Peter Taylor

by Peter Taylor

  “Shall we have the blessing tonight?” she said, with some small hope in her smile.

  “Oh, let’s not.” He smiled back. It was a cajoling smile.

  “All right, then.” She smoothed the tablecloth with her fingers.

  He served himself from the dish of beans and selected a piece of the side meat. He bent his head over and got one whiff of the steaming dish. “You’re too good to me,” he said evenly. He pushed the dish across the table to within her reach.

  “Nothing’s too good for one’s husband.”

  “You’re much too good to me,” he said, now lowering his eyes to his plate.

  Cookie came through the swinging door with a vegetable dish in each hand. She was a brown, buxom Negro woman, perhaps a few years older than her mistress. She set the dishes on the table near her mistress’s plate.

  “Good evenin’, Cookie,” he said to her as she started back to the kitchen.

  “Yessuh,” she said, and went on through the doorway.

  His wife was serving herself from a dish. “Here are some of your baked potatoes,” she said.

  “Ah!” he said. “You are too good . . .” This time he left the sentence unfinished.

  She passed him the dish. “And here are simply some cold beets.”

  “Fine . . . fine . . . fine.”

  “Do you think we would like a little more light?” she said. She pushed herself back from the table.

  “We might. We might.”

  She went to the row of switches by the doorway that led to the hall. She pushed the second switch, and the light overhead was increased. She pushed the third, and the wall lights by the sideboard came on. With each increase of light in the room her husband said, “Ah . . . fine . . . ah . . . fine.” It was a small dining room—at least, it seemed so in the bright light, for the house was old and high-ceilinged. The woodwork was a natural pine, with heavy door facings and a narrow chair rail. The paper above the chair rail was a pale yellow, and no pictures were on the walls. There were two silver candlesticks and a punch bowl on the sideboard. Through the glass doors of the press the cut glassware showed. The large light fixture, a frosted glass bowl, hung from a heavy “antiqued” chain low over the table, and the bright light brought out a spot here and there on the cloth.

  She was taking her seat again when Cookie pushed through the door with the meat and the bread.

  “What’s this? A roast? You’re outdoing yourself tonight, Cookie,” he said.

  “Y’all want all iss light?” Cookie said, blinking, and she set the meat down before him.

  “Well, it’s—well, it’s cold-water cornbread!” He took two pieces of bread from the plate that Cookie held to him.

  “Y’all want all iss light?” Cookie said to her mistress, who was selecting a small piece of bread and smiling ingenuously at her husband.

  “Yes, Cookie,” she said, “I think so. I thought I’d turn ’em up some.”

  “Wull, I could a done it, Mizz.”

  “It’s all right, Cookie. I didn’t want the bread burned.”

  “Wull, it ain’t Judgment Day, Mizz. Y’all could a waited. I’d a done it, stead of you havin’ to do it.” She put the bread on the table and covered it with the napkin that she had held the plate with.

  “It’s all right, Cookie.”

  Cookie opened the door to go back to the kitchen. As she went through, she said, “Lawd a mercy!”

  His wife pushed her plate across the table, and he put on it a slice of roast that he had carved—an outside piece, because it was more done. He cut several slices, until he came to one that seemed rare enough for himself. “Any news from the chillun?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Postcards from all three.”

  “Only postcards?”

  She began to taste her food, taking so little on her fork that it was hardly visible.

  “Now, that’s just rotten!” he said. He brought a frown to his face. “They ought to write you letters. They ought to write you at least once a week! I’m going to write the boys tomorrow and tell ’em.”

  “Now, please, honey! Please don’t! They’re well. They said so, and that’s all I need to know. They’re just busy. Young people don’t have time for letters.” She eased her knife and fork down on her plate. “They’re young!”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” he said. “They ought always to have time for you.” He went on eating and talking at the same time. “These beets are fine,” he said. Then, after swallowing, “I won’t have that! They ought to write their mother once a week. When I was in med school, you know how much I wrote Mama. Father would have beaten me, I believe, and taken me out, if I hadn’t. I ought to take them out just once.” He stopped eating for a moment, and shaking his fork at her, he spoke even more earnestly: “And just one month I should forget to send her that check.”

