by Peter Taylor
Attendant Evils
I DROVE all over Orange Mound yesterday; I literally scoured the place. This Willie Belle is what I found. She’s as good and as bad as another, and we’ll have to make her do, impudence and all, for I believe she can be relied upon to put in an appearance every day, which is more than can be said for the lot as a whole now-a-days. It’s one of the attendant evils of war, my dear daughter, one of the things which women must endure. And you’ll have to learn to bear all sorts of insolence and sass throughout this duration business. I declare I spent two weeks before you came looking for a nurse who would do, and when I found this one yesterday, when I came upon one that I could take home with me and instruct and feel some certainty about her being here this morning when you arrived, I was ready to take any black thing I could lay my hands on at any wage. It’s one of the attendant evils of war, and there’ll be no cessation till the thing is over.
I went in the rain yesterday out into that section they call Possum Trot, though I knew there were no good servants there, and I drove through the Garrett Hill section and Poesy. But the niggers in Memphis simply don’t want work, not even those in Orange Mound where one used always to find a pretty good nigger of some sort. A war plays havoc with things, my child. I know the signs. You won’t remember how Aunt Lacey behaved during the last one, how she wouldn’t use butter plates (There was “no need in nastyin’ up all them dishes”), and I shan’t tell you about it, for you have only kind memories of her. Well, I got my clue to this stupid, sullen Willie Belle from your Aunt Mary Gordon’s new cook (who is a peach considering the times). She gave me the street number of a certain Marcella who would tell me how to get to Willie Belle’s sister’s house, and so I had Vergil drive me there about eleven o’clock in the morning through the pouring rain. There was a young negro man sitting in the porch swing, but he paid us no attention when we stopped before the house. I said, “Vergil, sound your horn.” Vergil pressed down on the horn for several seconds, but the boy didn’t even look up at us. I was determined that he should come out and talk to me, and not to have Vergil get out in the rain in his new cap and fresh uniform and come back to my upholstery drenching wet. “Sound it again, Vergil,” I said. The boy still didn’t move. My idea was that he was too proud and fine to come out and stand in the rain. “Throw open your door, Vergil,” I said, “so he can see we’ll let him get shelter. He’s too proud and fine to come out and stand in the rain.” Vergil threw open the door and continued to press the horn. But he said with a grin:
“He’s slumberin’.”
I hadn’t realized that at all. But he was asleep. That, you see, was his contribution to the war effort—sleeping in the middle of the morning on the porch swing. Why, they don’t want to work as long as they have one crumb of bread and a roof over their heads.
We were about to pull away. I told Vergil to close his door, and it was the closing of that automobile door which suddenly brought a face to the entrance of the little shotgun house. A fat, brown negro woman opened the screen and called, “ ’At blowin’ for us?”
Think of it.
The boy on the swing roused himself and, opening two saucer-like eyes, he looked out at us through the rain like a drowsy cow. Then he looked at the woman in the doorway. I leaned forward quickly, rolled down my window, and made myself heard: “Marcella, will you step out here, please.”
“Get some’n’ on my hade,” she called hatefully as though I were putting her to the most unconscionable inconvenience. A second later she appeared with a newspaper over her head. The nigger on the swing sat staring at us, and the woman ran out to the car in her bare feet. She leaped over the little ditch and just barely held herself up by slapping her big brown left hand down on the door beside me.
“Where does Willie Belle live, Marcella?” I said.
“Willie Belle?” she said, as though she were repeating words in some foreign tongue which she didn’t understand. “Willie Belle,” she said again, now as though trying to recall a face out of the past.
“Aren’t you the Marcella who’s a friend of Mrs. Gordon’s Laura?”
Then she repeated “Laura” twice with just those intonations which she had put upon “Willie Belle.” Finally she looked at me and said with an airy smile: “Oh, aren’t Laura a tall dark-complected girl?”
“Yes, yes,” I said perhaps too eagerly.
“No’m,” she said, “I don’t know no Willie Belle. I don’t know what could have made Laura tell you that I do.” She turned and called to the man on the porch who was now staring off toward the blank wall of a house next door, “You know a Willie Belle?” Without even looking at us he shook his head. But I sat there in silence and looked her directly in the eye for a minute, because I knew very well that she could tell me if she but would.
Presently Vergil said, “You know anybody wants to nurse?” I looked back and forth from one of their brown faces to the other, for they do seem to have some secret language which they speak with their eyes which no white person can possibly translate.
