by Packer, Vin
• • •
“Very, very good!” Kate Bailey says at the end of “Loch Lomond.” “Now we’ll try ‘Turkey In The Straw’!”
Marianne Ficklin hollers over to Ada Pirkle, “Ada, honey? How come you don’t take up an instrument? Do you good, honey!”
“ ‘Turkey In The Straw,’ “ Kate Bailey says. “Page Six. Ready?”
6
VIVIE HOOPER turns the volume down on the small portable, and leans forward in the rocker to see who is driving up to the pumps outside. Then she gets up: twenty-eight, not too tall, but straight-standing, and quiet and graceful looking, as though her own awareness of her beauty has made her feel some sense of responsibility which must make her express to others an aura of inviolate dignity and stunning, kindly poise.
Her magnificent pitch-black hair spills to her shoulders, the gleaming soft-white-skinned perfectness of them, hidden by the simple black dress with its round Peter Pan collar. The dress is not designed to highlight her voluptuous figure — Thad ordered it for her from Atlanta; a surprise — but almost as if in protest the breasts and hips of her push through the cotton fabric proudly to show themselves. She is long-legged for a girl her height, her ankles curving thinly and exquisitely above the black ballet slippers. Her face is radiant, even now when its expression is solemn; the long black lashes of her deep blue eyes are lowered; the wide lips curving generously, lightly painted rose color; her skin is flawless, like burnished ivory. She has, for someone so vitally beautiful, some sweet and incredible shyness to her make-up; striped with a paradoxical air of calm composure. Her voice is husky, low; its tone, gentle.
Walking to the door and opening it, she calls out, “Hi, Storey! What brings you around this time of afternoon?”
He cuts his motor and grins at her, wiggling over and getting out on the right side of the new light-blue Ford. “Thought you’d be up at the house fixing for the barbecue, Vivs.”
“Hus is doing all the fixing. You know Hus. She hates meddling.”
He stands under the stark black-lettered sign which reads: Hooper’s Place — Gas and Pop, with the smaller sign attached: Scuppernongs For Sale — 50¢ gallon — 20¢ for all you can eat!
And he thinks as always with wonder upon the fact he, Storey Bailey, made more of himself than Thad Hooper; he, Storey Bailey, head superintendent at the Galverton Mill, with his farm growing a good crop in corn and cotton too, came out the better. For he never would have thought it as a boy — younger than Thad by eight years, beholden to Thad Hooper. He was so very beholden that the night with Vivs, even before Thad and she were officially engaged, had made him vomit afterwards, and swear no other lapse in loyalty to Thad — because even though it was not official between Vivs and Thad, who better but Storey Bailey knew his idol’s intentions toward her. And he had forced it out of his mind, rooted it out, married Kate (a really good woman) and paradoxically done better than Thad. He was almost ashamed because he had.
“Hey, girl, how come you’re minding the station? Ole Thad got you working now, huh! Whew, hot!” He mops his brow with a large square white handkerchief. The roundness of his face, the ruddiness of it and the tilt to his near-pug nose, coupled with the towhead, gives his countenance a boyish look. His lean, gangling frame, slightly awkward and disconnected in its gait, lends him still more youth; and Kate, older-looking but in fact two years his junior, says always at church supper socials: “Pass the salt to my son, please,” and people in Paradise laugh good-naturedly with her at the remark.
“Today’s the anniversary,” Vivie says. “He’s taken little Thad and Emily up to the grave.”
“Oh, yes? I saw him earlier out in front of the courthouse. The anniversary today, hmmm? And still having the barbecue?”
“Thad says it’s right we should; says she would have wanted it that way, for him to be surrounded by his friends — our friends.”
“Hard to tell, isn’t it, how she’d feel about it?” “I guess he grew her up right along with him in his mind, Storey.”
“I guess Thad did … I hardly remember her; just that they were twins and it nearly killed him when she died.”
“Yes. They were twins … I don’t remember her either.”
“Seems like we were all but babies when she was living anyway.”
