Old Powder Man
Page 30
Magic was the most successful laxative he ever had; later he sent Laurel a box telling her if she ever needed one it was the best he had found. He told about sending sixty post cards to a fellow who finally paid some money he owed. He wrote that it was windy but bright and pretty every day; he was going to the office as much as he could but didn’t feel any better at all. He knew it hadn’t been much time since she left, but if she’d like to come home for Easter he’d be glad to send her the money to.
At the office he began to clean out things, told himself it was only spring cleaning long overdue. Going through the files he found the personal letter from Winston Laurel had put there and threw it away. He found other things it seemed nobody had any business seeing, threw away wastebaskets full, to Holston’s astonishment. Son had always kept receipts, bank statements, cancelled checks for years back; now he kept them only for a year. He could not have explained a feeling of urgency about getting everything in order. He went through an old photograph album, mostly pictures of blasts; but there were some of him and Betty Sue swimming in the bayou in Mill’s Landing. He threw those away thinking they sure didn’t mean anything to anybody in the world but him.
He found in the files another man who owed him two dollars for a roll of fuse, started sending post cards to him.
In the summer Laurel was home briefly and went back to summer school. What he had said had taken root; she was going to stay in one place until something did happen. Occasionally Son played Pitch at the Engineers office, came home at four-thirty when it closed, waited until the paper came and read it until supper. He looked at television until he went to bed but seldom slept well. It was because he hadn’t done enough during the day to be tired, Kate said. When he fell asleep it was late, then he slept late the next morning and could not sleep again at night; he could not break the circle. Often he lay in bed all morning not really asleep, his knees drawn toward his chin. One morning, struggling up, he said he always had wanted to go back and see Pike’s Peak; they would drive to Colorado and perhaps see Laurel. He went to the doctor to see if he ought to make the trip. This time the doctor sent him to a specialist, Dr. Phillips. He came home trying to tell Kate what the specialist said he had; he couldn’t remember how to pronounce it. But it was something they were just finding out about and even the doctor-fellows didn’t know too much about it. He held up his hands the way Dr. Phillips had done, showing the size his lungs ought to be and the size they were.
“Well, what can they do about it?” Kate said.
“Nothing,” he said. “There isn’t any medicine, there isn’t anything. You just got to live with it the man said.” He could do what he felt like doing and would go ahead with the trip. The day before they were to leave he took towels to Holston. He wrote post cards, dating them ahead, for Holston to mail while he was gone. Sitting alone in the office thinking, he knew it was foolish to start out on a drive across the country without a will. But he wasn’t going to pay any shyster lawyer to draw up one; he’d write it himself. When he had, it didn’t look like much on paper for thirty years’ work; there ought to be some way you could put down what it had been like scraping around for every dime. Maybe Laurel would appreciate more all those shares of old A.T.&T. if she knew what he had been through to get them. His pen hesitated over the paper a moment, but having disposed of his stocks, house, car, he wrote only that his diamond ring was for Buzz. He guessed that was all else of value he had. Mace and Holston were witnesses.
“Well,” Kate said when they started off at noon the next day, “I never thought I’d live to see the day we didn’t start out on a trip at the crack of dawn.”
“Hell,” he said, settling to the wheel, “I never thought I’d see the time when I couldn’t sleep at night either.”
They stayed in New Mexico for a week. For the first time in years, Son bought a bathing suit, sat beside the motel’s pool, said he believed the sun helped his chest. Kate said he just wanted to look at those little airline stewardesses staying the week-end. He wanted her to buy a bathing suit; she would not, had never been swimming in her life. Where she grew up there had been no place to learn, except in muddy ponds with snakes, and afterward she had been too timid. She did not want to be wrinkled (more, she said) by the sun. She sat in shade near him. In the afternoons he rested and Kate took walks, visited places where Indian carvings were sold, began a collection. It was the first thing he had ever seen her interested in; he was glad.
