Shiloh and Other Stories

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  Waldeen shudders when she thinks of Joe Murdock. If he weren’t Holly’s father, she might be able to forget him. Waldeen was too young when she married him, and he had a reputation for being wild. Now she could marry Joe McClain, who comes over for supper almost every night, always bringing something special, such as a roast or dessert. He seems to be oblivious to what things cost, and he frequently brings Holly presents. If Waldeen married Joe, then Holly would have a stepfather—something like a sugar substitute, Waldeen imagines. Shifting relationships confuse her. She tells Joe they must wait. Her ex-husband is still on her mind, like the lingering aftereffects of an illness.

  Joe McClain is punctual, considerate. Tonight he brings fudge ripple ice cream and a half gallon of Coke in a plastic jug. He kisses Waldeen and hugs Holly.

  Waldeen says, “We’re having liver and onions, but Holly’s mad ’cause I won’t make Soybean Supreme.”

  “Soybean Delight,” says Holly.

  “Oh, excuse me!”

  “Liver is full of poison. The poisons in the feed settle in the liver.”

  “Do you want to stunt your growth?” Joe asks, patting Holly on the head. He winks at Waldeen and waves his walking stick at her playfully, like a conductor. Joe collects walking sticks, and he has an antique one that belonged to Jefferson Davis. On a gold band, in italics, it says Jefferson Davis. Joe doesn’t go anywhere without a walking stick, although he is only thirty. It embarrasses Waldeen to be seen with him.

  “Sometimes a cow’s liver just explodes from the poison,” says Holly. “Poisons are oozing out.”

  “Oh, Holly, hush, that’s disgusting.” Waldeen plops the pieces of liver onto a plate of flour.

  “There’s this restaurant at the lake that has Liver Lovers’ Night,” Joe says to Holly. “Every Tuesday is Liver Lovers’ Night.”

  “Really?” Holly is wide-eyed, as if Joe is about to tell a long story, but Waldeen suspects Joe is bringing up the restaurant—Bob’s Cove at Kentucky Lake—to remind her that it was the scene of his proposal. Waldeen, not accustomed to eating out, studied the menu carefully, wavering between pork chops and T-bone steak, and then suddenly, without thinking, ordering catfish. She was disappointed to learn that the catfish was not even local, but frozen ocean cat. “Why would they do that,” she kept saying, interrupting Joe, “when they’ve got all the fresh channel cat in the world right here at Kentucky Lake?”

  During supper, Waldeen snaps at Holly for sneaking liver to the cat, but with Joe gently persuading her, Holly manages to eat three bites of liver without gagging. Holly is trying to please him, as though he were some TV game-show host who happened to live in the neighborhood. In Waldeen’s opinion, families shouldn’t shift membership, like clubs. But here they are, trying to be a family. Holly, Waldeen, Joe McClain. Sometimes Joe spends the weekends, but Holly prefers weekends at Joe’s house because of his shiny wood floors and his parrot that tries to sing “Inka-Dinka-Doo.” Holly likes the idea of packing an overnight bag.

  Waldeen dishes out the ice cream. Suddenly inspired, she suggests a picnic Saturday. “The weather’s fairing up,” she says.

  “I can’t,” says Joe. “Saturday’s graveyard day.”

  “Graveyard day?” Holly and Waldeen say together.

  “It’s my turn to clean off the graveyard. Every spring and fall somebody has to rake it off.” Joe explains that he is responsible for taking geraniums to his grandparents’ graves. His grandmother always kept them in her basement during the winter, and in the spring she took them to her husband’s grave, but she had died in November.

  “Couldn’t we have a picnic at the graveyard?” asks Waldeen.

  “That’s gruesome.”

  “We never get to go on picnics,” says Holly. “Or anywhere.” She gives Waldeen a look.

  “Well, O.K.,” Joe says. “But remember, it’s serious. No fooling around.”

  “We’ll be real quiet,” says Holly.

  “Far be it from me to disturb the dead,” Waldeen says, wondering why she is speaking in a mocking tone.

