Peter Taylor

by Peter Taylor

  “Well spoken,” said Aunt Grace soberly. But presently she began to laugh and said that she was reminded of the limerick, “There was an old lady of Romany whose husband ate nothing but hominy,” and Virginia Ann and Mother began to laugh too because her laughter was so infectious.

  In Nashville Thanksgiving Day might be quite warm. It might be almost a sluggishly summerlike day, and sometimes we’d find that the freakish iris in the flower bed beside the porch had a few pale, bedraggled blossoms left. But, too, there will be years when it will snow at Thanksgiving time in Nashville, and everyone will be thinking so much about the problems of Christmas ahead that they have but little heart for even the football game.

  Uncle Jake always went duck hunting on the weekend before Thursday so that there’d be duck to serve with the spiced round for Thanksgiving dinner. On Thanksgiving morning he went quail hunting. Dinner was usually kept waiting on him, for Mother would say that they were, after all, his ducks. But if he was very late, the tension would sometimes become unendurable, and Mother would go through the dining room, push open the swinging door a little way, and call to the cook mournfully, “Well, we’ll just have to go ahead without Mr. Jake.” It seems to me now that he always came in as Father was carving the ducks. Father would go on carving the roasted fowl before him while he admired the dead partridges that Uncle Jake brought out of the large patch pockets of his khaki hunting coat. Father would stop a minute with his knife still placed in a joint of the duck and watch Uncle Jake’s big fingers feeling through the soft, dark feathers over the dead bird’s breast. Once I wondered momentarily whether or not I’d be able to eat my meal after seeing the poor dead partridge with the blood on its speckled neck.

  But there is no aroma more affecting to the palate than that of just-carved roast duck. When the steaming slices of dark meat and drumstick were placed in front of me I had no more thoughts of the dead birds that we would eat the following Sunday. I inhaled the delicious odor of the duck, I listened to the warm, eager voices around the table, and soon I would look up to see Uncle Jake returned now in his navy blue smoking jacket and with his hands washed whiter and cleaner than I ever saw them on ordinary days.

  But before Uncle Jake came there would be tension, because the Thanksgiving football game began at two o’clock. And Father and Mother, no matter the weather, did attend the Thanksgiving football game. Presumably they had long ago established this as the one really feasible outing of the year because fall weather was neither too hot nor too cold. There was also the fact that at some time in the remote past Father had been a left tackle on the University team, and Mother had come there to watch his superb tackling and blocking. Actually, too, the football game was just as necessary to Uncle Jake’s happiness on that day as was his quail hunting.

  All of the grown people went to the Thanksgiving game. Virginia Ann had been going almost as far back as I could remember. Finally the year arrived when even Brother was to be allowed to go with the family; and the question was naturally raised, since I was only two years younger than he, as to whether or not I too should be allowed to go.

  I should certainly have been taken along that day had I not shown real indifference to it. But it was considered on the whole well enough to leave me behind since Brother would be responsibility enough for Uncle Jake on this, his favorite holiday. Further, this year Virginia Ann was planning to attend, not with the rest of the family, but with Bill Evers. And this, strangely enough, involved me.

  When Brother told me that Bill Evers was her “date” for the game, I did not quite understand what he meant. For several months she had been going to movies and to dances with Bill Evers, but it just happened that I had never before noticed this use of the word “date.”

  Mother must have seen the puzzled expression on my countenance. She put her hand on the top of my head and explained, “Brother means that Bill Evers is going to escort Virginia Ann to the football game.” It did not occur to her that “escort” meant no more to me than “date.” She allowed a faint smile to play across her face that seemed to tell me that other considerations than the weight of Uncle Jake’s responsibility had brought her to agreeing to leave me alone on Thanksgiving afternoon. Presently she addressed these remarks to Father and Uncle Jake: “As we used to say in the country, Bill Evers is going to carry her to the game today. And if I know Virginia Ann’s beaux, he’ll not come for her till after we’ve left for the game. Boys today don’t seem to have any respect for the girls, the way they keep them waiting.”