“Come on in and rest. Have some pop. How’s Kate?”
Storey follows her into the filling station, a mile down from the Hoopers’ house, with the land in between their land; but poor top-soil land, less fertile than Storey’s own, with only a cotton crop, and none other to speak of save for the scuppernongs.
He says as they go: “She’s down rehearsing the band.” “Oh, of course. Tuesday.” “Umm-humm. Every Tuesday.” “You want orange or grape?”
“Grape’ll be good.”
“She certainly likes working with the band, doesn’t she, Storey?”
“I don’t know that she likes it. It’s hard, don’t let anyone kid you about that, Vivs, but you know it’s real worthwhile. I guess everybody in Paradise is crazy about the band.”
“Sure, I know it’s hard work.”
“Kate’s a good woman,” Storey says. He looks solemnly at Vivian Hooper, swigs his grape soda, and sets it down on the wooden table. He says in a surprisingly sober tone: “Yes, we married ourselves to good people, Vivs. We married ourselves to fine people.”
Vivian Hooper hears little or none of the explanation which follows for having the afternoon off from the mill at Galverton. Her mind harps on that statement, on its insinuation — imagined? — and again as countless times before with Storey, times when his eyes turn away from her own, having come up her body too suddenly to see it fully; yet just that furtively that she imagines he is thinking back in time to that night; she remembers it all again too.
• • •
Eleven years ago:
“Vivs? Thad says he’s got to stay on and close up the exhibit for his dad. Says that I might as well run you on home.”
At the county fair, the summer Vivian was just seventeen, Storey nineteen, and Thad twenty-seven, the oldest bachelor in Paradise — outside of Hollis Jordan, who was crazy and never would marry a girl in her right mind. It was at that county fair that Thad Hooper’s father had set up an educational exhibit based on producing sorghum molasses the old-fashioned way, with an old-time sorghum mill complete with a mule crushing the sorghum cane, and the syrup cooking over the wood fire. And during this the old man had caught the virus, and Thad had taken over most of the duties….
“Why, thank you, Storey,” Vivie had said, “but I don’t know that I feel like going home.”
“We could walk around some and look at the exhibits.”
“Oh, I’ve seen them all … I don’t know … Since Thad got tied up here, we just haven’t been anyplace at all but here.”
“Well, you want to drive around or something?”
“Why, thank you, Storey. I guess that might be fun.”
She had always genuinely liked Storey Bailey. They were nearer in age than Thad and she were, and sometimes when she was first going out with Thad, she wondered if she weren’t more pleased over the fact that she was dating Storey’s idol more than at the fact that she was dating the most eligible bachelor in Paradise. She used to like to tease Storey some.
“I was out with Thad Hooper last night, Storey. He mentioned your name several times.”
“He did! Well, what’d he say?”
“I don’t know that I rightly remember. Something, though.” “Well, good or bad?”
“I don’t remember, Storey. I just remember he mentioned your name several times. He certainly is nice.”
“He’s a swell guy, all right — Thad Hooper is. I guess I think he’s just about one of the nicest guys around here.”
“I guess you think a lot of him, all right.”
“Don’t you, Vivs?”
“Oh, he’s all right, Storey.”
“All right? You ought to be proud! He’s going to be mi
ghty big some day. You’ll see!”
“Yes sir, he mentioned your name several times.”
She liked Storey Bailey in a different way from the way she liked Thad. In Paradise, Thad was the county promise; got along with everyone, was considered bright and aggressive and good. He was a serious sort, made serious, some said, when his twin sister died; and he was more mature, harder — Vivian Hooper always thought — to talk to, maybe because of his age. But Storey was the kind of boy she’d sit with with her hair done up in curlers, and laugh and talk with him without even thinking about it. And Storey was shy in some ways in which Thad Hooper was more reserved than shy. Thad Hooper had principles; while Storey just seemed to have pent-up emotions that he was scared to let loose….
How they ever got out to Mike Fairchild’s place that night, both Storey and Vivie remember in separate ways. Storey has long since put it out of his mind; but if it were recalled to him, he would remember that Vivs made the remark in the car.