They drove on. By the end of each day, he was too tired to lift the suitcases to carry inside a motel, would have changed all their reservations ahead to hotels but Kate carried the bags. He never had expected to be in this kind of shape, he said. It was night when they reached Colorado Springs. The porter, showing their room, pulled aside the window curtain to say the lighter section of sky in the distance was from a light atop the Peak. Son turned toward it, embarrassed by his own grin of pleasure. Next morning, as early as he could make it, they started. Driving the winding route to the top and down, he knew just how long ago it all had been, thinking that once he had walked it. The next day, they went in search of the lumber camp and the ways he took were wrong. He drove through forests until Kate made him stop at a filling station where an old man sat on a bench in front and answered that the camp had not been in operation over fifteen years; long ago everyone had lost contact with the couple who had run it. Bent forward—he said he could breathe easier that way—Son stared into the distance, raced the motor once. Then, turning, he said expectantly, “I worked out to that camp when I was just a boy.”
The old man spit into the road. Kate said, “Frank, that was more than forty years ago. It couldn’t be the same. Those people probably aren’t even alive.”
He said nothing until a few moments later that he was too tired to drive. Having exchanged places, Kate released the handbrake; they moved. “Much obliged,” he called back to the old man, driving away, again through trees, then facing forward said, “I thought I saw some things I recognized.”
At the end of the week, Laurel came, George with her. They had been married the week before. Son thought he had to be glad she was settled at last; taken care of, he hoped. He had been fooling himself all this time thinking she would come back. Buzz had tried to tell him when she went the last time she probably never would be, had told him not to worry; but as long as she was alone, he had. He never would understand why she left home. He had thought she had everything in the world to make her happy.
Not understanding how things had gone wrong, he knew he had to make the best of them, told the hotel clerk he had a bride and groom on his hands, fix up the bridal suite. He treated them to it as long as they could stay. When they had to leave, he gave George a thousand dollars, said he figured they had saved him at least that much running off to get married. Couldn’t they stay longer?
George had to get back to teach, Laurel to classes. He told her, Any time you want to come home, I’ll be glad to send you the money. She said they would come at Thanksgiving and she could stay for a long visit. Afterward she got on the plane with George, not wanting to. She had let happen what had, never stood still to think, knew now she did not want not to be going back to Delton either.
They were gone and he said, Did Kate think George would ever amount to a hill of beans? Kate said he already did. Because he didn’t work with his hands, sweat to make a living the way Son had, didn’t mean he didn’t work. He said at least he wasn’t a Jew or a Catholic or a shoe salesman, he had something to be grateful about. Kate liked George, was glad Laurel was married, like everybody else’s daughter. The house had been empty so long, she thought she was used to it.
But it seemed more quiet, more empty after they had been travelling had someone in the motels always to talk to. And before it had not seemed Laurel was really gone. For a few days Kate had to unpack, had things to go over with Sarah. Then when everything was put away, clean, she began to stretch out on the bed for long parts of the day, closed her eyes but was not asleep.
By suppertime her cheeks had a faint red flush, her eyes a look of wandering.
He had to rest. As much as he might want to do something about Kate, there was nothing he could do. And he had to rest. He sat, resting and worrying about Kate, elbows on his knees, his head hung almost between them, rubbing his hands back and forth over his scalp, watching dandruff fall.
Kate went to the grocery store, occasionally played bridge. He searched the house, once asked Sarah to help him lift her mattress but found nothing. Sarah said she didn’t know where Mrs. Wynn hid them but she for a long time had been the one carrying out empty pints in the trash.
“Pints! What kind of whisky is it?” he said.
“Southern Lady,” Sarah said.
“Je-sus Christ.” If that wasn’t just like that woman. Nobody but Negroes bought Southern Lady or whisky by the pint either. That night, slapping a twenty-dollar bill on the table, he said if she was going to sneak whisky into his house stop sneaking in that cheap stuff. Get some good whisky and get it by the fifth. Taking the money, Kate said he had lost his mind.
