by Joanna Scott
“Morning, Miss Angel.”
He should call her Sally, she told him. He shrugged and hopped down from the chair, grabbed a bowl from the counter, and held it out to be filled. Georgie began bustling in an awkward fashion. After giving the boy his oatmeal, she set out the milk bottle and cups with a clatter, swished the percolator pot to check the level of the coffee, and urged the boy to eat. She had to get to work now and take him to Grandma’s, so he’d better hurry up and finish his breakfast and run a comb through his hair.
Sally kept out of the way, accepting the cup of coffee and taking a seat with the boy at the table. From her position, she noticed that the floor was warped; the whole floor seemed tilted, the molding bulging with swollen joints, and the ceiling was so low that Sally was reminded of the Jensons’ root cellar.
She watched the boy leap from his chair and whirl out of the kitchen. When he was gone, she asked if there was anything she could do to help. Georgie said what she could do was stay quiet for the day and make sure that infection didn’t flare up again. She apologized for the condition of the house. One day soon she’d get around to fixing up that spare room where Sally was staying.
“But it’s hard, you know,” Georgie said.
“Sure, I know how it is.”
“Raising my boy alone.”
“Who’s that man, that Mr. Swill?” Sally asked. And then, thoughtlessly: “What’s he to your family?”
Georgie gave her that same cold, searching look she’d given her yesterday when Sally had lied about her home.
“Swill?”
“I mean —”
“Swill is Steven’s grandfather.”
“I see.”
“You don’t think much of him, do you?”
No, Sally protested, she’d never said that.
But Swill had already told Georgie what Sally said to him up there on the mountain. The words she’d used. As she started to apologize, Georgie held her hand up to silence her. “He doesn’t always make a good first impression,” she said. “You’re not to blame. Well, listen, I’m going to work. You make yourself at home. I’ll be back at six, and we’ll have dinner. And then you can tell me your story.”
“I’m a Werner,” she blurted in a desperate effort to prove herself trustworthy. “I’m Sally Werner.”
“Werner.” Georgie thought for a moment. “I don’t recognize the name. Oh, look, there’s Mason’s truck coming up the road. He’ll keep you company. I’ll be seeing you.”
She headed off to the bathroom to help her boy wash up. Sally sipped the watery brew of her coffee. Watching Mason’s pickup approach, she felt like a fugitive waiting for the sheriff to arrive. She had an urge to run, the way she’d run from the kitchen of her parents’ house. And yet she also wanted to let things happen to her, come what may. Here in Georgie’s kitchen, with its low ceiling and cockeyed floor, sixteen-year-old Sally Werner waited as time was marked by the sound of tires crunching gravel. She thought about the sound her name made when she’d spoken it aloud to Georgie, and she wondered if her parents were searching the yard, calling for her right then, calling through cupped hands. Sally, you wicked girl! Sally Werner! Did they miss her? Did they want her to come home? Of course not. They were glad she was gone. Good-bye and good riddance to the daughter who had brought the family nothing but shame and another hungry mouth to feed.
Sally watched through the screen of the back door as Uncle Mason stepped from the cab of his pickup truck. Maybe he’d tell her what would happen next.
Hi, g-g-g-girlie.” He twisted the soft band of his cap around his wrist as he nodded his greeting. He seemed embarrassed to see her. She pushed herself out of the chair and folded her arms. His embarrassment humiliated her. She resented him. If he couldn’t find a way to help her, she wanted him to go away. And yet she also perceived him to be harmless. He must have been nearly seventy — a few years older than Swill. He was about her height, though with longer legs and a higher waist. His face lacked the gray grizzle of Swill’s face and instead was a smooth, shiny marble with age spots that reminded Sally of the spots on the newt she’d seen that first day at the spring. She remembered the slimy sensation on the back of her leg just before she’d fallen into the creek. The memory caused her to reach around to touch the skin of her calf to make sure something awful wasn’t still clinging there. As she twisted, she noticed a tear at hip level on her nightie, and when she looked back at Mason she saw he was staring right at the white of her panties showing through.