  His wife sat, somewhat paled, making no pretense of eating. “Now, please, honey,” she said. “She has two little children and a husband who is far from well. I had a letter from her last week, written while the children were taking a little nap. Remember that she has two little children to look after.” Her lips trembled. “There’s nothing for the boys to write. They say on every single card they miss being home.”

  He saw that her lips were quivering, and he began eating again. He frowned. Then he smiled suddenly and said, as if with relief, “I’ll tell you. Yes. You ought to go up and see ’em. You haven’t been to Nashville since they were both in med.”

  She wiped her mouth with her napkin and smiled. “No, there’s no need in my going,” she said. And she began to eat her dinner again.

  Cookie came in with a small pan of hot bread, holding it with a kitchen towel. She uncovered the plate of bread on the table and stacked the hot bread on top of what was there. With her free hand, she reached in front of her mistress and felt the untouched piece of bread on her plate. “ ’S got cole on ya,” she said. She picked it up in her brown hand and threw it on the cooking pan. She placed a piece of hot bread on her mistress’s plate, saying, “Now, gwine butter’t while ’t’s hot.”

  Her mistress pushed the bread plate across the table toward her husband. She said to him, “Cookie and I are going to get a box of food off to ’em next week, like we used to send ’em in military school. Aren’t we, Cookie?”

  “Fine . . . fine . . . fine,” he said. He took a piece of the cornbread and began to butter it.

  Cookie nodded her head toward him and said to her mistress, “He hear from ’em?” Then she took several steps around the table, picked up the bread plate, and returned it to its former place. She was tucking the napkin about its edges again.

  “No, I have not!” He brought the frown to his face again. “They ought to write their mammy, oughtn’t they, Cookie?”

  “Sho-God ought. ’S a shame,” Cookie said. She looked at her mistress. And her mistress put her knife and fork down again. Her lips began to quiver. She gazed tearfully at her husband.

  He looked away and spoke out in a loud voice that seemed almost to echo in the high-ceilinged room: “What are you goin’ to send ’em? What are you going to send them young’ons, Cookie?”

  Cookie looked at him blankly and then at the butter plate, which was in the center of the table. “Whatever she say.”

  “Well, what do you say, Mother?”

  She cleared her throat and ran her hand in a series of pats over her thick and slightly graying hair that went in soft waves back over her ears. “I had thought that we might get hold of two fat guinea hens,” she said.

  “Fine . . . fine.”

  “I thought we might get some smoked sausage, not too new and—”

  “Ah . . . fine.”

  “And we might spare one of the fruitcakes we’ve got soaking.”

  “How does that suit you, Cookie?” he said.

  Cookie was on her way toward the kitchen again. “Yessuh,” she said.

  He ate in silence for several minutes, took a second helping
of string beans, and another piece of bread. She nibbled at a piece of bread. She put more salt and pepper on her meat and ate a few bites. And then she arranged her knife and fork on her plate. Finally, he put his knife and fork down on his empty plate and, with his mouth still full, said, “There’s not more, surely?”

  She smiled, nodding her head. “Pie.”

  “No! What kind!”

  “I cooked it myself.” She picked up a little glass call bell beside her plate and tinkled it. He sat chewing his last bite, and presently Cookie appeared in the doorway with two plates of yellow lemon pie topped with an inch of white meringue.

  “This is where she can beat you, Cookie,” he said as the cook set the piece of pie before him.

  Cookie made a noise that was somewhat like “Psss.” She looked at her mistress and gave her a gold-toothed smile. She started to leave with the dinner plates.

  “Wait a minute, Cookie,” he said. She stopped and looked at him, with her lower lip hanging open. He was taking big bites of the pie. “Cookie, I’ve been wantin’ to ask you how your ‘corporosity’ is.”

  “M’whut, Boss-Man?”