Whew! He lay awake nights wondering what was going to happen to Kate if anything happened to him. Often, still awake in the middle of the night, he would get up and sit in a chair, look out at the nighttime trees and the black yard and the even blacker street where there was nothing to see but occasional cars going by, their lights mellowing the lonesome night, their tires making sounds like thump as they passed the house. He thought of her reasons for drinking when she could not deny she did: to get back at him for all the drinking he had done, for the times he had hit her, for the women he had known. He waited as expectantly for sleep as if it were a guest coming to the door, wondered all the time now what had happened, where he had made his mistake.
He did not see how things were going to get any better and thought of the times she had said she would leave him if she hadn’t known he wouldn’t let two women do it without scandal and mess. She had tried to save Laurel that. He thought one midnight, Laurel was gone, let Kate go too; he could get along all right. He wrote to Cecilia and told her when she came, he had decided to get a divorce. What he thought was, he would buy a big house down there in the Delta, have only a small part, and Joe and Cecilia could have the rest if she would run it for him. Cecilia said, “Brother, Joe’s managed to finish paying on that little house we have. The girls are grown and married. We’re set for the first time. I can’t ask Joe to give up what he’s worked for so long to live in a house you buy. And what’s going to happen to Kate?”
“That’s what’s about to worry me to death,” he said. “Now that Laurel’s settled, it seems like I could stop worrying if I just knew what’s going to happen to Kate if anything happens to me.”
Cecilia promised to come as often as she could. The last morning she walked through the silent orderly house where everything gleamed, was waxed, polished, dusted. Kate had made the house beautiful and seen it was kept that way; why couldn’t they have been happy in it? Cecilia wondered: knew how Brother had been but knew if Kate had been different, he might have been different too.
However it ended, she prayed it was in peace, had always done so. Hearing him come slowly down the hall, she picked up her suitcase. She had said as much to Buzz once; he had said no matter what, they had stayed together and there had to be a reason for it.
Kate had opened her eyes to say Goodbye, then closed them. He passed Cecilia, went out the back door, the car keys catching the sun to gleam. Following, Cecilia stopped, turned back to the kitchen where Sarah ironed. They stared a moment, hearing the car start, sharing the same knowledge. Cecilia tried to find words then did not need them. “I’ll do the best I can,” Sarah said.
“Thank you,” Cecilia said.
In the car, she said, “Brother, can’t you see again if that doctor can’t do something about that cough?” He was having another check-up tomorrow. He let her out, did not have breath to park and walk back to the station with her. Standing on the curb, Cecilia said, “What are you going to do now?” As long as he was dressed, he’d go on down to the office. She said again she would come back more often. Then she stood holding the suitcase he could not carry, watching him drive away.
Holston said, “Boy, I thought you’d decided to let the dynamite business go down the drain.”
He just hadn’t felt like dressing and coming down. “What’s been going on?” Holston threw a check for two dollars on the desk and Son laughed. “So he finally paid off?” Only Holston compared how much he had spent on post cards to the cost of the fuse. “One more,” Son said. “That doctor-fellow down in Grenada owes me for four hundred pounds. I’ve written him all I’m going to. I’m going to call him on the phone and get rough when I get rested.”
Mace, coming in from a trip, said Mister Will had sent word he would be home as much as possible this winter, would see Son soon. “How’s the old man getting along?” Son said.
“Mrs. Carrothers finally was able to talk him into driving around the levee. He just couldn’t walk from one place to another. How old is that old man?”
“Lord, past seventy,” Son said.
“Tangle-eye, Sho Nuff, the old boys are still with him,” Mace said, but there were differences. Contractors usually rented houses in the nearest towns for their help; even all the Negroes had cars and roads were good; easier to have them drive back and forth than to set up a big camp. The owner, the foremen, a few who had never lived anywhere but in a levee camp still had their tents. Even if he felt like travelling, Son thought, it wouldn’t be the same. But he felt so good after talking to Mace he called the doctor in Grenada, told him what was going to happen to him if he didn’t pay off. He drove home feeling better than in a long time, admitted maybe there was some truth to what Kate said, getting out and seeing folks did him some good.