She glared at him and moved her forearm to cover it. He matched her glare with a smile. It was a melancholy smile, as though he were trying to cheer her up despite his own secret misery.
He asked her how she was feeling.
“Why, I’m feeling fine,” she said with a shrug, unsure why she found it an odd question.
“Well then, where are you g-g-going next?” It was a straightforward question, but she didn’t have a straightforward answer. In fact, she didn’t have any answer at all.
He picked up the glass Stevie had left on the table and examined the inch of milk left in it. He said, “Let’s not b-beat around the bush,” and then paused. The pause made Sally wonder if he was expecting her to offer some suggestion. Or maybe he was telling her to go find some clothes and get dressed properly. She wanted to get dressed. She didn’t want to give the false impression that she was lazy. She was far from lazy — anyone who knew her would agree. If she was given work to do, she did it, and much more. She just needed permission to do things her own way.
She took a step toward the hall, but just then Mason dropped the glass he’d been holding. It bounced without shattering, dribbling milk, and he stepped quickly backward, as if to move away from something alive that had found its way into the house and was scuttling across the floor.
“I’ll take care of it,” Sally said, grabbing a dishrag and getting down on her knees to wipe the floor. The position made the sharp pain in her breast come back all at once. She sat up, sucking in her breath with a whistle.
“Y-you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He offered her his hand and tugged her to her feet. She was surprised at his strength and then remembered that somehow this little man, by his own account, had managed to pick her up from her faint in the woods and haul her down the mountain. She looked more closely at him, trying to figure out how all the pieces came together.
“You’re looking at m-me,” he said, “like I’m a p-puzzle you want to solve.” She blinked, startled by his accuracy. She would have asked him if he was a mind reader, but she sensed that the question would have sounded stupid.
Handing him the glass she’d picked up from the floor, she denied that she was looking at him in any special way, even as their eyes met.
“S-say,” he said after a pause. “You have a p-plan for yourself?” It was a question that made her feel a little bit ashamed and a little bit suspicious, in equal measure. He was standing there judging her. Depending on whether he blamed her or forgave her, she would feel either more ashamed or more suspicious of him.
She wanted to say she didn’t see how her plan was any of his business. But he clearly wanted to help. So what if she didn’t want his help?
Funny that right then she heard a chickadee call outside the kitchen window. Its trill reminded her of her younger sister Tru, who used to translate birdsongs into words. Thanks to Tru, she heard, Love me, me, me, from the chickadee, a plea that roused in Sally the impossible but nearly overwhelming longing to believe that everything she’d experienced since she’d ridden away from the picnic on Daniel Werner’s motorcycle had been a dream. All she had to do was go back to sleep and wake up again, and her mother would be standing over her bed:
Morning, Sally.
Where am I?
Why, you’re at home. You’ve been sick. But you’re better now. Get up, you lazybones.
And below her bedroom window, she’d hear the sound of the cows complaining, groaning from their fullness
and with their low mooing urging her: Get up, Sally, get out of bed.
Moo.
Sally?
Where’s Sally?
Who cares?
“You look l-l-lost in thought,” said Uncle Mason.
“Who cares?” she asked, just to hear the words spoken aloud.
“I’m s-s-sorry.”
“No, I mean… aw, forget it. Listen, I’ll be honest. I’m in a fix. I don’t have a dime in my pocket. I need to find work, but it doesn’t look like there’s much available around here. There’s the cement factory where —”
“They’re laying off r-r-right and left. G-Georgie will be lucky if she holds on to her job.”
Sally wondered aloud about the sales work she’d seen advertised in mail-order catalogues. If she could stay with Georgie for a while and start earning commissions —
“You can’t stay here,” Mason said plainly, forcefully.
“Why not?”
“That room — there’s no heat b-b-back there. It’s closed off during the w-winter.”
