Mary Edna had arrived an hour early with a plate of deviled eggs in each hand (Salmonella waiting to happen, Lusa thought but did not say). Seeing the front hallway suddenly occupied by the Menacing Eldest in a burnt-orange pantsuit and sensible shoes had sent Lusa into a panic; she’d called out some instructions and flown upstairs on the pretense of finding a tablecloth. But of course Mary Edna would know that the tablecloths were in the cherry armoire in the parlor. Right now, in fact, she was outside sailing one of her mother’s linens over the table while the men hunkered down near the chicken house with their backs to her, stabbing beers into a tub of ice and opening up long-necked bottles of something homemade. Hannie-Mavis was trying to organize the kids into a labor pool for cranking the ice cream, but at the moment they were circling her like a swarm of bees threatening their queen with mutiny. Lusa stood with one hand on the back of the green brocade chair and looked down on all her in-laws from above, pondering their resemblance to the clucking, parti-colored flock of chickens that was usually scattered out over her yard. The hens had scrammed early to their roosts to avoid this onslaught of relatives. Lusa smiled a small, sad smile, wishing she could watch the whole evening from this window. Finally they were all here, conceding to be her guests. And she didn’t have the nerve to go downstairs.
She sighed and shut the window. It had rained earlier. The air had the fetid smell of mushrooms releasing their spores into the damp air. It was evening, though, so the men would be shooting off their fireworks soon, tinting the air blue with that acrid smoke. Having a program would help the evening go by. She glanced in the dresser mirror and ran a hand through her strawberry mane, feeling miserable. Her jeans fit too well, the black knit shirt was too low-cut, her hair was too red—the widow Jezebel. She’d chosen the black top for a drab effect, but it was no small task to look dowdy next to Mary Edna in her waistless polyester pantsuit, or Hannie-Mavis in a red striped top, star-spangled shorts, gold mules, and blue eyeliner. Lusa pointed her feet toward the stairs and made them go. It time, it’s time, too late to change now. A year too late.
She was right about the fireworks; there was already a movement afoot to begin. Hannie-Mavis’s Joel and Big Rickie were peering into a series of brown paper bags they’d set out in a row, arguing about some aspect of the scheme. Lusa was grateful for the rain—she’d been genuinely afraid they’d burn down her barn, and not brave enough to declare a ban on the fireworks (they were a tradition). But May and June had dumped such rain on Zebulon County that the air itself could smother a flame. Bullfrogs had wandered up out of the duck pond and carelessly laid their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms. Fierce snapping turtles no longer confined themselves to the ponds but wandered the lanes like highwaymen. In all her life Lusa had never seen such an oversexed, muggy summer. Just breathing was a torrid proposition.
“Hey, guys,” she called to Joel and Big Rickie, who nodded at her, smiling broadly like schoolboys. They were thrilled about this picnic. Lois the Loud, meanwhile, sat in a folding chair near the food table, chain-smoking and posting a stream of complaints about how much they’d spent on the fireworks.
“One hundred and eighty-one dollars,” she boomed in a voice deepened by decades of cigarettes. Mary Edna stood three feet away, ignoring her and scowling at the food table. When Lois spied Lusa coming out of the house, she perked up at the potential of a new audience. “A hundred and eighty-one dollars!” she called out to Lusa. “That’s what these little boys spent on their little show for tonight, did you ever hear the like?”
Lusa had already heard it all from upstairs, but she pretended to be dismayed. “Good grief. Did they drive all the way to China, or what?” she said, walking over toward Lois. She was relieved to see that Lois was in the Jezebel camp, too, dressed in jeans and a western-style shirt unsnapped a tad too far.
“Naw,” Lois said, “they went over to Crazy Harry’s down there off the interstate.”
As far as Lusa could tell, the entire border of the state of Tennessee was ringed with shacks advertising cheap fireworks. It had to do with their being legal on one side of the line and not the other, but she wasn’t sure which was which.
