by Packer, Vin
He was surprised, no, shocked, to see Ada there, and to see her that way. The last time he had seen Ada Adams alone had been the night after Thanksgiving, Gawd — eighteen years past, in Athens, when he’d gone there some weeks after old man Adams and young Hooper had come across them up in the wood’s clearing. She’d phoned him, asking him to come, and he’d gone, spent a night with her in a motel outside the city, registering as Mr. and Mrs. Marsden. They’d eaten bacon and eggs the next morning in a greasy diner in Watkinsville, and Ada had announced, “I want to marry you, Hollis. I want to do it today. Drive to Macon and do it.”
“Ada, I can’t do that. Not now. Not just yet.”
“Now or never, Hollis Jordan,” she had said.
“Can’t be now, Ada. I got a lot to take care of. You don’t know anything about me. I got to — ”
But she had interrupted him. “Dick Pirkle’s been chasing after me, Hollis. I could marry him.”
“Ada, if all you want to do is get married — to anyone, so long as you get married — then you best marry Dick Pirkle.”
“I want to marry you.”
“I couldn’t take care of you, Ada. You don’t know some things.”
“When could we get married, Hollis?” “Ada, I just don’t know.”
Eighteen years past they had fought about that; and eighteen years past plus two days, Ada had “showed” him, like she’d said she would; married Colonel, eloped with him; and never said another thing to Hollis Jordan but what people living in the same town say to one another when they just know one another “casually.”
Until that afternoon.
“I never regretted marrying Colonel Pirkle, Hollis,” she said.
“I don’t suppose you did. Colonel’s a good man.”
“I did it on impulse. I was crazy in those days, wild — didn’t know what I wanted. But I’ve had a happy life with Colonel, and I’ve had Dix. It’s more than you’ve had, Hollis.”
“Ada, I don’t deny it, but I don’t see the sense in going into it, or why you want to. You better go on home now, hadn’t you?”
“When Colonel went to war, I was proud, Hollis.” “All right, Ada, all right.”
“A lot prouder than that day we were caught up in the woods, you know,” she said, giggling. “Gawd, we shook them up that day, all right. I was a stupid kid. When the war came along and Colonel enlisted, I was proud. You know, Hollis, I often wonder how I’da felt had I married you and the war came along.”
“I’m going back in the house now, Ada. I didn’t know you bore me malice after all this time. Don’t know why you should, but you better go on home now.”
She’d turned the key in the ignition; gunning the motor. “Turn your back on it, like always, Hollis,” she said. Then she’d started the car going; leaving as suddenly as she’d arrived; zigzagging down the hill toward the crossing….
Jordan often wondered what Ada would have said back when she wanted to marry him, if he had just told her: “Look, Ada, I am married, in a sense.” Told her that right out and then added, “She’s living back in Juddville, where I come from. We were very much in love, Ada, but something happened — she lost a child in birth, and it changed things. I haven’t seen her since.”
He could have told her that without telling her any of the rest of it; without telling her how he left Juddville, left the sprawling plantation he’d helped his father run, and come to Paradise, just picking any place that sounded nice. He left Juddville on a summer’s morning after a talk with his father there on the lawn outside their home, near the old white post by the driveway, where a storm flag of the Confederate Cruiser, Shenandoah, still waved; and his father said, “And I don’t care where you go, Hollis, or what you do after today. You’ll still get the income your great-grandfather Henry left you; that I can’t do anything about, and I’d get it from you if I could — but you’ll not live high off the hog on that. You’ve murdered a baby, and ruined a good woman’s life with your prodigal ways. You’ve broken every tradition the Jordan name ever stood for. There’s not much left for me to say except good-by.”
He could have told her too that Kathryn, his wife, had lost their child because he’d kicked her in the belly. But he would have had to tell her a lot of other things to tell her that; filthy, rotten, drunken things he’d done when he was Mitchell Jordan’s heir, cock of the walk in Juddville.
