Black Mountain Breakdown

by Lee Smith

  AGNES THINKS ABOUT Crystal a lot during the months that follow her visit. In particular, she remembers Crystal saying to tell her mother how happy she was. As if Agnes would have ever told Lorene any such thing! Agnes thinks about Crystal even more after she hears the news, and she guesses Crystal wasn’t so happy the day Jerold Kukafka hung himself dead from an exposed pipe in the bathroom in that place where they lived, and Crystal found him with his tongue hanging out and all black in the face. But the death is so awful that Anges can’t bring herself to think “Serves you right,” even though she has always known that the wages of sin is death. It’s one thing to know that, and another to have it come up and slap you in the face. Agnes looks at her teacups, remembering the way Jerold Kukafka picked them up and handled them, and shivers. She wonders what will come next.

  But Agnes has her own hands full that summer. Her daddy dies, and even though she has gotten everything in order long before, still there is lots to do. Hassell’s death falls right in the middle of June, and it is well into July before Agnes can catch her breath. Lorene hasn’t mentioned Crystal all this time, except for telling Agnes about Jerold Kukafka’s death, and of course nobody has asked. So when Lorene invites Agnes and her mama over that August evening after supper, the thought of Crystal doesn’t even cross Agnes’s mind.

  It’s a hot night. Agnes sits with her legs well apart in the darkness because she has been troubled lately with prickly heat. She sips at her iced tea with mint, looking out at the fireflies beyond the screen and listening in every now and then to her mama and Lorene, who discuss casseroles in a desultory fashion. It’s real pleasant on Lorene’s new screen porch. Everybody admires the Spanish-style Solarian floor covering which looks like real Spanish tiles, the curved white iron outdoor furniture ornamented by little white wrought-iron roses, the little iron cart full of blooming red geranium plants in their pots.

  “Odell bought those in a greenhouse in Roanoke,” Lorene is telling them. “I like to have had a fit when I saw them! All that money, I said, for just one summer’s worth of flowers and half of it already gone! I could have gotten some artificial ones down at the Ben Franklin just as well.” Lorene’s tone is scornful and lilting, and in her snort of laughter Agnes can tell how pleased she is. Well, let her be pleased. Let her. Why not? Through the window into the house, Agnes can see Odell himself, or at least the back of his head. He’s sitting in the rocker in Lorene’s conversation area watching television, and every now and then they hear him laugh out loud. Odell has changed a lot in the past three or four years, ever since Lorene got ahold of him. Agnes cranes her head back to see him through the glass, and he’s wearing a gold-colored polyester jumpsuit. Imagine, Odell Peacock in a jumpsuit! Agnes wonders if Lorene will marry Odell when she gets him like she wants him. It would be hard to say. She cooks supper for him every night. Sometimes they have a glass of cold duck with their dinner. Agnes can see them right from her own kitchen window. Agnes wonders what’s holding Lorene up. Sykes wouldn’t care; he and Odell go hunting and fishing together all the time. Jules is out of the picture. It must be Crystal. Lorene has always had this unnatural attachment, God knows why. But Crystal is as old as Agnes: she ought to be able to take care of herself.

  Then Lorene says something which gives Agnes the creeps, just like Lorene has been reading her mind. “I got a letter from Crystal today,” Lorene says easily. In the flickering light of the Bug-Off candle, Agnes cannot see her face, but her voice is as chirpy as ever. You’d think she mentioned Crystal every day.

  “Well, how is she doing?” Agnes’s mama loves news.

  “To tell you the truth, Louise, she hasn’t been well at all. I’ve been real concerned about her, in fact, ever since her friend passed away,” Lorene says calmly and confidentially, leaning forward.

  Agnes almost dies. Friend, my foot! But she keeps quiet and Lorene goes on.

  “She’s been in the hospital,” Lorene says. “But she got out last week and she’s coming home Friday for a nice long rest. Odell is going to pick her up at Tri-Cities Airport at three.”