“I should have gone with them,” Lois droned on in her deep, cracked voice. “Or sent Little Rickie and the girls along to keep an eye on them. I didn’t think two grown men would act like kids in a candy store.” She examined the ends of her hair, which she wore long and dyed coal black—not flatteringly, in Lusa’s opinion, since Lois was fair and blue-eyed like Cole, and a little long in the tooth for the straight, dyed look. But maybe having Indian-black hair like her husband and children made her feel like she belonged to them. Who knew?
Mary Edna was fussing tediously with a piece of aluminum foil over a sheet cake. She was a vision in her orange polyester, which seemed itself a heat source in this muggy night; the outfit gave Lusa an odd, uncomfortable sensation that Mary Edna’s physical presence would spoil the food.
Mary Edna turned around suddenly, as if reading Lusa’s thoughts, but it was Lois she snapped at: “Oh, hush your bellyaching, Lois, they do it ever year. If you’re not used to it by now, you never will be.”
Lusa winced, but Lois was utterly unfazed. She craned her head sideways toward Mary Edna, flicking ash in the grass. “Why sure, go ahead and talk. Your husband wouldn’t go spend a week’s grocery money on cherry bombs and Martian Candles and stuff.”
“I’d ruther him do that than what he’s up to right now, down there poking his nose in the bottles. What kind of hooch have they got down there?”
“Lord, honey, Frank’s done made that elderberry wine. You’d think he’d get over that little chemistry project, or Emaline would dump it down the drain, one.”
“Oh, it’s that business.”
“He claims it’s a pure wonderful product and maybe he’ll sell it one of these days.” Lois rolled her eyes.
Mary Edna touched her bluish, tightly coiffed hair and stared at the men with narrow eyes. “I wouldn’t know. You ask me, I’d have to agree with the good Lord. All of it bites as the serpent.”
Lois snorted, breathing smoke out her nose like a dragon. “After the second bottle of that stuff, turpentine’d taste pure wonderful, I expect.”
Lusa watched the sisters volley, surprised that they could be as mean about their own husbands and each other’s as they’d ever been toward her. Cole had always insisted that she took his family too personally. She’d never had brothers or sisters of her own, only parents who said “please” and “thank you” to each other and to the child they’d produced late in life and never quite known how to handle. Maybe Cole had been right. She’d never experienced rough-and-tumble, the sharper edges of family love.
She walked down toward the chicken house, deciding to investigate whatever it was that was biting these men as the serpent. They were engaged in the kind of cheerful, energetic argument that tends to happen when all present are agreed and the enemy is absent. Farm policy and government stupidity, most likely. But maybe not. “Blevins would lie, though,” Herb was saying. “He’d lie quicker than a dog can lick a plate.”
“Howdy, gentlemen,” she called from a decent distance as she approached, just in case they were about to say something they wouldn’t want her to hear. It embarrassed them to death if they let slip even so much as a “hell” or “damn” in her presence.
“Hey there, Miz Widener,” Big Rickie called to her. “I have a crow to pick with you!”
His friendliness caught her off guard. This crow didn’t seem very threatening. “What is it now, those cows I sold you and Joel? Did they all run off already? I warned you they were fence jumpers.”
“No ma’am, them cattle are behaving just fine, thank you. But now we leased them cattle, a percentage on the calves, let’s don’t forget. We don’t owe you unless they all get busy and get theirselves in the family way this winter.”
“I rec
all the terms, and I gave those girls their instructions.” Lusa smiled. Rickie and Joel had made her a good deal, and she knew it.
“No, now, our contention is with your antitobacco policy.”
“My what? Oh, I see. You’ve got me chalked up as the enemy of the small farmer.”
Rickie hid his cigarette quickly behind his back. Herb, Joel, Frank, and Herb’s son all followed suit. “No ma’am,” Big Rickie said. “We’ve got you chalked up with Miss Butcher, our tenth-grade shop teacher. She used to throw screwdrivers at us when she caught us smoking.”
“A woman, you had for a shop teacher? A Miss Butcher? I can’t believe that.”
“God’s honest truth,” Frank said. “I had her, Rickie and Joel had her, and Herb’s boy here did, too. By the time she retired she was somewheres around a hundred years old, and missing three fingers.”
