by Carolyn Wall
Neither of them understands. There are no sides. I settle things in my usual way. “Since we’re all up, I’ll start breakfast.”
“Gran,” Will’m says before I can move, “are we like the Bible story with King Solomon and the baby with two mothers? And the one that loves him most says, ‘You take him’?”
Lord, Lord, he can read my thoughts.
“Stop that talk right now,” Pauline says, stamping her bare foot. “I birthed you!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pauline,” I tell her. “How is it, in all these years, you never grew up?”
She hugs her elbows. “You got no right to say that to me, Mama. Don’t you ever think I’m sad and lonesome, too?”
“You could have come for a visit anytime.”
“No, I couldn’t. You didn’t want me. After Daddy Saul died, nobody wanted me.”
“That’s foolish talk.” I’m throwing words at her now, without thinking. I tamp the fire, add a few sticks, pour water in the pot.
“That’s it?” she says. “That’s the only thing you’ve got to say to me after all these years?”
“What is it you want to hear?”
“Some mamas tell their daughters they love ’em.”
I take out a box of Farina and open the lid. Pour. Stir. Feel it coming—in another minute, Pauline’s going to walk out of here, and it will be years before we see her again. Ida has taught me one thing—ma’ams don’t necessarily love that which they squeeze out of their bellies and into this world. And Pauline appears only when she wants something.
“If I knew you, Pauline, I might come to love you.”
She turns away. I stir in the cereal and feel sick to my stomach.
“Well, it should matter what I think,” Will’m says. “And I don’t want to go to California.”
“Hollywood’s real nice, Will’m,” Pauline says, changing her tone. I see how scared she suddenly is. “Movie stars, just standin’ on the corner.”
There’s a long silence while the Farina cooks. I put the pan on the table and ladle it up. Pauline sits down and stirs hers with a spoon.
How torn I am! If Will’m stays here, heaven knows what will happen. I have no right to put him in harm’s way. Still, Pauline’s going to be no better a ma’am than I was. She’ll tuck him away over that liquor store and leave him alone days and nights, and there’s no telling whether he’ll finish school or have enough to eat. One other thing’s itching me. “Pauline, after all these years, why do you want him now?”
“Look what a good-looking boy he is, Mama.”
“You want him because he’s got a sweet face?”
“Child stars are the rage,” she says. “If producers give him even bit parts, he can help pay our rent. If he makes it big in the films, we can move to our own place, and I can drive around in a fancy car. I’ll get a maid and—”
I’m both glad to hear it, and outraged. I plunk myself down in a chair. “Well, that does it. He’s not going with you if hell freezes over.”
Will’m’s eyes widen, and his mouth opens up. “You mean it?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Of course I mean it.”
“You can’t do that,” Pauline says. “You can’t just change your mind.”
“I can do more than that. Soon as you’re done eating, Pauline, pack up your things and get out of my house. No judge in the country will give you the boy to use in that way.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and air jerks around in her throat while I look at a spot on the tabletop. With what sounds like a sob, she gets up and flounces off into the bedroom. I hear her throwing things around, and in a few minutes she comes back wearing the same dress and cloth coat, the same high-heeled shoes, that she came in. I wonder if she’s going to apologize to her son, but she simply takes her handbag from the drainboard and walks out through the grocery, slamming the door.
Will’m’s eyes are round as quart jars.
“Eat your breakfast,” I tell him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, but we are both on fire with the need to grin. In another instant he’s gotten up from his chair and come to put his arms around me, bury his face in my neck.
“Well!” Breath explodes from my chest. “Peas in a pod shouldn’t be separated. Besides, I can’t care for that cub near as good as you can.”
“I love you, Gran.”
“I love you, too, Will’m. But now that you’re staying, there’s things you’ve got to know. Bad things.”
“What things?”
“There’s going to be trouble—though I’ll be damned if I know why.”
He sits down in what was, a few minutes ago, Pauline’s chair. “Tell me,” he says. “I want to know.”