“Storey, you know what I hear? I hear out at Mike Fair-child’s you can buy moonshine and soda, and sit right there and drink it.”
And Vivian Hooper remembers it as Storey saying:
“Did you ever have any moonshine before? Oh, I suppose Thad’s introduced you to that long ago.”
And herself answering, “Naw, gaw, Storey — you don’t know Thad well. He wouldn’t touch it. Since his sister’s death he’s vowed … I guess he’s right, isn’t he?”
“Oh, a little won’t hurt anyone, Vivs.”
No matter how each one remembers it, the fact stays they went to Mike’s and drank glass after glass; until they were giggling up a storm; and Storey, as Vivie remembers it; and Vivie, as Storey remembers it —
Said: “We better go out in the car and sit in the fresh air a bit, and get ourselves back to normal before we drive on into town.”
As they both remember it they just got to kissing each other out in the car, lightly at first, laughing about it; and then after a while she was telling Storey: “No farther than that, Storey! I never let anyone do this. Gaw, Storey!”
Then, as Storey remembers it, Storey broke away before they had gone all the way; and as Vivie remembers it Vivie pushed Storey away when she heard a zipper unzip. But as they both remember it, they stopped; said seriously to one another that what had happened was awful and neither one’s fault; and Storey said he would step inside Mike’s for just a minute, and she should fix herself there in the car; and he would be back, in a minute and drive her on home the way he should have, the way he’d promised Thad to begin with….
Inside Mike’s, Storey went into the men’s room; leaning dizzily against the sink there, shaken and sorry as he thought about Thad, but wildly excited at the thought of the girl waiting out in the car; he stood remembering her gasps and moans of joy as his hands explored her. He remembered her body moving in that strange rhythm of passion he had never recognized in any other woman but the one in Mary Jane Frances Alexander’s establishment, where he and some of the other seniors had gone the night of graduation from Hoschton High; and he had felt himself torn terribly between a loyalty to Thad and an immense and tender emotion toward Vivs, who had given him the gift of her response. He stood pondering this new plight for a long time, unable to find any solution, but staying there in fear and some uncertain glory. Just as he was leaving the men’s room, Vivs got out of the car, worried at his absence, to come into Mike’s and get him.
Storey was sober by then; sober and unnerved; and when he passed by Mike and Mike said, “How about it, Bailey? Want a shot for the road?” Storey summoned up some false tone of bravado and laughingly shouted, “Hell, I can get two fingers in!”
And that was what Vivie heard when she opened Mike’s door. She heard it and was horrified to think she knew what Storey Bailey was referring to. She slammed shut the door with a ringing bang and ran crying to the car.
“Two fingers it is!” Mike said, pushing the glass toward Storey.
And Storey, staring toward the door where a second before he had seen Viv, murmured, “Now, what the dickens?” drank his corn down in a gulp and took after her.
“You’re filthy!” she said the instant he entered the car, giving him no explanation for her wrath. “You’re rotten clear through, Storey Bailey!”
Storey could find no reason for her to turn on him in that way, save for the fact during the interval they were separated she had thought over what had happened and regretted it and then decided to blame it on him.
He said: “It’s not me that’s filthy or rotten! Oh, Christ, didn’t I see you squirming like some bitch all hot, didn’t I!” He was furious with her for turning the incident that had thrilled him into something evil.
“Rotten, filthy, rotten!” she had wept.
And Storey, seething now: “All I feel sorry for is Thad, who doesn’t know you got a whore’s body. All I care is to get you home and out of my car!”
So that neither ever understood the other or what had happened between them; but they rode each hating the other for what each one imagined the other had made of the affair.
And Storey, on the way back down Route 109, stopped, got out and vomited, while she cried the whole time, neither one saying any more.
• • •
Whenever they met after that time — each avoiding that first meeting until ultimately it was inevitable in the smallness of Paradise — there was a noticeable strain upon them in the beginning, a too-conscious effort at civility, which though alleviated in time, nevertheless cropped up again at certain intervals through the years. Though Thad, who never knew, still said, “Storey’s my best friend … Funny that he married Kate … Not that Kate isn’t one wonderful woman, but she’s so serene for Storey.”