  After supper, Joe plays rummy with Holly while Waldeen cracks pecans for a cake. Pecan shells fly across the floor, and the cat pounces on them. Holly and Joe are laughing together, whooping loudly over the cards. They sound like contestants on Let’s Make a Deal. Joe Murdock had wanted desperately to be on a game show and strike it rich. He wanted to go to California so he would have a chance to be on TV and so he could travel the freeways. He drove in the stock car races, and he had been drag racing since he learned to drive. Evel Knievel was his hero. Waldeen couldn’t look when the TV showed Evel Knievel leaping over canyons. She told Joe many times, “He’s nothing but a show-off. But if you want to break your fool neck, then go right ahead. Nobody’s stopping you.” She is better off without Joe Murdock. If he were still in town, he would do something to make her look foolish, such as paint her name on his car door. He once had WALDEEN painted in large red letters on the door of his LTD. It was like a tattoo. It is probably a good thing he is in Arizona. Still, she cannot really understand why he had to move so far away from home.

  After Holly goes upstairs, carrying the cat, whose name is Mr. Spock, Waldeen says to Joe, “In China they have a law that the men have to help keep house.” She is washing the dishes.

  Joe grins. “That’s in China. This is here.”

  Waldeen slaps at him with the dish towel, and Joe jumps up and grabs her. “I’ll do all the housework if you marry me,” he says. “You can get the Chinese to arrest me if I don’t.”

  “You sound just like my ex-husband. Full of promises.”

  “Guys named Joe are good at making promises.” Joe laughs and hugs her.

  “All the important men in my life were named Joe,” says Waldeen, with pretended seriousness. “My first real boyfriend was named Joe. I was fourteen.”

  “You always bring that up,” says Joe. “I wish you’d forget about them. You love me, don’t you?”

  “Of course, you idiot.”

  “Then why don’t you marry me?”

  “I just said I was going to think twice is all.”

  “But if you love me, what are you waiting for?”

  “That’s the easy part. Love is easy.”

  —

  In the middle of The Waltons, C. W. Redmon and Betty Mathis drop by. Betty, Waldeen’s best friend, lives with C. W., who works with Joe on a construction crew. Waldeen turns off the TV and clears magazines from the couch. C. W. and Betty have just returned from Florida and they are full of news about Sea World. Betty shows Waldeen her new tote bag with a killer whale pictured on it.

  “Guess who we saw at the Louisville airport,” Betty says.

  “I give up,” says Waldeen.

  “Colonel Sanders!”

  “He’s eighty-four if he’s a day,” C. W. adds.

  “You couldn’t miss him in that white suit,” Betty says. “I’m sure it was him. Oh, Joe! He had a walking stick. He went strutting along—”

  “No kidding!”

  “He probably beats chickens to death with it,” says Holly, who is standing around.

  “That would be something to have,” says Joe. “Wow, one of the Colonel’s walking sticks.”

  “Do you know what I read in a magazine?” says Betty. “That the Colonel Sanders outfit is trying to grow a three-legged chicken.”

  “No, a four-legged chicken,” says C. W.

  “Well, whatever.”

  Waldeen is startled by the conversation. She is rattling ice cubes, looking for glasses. She finds an opened Coke in the refrigerator, but it may have lost its fizz. Before she can decide whether to open the new one Joe brought, C. W. and Betty grab glasses of ice from her and hold them out. Waldeen pours the Coke. There is a little fizz.

  “We went first class the whole way,” says C. W. “I always say, what’s a vacation for if you don’t splurge?”

  “We spent a fortune,” says Betty. “Plus, I gained a ton.”

  “Man, those bi
g jets are really nice,” says C. W.

  C. W. and Betty seem changed, exactly like all the people Waldeen has known who come back from Florida with tales of adventure and glowing tans, except that C. W. and Betty did not get tans. It rained. Waldeen cannot imagine flying, or spending that much money. Her ex-husband tried to get her to go up in an airplane with him once—a seven-fifty ride in a Cessna—but she refused. If Holly goes to Arizona to visit him, she will have to fly. Arizona is probably as far away as Florida.

  When C. W. says he is going fishing on Saturday, Holly demands to go along. Waldeen reminds her about the picnic. “You’re full of wants,” she says.

  “I just wanted to go somewhere.”

  “I’ll take you fishing one of these days soon,” says Joe.

  “Joe’s got to clean off his graveyard,” says Waldeen. Before she realizes what she is saying, she has invited C. W. and Betty to come along on the picnic. She turns to Joe. “Is that O.K.?”

  “I’ll bring some beer,” says C. W. “To hell with fishing.”

  “I never heard of a picnic at a graveyard,” says Betty. “But it sounds neat.”