“She should live to a hundred and twenty,” Lusa said. “Look at you. Despite her years of trial, you’re all still smoking like chimneys. Where’s my screwdriver?”
They ducked their heads like little boys. Lusa felt amazed to be the center of their attention. These men had never fully let her in on a conversation before. Possibly it was the elderberry wine, which Frank was now urging her to sample. He’d put it up in beer bottles, so it was hard to tell who was drinking what.
“Wow,” she said, after a taste. It was dry and strong, almost like brandy. “Good,” she added, nodding, since they seemed very interested in her opinion. “Although I hear it bites as the serpent.”
They exploded at that, all of them, even Herb. Lusa flushed a little, pleased to have earned this amity but also surprised to find herself allying with these men against their women. Or maybe it was just Mary Edna. There seemed to be resentment throughout the ranks on the Mary Edna score.
“So, Mr. Big Rickie. What’s this crow you have to pick with me, really?”
“Them goats up ’air in your back pasture. Now I see why you had Joel and me clear out all your cattle: to make way for the goats. I know what you got ’em for, too.”
“You do?” She felt a slight panic, for no reason. Had Little Rickie shared her plan? Would it really matter if he had?
“Yep.” Big Rickie had a twinkle in his eye.
“OK, why did I get those goats?”
“To make me look bad. They’ll eat down all the thistles and rose briars out of your hayfield neat as pickle. And see, now, a man drives by, he’ll look on the other side of the fence and say, ‘Well, sir, that old Big Rickie Bowling, his hay’s nothing but a mess of briars. I wouldn’t buy that hay for two cents.’”
“That’s exactly why I got goats, to wreck your hay trade. I couldn’t stand to sit here and watch you get rich selling hay.”
“Lord, Rickie,” Joel said, “woman’s going to ruin you. You’d just as well get out of farming altogether, with her running the competition.”
Were they making fun of her now? But this was how they spoke to each other, too—in a complicated mix of rue, ridicule, and respect that she was just beginning to grasp. They were also appreciating her figure rather frankly, especially Big Rickie and Herb’s son from Leesport, whatever his name was. Lusa pulled at her shirt, wondering if her nipples showed through somehow. She racked her brain for the son’s name, which she couldn’t have guessed if her life depended on it. She kept hoping he would reintroduce himself, but instead he handed her a second bottle of Serpent, as they were now calling their drink. Had she downed the first one so fast? And why did Rickie keep smiling at her? He was a handful—she’d never imagined this side of him. She could see why Lois would want to keep her hair young and her eye peeled.
“Is ’at there barn made of chestnut?” Herb’s nameless boy was asking her now.
“You’re asking me?”
“Your barn, ain’t it?”
She was startled by this turn in the conversation that had now, suddenly, given her authority over her barn. Their wives wouldn’t even acknowledge Lusa’s ownership of her kitchen. But of course, these men were in-laws, too; they hadn’t grown up in these buildings any more than Lusa had. She’d never really thought of this—they weren’t Wideners, either.
“Yeah, I think it is chestnut,” she said. She pointed at the joinery under the peak of the gable end. “You see how the roof got raised up at some point? That was more recent, and I think they used oak. It’s not weathering as well. All the rafters need to be replaced.”
Herb whistled. “That’s going to cost you.”
“Tell me,” she said. “If you hear of anybody who likes to replace barn roofs, tell him you know a lady who’s looking to make him rich.”
“You ought to have him build you a gabazo up there on your hill, while he’s at it,” said Frank. “So you could set up there in it and watch your goats.”
“I know a man that had two gabazos,” Rickie said. “But they died.”
“Rickie Bowling, you’re a damn fool.”
They all stood silent for a moment in the early-evening light, studying the barn with its many seams of age and repair. From the depths of the chicken house behind them came the low, world-weary moan of a hen slowly accomplishing an egg. In the ambient air the choir of summer insects was tuning up its infinite clicks and trills. By nightfall they’d be deafening, loud enough to drown out the fireworks. But for now Lusa and the men could still hear the constant voice of Lois, who had flagged down Hannie-Mavis and was now bending her ear about the price of gunpowder.