  “He is!” Agnes’s mama exclaims. “Well, it sure will be good to see her. How long is she coming for?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Lorene says. “She might just stay for good. When she’s strong enough, she wants to look for a job.”

  “Well, my goodness!” This is Agnes’s mama’s strongest expletive.

  “Do you need any help getting ready?” Agnes asks, even though she knows Lorene’s got a cleaning girl now.

  “Oh no!” Lorene brushes off this suggestion with a tinkly laugh. “Oh no, we’ll take care of everything. I’m just so pleased that she’s coming home. You’ll have to come over, Agnes,” she adds. “You girls used to be such good friends. I know you’ll have a lot to talk about.”

  Agnes sincerely doubts it. “I’m sure we will,” she says, getting up from her chair. “Come on, Mama, time to go.”

  Odell comes to stand brilliantly in the door and tell them goodbye. He has grown himself some sideburns, Agnes sees. Real mod.

  “It’s so nice Crystal’s coming home,” Agnes’s mama’s voice trails back over the yard.

  “It sure is!” Lorene cries out into the night, but Agnes wonders if that’s what she really thinks. It could upset Lorene’s little apple cart, that’s for sure.

  “Mama,” Agnes says carefully when they’re back in their own house again and her mama has exhausted the subject of Lorene’s beautiful porch floor. “Mama, did you notice she never did say exactly what Crystal’s been in the hospital for?”

  “Well, now, that’s a fact,” Agnes’s mama says. “She never did say, did she?”

  “No, she sure didn’t,” Agnes answers with a special emphasis, and pauses to let that sink in, but no light dawns in her mama’s calm face. Agnes gets a little exasperated. It’s not like talking to Millie Shortridge, her good friend at the bank, who catches on to everything right away.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of strange,” she pursues, “that Lorene didn’t say what Crystal has?”

  “Now, doctors don’t know everything,” Agnes’s mama points out. “Don’t you remember that time when Marvelle spent three whole months at Charlottesville and they never did know what she had? Or when Mrs. Belcher, Fay’s mother-in-law, got those raisings on the head? Why, they sent her to Duke Hospital for that one and finally she just came home.”

  “Mama,” Agnes says. “I know all that. What I think about Crystal, though, is that it’s mental. If it wasn’t mental, she would have said.”

  “You mean like a nervous breakdown?”

  “Yep,” Agnes says. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself! That’s not very nice, Agnes,” her mama says with a quiver in her voice, and they finish turning out the lights and go to bed. Agnes is so mad, going up the stairs. Her mama has no right to talk to her like that. Where would Mama be right now, if Agnes hadn’t come home from VPI to take care of them all? Never even learned to drive a car! Still, Agnes grins when she gets to the bend in the stairs: Mama does have a point, and anyway it’s the most spunk she has shown for years.

  ODELL IS ALL spruced up and fifteen minutes early at the Tri-Cities Airport to pick up Crystal. The runways are so hot that heat rises and crests in little shimmery waves at the end of each concrete strip. Standing inside the air-conditioned terminal, chewing on a mint-flavored tooth-pick, Odell squints through the glass at the runways and watches the big plane land. A jet plane, taking off or landing either one, is one of the prettiest things he can think of. The jet wind whirls trash around and blows a woman’s hair forward and into her eyes. Odell waits patiently. He’s good at waiting. He didn’t mind driving over here to get Crystal either. Anyway, it gave him a chance to go through Bristol and order a car he’s been thinking about, white Cadillac Coupe de Ville, a little surprise for Lorene. Odell does not move forward to wait outside by the rope. He stays where he is, squinting from behind
the glass, and watches the passengers get off the plane. An old woman in a straw hat, greeted by grandchildren. Two Bristol businessmen with briefcases, some students in blue jeans, a bald-headed black man—they go everywhere now. Suddenly Odell leans forward, opens his mouth, and spits out the toothpick. You don’t think that’s Crystal, now? But it has to be. There’s no other girl—or woman, Crystal is a woman now—no other woman that age getting off the plane. Odell watches her walk across the concrete and down the roped-off sidewalk. Son of a gun.