  “It used to be the boys that were kept waiting,” Father said. “It’s really the girls’ own fault. They don’t require anything of them.”

  “It never enters Virginia Ann’s head,” Mother said, “whether or not promptness is a virtue in young men.”

  “Well, well,” Uncle Jake said rather sadly yet with the obvious intention of softening the remarks being directed against his niece, “customs change. Everything changes.”

  Mother gazed about the room as though she were keeping most of her thoughts to herself. At last she absently put her hand on my head again and said that Uncle Jake was quite right, that everything changes. “But, in any event, my lamb here will act as chaperon when Mr. Evers does arrive today. How is the weather out, Jake?”

  A cold unexpected rain fell that afternoon.

  They had all observed the gray overcast sky before they left, but none of them could predict what sort of weather would result.

  The rain that fell, not a downpour or a mist but a fitful and wind-driven rain, was of such an uncertain character that I could not tell whether or not it would bring the family home early.

  But the wind and rain together did bring them home. The wind that sprayed the rain against the pane of the bedroom window seemed to have blown them all into the front hall at once. Or, rather, it seemed to have blown them all through the hall and into the living room where Virginia Ann and Bill Evers had for the past half hour kept a silence that I felt I could not endure another second, a silence utterly unnatural in a house where someone had always before been talking and talking.

  “How dare you! You get out of here you common dog.” Father’s voice burst upon the quietness.

  Then everyone seemed to be talking at once. Mother uttered something as near to a scream as she had ever been known to utter, “Virginia Ann, I want you to get yourself upstairs out of your father’s sight.”

  “Get out of here and never let me catch you on my premises again.”

  “How could you take such an advantage?”

  Uncle Jake spoke too, but what he said was inaudible from where I stood in the doorway to my and Brother’s room. But the sound of their voices in the house once more had filled me with confidence, had filled me with a sense of relief now. Father’s first indignant commands were the relief and the proof I’d been waiting for. All my feelings of shock and fear and resentment were gone. I could enjoy the wonderful satisfaction that Father and Mother and Uncle Jake and even Brother had been driven home by the rain to make a reality of something that I felt had been frightening because of its unreality.

  I had gone to the kitchen soon after the front door had closed behind the family when they left for the game. I had waited there, watching the cook dash the pots and pans about in her great haste to get away on Thanksgiving afternoon. The doorbell finally rang, and the cook and I heard Virginia Ann in the front hall saying to Bill Evers, “Hello, Cousin.” The cook ceased her noisy business long enough to listen to Virginia Ann’s chatter and to smile over it. She shook her head and, using Virginia Ann’s own language, she told me that that sister of mine had a dandy line with her boyfriends.

  And from thereout the cook didn’t seem to be making such a racket with the utensils she was cleaning. In a few minutes she reached her brown hand through the gray, soapy water and opened the drain of the sink. She stacked those dishes that she had not washed on the draining board and said that they would just have to go till tomorrow. Then she gathered her hat and her
coat and umbrella and asked me to lock the backdoor behind her. “I got to make haste,” she said.

  When I had locked the door I gave one glance to the dirty dishes and began to move toward the dining room. But at the sound of the voices of Virginia Ann and Bill Evers I stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor. It hadn’t occurred to me that those two did not leave for the football game immediately after his arrival, and I was restrained from going into the front part of the house by a sudden wave of timidity. I stood a moment studying the black and white squares of linoleum about my feet. I observed now the bread crumbs in one spot and the grease splotch in another. I saw on the long table beneath the window a crockery bowl filled with water in which pieces of cake batter floated. A large spoon lay beside it on the table, and beneath the spoon a little puddle of water had settled on the white oilcloth. I was so sensible of the general mess in which the cook had left the kitchen and of the displeasure it would cause Mother when we should come to the kitchen to fix sandwiches tonight that I could not bear to think of being confined here any longer.

