She drifted, aimless and careless, with little thought to how far she was going, conscious only of her joy to be in the open, received again in the hospitalities of the night. Leaves brushed her face.
She began to sing under her breath. She sang, because it rose unbidden,
Au clair de la lune. Mon ami Pierrot…
and, singing, came to her own corner, where the tree stood at the entrance to the alley, its branches touching her windows. She stopped in its shadows and looked up at the thick, dark leaves. Here she was safe. How many times had they sheltered here from the fine rain, measured the trunk with their arms, and scratched against it like horses! She laid her hand on the rough bark. Tell me tell me tell me elm. Where did it go? And what was she doing here, alone and absurd in the middle of the night, playing her solitary games? The time was gone and maybe should never have come, not for her. She was not a child. Yet she had behaved as one, all seemliness forgotten, all rank and position, decorum, and consequence. She, a grown woman, prancing about in the dark singing nonsense songs, fishing up busted parasols.... How could she? she asked herself once again. And what was she doing here, alone in the night, trying to bring it all back?
For that’s what she was doing, and no use pretending she wasn’t. And it wasn’t Toby alone she wanted, she wanted George too, and the fun and laughter and James Joyce under the streetlamp, and the three of them singing together as they had in those fine spring nights before the night of the fog and the moonlight, when the laughter stopped and the spring and everything they had made it was over.
She stood for a long time under the elm tree, thinking back. Well, it was over, all of it, and perhaps it was just as well. Gone and good riddance. And for this she could thank her own iniquities. She had turned greedy. It wasn’t enough that she should invade two lives—one of them she must possess. That was the first sin. The second was that they had been false to George. And there was another. She could see it now, clearly, out here on the dark field alone, all the players gone home, except her. Somewhere in the heat of the game, when she was too fevered to notice, the boys had suddenly grown up. And it wasn’t the times alone that had done it, or the war she did not understand. It was she who had led them out of childhood before they were ready to go. That was the third sin, and that one undid her.
High in the tree a robin whistled, answered by another somewhere in the alley. She looked up through the branches, still dark against a dark sky. But it was no longer night. Morning had come. Heaving a sigh, part regret, part relief, she climbed the stairs and went in, locking the door behind her.
Nineteen
She awoke with the sun at the window and the clock ticking toward 9:15. Saturday morning. She turned over on her stomach and pulled the pillow over her head, making it dark again. A long day ahead and no place to go. Nothing to do but grade more papers and worry.
She was trying grimly to go back to sleep, when an assertive knock at the kitchen door brought her upright. Toby. No, not on Saturday, not at this hour. Then who—? Bounding out of bed, she grabbed her robe, ran through the kitchen, and stopped at the door in panic.
Mother! She had come!
Another knock, louder. She unlocked the door, opened it cautiously, only a crack, and peered out.
“Open up, lady, it’s the FBI!”
She flung the door open with such relief that for a moment she was speechless. Dalton stood there, her own dear old hayfoot-strawfoot funny old brother, solid and beaming in a blue work shirt and a new straw farm hat. Squealing welcome, she hugged him, pulled him inside, hugged him again, and pelted him with questions: How were the kids, had he had breakfast, how was Gwennie, why hadn’t she come too, and how come he was here this weekend? “You didn’t come to take me home today, did you? School’s not out for another week!” She stopped with the coffeepot in her hand. “Did Mother send you to check up on me?”
But Mother had had nothing to do with it. He had come down to take a neighbor boy to Camp Crowder. “Forrest Nail’s boy. You remember—Clyde? He’s been drafted. His dad was going to take him down there, but their car’s not running very good, so I offered. And I thought as long as I was this close—well, here I am.”
They sat at the kitchen table over coffee and eggs and oranges. Dalton had been up since five and was ready for another breakfast. He was feeding ten head of cattle now, besides the horses. Milking two cows. He had already sowed oats and planted corn. “It’s near a foot high now.”
“Dalton,” she said, “you don’t think they’ll take you, will they?”
“Take me? Who?”
“The draft. They won’t draft farmers, will they?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Those of us with a farm and a family might be exempt. But you can’t be sure.”
Allen asked, as she asked anyone she encountered, if he thought the country might yet get involved in the war. Really.
“At this point, hard to tell. I hope not, but—” He shrugged and looked out the window, and for a moment neither of them spoke. She was thinking that if he were drafted, maybe she should, after all, go back to the farm and help out. If she couldn’t stay here.
Toying with her fork, she said casually, “I’m surprised Mother didn’t come with you.”
Dalton said with a wink, “Didn’t tell her I was coming.”
“She’ll find out.”
“I’ll tell her, next time I see her.”
“I guess she’s told you I may quit my job.”
He laughed. “Yeah, she’s flaring her nostrils about that. What’s it all about anyway?”
Allen spelled it out again, and he listened, nodding as if he understood. There were the usual questions and objections, and her usual rebuttals, and after a while he said, “Well, it makes sense to me. Risky, but if that’s what you want to do—”
“If I could afford to. But the money—I still owe you some, and I won’t be able to pay you back right away.”