What was it Joh Greene had said to Hollis this morning, when Hollis had gone to him to tell him Dix Pirkle was courting trouble, Dix Pirkle needed to be advised. “You know, Hollis, you’re a many-faceted human personality, but I think there’s something deep inside you protesting evil; protesting and wanting to do something about it,” Joh had said, “and I think one day you’ll buy my product without me even giving you a sales pitch.”
“I didn’t tell you this just for Dix Pirkle’s sake,” Hollis had said. “I don’t know why the Christ I did tell you exactly.”
“Some day you’re going to use the Son of our Lord’s name in a prayer, Hollis Jordan; not just to cuss with. But I’m glad you told me about Dix. I’ll have a talk with him.”
Hollis Jordan squints at the road in front of him, imagining for a moment that far down the road he sees someone, then deciding, no. He resumes his thoughts, recalling the second time he had seen Ada alone — drunk too, just like the first time — just like she must have been tonight calling him that way and giggling without saying anything. Oh, he knew her giggle; no mistaking that. But about tonight, he wondered had Joh broken his promise and gone and told Ada about Dix and the James girl? Had that been the reason why Ada had started up again tonight?
The second time had been as sudden and short-lived as the first time. Happened in the early evening, dusk hour, when Hollis Jordan had been in town on a Saturday buying supplies, and had met Ada at the parking lot, fumbling with her car keys, trying to open her door, smelling again like liquor and smirking up at him when he tried to help her.
“Why, here’s Hollis Jordan,” she had said. “Johnny-on-the-spot. That’s not like you, Hollis, to be Johnny-on-the-spot.”
“Let me help you with your keys, Ada. Ada, you shouldn’t drive home the way you are now.”
“God provides, Hollis, for drunkards. You know that’s what I am, don’t you? Everyone knows that’s what I am.”
“I don’t know anything but that you hadn’t ought to drive, Ada. I’ll drive you.”
“And cause scandal again. Naw, Hollis.” And then she said something peculiar to him — how had she put it? She had turned and looked at him, smiling that funny, ironical smile she had, and she had said it in a flat, almost accusing tone, “Hollis, tell me something. Do you — ”
Jordan’s musings halt instantly then, and he slams the breaks on, brings the car to a screeching, tire-burning stop, then backs up. Through his rear-view mirror he sees the figure of a boy in the road. He hadn’t imagined it, and as he nears the figure, he sees the colored boy standing there, holding a suitcase.
He says, “I damn near run you down, boy. What the hell you doing?”
“I’m hitching to Paradise,” the boy answers, standing by his suitcase, not moving toward the car. “Well, come on then!” “Yes, sir! You going to Paradise?” “Come on!”
The boy lugs the suitcase into the car; into the back seat. Hollis Jordan says, “Leave it back there and sit up here with me.” “Yes, sir.”
“What you doing off the main road anyhow?”
“I thought I was on the highway, sir.”
“Naw, boy, you’re on a back road.”
“I started walking on the highway, sir, from Manteo.”
“Well, you got off it. You must have walked about five miles. Where you headed?”
“My uncle’s Bryan Post, sir. I guess you might not know him. He’s from Paradise, and he was supposed to meet me, but he didn’t show.” The boy adds, “My bus was late. Guess he didn’t wait.”
“So that’s where he was headed, hah?”
“You kno
w him?”
“Sure, boy, I know him. He had a little trouble. He was driving the Hoopers’ pickup and he drove it up a tree. Oh, he’s all right, boy, don’t worry about that. Just likes his corn, I guess. Yeah, I passed the wreck a while back, just beyond Hooper’s Place.”
“You kidding me, sir?”
“Kidding you?” Hollis Jordan glances over at the boy. “What the hell’d I tell you something like that for if it weren’t true? Hah?”
“I don’t know. I just — ” His voice trails off, and he sits there dumbly, rubbing his hands together in his lap.
“Told you you don’t have to worry about him. He got out okay. Just made a mess of the pickup … You related?”
“Yes, sir. He’s my uncle — only I never met him.”
“You from up North?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you had a Northern accent. Well, you’ll be in Paradise in a bit now, boy. I’m not sure just where the Posts live in The Toe, but I’ll drop you at the Hoopers’. They work for the Hoopers mostly.”