  “And, furthermore, I understand from what various people are saying around that you have ancestors.” He winked at his wife. She dropped her eyes to her plate.

  “Whut’s he mean, Mizz?” Cookie asked, standing with the two dinner plates in hand.

  “Just some of his foolishness, Cookie,” she said, with her eyes still on her plate.

  He thought to himself that his wife was too good to tease even Cookie. He said to himself, “She doesn’t realize that they really eat it up.”

  “M’ coffee’s bilin’,” Cookie said, and she went through the swinging door.

  His wife looked up from her plate. “You know Cookie never has liked to joke. Now, please, honey, don’t tease her. She’s getting along in her years now. Her temper’s quicker than it used to be.”

  He had finished his pie when Cookie brought in the coffee. She brought it on a tray—two cups and a kitchen pot. She set a cup at each place, filled them, and set the pot on the tablecloth.

  “How’s that church of yours comin’, Cookie?” he said.

  “It’s makin’ out, Boss-Man.”

  “Haven’t you-all churched nobody lately?”

  “No, suh, not us.”

  “How about Dr. Palmer’s cook, Cookie? Is she a member in standing?”

  “Sho. Mean ’at gal Hattie?” She looked at her mistress and smiled.

  He looked at his wife, who he thought was shaking her head at Cookie. Then he looked at Cookie. “Yes,” he said, almost absent-mindedly. “He brought her in from the country. That’s it—Hattie! That’s her name.”

  “Yessuh. She’s from out on Pea Ridge.”

  “She’s givin’ ’im some trouble. Drinkin’, ain’t she, Cookie?”

  “ ’Cep’ he didn’t get her from Pea Ridge.”

  “No, Cookie?”

  “She put in a year for some ladies he know out near the sand banks, and—”

  “She’s a drinker, ain’t she, Cookie?”

  “Yessuh. I reckon she is.” She tilted her head back and gave him her gold-toothed laugh, which ended in a sort of sneer this time. “She uz dancin’ roun’ outside chuch las’ night an’ say to me she want to teach me how to do dat stuff. I tell huh she’s drunk, an’ she say, ‘Sho I is. I teach you how to hit de bottle, too!’ ”

  He pushed his chair away from the table, still holding his coffee, and laughed aloud. He saw that his wife was looking threateningly at Cookie. “What else did she say, Cookie?” he pressed her.

  “Oh, dat gal’s a big talker. She’s full of lies. De way she lies ’bout huh boss-man’s terble. She lie ’bout anybody an’ everybody in Thornton. She call names up an’ down de street.”

  “What sort of lies?” He leaned forward, smiling, and winked at his wife.

  “Them ladies from the sand banks—she say they’s in an’ out his place mos’ any night. Doc Palmer’s a bachlorman, sho, but Hattie say hit ain’t jus’ Doc Palmer! They comes there to meet the ladies—all sorts of menfolks, married or not. She say she see ’em all ’bout his place sooner later.”

  His wife had quit sipping her coffee and was staring at Cookie.

  “Who, for instance, Cookie? Let us in on it,” he said.

  The cook turned to him and looked at him blankly. “You, Boss-Man.”

  His wife stood up at her place, her napkin in her hand. Her eyes filled with tears. “After all these years!” she said. “Cookie, you’ve forgotten your place for the first time, after all these years.”

  Cookie put her hands under her apron, looked at her feet a moment, and then looked up at him, her own eyes wet. Her words came almost like screams. “Hattie say she seen ya! But she’s a liar, ain’t she, Boss-Man?”

  Her mistress sat down, put one elbow on the table, and brought her napkin up to cover her face. “I’m disappointed in you, Cookie. Go to the kitchen.”

  Cookie went through the swinging door without looking at her mistress.

  In a moment, his wife looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry. I’d not thought she was capable of a thing like that.”

  “Why, it’s all right—for what she said. Doctors will get talked about. Even Cookie knows the girl’s a liar.”

  His wife seemed, he thought, not to have heard him. She was saying, “A servant of mine talking to my husband like that!”