“Don’t worry about that. I don’t.”
“Well, I do.”
“You’ve already paid me back more than half.”
“But if you should get drafted, how would Gwennie manage?”
“We’ve thought about that. But with Gwennie’s kid brother and her dad, she could manage right well. We’ve all talked it over. So if it should happen that they call me up,” he said, pushing crumbs around on his plate, “I’d feel like I ought to go. I’d rather not, God knows. But if I have to—” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Hey, let’s worry about that when the time comes, and it ain’t come yet. What d’ya say we go out and do something? Let’s have some fun. I haven’t had a day off in a coon’s age. Want to go to the carnival?”
“Where?”
“Up north a little ways. I saw it as I drove in.”
“That would be Jackroad. Well—”
“It ought to be open by now. It’s nearly noon. Grab your hat and let’s go!”
It had been a while now since she had had any fun, and she hardly knew how to go about it. But it was a sunny, maypole kind of day, and it was good to be driving through town with her brother, who used to tease her and boss her around and take care of her. Kept her from falling out of the hayloft or drowning herself in the horse tank. Defended her at school if the big kids teased her. She was glad he had come, and without Mother. And mightily relieved that she had brought up the job-quitting business and got that over with. She sat beside him with a heart lighter than it had been for some weeks.
It was a shabby little carnival, set up in a field against a backdrop of mine tailings. Already, this early in the season, it looked road-worn and weary. But the Ferris wheel and the dipper and the merry-go-round whirled and swung and clattered bravely. The mechanical music blared and the carnies bawled from their canvas booths. Come win a Kewpie doll, come see Mother Nature’s awesome mistakes. The poor freaks were painted larger than life on the walls of the sideshow tent.
Dalton said, “Not The Greatest Show on Earth,
is it?”
But it didn’t matter. They strolled among the booths, pitched pennies, ate cotton candy. They were on holiday, and after a long spell under a rock, Allen took it in, blinking: The racket, the aimless busyness, the dolls and feathers and balloons, all the tinseled junk, the stimulating carnival stink of burning grease and sugar. More than an hour had passed and she hadn’t thought once of Toby or Mrs. Medgars.
At the Kewpie-doll booth they threw twenty cents’ worth of baseballs and Allen knocked down three of the five tenpins. “You got a mean arm on you there,” Dalton said and paid for another five balls. They still didn’t win, but Allen bought a long pink feather for Nanette, and a yellow balloon.
They skipped the freak show in favor of the “Dodgem” cars, and after that took two small boys for a ride on the merry-go-round. One was named Raymond and the other one Hosey, as well as they could make out. They lived near the stockyards and wished they had a pony. Their sister had brought them to the carnival; she was somewhere around.
“Well, you’d better go find her,” Dalton said as he lifted them down. “You wouldn’t want to get lost.” They ran off, waving over their shoulders.
Around two o’clock they followed their noses to a hamburger stand. Behind the bare-board counter a red-haired woman was slapping raw meat onto a griddle. A gent with a straw katie raked over one ear stood with an elbow on the counter. Although they came up too late to hear what he said, they caught the gist of it and the leer on his face.
The woman flipped a hamburger onto a bun, laid it on a napkin, and shoved it across the counter. “Just what condition were you referring to, mister?” She faced him, reared back, her hands on her hips, letting him stare at the bulge under her apron. “Ketchup and mustard over there. That’ll be fifty cents, please.”
“What are you tryin’ to pull on me, woman? It says up here fifteen.”
“Woulda been, if you’d kept your mouth shut. Take it or leave it. Yes, folks, what’ll it be?”
The man muttered, “Fuckin’ bitch,” and left it.
“We’ll take it,” said Dalton.
“You don’t have to. I’ll make you another’n.”
“This one will do just fine. We’ll need another one for my sister. And two bottles of red sody pop. Put your money away, kid, I’m paying for this.”
By the time they argued it out, another woman and a young boy had come into the booth. After a few murmured words, the red-haired woman untied her apron and dropped down in a chair, fanning herself with the bunched apron. She took a chunk of ice out of a tub where pop bottles were cooling and rubbed it over her face and throat. Her hair, piled high in an untidy heap, was the color of marigolds. Damp tendrils straggled down the back of her neck. She had the kind of fragile white skin that ages early, with fine wrinkles like the surface of scalded milk.
“You better get goin’,” the second woman said.
“Soon as I catch my breath.”
“Where you think he went to?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find him. Then I’ll kill him.”
Allen made a great business of slathering mustard on the bun. Dalton had trouble with the ketchup bottle. They hung around as long as they thought they could. But no more was said between the women, and they moved off reluctantly.
“Shucks,” Dalton said.
They circled casually, trying not to be obvious as they watched the red-haired woman leave the stand and vanish behind the freak-show tent.