“Well, I could —”
Sally waited for Mason to fill in the blank. Instead he put his cap on his head, positioning it so the rim bent over his ear. “I’d b-best be going,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“See you then, sure,” Sally echoed.
And that was that. With Uncle Mason went Sally’s sense that she had to plan anything. She didn’t even get out of her nightie that day. She just sat around, paging through Georgie’s old magazines, setting herself the task of memorizing details about the lives of movie stars to keep herself from getting too jittery with boredom. Georgie came home with Stevie at the end of the day and cooked scrambled eggs for dinner.
The next day when Georgie was at work and the boy was with Swill’s wife, Sally sat around again, though at least she got dressed, wearing a denim skirt and yellow blouse that Georgie had lent her. The following day, she devised small chores to occupy her while she tried to figure out the direction of her life. The week turned into a month, and she was still trying to decide on her next move. Once in a while she’d get up and walk through the town. She thought about stopping at the beauty parlor to have her hair done, but she had no money.
On weekends when it was hot, Sally accompanied Georgie and her boy to wade in a swimming hole near the spot where Swill and Mason had found her the day after she’d run away from home. They watched the parade in town on the Fourth of July. And once Mason drove them to a country fair, where they watched barrel races and horse auctions. That was the best day of all. It happened to be Sally’s seventeenth birthday, a fact she kept secret. But instead of feeling sorry for herself, she felt relieved to have put the last year behind her.
During the week, Georgie worked long days at the factory. She couldn’t be blamed if she didn’t have the energy to straighten up around the house. Sally, who felt ready to explode from boredom, spent the lonely hours setting things in order for Georgie, dusting her collection of ceramic animals on the shelves in the living room, washing the windows and the kitchen floor. When she saw how grateful Georgie was for her effort, Sally grew more ambitious. She washed the dirty laundry and hung it on the line. She found a screwdriver and tightened the loose knobs on the doors. After finding a can of white paint in the basement, she sanded and painted the flaking porch rail. She took apart a window sash and attached a weight to the cord. She filled a pail with raspberries from the bushes out back and boiled them down to jam.
Georgie never asked her to leave and never complained to her about staying there. Swill hardly came by at all. He’d wait to see the boy when Georgie dropped him off at his house for his wife to babysit. Weeks had passed, and Sally had only heard of the woman who was Swill’s wife and Steven’s grandmother — she never seemed to leave her own house. But Uncle Mason stopped by to visit Sally most mornings, and Sally found herself looking forward to the company. He wouldn’t say much. He’d usually bring his pipe, and he’d spend a long time tamping the tobacco. Often, he wouldn’t even bother to light it.
All summer long, Sally Werner stayed at Georgie’s house. At the beginning of September, little Stevie started school. Nights turned colder, and the chirping of the crickets grew weaker. Sally would have liked a second blanket, but she didn’t bother to ask because she guessed that Georgie didn’t have an extra to spare. And then one morning early in October she woke up from a restless sleep. Noticing a different quality of light in the room, she lifted the blind and saw snow on the ground — a light dusting shining like glitter inside the bottle of a winter scene.
I’ve b-b-been thinking,” Uncle Mason said later that day, chewing on his pipe.
Sally rocked fast in the chair on the porch. She had on an old wool jacket Georgie had lent her, though the snow had already melted, and the sun was saturating the earth with a velvety warmth.
“Now hear m-me out.” Uncle Mason leaned back against the porch rail, drawing creaks from it as he shifted his weight. He stared off at something over Sally’s right shoulder and stayed quiet for so long that Sally thought he’d forgotten what he’d been wanting to say. And then it came out all at once: He had a home that n-n-needed tending. Sally didn’t have a home to g-g-go to. She couldn’t stay there with Georgie. Why, then, d-d-didn’t she come stay with Mason for a while?
“You,” she began in shock, trying to gather words in response to the offense. “You…”
“Me?”