  Yet I waited. If they didn’t leave soon they’d certainly be late for the game. It had not yet begun to rain and so there was no question in my mind as to whether or not they would go. They would go, and they would go soon. I had merely to wait.

  I waited. Still there was only the sound of their voices. I listened for the noise of footsteps. But there was none. As I waited with growing impatience I remarked how strange it was to hear a man’s voice that was not Father’s and a woman’s voice that was not Mother’s sounding on and on in our living room. Finally it seemed to be only Bill Evers’s voice that I heard. Whenever Virginia Ann did speak, her voice had a sweetness about it that I had never heard and that almost brought tears to my eyes.

  After a while my impatience grew naturally into resentment. But as the temptation to invade their privacy increased, so did my timidity.

  I decided of a sudden that I was hungry.

  I went to the big white refrigerator and opened its door. It had never before been so completely stocked with edibles. And the cook in her haste to be away had apparently crammed every perishable in sight into the box without thought or care for arrangement or accessibility.

  A long stalk of celery fell out on the floor at my feet. I stooped to pick it up, and as I rose I found myself looking directly in on the heap of dead quail.

  At that moment I heard, or thought I heard, Virginia Ann’s voice calling my name. I remained staring at the dead birds for a moment. They were stacked one upon the other in their bloody, feathery deadness in the same shelf with the respectable skeletons of the roast ducks. I resolved not to move until I had heard Virginia Ann calling again. Then I should oh so gladly shut that door on the unwelcome sight of the birds and all that food for which I knew now I felt no hunger.

  But when presently she called my name again, I could not make good my resolution. I stood holding the refrigerator door half open. She had called me, there was no doubting, but there was in her voice a note of caution. There was too evident a careful gauging of her volume. She plainly did not intend to disturb me if I were safely asleep or were safely out of earshot. And now that she had called me twice without answer, how could I ever answer? It was then that I determined to creep up the little flight of steps that went up from the kitchen (and joined the front stair on the landing) and to go and wait in my room. After I reached the small square bedroom with its overlarge pieces of mahogany furniture and metal bedstead I heard not another sound, and I had waited in the silence there until I thought I could endure it not another instant.

  After Father had shut the front door behind Bill Evers, I heard Virginia Ann’s footsteps on the stair. I hurried to the double bed that Brother and I shared and threw myself across it, but with my face toward the doorway. Presently she passed along the hallway, her hair disheveled, her turbanlike navy blue hat in her hand. I watched her indistinct daytime shadow that followed her along the plain wall of the hallway one second after she was out of sight.

  In a little while Uncle Jake and Brother came upstairs. Brother came in the room and pushed his cap back on his head as he usually did when he came in the front door downstairs. Uncle Jake stopped in the doorway. I raised myself on my elbows and pretended to yawn. Uncle Jake said to me, “Tonight’s Scout meeting night and we want you to go with us as our visitor.” It was more command than invitation and I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You two get yourselves a nap,” he said, and as he moved away he pulled the door closed behind him.

  Brother went to the closet and pulled out his Scout suit. I sat up on the side of the bed. Thursday night is Scout night, I said to myself. He and Uncle Jake would be going to Scout meeting the same as on any other Thursday. This made it all quite real now. A sort of joy took possession of me. I saw that Brother, in his way, was quite as disturbed as I by what had happened. Father had already expressed his rage as he entered the house. Mother I could hear talking and weeping intermittently in Virginia Ann’s bedroom. I felt somehow that I could hear Aunt Grace saying to Virginia Ann, “You’re a fool. You’re a real little fool.”