“Will’m, I came upon Alton Phelps on Cooper’s Ridge yesterday. Most of what he said didn’t make a lick of sense, but he threatened us both.”
“Threatened us how?”
“Said—first it was the wolves, and then us. That he didn’t have to worry about Ida.”
“What’d he mean?”
I shake my head, put down my spoon. I don’t tell him what Phelps said about killing him slow. “I thought he was talking about the night James Arnold died—I told you that story—and was still holding Pap and me responsible. I said over and over how sorry I was, but I don’t think that’s it.”
“What, then?”
I shake my head. “Maybe he believes Pap ran over James Arnold on purpose.”
“And did he?” Will’m says.
“I can’t think why.”
“What do you think he’ll do now?”
“I have no idea. But he means us harm.”
“And that’s why you were sending me away.”
I let a few seconds pass, and then I nod.
“Well—now that I’m staying,” he says, rubbing his hands together in a way that would make me smile if this wasn’t so serious, “we’ll figure this out.”
“Will’m, this is not a game. We’ve got to put the pieces together, all right, but I can’t have you in danger’s way while we’re doing it.”
“We’ll have to watch each other’s backs, Gran. You could have been in a mess all alone, while I was off in California, starin’ at palm trees.”
“If anything happened to you—”
“Same goes double,” he says.
“Well, here’s the thing. I’m keeping the rifle loaded. If I think there’s trouble coming, if I see it ahead, you go down to Wing’s and stay till I fetch you.”
“But—”
“Will’m, it wouldn’t take me five minutes to catch up with Pauline. Is it a deal?”
Will’m sighs. “It’s a deal.”
45
Before noon I’m up and dressed. In fact, I’ve just finished feeding the goats and the chickens and gathering four eggs when Wing drives up in his station wagon.
“Olivia!” he calls, getting out.
“Wing,” I say, clumping up the steps, banging snow from my boots. I feel myself tightening, closing up.
He comes around to the yard. “I see lumber stacked out in your barn. You renovating?”
“Something like that.” What business is it of his what I do? But the illogic of that stymies me and forces me to put it away. “I’ve cleaned out the cellar and—things.”
Even though we’re on the porch and out of the wind, Wing shivers with cold. I’m so irritated with him I could shove him down the steps. A realization comes—the opposite of love is not anger, it’s indifference. But which is it I feel?
“Any chance you’ve got coffee on the stove?” he says.
Under my cape, I wipe my cracked hands on my apron. “Come in. I’ll make us some.”
“Warm in here,” he says, rubbing his hands over the stove that has not quite gone out.
I hang my cape on its nail, set the eggs in a basket with the two I collected yesterday, throw into the stove a medium thickness of wood, bit of kindling, damn waste. Run water in the pot and add two spoons of coffee. Set it
on the burner. Rub a bit of melted tallow on my hands.
“Place still looks the same,” he says, pulling out a chair and sitting.
“You didn’t have to wait thirty years to come out.”
All the time I’ve spent in this kitchen, I don’t know when I last looked at these chairs. Ladder-backed, bare wood worn to a blade. Table’s the same. How shabby we must look.
“… I recall being here a lot,” he’s saying. “I’d come get you, and we’d walk the highway, down toward the river. I think everybody in town knew about us. Remember how Ida used to give us hell—”
“Wing.”
He looks at me, but I turn and adjust the pot on the burner. “That was a lifetime ago.”
I try not to think about the peeling linoleum, pitted wood showing through. I cannot help it if he’s done well while I … I bring his coffee and pour myself a cup. Two weeks ago, I’d have wanted him to stay; today I ache for him to go.
“You been all right out here, Olivia? I mean, since Saul died and everything.”
“Saul’s been gone twelve years, Wing.” I feel as if I’ve swallowed a head of cabbage, and it’s lodged in my chest.
“The grocery going OK?”
“Yes.”