  Crystal’s hair is short, parted on the side so that a piece of it falls across her sunglasses and down her cheek and she keeps brushing it back with one hand. She wears high-heeled sandals, a white sleeveless dress, gold jewelry that flashes in the sun as she walks. The sunglasses are big and round, hiding half her face.

  I’ll be damned, Odell thinks. Lorene will be tickled to death.

  He looks again to be sure it’s Crystal before he goes over to the door where she’ll come in. It’s Crystal all right, but a new Crystal like a picture straight out of a magazine, still thin but not bony, all white and golden, yellow short straight hair. Only in the way she moves, in the way she hesitates and draws back a little from the automatic door, can Odell find any trace of that other Crystal he knew best, Grant’s little girl sitting so still under a bush or in the corner of a room that seeing her made you jump.

  “Over here, honey!” Odell hollers.

  “Why, Odell!” she says, coming right up to him and hugging him, something she never used to do. “Let me look at you,” she cries. “I just can’t believe how much you’ve changed!” Odell kisses her on the cheek and smells perfume. He would not have done this in the past, but during the last couple of years he had picked up a lot about what you do and don’t do in airports. “You look so good!” Crystal says. She takes off her glasses to get a better look at him, and Odell sees that her eyes are still that same dark blue, that they have little wrinkles at the corners of them now and light circles, like bruises, beneath.

  “You don’t look half bad yourself,” he says, and Crystal laughs. She has a new way of laughing, throwing her head back a little.

  On the way to get her luggage, Odell keeps glancing sideways at her. Not that he’d thought much about it—you take care of your own, that’s what you do, you don’t even have to consider it—not that he’s given it much mind, but he’d sort of figured from what Lorene said that Crystal would be sickly-looking, washed out, puny. But she looks like a million bucks.

  Crystal watches the bags go around on the revolving belt. She hesitates and then reaches out and grabs off a mediumsized navy leather bag with her initials on it in red, CRS. She had them put on at extra cost out of Lorene’s generous check.

  Odell continues to wait patiently, watching the bags revolve.

  Crystal pokes him in the ribs. “Let’s go,” she says.

  “What?” Odell turns and takes her bag. “You mean that’s all you’ve got?” he asks.

  “I travel light.” Crystal grins at him.

  Women. Odell shakes his head. Now, if it was Lorene, she’d have half a dozen bags, plus some more suit bags and then some packages tied up with string. Odell remembers picking Lorene and Neva up here after they went to the cosmetology convention in Hawaii. You never saw so much stuff in your life! Well, you can’t tell a thing about women. Crystal walks ahead of him out into the glare and across the parking lot toward where he points. Odell can’t help watching the sway of her hips, the way she steps along. He can remember when Crystal was not as big as a minute. Now she’s more like Lorene, and Odell smiles when he thinks of Lorene. Lorene is all plump and easy, a woman like a big soft chair. You don’t have to talk too much with Lorene. Everything is simple and straightforward with her; she’s a woman like a man in many ways. Odell just plain likes her. He likes her age, the way the flesh is soft and freckled and loose on her back between her shoulders and he can bunch it up in his hand. He likes the way she says, “Git on!” when she wants him to hurry up and do something, mock annoyance hiding a real annoyance, severe pretending. If Lorene decides they ought to get married, fine. If she doesn’t, fine. There’s no rush. Odell has lived a lot of years without getting married. The thought of Grant doesn’t bother him, either. They never mention Grant. When Grant bothers Odell it’s not in connection with Lorene at all: it’s just sometimes if he happens to remember something they used to do as kids, fishing down at Harmon or shooting craps behind the American Legion Hall with old man Mose Drew. Odell has been known to show up at church with Lorene upon occasion, but he doesn’t hold much with heaven or hell. The dead, including Grant, are under the ground, that’s how he feels about it. Odell knows the ground and what’s down there; anything else is made up.

  Crystal gets into the car and crosses her legs. “Some car.” She smiles at him. She lights a Salem from the lighter in the dash; Odell can’t remember her smoking before.