  Joe seems embarrassed. “I’ll put you to work,” he warns.

  Later, in the kitchen, Waldeen pours more Coke for Betty. Holly is playing solitaire on the kitchen table. As Betty takes the Coke, she says, “Let C. W. take Holly fishing if he wants a kid so bad.” She has told Waldeen that she wants to marry C. W., but she does not want to ruin her figure by getting pregnant. Betty pets the cat. “Is this cat going to have kittens?”

  Mr. Spock, sitting with his legs tucked under his stomach, is shaped somewhat like a turtle.

  “Heavens, no,” says Waldeen. “He’s just fat because I had him nurtured.”

  “The word is neutered!” cries Holly, jumping up. She grabs Mr. Spock and marches up the stairs.

  “That youngun,” Waldeen says. She feels suddenly afraid. Once, Holly’s father, unemployed and drunk on tequila, snatched Holly from the school playground and took her on a wild ride around town, buying her ice cream at the Tastee-Freez, and stopping at Newberry’s to buy her an All in the Family Joey doll, with correct private parts. Holly was eight. When Joe brought her home, both were tearful and quiet. The excitement had worn off, but Waldeen had vividly imagined how it was. She wouldn’t be surprised if Joe tried the same trick again, this time carrying Holly off to Arizona. She has heard of divorced parents who kidnap their own children.

  —

  The next day Joe McClain brings a pizza at noon. He is working nearby and has a chance to eat lunch with Waldeen. The pizza is large enough for four people. Waldeen is not hungry.

  “I’m afraid we’ll end up horsing around and won’t get the graveyard cleaned off,” Joe says. “It’s really a lot of work.”

  “Why’s it so important, anyway?”

  “It’s a family thing.”

  “Family. Ha!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what’s what anymore,” Waldeen wails. “I’ve got this kid that wants to live on peanuts and sleeps with a cat—and didn’t even see her daddy at Christmas. And here you are, talking about family. What do you know about family? You don’t know the half of it.”

  “What’s got into you lately?”

  Waldeen tries to explain. “Take Colonel Sanders, for instance. He was on I’ve Got a Secret once, years ago, when nobody knew who he was? His secret was that he had a million-dollar check in his pocket for selling Kentucky Fried Chicken to John Y. Brown. Now look what’s happened. Colonel Sanders sold it but didn’t get rid of it. He couldn’t escape from being Colonel Sanders. John Y. sold it too, and he can’t get rid of it either. Everybody calls him the Chicken King, even though he’s governor. That’s not very dignified, if you ask me.”

  “What in Sam Hill are you talking about? What’s that got to do with families?”

  “Oh, Colonel Sanders just came to mind because C. W. and Betty saw him. What I mean is, you can’t just do something by itself. Everything else drags along. It’s all involved. I can’t get rid of my ex-husband just by signing a paper. Even if he is in Arizona and I never lay eyes on him again.”

  Joe stands up, takes Waldeen by the hand, and leads her to the couch. They sit down and he holds her tightly for a moment. Waldeen has the strange impression that Joe is an old friend who moved away and returned, years later, radically changed. She doesn’t understand the walking sticks, or why he would buy such an enormous pizza.

  “One of these days you’ll see,” says Joe, kissing her.

  “See what?” Waldeen mumbles.

  “One of these days you’ll see—I’m not such a bad catch.”

  Waldeen stares at a split in the wallpaper.

  “Who would cut your hair if it wasn’t for me?” he asks, rumpling her curls. “I should have gone to beauty school.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nobody else can do Jimmy Durante imitations like I can.”

  “I wouldn’t brag about it.”

  —

  On Saturday, Waldeen is still in bed when Joe arrives. He appears in the doorway of her bedroom, brandishing a shiny black walking stick. It looks like a stiffened black racer snake.

  “I overslept,” Waldeen says, rubbing her eyes. “First I had insomnia. Then I had bad dreams. Then—”

  “You said you’d make a picnic.”

  “Just a minute. I’ll go make it.”

  “There’s not time now. We’ve got to pick up C. W. and Betty.”

  Waldeen pulls on her jeans and a shirt, then runs a brush through her hair. In the mirror she sees blue pouches under her eyes. She catches sight of Joe in the mirror. He looks like an actor in a vaudeville show.

