Birmingham, then across several smaller routes toward Plains. There was a lot of traffic on the small roads. Georgia drivers were worse than Kentucky drivers, Bill thought, as he tailed a woman who was straddling the line in a battered old Buick with its rear end dragging.

  “Look, there’s a old mansion!” Imogene cried. “One of those with the white columns!”

  The mansion was so close to the road there was no yard, and they could look through the front door and out the back. Weeds had grown up around the place.

  “See them old shacks out back,” said Bill. “That’s where the slaves used to live.”

  “Looks like they’re still living there,” said Imogene, pointing to some ragged black children. “Law, I thought we had poor people at home.”

  In Plains, Imogene bought postcards and sent them to the kids, who were scattered all over. Imogene wrote the same message on each card: “Your daddy and me’s headed out to see the world. Will let you know how it comes out. If I live that long. (Oh!)” Bill and Imogene walked down the tiny main street, which was crowded with buses and campers.
People from everywhere were there. Imogene wanted to take the tourist bus, but Bill said they had a new twenty-thousand-dollar vehicle of their own and knew how to drive it, so they drove around awhile, doubling back on themselves. Then, at Imogene’s insistence, Bill stopped at Billy Carter’s filling station.

  “I think that’s him,” Imogene said, peering toward the back of the station, where there was a crowd of people standing around. “No, that’s not him. Looked like him, though.”

  A sweaty man in an undershirt with skinny straps filled up the tank.

  “Reckon Billy ain’t around,” said Imogene, leaning over toward Bill’s window.

  “No, he’s off. He’s off over to Americus.” The man pointed.

  “We went through there,” said Imogene.

  “No, we didn’t,” said Bill.

  “All these tourists just driving you folks crazy, I expect,” said Imogene, ignoring Bill.

  “Oh, you get used to it,” the man said, leaning against the gas pump. “You never know what you’re liable to see or who you’ll meet. We get some characters in here, I tell you.”

  “I ’magine.”

  “Are you ready?” Bill asked Imogene.

  “I guess.”

  “Y’all come back now, hear?” the man said.

  “We will,” said Imogene, waving.

  “Seen enough?” Bill asked.

  “I can say I’ve been here anyway.”

  Bill was getting tired, and he drove listlessly for a while. He could not make the connection between Plains and the White House. Plains looked like the old slave shacks outside the mansion they had passed. The mansion was the White House. Bill thought of Honest Abe splitting rails, but that was a long time ago. Things were more complicated now. Bill hated complications. If he were running the show, it would be pretty simple. He never had trusted those foot-washing, born-again Baptists anyway. And now the President had let a whole country in the Middle East be taken over by a religious maniac. It made him sick. What if Billy Graham decided to take over the United States? It would be the same thing.