The boy says nothing to that. Jordan glances at him, sees him rubbing his hands together more frantically.
“You have a nice trip down?” he asks.
“It was all right,” the boy mumbles.
“Those are the lights off in the distance, boy — see, way off there? That’s Paradise.”
The boy looks out the car window, off to the left between the black pines and the hills, watching the dark-looking land silently, not saying anything. Jordan scratches a match and touches it to a cigarette he pulls from his wool shirt pocket; then flips the radio on again: “… because Alkalino clears up sour stomach in fractions of a minute, listeners, when due to hyperacidity,” the announcer is saying. Hollis lets his mind sink back again into the deep cushions of memory, recalling now how Ada had put it that day in the parking lot; and wondering whatever had possessed Ada to think of a thing like that after all these years:
“Hollis, tell me something. Do you still have that little birthmark that runs in you-all’s family on the male side?”
18
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY in Paradise, down in the brow below Linoleum Hill, Kate Bailey says it seems a shame.
“Yes, it does,” Colonel sighs. “It all started off so nice, too.”
“And I never tasted Brunswick stew that good, did you, Guessie?”
“Law, no. Hus must have some secret ingredient.”
“Seems a shame,” Kate repeats. “But maybe Storey can do something about Vivie anyway. How’d she get in such a temper? It isn’t like her, do you think, Marianne?”
“Hmm?” Marianne Ficklin looks away from Major Post’s shadow, off by the queen-of-China trees, where he’s clearing the plank table. He sure is mad, she thinks; he sure got mad when Thad Hooper told him hell, no, he couldn’t leave the barbecue and go down to The Toe to see what become of Black Bryan in the wreck. Thad said, “Don’t you worry, boy, he ain’t hurt! Fellow who called said only thing hurt is my pickup and a black-gum. Don’t you worry, Major, the way your old man was feeling he couldn’t feel hurt if he had it!” That sure made Major Post’s black eyes flash up, sure made his jaw set hard, big hard-looking nigger boy, mad like sixty, he is, Marianne Ficklin thinks; and answers Kate: “What’d you say, honey?”
“I said I never saw Vivie in such a temper. Did you?”
“Naw, Gawd, Thad sure got his hands full tonight. First Vivie, and then Major Post’s pa wrecking his pickup. Major Post’s sure burning, isn’t he?”
“What’s he like as a worker, Marianne?” Joh Greene pokes the dying campfire with a stick, sparking it. “I got some odd jobs around the rectory needs looking at. Thinking of hiring Major.”
“He does his work, but he’s sullen. It’s as though he had something smoldering inside of him.”
Bill Ficklin smiles. “Marianne here thinks any colored boy that can count beyond ten is thinking dark thoughts. Major’s just brighter than most. Probably resents having to tote for a living.”
“What do you know about it, Fick?” his wife says sharply. “Do you have him around all morning? Even now, lookit him. Slamming things around back there.”
“He’s angry,” Colonel Pirkle says. “Boy wanted to see for sure that his father got out of the wreck. Thad should have let him go. Don’t know what’s got into Thad tonight. Boy got a cousin coming in over at Manteo, too. Worried about his cousin. It isn’t like Thad to be so hard on one of his niggers.”
“Aw, Thad’s had more than his share of bother tonight,” Joh Greene says. “And it seems to me Bryan Post is always wrecking something that belongs to him.”
“Still, the boy can’t be blamed for being concerned about his family. Thad should have let him go.”
“I make a motion we all go soon. Party’s sort of broken up.” Joh Greene tosses the stick onto the campfire. “Ought to make it an early evening.”
“We got to wait for Thad to come back. Shouldn’t be long now. He just had to check and see that the pickup isn’t obstructing any part of the highway. I swear I don’t blame him for getting hot under the collar. Nice enough of him to lend Bryan Post the car. Now he has to leave his party and go investigate the damage.”
“Maybe Storey can get Vivie out of her mood before he gets back,” Kate says. “That’d make Thad feel better. Storey has a way with her. Maybe I ought to run up to the house and help him.”