  They go into the kitchen, where Holly is eating granola. “She promised me she’d make carrot cake,” Holly tells Joe.

  “I get blamed for everything,” says Waldeen. She is rushing around, not sure why. She is hardly awake.

  “How could you forget?” asks Joe. “It was your idea in the first place.”

  “I didn’t forget. I just overslept.” Waldeen opens the refrigerator. She is looking for something. She stares at a ham.

  When Holly leaves the kitchen, Waldeen asks Joe, “Are you mad at me?” Joe is thumping his stick on the floor.

  “No. I just want to get this show on the road.”

  “My ex-husband always said I was never dependable, and he was right. But he was one to talk! He had his head in the clouds.”

  “Forget your ex-husband.”

  “His name is Joe. Do you want some fruit juice?” Waldeen is looking for orange juice, but she cannot find it.

  “No.” Joe leans on his stick. “He’s over and done with. Why don’t you just cross him off your list?”

  “Why do you think I had bad dreams? Answer me that. I must be afraid of something.”

  There is no orange juice. Waldeen closes the refrigerator door. Joe is smiling at her enigmatically. What she is really afraid of, she realizes, is that he will turn out to be just like Joe Murdock. But it must be only the names, she reminds herself. She hates the thought of a string of husbands, and the idea of a stepfather is like a substitute host on a talk show. It makes her think of Johnny Carson’s many substitute hosts.

  “You’re just afraid to do anything new, Waldeen,” Joe says. “You’re afraid to cross the street. Why don’t you get your ears pierced? Why don’t you adopt a refugee? Why don’t you get a dog?”

  “You’re crazy. You say the weirdest things.” Waldeen searches the refrigerator again. She pours a glass of Coke and watches it foam.

  —

  It is afternoon before they reach the graveyard. They had to wait for C. W. to finish painting his garage door, and Betty was in the shower. On the way, they bought a bucket of fried chicken. Joe said little on the drive into the country. When he gets quiet, Waldeen can never figure out if he is angry or calm. When he put the beer cooler in the trunk, she caught a glimpse of the geraniums in an orna
te concrete pot with a handle. It looked like a petrified Easter basket. On the drive, she closed her eyes and imagined that they were in a funeral procession.

  The graveyard is next to the woods on a small rise fenced in with barbed wire. A herd of Holsteins grazes in the pasture nearby, and in the distance the smokestacks of the new industrial park send up lazy swirls of smoke. Waldeen spreads out a blanket, and Betty opens beers and hands them around. Holly sits under a tree, her back to the gravestones, and opens a Vicki Barr flight stewardess novel.

  Joe won’t sit down to eat until he has unloaded the geraniums. He fusses over the heavy basket, trying to find a level spot. The flowers are not yet blooming.

  “Wouldn’t plastic flowers keep better?” asks Waldeen. “Then you wouldn’t have to lug that thing back and forth.” There are several bunches of plastic flowers on the graves. Most of them have fallen out of their containers.

  “Plastic, yuck!” cries Holly.

  “I should have known I’d say the wrong thing,” says Waldeen.

  “My grandmother liked geraniums,” Joe says.

  At the picnic, Holly eats only slaw and the crust from a drumstick. Waldeen remarks, “Mr. Spock is going to have a feast.”

  “You’ve got a treasure, Waldeen,” says C. W. “Most kids just want to load up on junk.”

  “Wonder how long a person can survive without meat,” says Waldeen, somewhat breezily. But she suddenly feels miserable about the way she treats Holly. Everything Waldeen does is so roundabout, so devious. Disgusted, Waldeen flings a chicken bone out among the graves. Once, her ex-husband wouldn’t bury the dog that was hit by a car. It lay in a ditch for over a week. She remembers Joe saying several times, “Wonder if the dog is still there.” He wouldn’t admit that he didn’t want to bury it. Waldeen wouldn’t do it because he had said he would do it. It was a war of nerves. She finally called the Highway Department to pick it up. Joe McClain, she thinks now, would never be that barbaric.

  Joe pats Holly on the head and says, “My girl’s stubborn, but she knows what she likes.” He makes a Jimmy Durante face, which causes Holly to smile. Then he brings out a surprise for her, a bag of trail mix, which includes pecans and raisins. When Holly pounces on it, Waldeen notices that Holly is not wearing the Indian bracelet her father gave her. Waldeen wonders if there are vegetarians in Arizona.