  “It’s only old-nigger uppitiness,” he reassured her.

  “I shall speak to her tonight,” she said. “I promise you.”

  “Oh, I suppose you’ll think you have to fire her.”

  She looked at him, her features composed again. She ran her hand over her hair in a series of pats. “No, no,” she said. “I can’t fire Cookie. I’ll speak to her tonight. It’ll never happen again.”

  “Now I think of it, perhaps she ought to be sent on her way after talking like that.”

  “I’ll look after the matter.”

  He poured himself a second cup of coffee and, as he drank it, he watched his wife closely. He frowned again and said, “Why, she might talk to you that way some day. That’s all I thought.”

  She smiled at him. “There’s no danger. I’ll have a talk with her tonight.”

  She helped him on with his overcoat. He said, “Got to see some country people tonight. Might even have to drive over to Huntsboro.” She was buttoning his coat. “There’s a lot of red throat over there.”

  “I can’t have her talking that way to my husband,” she said aloud, yet to herself. “But I won’t fire her,” she told him. “She’s too much one of us—too much one of the family, and I know she’ll be full of remorse for speaking out of turn like that.”

  He looked directly into her eyes, and she smiled confidently. She told him she would leave the back light on, because lately the nights had been cloudy and dark. As he stopped in the hall to pick up his hat and his case, he heard Cookie come through the swinging door.

  “Now, Cookie, I want to have a little talk with you,” his wife said, and Cookie said, “Yes’m, Mizz.”

  He went out, closing the door softly behind him, and as he crossed the porch, he could still hear their voices inside—the righteousness and disillusion of Cookie’s, the pride and discipline of his wife’s. He passed down the flight of wooden steps and stepped from the brick walk onto the lawn. He hesitated a moment; he could still hear their voices indistinctly—their senseless voices. He began walking with light, sure steps over the grass—their ugly, old voices. In the driveway, his car, bright and new and luxurious, was waiting for him.

  Sky Line

  “IS IT God knocking?”

  “No, no. That isn’t God. That isn’t God.”

  “Then it’s the hanging baskets. The wind is blowing the vine-baskets against the house.”

  “After the wind has died, you may go out on the porch and look at the wall of the house, at the places where the wire baskets have chipped more
paint off the boarding.”

  “They are Grandmother’s baskets.”

  Then his little humpbacked grandmother is found dead in her bed one morning, and he must play in his room upstairs for two days. Out his window he watches automobiles coming from far off. They turn on streets which wind for no reason through a field, wide streets with sidewalks but with few houses and no trees along their borders. Down his street there is only the house on the corner and the speckled stucco next door where the little girl comes and leans against one of the porch pillars.

  Everywhere in the fields are white signs with blue and red lettering that hurts the eye.

  During the second day the Negro cook Cleo comes up and plays parcheesi with him while downstairs the music and the preaching go on. From his window he watches the hearse drive away with the long line of cars following it. On the winding street through the fields the long line moves like a black snake. Cleo says, “She wuz lyin’ ’ere in bed when we find ’er—just like she be asleep.”

  Cleo leads him down the stairs by his hand, and they watch the Negro men loading stacks of folding chairs on a truck.

  After the funeral some big wicker baskets are left sitting about in the front hall and on the porch. Just at twilight one day everything outside the living room window looks yellowish. Then the rain comes like a burst of tears; and the wind blows the wicker baskets over, and the tin cans from inside them roll about the porch floor. The tin cans and the wicker stands and the swinging baskets make a clatter like a jazz band. Even his mother goes to the window and looks out. And he says to her, “The wood will look pinkish in the spots where the paint is gone.”

  All the wicker baskets are at last stacked behind the garage and burned like old boxes. The tin cans serve in turn, as one after another rusts, for watering troughs to the white pointer which runs on a wire in the back yard. And the swinging baskets (“your poor grandmother’s last efforts at gardening”) are missing from the porch. After dinner on Sunday Cleo wraps them in newspaper and goes off toward the trolley with one under each arm.