“I’m a damn fool,” Rickie said solemnly, “what spent a hundred dollars on fireworks, and won’t hear the end of it till Christmas.”
“I heard it was a hundred and eighty-one dollars and twelve cents,” Lusa said. “Approximately.”
“No, now, the eighty-one dollars and twelve cents, that was Joel.”
“Come on,” Joel said, suddenly excited. “Let’s go shoot.”
“Hold your horses, Mr. Sexton. We can’t start till it gets good and dark.” But Joel was already walking back uphill. They all watched him go, observing as his path intersected with that of the starred-and-striped Hannie-Mavis, who had broken free of Lois and was headed in her husband’s direction carrying a hot dog on a bun. Lusa started to make a remark about her outfit also looking better in the dark, but she thought better of it as Hannie-Mavis stood on tiptoe in her little gold shoes, letting Joel give her a kiss before he took the hot dog from her. There was such a wealth of simple fondness in his hand as it touched her back, in her stretched calves and her head turned to receive his kiss. A vast loneliness crept over Lusa. She needed Cole to negotiate this family. With him it had made sense. Or could have, maybe, eventually.
Joel began poking into the paper bags, holding the hot dog high in his other hand as he bent over. Rickie seemed nervous about letting him do it alone. “I hate to leave such pleasant company,” he said, making a courtly bow and giving Lusa a look in the eye that shocked her with suggestion. “But I have to go keep an eye on my brother-in-law. He is not to be trusted.”
“I don’t think you are, either,” she said.
He winked. “I believe you may be right.”
Lusa turned her face away to hide a blush, pretending to look uphill toward the food table. She felt incensed—here she was not six weeks a widow, and her brother-in-law was flirting. Although he may have just been trying to cheer her, and the alcohol muddled everything, of course. Just for a minute, she herself had forgotten to be sad. She felt guilty and hopeful both, realizing that beyond these numb days lay an opposite shore where physical pleasure might someday surprise her with its sharp touch. Where she would see colors again.
“Gentlemen. I’d better go act like a decent hostess and see if we’re going to have any ice cream,” she said. Frank reached out to snag the empty bottle out of her left hand and press a full one into it.
“We are sinking deep in sin,” she sang quietly as she walked past Mary Edna with a Serpent in each hand, heading down toward the barn to check on the progress of the ice cream cra
nkers. She felt a tightness in her lower abdomen, not from the elderberry wine but from something else, a body sensation she recognized but couldn’t place. She’d been feeling it all day—a fullness, not really unpleasant but distracting, and a constant small twinge on the left side of her belly. And then it came to her, just as she spied the bald pate of an enormous whole moon rising above the roof of the barn. Of course. What she felt was her cycle coming back. She’d been on the pill for years, since college, but she’d tossed out the pink dial-pack several weeks ago when she finally made herself clear Cole’s toothbrush and shaving things out of the bathroom. Now, after years spent suppressed in hibernation, her ovaries were waking up and kicking in. No wonder the men were fluttering around her like moths: she was fertile. Lusa let out a rueful laugh at life’s ridiculous persistence. She must be trailing pheromones.
Halfway down the hill, Jewel’s five-year-old flew into her legs, causing her to spill wine on herself and nearly lose her footing.
“Good grief, Lowell, what is it?”
“Crys made me cut my leg!” he wailed, pointing frantically. “It’s bleeding! I need a Band-Aid.”
“Let me see.” She sat down on the ground, set both her bottles firmly into the grass, rolled up Lowell’s pants leg, and scrutinized the unbroken skin for damage. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s the other leg,” came a weary voice through the darkness. It was Crys, trudging up the hill after her brother. “He scratched it on a nail in the barn cellar.”
Lusa was flustered by the child’s hysteria. To calm both him and herself she held him in her lap while she examined his other leg. She found a scratch on the ankle, but it hadn’t even broken through the second layer of epidermis. Definitely no blood. “You’re OK,” she said, hugging him tightly. She picked up his leg and kissed it. “This will heal before your wedding.”
Crys flopped onto the ground beside Lusa. “Did he say it was all my fault?”
Prodigal Summer Page 23