Then for a while they sit around the died-down campfire, lost in their individual thoughts; crickets squeak down in the brambles by the spring, brambles rustle in the slight breeze of the underbrush behind them; and the ashes of twigs and burnt-up paper supper plates, autumn leaves and scrub logs, dry and flake in the fire’s grave before them, with the few remaining coals still hot and giving glow. All of them think inside themselves for that lazy interlude at the end of the evening.
Colonel wonders what he’ll find when he gets back home — Ada drunk still? — wondering vaguely where Dix has been spending his nights lately; reminding himself it’s been a long time since Dix and he have had a talk; ought to do something about that. Used to talk a lot together about life and all, but Ada makes everything so tense in the house when she’s at it. How did this problem come on him; why?
Guessie Greene, beside Colonel, vaguely planning the menu for the church social on Friday. Fried fish, let’s see, and hush-puppies, slaw, potato chips, pickles, apple cobbler and coffee. Got to remember to take her red silk down to be cleaned in time …
Bill Ficklin ponders the reason for Marianne’s irritability, increasing daily; not just in small matters, like this morning’s with Major, but in larger, more important ones. Like last week’s argument, which had started off as a silly discussion about small towns and large cities — the dullness, she had complained, of small towns; and then the talk had grown and expanded until Ficklin had realized she was criticizing him for something, blaming him for something. Then finally she had snarled: “I’m still young! I’m not ready to decay here along with last year’s crops!” He guesses maybe they should go someplace on their vacation next year — save, so they can afford to take a trip, maybe even to Europe. No, he’d never save that much from his salary, but New Orleans, maybe. Someplace exciting …
And Joh Greene remembers it’s been a long time since he’s given his “apples” sales pitch on a Sunday. Everybody’s heard it; still, won’t hurt to say it again and again, same way singing commercials on the radio start to sink in on the unconscious. There’s a lot of value to repetition; just keep on saying it. Ought to drive down to The Toe and have a talk with Doc James too; he’s a sensible Nigraw, don’t want trouble any more than the rest of us in Paradise; he’d keep it under his hat too, no sense Colonel knowing anything about Dix and the James girl. Colonel’s got his hands full already with Ada. But Doc don’t want trouble; he’d know to keep the girl on close rein, put an end to it right here and now, before it’s too late. Nip it in the bud.
Vivie ought to take up an instrument, Kate Bailey
decides; no reason a woman’s got to think about herself to a point she gets herself out of control, embarrassing Thad before the guests that way — not showing up at all at the barbecue. Band could use a saxaphone. Poor Storey up there at the house trying to talk reason into her; ought to get up there and help him. Saxophone’d be a good thing for Vivie Hooper, and the Bigger Band sure’d sound fine!
Black eyes and a hard-set jaw; big hard-looking nigger boy; what’d you like to do if you could, Marianne Ficklin thinks; what’d you like to do, buck? If you could — what’d you like to?
At eleven-thirty in Paradise, up on the road near Awful Dark Woods, driving slowly, Doc James watches the land around him. “See anything, Myra?”
“Aw, Ed, I don’t think you’re right about Barbara.”
“Then why didn’t she tell me the truth about last night?”
“I think she just objected to having to explain her every move, Ed, that’s all. She’s not a child, like Betty. She’s a grown lady.”
The doctor shakes his head. “No, Myra,” he says, studying the darkness carefully through the car’s windows. “No, Barb and I have always been close. She’s doing something she’s ashamed of. She’s doing something with a white man.”
“Ed, it won’t do any good even if we find them up here together. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Hollis Jordan’ll listen to me! That’s one white man I don’t have any qualms about speaking up to!”
“And if it’s not him?”
“I’ve got a hunch it is. When I saw him the other night, and then picked Barbara up right after, I had a funny feeling — even before I saw Neal sitting on the porch. I got that same feeling tonight, Myra, when Barb sneaked off again; and a few minutes back, when we passed Jordan’s house and saw it dark. I got a hunch they’re together right now.”
“Just because of Juddville, Ed?”
“That, and other things too. It couldn’t be anyone else.” “Be hard to find them around up here even if you’re right, Ed.”
Doc James says, “Just keep looking, Myra. We’ve got to just keep looking.”