“Just a minute,” she said. “Let me ask my husband.” She went back through the rain between the forsythia and the jonquils to the porch, all the while holding the wet paper over her head. She sat down beside the man on the swing. Meanwhile I rolled up the window beside me, for the rain was blowing in on the upholstery. I could see through the rain that now fell on the glass and ran in long streams down to the sill the two of them sitting there talking the whole thing over casually, slowly, as though there were no war and as though you and the baby weren’t arriving for another month. I really felt as though they weren’t even discussing my errand but rather all those yellow flowers in the yard. At last she got up, however, and went into the house and put a dry piece of newspaper over her head. When she was at my window once again, I rolled down the glass, and she said, “My husband says he don’t know no Willie Belle.” But I could tell that she had something more to say by the way she looked about the inside of my automobile, noticing the upholstery and scrutinizing every article of clothing I wore. She looked at my hat an eternity (I was wearing the black velvet one with the two blue feathers in front), my choker, my beads, and of course my fur piece. You see, she knew that I was desperate and would take almost any amount of impertinence from her. That’s the way the war affects them. Whatever they can get by with they’ll do, just for the sake of getting by. Finally she said with that same airy smile, “I don’t suppose you mean Willie B., do you, instead of Willie Belle? Nell Ruth’s sister Willie B.? Nell Ruth who lives just up here in back of me on the next street. You’ll see a yellow house with a big water oak in the yard just around the corner and back two houses.” Then she smiled that airy smile at me still again, standing there in the rain barefooted, with a wet newspaper over her head like a poke bonnet, but with the airiest smile you’ve ever seen, proud, don’t you know, of her mouth full of yellow gold teeth.
I said, “Drive on, Vergil.” And when we had driven up the street a way I glanced backward through the rear glass. But do you know they weren’t looking after us at all, as you’d naturally expect, but the woman was still in the rain holding onto that newspaper with both hands and loosening the earth about the roots of her flowers with her bare toes. The man she called her husband, who was twenty years younger than she, was already asleep in the swing again. And mind you, my child, this Willie Belle’s sister’s house was virtually in a stone’s throw of Marcella’s.
But it was quite a different sort of looking place. It was painted, as Marcella had said, a bright yellow, and there was a tree in the yard. It sat high up above the street on a clay bank, and the house next to it was painted a pale blue. In the rain both houses seemed bright and fresh against the grey sky. Vergil sounded the horn, and I was filled with hope. I had the feeling that here I’d find the sort of girl I wanted. I felt it, even before the negro woman showed herself at the door. When she did appear. I could tell from the automobile that it was an extremely fine looking colored girl. She wore a
green sweater and brown skirt, and when I motioned to her to come out to me, she nodded right intelligently and stepped back inside the house a second. She reappeared with an umbrella and wearing galoshes. She ran through the yard avoiding mud puddles, and she smiled as she moved cautiously down the slick wooden steps over the clay bank. She put her head through the window and said very nicely, “Yes, Ma’am.”
“You’re Willie Belle, aren’t you?” I said. But of course it wasn’t Willie Belle, and she said no, that it was Nell Ruth. “I’m Willie Belle’s baby sister,” she said, “but Willie Belle stay here with I and my husband.”
She was such a clean, neat, nice looking girl that I thought I’d say no more about Willie Belle. “Nell Ruth,” I said, and I cleared my throat, for the girl looked at me so intelligently and even perceptively that I felt she observed my change of plans, “have you ever done any nursing?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a serious nod, “quite a lot.” Her hair, which had been very thoroughly pressed out, lay flat on her head and was brought to a neat roll behind her ears, around the back of her neck.
“Well, I’d like to give you a try,” I said. “What do you get?”
“Oh, I don’t nurse now a lot,” she answered quickly. “My husband don’t usually like me to work out. He’s night watchman for Barne’s Supply Company and likes me here in day time.”
I glanced down at my purse on my lap and said, “I pay well, Nell Ruth. Where did you work last?”
“Ah, I nursed last for Mrs. Norris in Morningside Park. She gives eight dollars a week.”
Mind you, she said eight dollars a week, my child, in which of course there was not a word of truth. But that’s the war for you. And now prepare yourself for this, my daughter. I said, “I’ll give you nine dollars, Nell Ruth.”
For a minute she ran her forefinger back and forth behind her ear pressing her hair down tight. She pursed her lips a second and then said, “I’ll ask my husband.” She went cautiously up the wooden steps again. Her galoshes were unfastened and the zippers tinkled at every step. It was still raining and she drew her shoulders in tight to make sure she kept within the circumference of the silk umbrella.
She was in the house for five or ten minutes, and Vergil and I sat in silence. Presently he switched off the engine and settled in his seat, as though he knew precisely what the procedure would be and just exactly how long it would take. I was so preoccupied with the business that I didn’t even roll up the window, but sat watching the rain splash off the sill onto the upholstery and about my feet. When Nell Ruth opened her front door again, I peered up over the brown clay bank and saw two other persons in the shadow behind her. As she stepped down from the porch, I had my first glimpse of this Willie Belle, for she came out onto the porch and sat down in a high-backed rocking chair. She was wearing some sort of gingham wrapper and those carpet slippers she has on upstairs now.
Nell Ruth stuck her head inside my window and said, “No’m. He just don’t like me to work out a bit.” She shook her head, saying, “You know the men folks.”
“Hop in out of the rain, Nell Ruth,” I said, pointing to the front seat. And Vergil opened the door. While she was letting down her umbrella and very deliberately closing the car door, I said, “Nell Ruth, I’ll give you ten dollars a week to nurse my daughter’s baby for the two weeks they’re visiting me. It’s a four-year-old girl who’s a perfect angel.”