When they had finished their lunch, across the street in the shade of an ash tree, Dalton said they must ride the Ferris wheel now. “And then I’ve got to get going. It’s a long haul home.”
Crossing the grounds, they happened on Raymond and Hosey again. “Hi,” Dalton said. “Find your sister?”
The boys nodded and pointed to the Ferris wheel, where a blonde girl and a boy in a little carnival hat were climbing into a swing.
“You guys want to have a ride?”
They shook their heads and the older one said, “Sis took us. We were scared.”
“You were? What were you afraid of?”
“Fallin’ down.”
“There’s a straight answer,” Allen said.
By the time they bought their tickets, another ride had begun. They watched the great wheel circle four times, bearing the swings high in the air and down again with their squealing cargo. “Remember how crazy you used to be about these things?” Dalton said. “You’d ride it a dozen times if I’d take you. Got away once and rode it by yourself. Remember that? You weren’t any bigger than Hosey, little bitty thing up there, waving at us. Scared your mother half to death.”
She remembered. It had been a whee of a ride. And she climbed aboard now with a familiar pit-of-the-stomach thrill. But the ride hadn’t started before the palms of her hands were damp. She had never before been scared on a Ferris wheel. They didn’t jerk you around and leave your head behind you as other rides did. Just the same, her hands were sweaty and her mouth was dry and the attendant had fastened her in with the lockbar and slammed the gate shut.
“Hang on,” Dalton yelled, “here we go!”
Slow at first and easy as a porch swing, then faster and faster, the seat tilting with the curves, till they reached the top and plunged down, picking up more speed. Up again and over and down. Allen shut her eyes tight, daring to look only when the pace slackened and the wheel came to a full stop. They were sitting at the very top, she and Dalton, the seat rocking gently. “Why are we stopping?” she said in a tight voice.
“To let people off. Look at that view, would you! You can see for miles around.” Allen gripped the lockbar and stared at her hands.
“Clear from here to Tipperary! Look down there at the kids, wavin’ like crazy.”
Dalton wasn’t even holding on. He was waving at the kids, looking up and down, all around, with a big smile on his face. Because his heart was pure, because he was honest and truthful and hadn’t done a lot of dumb things and because—She took one look down and shut her eyes tight. The ground was ten miles below. The gears were stuck. They were trapped up here till the bolts rusted out and the swing fell down. The wheel was never going to turn again and she had sinned or she might have if Toby hadn’t left her and what she had done was bad enough and she was going to be fired and what was she going to do?
Down below, the gate crashed and the music picked up. “If they draft me,” Dalton shouted, “I’m going to fly airplanes!”
After a while then, it was over. Allen climbed out, her legs like string.
“You look plumb pale. You weren’t scared, were you?”
“Spitless.”
“You never used to be.”
“A lot of things scare me that didn’t used to.”
“Like what?’
She lifted a shoulder. “This and that.”
“Well, come on, I’ll buy you some ice cream. That’ll settle your butterflies. Then I got to get goin’.”
Allen was brought up short, after they were on their way back to town, when Dalton said quietly, “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”
She gave him a quick glance and quickly looked away. “Why would you say that?”
“Well, when there’s a storm coming, the cattle can get kinda nervous. I figure it’s about the same with people. If they feel it coming.”
“I don’t know about any storm,” she lied, “and I’m not a cattle.”
“No-o, but—”
“Why should you think I’m in trouble?”
“Because you never have been. If you had, I’d have got wind of it. Sooner or later everybody runs into trouble of some kind, and you’ve gone a long time without it. You’re about due for some. And all this flimflam about running off to New York or the moon or Lord knows where… Why, only a month ago you were writing home what a swell time you were having, how much you liked your job.”
“I do like it.”
“Then why do you want to quit? Right now, with everything so unset
tled, it seems to me—I don’t want to pry into your private affairs, but something’s eatin’ you. And if you’re in trouble, maybe I can help.” He gave her a glance that went straight through her. “You aren’t knocked up, are you?”
“No!” By the grace of God and Toby’s forbearance, that much was the truth. “Nothing like that.”
“Well, I’m mighty glad to hear it.”
He had pulled up to the curb by her house. She opened the door, ready to get out. But Dalton hadn’t finished. “Are you thinking they might let you go?”
“You mean fire me?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “They could.”
“Why?’
“Because … maybe because I’m popular with the kids.”
“How popular?”
“Well, they like me. Most of them. More than some of the other teachers.”
“Do the other teachers resent it? Professional jealousy?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. People can twist things.”
“What did you give ’em to twist?”
She didn’t answer, and he let that one go by.
“Well, when you’re young and kind of a live wire, that can be a problem for some folks. They may get it in for you. And folks like to gossip. You haven’t been called on the carpet, have you?”
She drew another long breath. “Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“In the dean’s office. He said—he said maybe I should be a little more careful. About associating with the students. I did go to the movies with some of them. A time or two.”
Clair De Lune Page 15