  Brother was scrutinizing his uniform, brushing his shirt, loosening the knot of his kerchief. He would not look at me. Finally, without raising his eyes, he said, “You weren’t asleep. Did you or didn’t you go down and spy on them?” I made no answer. Now for some reason I felt myself blushing. I had no mind to answer him, I cared not whether he thought I had crept down the steps and spied on them or had remained in our room sleeping. Though I had not done so, I felt momentarily that I had. I could hardly remember whether I had or had not. But that was no matter. Actually I seemed to have forgotten Virginia Ann and Bill Evers. I was concerned only with Brother’s eagerness to get into his uniform and be gone to the Boy Scout meeting. For I saw that he was trying to interest himself in other things. He hung his khaki trousers and shirt on a chair and began to move toward the bed. When he had lain down beside me he said, “Well, they were only necking, but they sure were at it.” It had not occurred to me to imagine what they might have been doing. I rolled over on my back and looked up at the blank ceiling. I did not know exactly how to imagine what they might have been doing. And I couldn’t imagine why I had been left at home this afternoon since I was not rebuked for my failure as a chaperon. A sense of my own ignorance overshadowed all my other dark feelings. Yet it did seem that all my elders, who knew so much, were no less surprised than I by Virginia Ann.

  When Uncle Jake woke us from our nap he was dressed in his khaki Scout clothes. It was dark outside, and he had turned on the light and gone back into the hall to bring in a tray of sandwiches and two glasses of milk. Brother dressed himself in his khakis, and we ate.

  Brother kept trying to make Uncle Jake talk about things pertaining to the Scouts. The only thing Uncle Jake said was, “If you’ll apply yourself you’ll be the first Eagle in our troop.”

  “I’m going to,” Brother said. “I’m going to if it takes every single afternoon of the week.” He was still trying to think of other things, I reflected.

  When we went downstairs we found Mother and Father back in the sitting room playing casino. Virginia Ann was looking on. Father was winning and he pretended to be very proud and boastful of his score. He called us around to look at his hand and observe how cleverly he played it. But when he had called, “Cards,” and the last hand was played, Mother had much the larger stack and all but one of the spades. So now she derided him for his boasting. Father pretended to want to talk of other things. “I believe,” he said with feigned formality, “I say I believe, my dear wife, that you said you had a letter from your sister Grace yesterday. What did she say? Do tell me about it.”

  And Mother did commence to tell him all about the “nice, fat, long, happy” letter.

  So we left the house amidst a new burst of conversation between Mother and Father, and I felt a gladness that I was not going to be in the house tonight. It would have meant being there alone with Vir
ginia Ann. For just as Mother and Father had not invited her or anyone else to join their game they would not really have allowed anyone to join their conversation.

  On the way to the Scout meeting, sitting in the front seat of the automobile between my uncle and my brother, I thought of the letter from my Aunt Grace. If she had been there that afternoon I knew that she would have said, “Virginia Ann, you’re a real little fool.” And I did not long to see her tonight, for she would have been singing in the kitchen and in the hall, full of the sort of cheer that was in the letter, the exaggerated sort of cheer she had shown the day she left for Birmingham.

  The Scout meeting was held in an unused servants’ room above the garage of one of Uncle Jake’s hunting friends. As we walked up the shadowy drive to the garage we could see the light already burning in the room upstairs, and several of the other Scouts were at the window. But when we came into sight just below the window I saw them leave the window hurriedly as though they were in school and the teacher was arriving.

  We went into the garage and began to climb the steep, dark stairs. When we were about halfway to the top I suddenly reached forward and grasped Uncle Jake’s hand. He held my hand firmly and led me to the top step. And I wondered what might have become of me tonight if it had not been for Uncle Jake.

  Presently we entered the bright room and found all of the boys sitting erect on straight wooden benches that lined three walls of the bare room.

  “Good evening, boys,” Uncle Jake said. The sound of his voice sent a chill up my spine. I felt goose bumps on the backs of my hands. The light in the room was bare and sharp and sent a long blue-black shadow of Uncle Jake’s figure against the wall.

  The boys answered in a chorus of high tingly voices.