If he thought she would, if he wanted…
“I d-d-don’t understand.”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
At this, the old man nearly collapsed in a fit of laughter. “Oh!” he cried, holding his belly, reminding Sally of her father when he was measuring the effects of a good meal. “Oh!” he howled, overcome with amusement. “Oh, good Lord. Oh, girlie. Oh, oh, oh!” He moaned in glee. He had to take off his glasses and wipe tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard. He had to sit down, he was laughing so hard. He was laughing so hard that Sally began to feel offended.
“Is it that funny?”
“Oh, g-g-girlie, no, yes, I d-d-don’t know. I n-n-need a housekeeper.” And then, through his chuckles, he murmured, “Unless you w-want to marry me?”
“Of course not!” she said. “I can’t believe you’d come up with that crazy notion! Why, that’s just cockeyed!”
What a cockeyed world she’d stepped into, she thought. A cockeyed family, a cockeyed hamlet on a meager river, a cockeyed old salamander of a man who dared to imagine that a seventeen-year-old girl would want to be his wife. The sky was too low and the ground was too high. No wonder everything kept slipping, glasses were dropped, and nothing made sense. And yet how odd it was to feel a growing commitment, as though just by choosing to remain there she would acquire a permanence, with roots growing from her feet into the porch.
“I’m going to take a bath,” she said, using the same familiar kind of announcement she would have used at home with her own family. It was strange, she thought, how this old man was starting to seem familiar to her, how strangeness itself was becoming ordinary, how she was beginning to imagine that she could fit in here, she could belong.
“I’ll b-b-be seeing you,” he called after she’d gone inside. She was heading down the hall to her room when she heard him say, “Think about wh-what I’m offering. I p-p-pay a good wage.”
She hesitated, then turned around. She intended to tell him okay, she’d think about his offer, and it sure was kind of him to be concerned about her situation. But he was already gone.
This was rural Pennsylvania in the fall of 1947 — a world of mud, sickly elms, stubbled hayfields, and backyard industries. The Tuskee was even dirtier then than now, or at least polluted in a different way, with a film of soot coating the surface and cement dust ending up as sludge along the banks. In the village where Georgie and her relatives lived, Fishkill Notch, the creek from the spring on Thistle Mountain met the Fishkill Creek. With the headwaters pouring in from the upper slopes
, the water in Fishkill Notch spread into a deeper channel that on maps is marked as the start of the Tuskee River.
Hidden between its marshy banks, the river didn’t draw attention to itself as it ran through the village. Anglers cast their lines there, but mostly the river flowed on without being noticed by the residents, and without noticing them.
Georgie’s house was on a side road off of Main Street. Mason’s house, though, was perched on a mound of land close to the wedge where the Fishkill bends into the Tuskee. In the spring and fall and after heavy rains, the sound of the river would make Sally Werner think that a storm was blowing in and wind was pouring through the trees. Years later, when she heard static on the radio or the TV, she’d think of Mason’s house and the Tuskee rushing past.
She spent one more night at Georgie’s. When Georgie came home from work, she brought a casserole that Swill’s wife had made. She already knew about Uncle Mason’s proposal and agreed that it was a good idea, promising Sally that they’d get together every weekend. She’d heard they were building a new movie theater over in the next town. She was planning to take Stevie to the Saturday matinees, and she hoped Sally would come along with them.
They ate supper, and Georgie put the boy to bed, ran a bath for herself, and called good night. Sally, who was ready to be forthright, asked if they could talk. Georgie came into the living room immediately, as though she’d been standing just around the corner waiting for the invitation.
The two young women stayed up most of the night, sharing Georgie’s cigarettes, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, their knees drawn up under their nighties, their bare toes tucked between the creases of the cushions. Sally listened to Georgie talk about Steven Jackson, her fiancé, and the plans they had had. The wedding never happened, she explained, because Steve never made it home from the war and never got to meet his son, who came three weeks early and emerged like a king, bright blue from the squeeze of the cord around his neck. The doctor had taken it upon himself to pronounce the boy damaged for life. But he turned out to be just fine.