“Remember the Fourth of July picnics we’d have down on the river?” he says, picking at a loose thread of memory.
I nod.
“Dooby’s wife made the best peach ice cream. His old freezer—we bigger boys took turns cranking. That pretty Olivia Harker would come flouncing along and sit on the lid while I turned the handle. Then I’d take your hand and we’d run off—”
“Wing.”
He looks up.
I look off out the window, remembering Phelps’ angry face and swallowing my secrets.
“Olivia?”
“What?”
“Would you like to ride over to Buelton, see a picture show with me next Saturday night?”
Saturday night. Something passes across me like a shadow. “Will’m—”
“He can come, too. Or stay at the hotel, if you feel right about it. He might like to listen to the radio—”
I see a possibility, the very thing I talked to Will’m about. I’m going to have to be pleasant, change tracks. “No movie, thanks, but while I’m renovating around here, you think Will’m could spend a night or two with you?”
Wing drains his cup, looks around for the pot. “Of course he can. I’d be happy to have him. When I’m away, Molly’s ma comes up, runs the place fine. So, Olivia, how about dinner?”
Something important has come and gone, but I can’t think what. For a moment I thought I heard Pap’s voice. And Phelps saying, “I know what you’re doing, and—”
What was it he’d said?
“—and I want it stopped.”
Of course. It was the day I asked Love Alice and Mavis Brown to ride out there with me, hidden in Pap’s wagon. The Phelpses had talked to Pap in words as mysterious as what Alton had said to me on the Ridge.
I get up from my chair and stand at the stove, looking at nothing. Press both hands to my belly. “Wing, why are you here?”
For a moment he’s silent. “To see if you’d like to take in a show. Coffee, a piece of pie after.”
I turn and look in his tired face, lines deeper than any man ought to have.
“I have missed you, Olivia,” he says. “The way a man misses an arm or a leg.”
“That’s not fair.”
He drains his cup, stands up.
“There is nothing,” he says, “fair in this life. Things are what they are. I have loved you all these years, sometimes so much I could hardly stand it.”
I am clamped in the jaws of an anvil. A while ago I wanted to shove him down the porch steps. Now I want to beat him with my fists. “You married Grace—”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’d found someone, had a baby. I asked you, I said did you want me to give it my name.”
“Give it a name? What kind of love is that? And anyway, it’s not fair of you to tell me all that now. It’s belittling of you, Wing, to mention Pauline.”
“Don’t talk to me about belittling, Olivia. You can’t imagine how I felt, all those Saturday nights, playing at Silty’s, watching the woman I loved make a fool of herself. I’m sorry, but it’s God’s own truth.”
I should say nothing. Instead: “I was angry and lonely without you, and I couldn’t stand living with Ida—”
“Watching you lay down with one man after another—”
I wanted to take up the skillet and beat him senseless.
“—after all we’d meant to each other.”
“We were children! How can you be so unkind?”
“I’m hurting, Olivia. Did it make love any less, because we were young?”
My knees are so weak I can hardly stand. “God, Wing, I don’t know what was real. My heart was breaking. I put you away.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Only a fool would grieve for a lifetime!”
Wing nods slowly.
“That’s a lie,” I say sadly. “I never stopped loving you.”
“You don’t much sound like it.”
“Neither do you.”
Wing sets his mouth, reaches for his coat, shrugs into it. I’m sending him packing one more time. But there’s no other way. All I’ve felt for him amounts to nothing.
“Wing—”
“Send Will’m down. Anytime.” He pulls the door shut behind him.
46
I have not told Will’m about my quarrel with Wing. I do, however, tell him that I’ve seen Wing and that he’s invited Will’m to stay at the hotel now and then. The boy is delighted. In the event of trouble, I’ve covered all my bases.
We sit, after supper, when Will’m’s taken Ida home and read to her. We’re at the kitchen table, sorting out what we know. Not that anything gets in any way sorted. After a while, Will’m brings his notebook and writes things down, hoping that will make it clearer.