And Vivian Hooper knows that only that night — parked outside Mike’s with Storey — did she ever feel passion — not before or since. And she resents Storey for it, and for the fact that when she had gone in Mike’s after him, before she had heard his remark, she had wanted to say, “Storey, I don’t want to marry Thad. Gaw, Storey — I’m not sorry for what happened just then. It was something beautiful, and I could be me. I could be me!”
• • •
“You look beautiful even tending a filling station, Vivs,” breaks through the wall of memory.
“Why thank you, Storey.” He has forgotten, she thinks to herself; he doesn’t think about it as I do. “Why thank you.”
“Yeah, you do.”
Softly in the background the radio plays:
Cold corn bread and fatback Oh, scat on back to me You see You see I got to have my cold corn bread And fatback - scat back
Even if Thad didn’t make out better, Storey thinks as he looks across at her, he deserves Viv; Viv needs him too. Joh Greene often said: “Men and women got the devil in them, got the apple embedded right in them; and some fight the apple and some let the apple grow bigger and bigger until it’s bigger than them. And every man and woman knows what they’re doing about their own apples; and nobody has to tell them that. And I say, you man — letting the apple grow, you man — find you a woman who’ll fight that apple in you like she fights her own apple; and you woman with that apple in you growing — find you a man who’ll fight that apple in you like he fights his own; for the weak hold the strong up and the strong gets stronger with the weak leaning on them. And that way only shall we all know God, and we got to know God. We’re nice folks — we got to know Him, for God likes good folks.”
And Storey remembers once Doc Sell said after church service, “Hell, Storey, it’s gaw-awful plain whose apple’s growing and whose apple ain’t in your family; but what I never could figure out is whose apple’s growing and whose ain’t in the reverend’s house!”
“What you sitting there grinning at, Storey?”
“Huh? Oh, something Doc Sell said one time, Viv.”
“Bill Ficklin told me the other day Doc’s the only one opposed to building the new colored school.”
“Oh,
well, you know Doc well’s I do, Vivs. He don’t think the nigger’s got any business going to school in the first place.”
“Fick’s real hot under the collar about that school, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, he is. I think being married to a Northerner’s got something to do with it. Course I like Marianne.”
“She’s got Major Post working for her now, you know. The other day Thad asked him why he wasn’t picking any this year and he said he had a job over to the Ficklins.”
Vivian thinks to herself that she is sorry Major is not up on the hill as much as he was before the Ficklins hired him. Major and she always got along — he wasn’t at all like Post niggers. Where’d he learn all he did — from Doc James? Ever since Doc James moved over from Criss County, the first colored doctor in Paradise, he stuck out like a sore thumb before the other niggers; widowed and with that near-white daughter. Then he married himself to some nigger lawyer’s girl from Macon, brought her back and him and his family never held down niggers’ jobs; never talked much nor acted either like niggers. She remembers Thad saying, “I saw a nigger on Main today wearing a necktie. What next!”
“No.”
“Yes, I did. And this’ll rock you. He’s a doctor.” “No.!”
“Yes, he is … Well, Vivie, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s high time Paradise had a nigger doctor. I think maybe it’s a good thing. Niggers get sick like anyone else, and white doctors shouldn’t have to handle them. Syphilis and all.”
Storey finishes the grape pop, sets it on the table, stretches, and yawns. “Well, I know this much anyway. If we don’t get the niggers a new school, we gonna have them in white schools ‘fore we know it. Supreme Court made that ruling about desegregation, and ‘less we got something to fight back with, we gonna have to abide by it!”
“Thad says we never will. Says we’ll just change the white schools into private schools.”
“Yeah, but we still got to give the niggers better ‘n what they got now or we can’t do that. We get someone like Tom Sellers in this year — and get rid of Senator Fred Henderson — things will be getting done around Georgia.”