And she looked at me ever so engagingly with her head cocked to one side and a tender smile which seemed to say that one more word about the darling child would leave her in tears. Then quite mechanically, with her head still slightly cocked, her expression grew solemn and she rolled her eyes off in the direction in which Willie Belle sat rocking away on the porch. My eyes followed hers. And before I had time to bring my eyes back from that figure in the faded gingham wrapper, Nell Ruth had said, “Willie Belle might do it for nine, with car fare.” By the time I looked at her again she had begun to loosen her umbrella.
“Do you mean you won’t work at any wage?” I said. She put her hand on the door handle and began to open it. She had fastened her eyes on the figure who sat rocking on the porch of the yellow house and staring off into the rain. Nell Ruth stepped onto the running board, and I said, “If Willie Belle comes with me now, I’ll give her eight dollars.” She stepped firmly down onto the ground from the running board, and my heart sank with the thought of your arriving, my dear, today, and I added, “Plus car fare when I don’t send her home.” As that black creature in the green sweater was prissing herself up the slick steps, still cautiously, undisturbed by what I had said to her, I didn’t know whether she was going to send Willie Belle or not. I watched her movements as though I might be able to discern the answer in them, and I listened to the tinkle of the zipper fasteners on her galoshes. Beyond her I could see Willie Belle still rocking with a cud-chewing motion. She seemed to have no interest in what price, if any, she had brought. The truth is, my dear, they absolutely have us for this duration, and we’ll have to bear it—for that long. While I watched Nell Ruth go across the yard, carefully avoiding the puddles of water, I said to Vergil, “Vergil, some people will better themselves just so much and no more. Because her husband has a job, that girl won’t work.” I rolled up my window and resting my head on the back of my seat in exhaustion I said, “We’ll wait a minute and see whether or not Willie Belle’s coming with us.” And Vergil said confidently:
“She’ll be along in a minute or so.”
Rain in the Heart
WHEN THE drilling was over they stopped at the edge of the field and the drill sergeant looked across the flat valley toward the woods on Peavine Ridge. Among the shifting lights on the treetops there in the late afternoon the drill sergeant visualized pointed roofs of houses that were on another, more thickly populated ridge seven miles to the west.
Lazily the sergeant rested the butt end of his rifle in the mud and turned to tell the squad of rookies to return to their own barracks. But they had already gone on without him and he stood a moment watching them drift back toward the rows of squat buildings, some with their rifles thrown over their shoulders, others toting them by the leather slings in suitcase fashion.
On the field behind the sergeant were the tracks which he and the twelve men had made during an hour’s drilling. He turned and studied the tracks for a moment, wondering whether or not he could have told how many men had been tramping there if that had been necessary for telling the strength of an enemy. Then with a shrug of his shoulders he turned his face toward Peavine Ridge again, thinking once more of that other ridge in the suburban area where his bride had found furnished rooms. And seeing how the ridge before him stretched out endlessly north and south he was reminded of a long bus and streetcar ride that was before him on his journey to their rooms this night. Suddenly throwing the rifle over his shoulder, he began to make his way back toward his own barrack.
The immediate approach to the barrack of the noncommissioned officers was over a wide asphalt area where all formations were held. As the sergeant crossed the asphalt, it required a special effort for him to raise his foot each time. Since his furlough and wedding trip to the mountains, this was the first night the sergeant had been granted leave to go in to see his wife. When he reached the stoop before the entrance to the barrack he lingered by the bulletin board. He stood aimlessly examining the notices posted there. But finally drawing himself up straight he turned and walked erectly and swiftly inside. He knew that the barrack would be filled with men ready with stale, friendly, evil jokes.
As he hurried down the aisle of the barrack he removed his blue denim jacket, indicating his haste. It seemed at first that no one had noticed him. Yet he was still filled with a dread of the jokes which must inevitably be directed at him today. At last a copper-headed corporal who sat on the bunk next to his own, whittling his toenails with his knife, had begun to sing:
“Yes, she jumped in bed
And she covered up her head—”
/> Another voice across the aisle took up the song here:
“And she vowed he couldn’t find her.”
Then other voices, some faking soprano, others simulating the deepest choir bass, from all points of the long room joined in:
“But she knew damned well
That she lied like hell
When he jumped right in beside her.”
The sergeant blushed a little, pretended to be very angry, and began to undress for his shower. Silently he reminded himself that when he started for town he must take with him the big volume of Civil War history, for it was past due at the city library. She could have it renewed for him tomorrow.
In the shower too the soldiers pretended at first to take no notice of him. They were talking of their own plans for the evening in town. One tall and bony sergeant with a head of wiry black hair was saying, “I’ve got a strong deal on tonight with a WAC from Vermont. But of course we’ll have to be in by midnight.”
Now the copper-headed corporal had come into the shower. He was smaller than most of the other soldiers, and beneath his straight copper-colored hair were a pair of bright gray-green eyes. He had a hairy potbelly that looked like a football. “My deal’s pretty strong tonight, too,” he said, addressing the tall soldier beside him. “She lives down the road a way with her family, so I’ll have to be in early too. But then you and me won’t be all fagged out tomorrow, eh, Slim!”