When he came into the house, he said to Kate lying on the bed, “You know some of these nights I’ve been sitting up thinking, I was thinking that if I could get to feeling better, I wouldn’t mind going over there and seeing what It-ly looks like.”
Kate said, “It’s too late to go on a trip like that now and you know it.”
He stood a moment, then turned around and went out, guessed he had known it but had not been sure anyone else did. In the living room he sat down to wait for supper. The afternoon paper came and he read it. Turning on television at random, he called, “Groucho’s on!” but no one answered and no one came. Tippy’s toenails clicked across the kitchen floor and he whistled. Tippy came and he watched the program, occasionally rumpling the dog’s ear, saying Boy, ooold boy …
After supper, he felt tired; having had more activity than usual he thought he would sleep. He watched television as long as possible, until he felt sleepy, and went to bed thinking he would sleep. Then he lay staring into the dark, wondering when.
It seemed a long time until Thanksgiving but George and Laurel came. Kissing him, Laurel thought how much smaller he seemed. Her arms went around him; she felt the larger. She spoke of it to Kate who said, “People always shrink up when they get old.”
“But he’s not old. He’s not even sixty.”
“Well I’ll be glad when he is so he can stop talking about it,” Kate said. “It seems to worry him. He can’t get over being almost sixty.”
For the few days George was there, they talked. Laurel asked about what. “Football, baseball, money, his business,” George said. “He told me about going to Cairo and having to be protected by the militia. About men with wads of small bills and change buying sticks of dynamite to blow up levees and flood other people; how he knew it but had to sell dynamite any way he could during the Depression. He just needs somebody to talk to, to listen.”
“Yes, but a man,” she said. “Mother says that’s another sad thing about men having to stay home. They never see anyone but women. For so many years, he paid no attention, never talked to me, that now I don’t know anything to say to him. I don’t know anything he knows and vice versa.”
“He’s not an invalid!”
“That’s just what Kate said, in just that way.”
“Well he’s not,” she said.
“He’s the next thing to it, Laurel,” he said. “He will be.”
“No, he couldn’t be an invalid. If he had more to think about, he might be better. And he told mother what to do all those years, she can’t just start telling him.”
“She’s going to have to.”
“She can’t. He wouldn’t let her anyway. You don’t know the way it was.”
George was on the plane and she thought him still wrong, thought everything would be all right. Maybe he wouldn’t get better, but he wouldn’t get worse. And her baby would be a boy, to make up for her not having been. He would “toughen the little sucker up,” make him a man. She did not know how when she was in California; in her dreams, she never was. She knew of positions in southern universities she thought would be better for George; she would somehow get him to move. She had thought of coming back to Delton, then she would see again that semi-dark early morning room where the sheets smelled of whisky and were rumpled as he turned to give her the only piece of advice he ever had, about a rolling stone. Because of that she had had to stay with George. But if he came to Delton, everything would be fine.
George had said, When will you be home? and she had answered, Two weeks, knowing that when the time was up she would extend it.
Regularly now he went to the doctor, one morning asked Laurel to drive him. Having spoken and before she could reply, he began to cough. Smoke from the cigarette he had inhaled, spit back, tumbled through the air on gusts of his breath. He seemed about to strangle. Having stood, he held to the back of the chair and shook like a mechanical toy, coughing, short, hard, sharp, so relentlessly he could not catch his breath between. Saliva appeared at the corners of his mouth. He stopped, exhausted, his eyes apologized, his face was pale. He sank his weight to one leg and slurped, recovering the saliva, then took out his handkerchief and blew his nose with a hard, blaring sound. Slowly his face regained color but seemed deflated; the skin hung in soft folds, like something punctured. He seemed a concave standing, his chest in, shoulders bowed. Staring at the floor, he quieted. Then in an attitude that missed being defiant, he threw back his head and his eyes held defeat.