  Now that they’re in the car, air-conditioned and doing seventy down Interstate 81, Odell finds he doesn’t have a thing to say to her. But he’s comfortable being quiet, and after Crystal points out a couple of things along the road, new motels and such as that, she grows quiet, too, and smokes and looks out the window.

  “Tell me something, Odell,” she says abruptly.

  “What is it?” He’s instantly wary, ducking his head in the old way.

  “Do you think this is really all right, me coming home, I mean? Do you think it’s all right with everybody?” With you, she means, with Mama, with Sykes, with Agnes, with whatever way you are living now. Because here I am.

  “Well, shoot.” Odell grins. “Now, how the hell would I know, Crystal? It’s all right with me.”

  Crystal laughs and stretches back in the seat. “I forgot how far it is from the airport,” she says.

  “There’s plenty of people’s got private helicopters now, Crystal. Fly right from Tri-Cities up to the top of Black Mountain. It’s just us poor folks got to drive.” But Odell is grinning his dark animal grin; he knows he isn’t poor folks anymore.

  “Aren’t you going to stop for a drink and a Slim Jim?” Crystal asks suddenly. “Don’t you remember when I was little, every time you took me someplace in the truck we used to stop at a store and you’d get us both a Slim Jim and me an RC and you’d get a beer. Don’t you remember that? I thought you couldn’t even go on a trip without a drink and a Slim Jim.”

  Odell had forgotten. “Road beer.” He grins. “Well, your mother has got me counting the calories now.”

  “Let’s get some road beer,” Crystal says. Maybe it will help her stomach, help her head; the top of her head feels like it’s going to fly off and disappear. Anxiety, of course, and she knows it. But still…

  “Your mother would have a fit.”

  “She would not. This is a celebration. Pull in there, Odell. No, we’ve missed it now. Pull in the next one.”

  When Crystal gets her Slim Jim she gulps it down, barely chewing. She hasn’t had a Slim Jim or a pickled hard-boiled egg in years. She drains about half of her beer and makes a face at Odell. “Schlitz! I thought you drank Pabst all the time.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, honey, I don’t remember.”

  “It was Pabst,” Crystal insisted.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Odell says. “That might be so. But things change, and you have to just kind of go with it, if you know what I mean.”

  Odell drives fast through Swords Creek, whipping around the curves.

  “Now tell me a story,” Crystal says after a while, and her voice is so high and so peculiar that Odell looks away from the road for a minute to stare at her. But she just smiles back at him, all open and golden, and he goes back to driving without a word. It’s funny about Crystal. Trying to figure her out. There was one time, years back up on Dry Fork, when she had that sick spell or something, and now he can’t remember it. Peculiar, though. Trouble with Crystal is, sometimes she almost makes you think something, but then she makes you stop and you
never know what it was. You never get it thought through.

  “I don’t know no stories, now,” Odell says. “Grant was the one with the stories.”

  “Tell me something true, then,” Crystal said. “Let’s see—tell me about Goldie Coe.”

  “Goldie Coe? What you want to hear about her for?” Odell hasn’t thought of her in years.

  “Grace used to tell me about Granddaddy,” Crystal says. “But she never would tell about Goldie Coe.”

  “Hah!” Odell laughs. “That Grace is really a case, now. You just wait till you see old Grace.”

  “Please tell about Goldie Coe. Nobody ever would.”

  “Well, there’s actually not much to tell, Crystal. She was just a girl from up on Hurley, worked at the Ben Franklin, and Iradell took a fancy to her, that’s all. She used to work the popcorn machine.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, hell, I don’t know. Iradell got to buying popcorn, he’d take me with him, then he got to bringing her up to the house, then the first thing I knowed, we was all in the car going to Charlottesville to get Goldie some new teeth.” Odell’s own gold tooth flashes in the sun as he tells it. “It was a long trip in those days, two days it took us. We put up at Natural Bridge. But she was about to bust to get those teeth.”