“We know this,” I say while he writes. “Alton’s taken a strong liking—or disliking—to our wolves. He’s cutting off as many right ears as he can.” I look up from the muslin square I’m embroidering. “Molly said the club comes three or four times a year.” I knot an intricate stitch. “Funny I don’t remember ever seeing them on the hill on a Saturday.”
The word Saturday, clearly, has stuck in my mind.
I look up, past Will’m to the boarded window.
“Gran? What’re you lookin’ at?”
“Saturdays.”
“Why?”
“When I think of them, I see the back of Pap’s head.”
“Gran—”
“Pap said something about Saturdays. Then I asked him what happened at the Phelpses’ on Saturdays.”
Will’m says nothing.
I’m thinking out loud. “He told me to forget we’d been there. Huh. Not likely the boys were makin’ whiskey; they bought their liquor from Pap. When Pap cut them off, it was the start of all the trouble….”
“What trouble?” Will’m says.
Has all this been about running whiskey? Or gambling, maybe. Did Pap owe them money, somehow? Still, what difference does it make what Alton Phelps did at his place all those years ago? Unless, of course, he’s still doing it. On Saturdays.
I can’t imagine Pap involved with the likes of the Phelpses. Still, bootlegging wasn’t exactly legal. Did any of that tie in with James Arnold’s death night on the road? Had James Arnold come looking for Pap that night? Had Pap seen him climb up out of the ditch and made a quick choice to be rid of him? But Pap would never have deliberately put me in danger.
Phelps said, on the Ridge, that I had information. What is it, exactly, that he thinks I know?
I mix mustard paste for Will’m’s poultice. He has no option but to pull on his nightshirt and climb into bed. I smooth the smelly flannel on his chest, kiss his forehead, and go off to my room where I change into my gown and huddle under the blank
ets. I want so badly to figure this out.
47
Tuesday night, after Will’m’s breathing better with his cold, I realize that Phelps believes Pap let me in on a secret—whatever that was. He did not. Along those lines, I wonder if Pap ever told Ida. I’ve always suspected she knows more than she’s saying.
On Wednesday, while Will’m is in school, I sit quilting and waiting on the coloreds.
Across the room, Aunt Pinny Albert is picking out canned goods. Her sisters Iva and Wellette are haggling over thread and lengths of elastic. Lengths of yardgoods.
“I got a nice bolt of red in,” I tell them. I count four running stitches and draw the thread through. “Would look real good on you, Miss Iva.”
The sisters look stunned.
I look up. “Something wrong?” I say.
“This a nice yeller,” Miss Wellette says, quick. “Jus’ right for spring.”
“Sisters, that’s two months off,” says Aunt Pinny Albert, batting their hands. “You-all forget, we shoppin’ light today.”
“Just saying, you’d look real fine in the scarlet, Miss Iva. Done up pretty with a belt or a big white bow.”
Miss Iva’s face freezes, and she’s barely breathing. Her mouth pinches up, like I’ve maybe spat on a grave, or suddenly cussed a blue streak.
I get up and come around, looking over at the bolts of new cloth.
“Not a thing, baby girl,” Aunt Pinny Albert says, slapping Miss Iva a good one.
I ring up their purchases. There’s a great deal of haggling over what they’ll pay for and what will have to go on account, but they’re distressed, and I’m saddened to think I caused it.
For now, however, I’ve got enough to brood on. I take up my needle and replay the day Pap drove the wagon to the Phelpses’, how I stood up in Alton’s face. By nightfall, my eyes burn from tiredness—or from looking so far into the past.
Will’m and I agree to sit tonight, and try to figure things out, but he’s equally tired, and by eight o’clock we’re ready for sleep. I’ve taken to tucking him into bed, the way I did when he was small. I drop a kiss on his forehead, and give the cub a pat before they both close their eyes. It’s a ritual that keeps us sane and safe and remembering who we are.
