In the kitchen Kate struggled with herself and won. The rum flavoring she did not put into the cake, she returned to the shelf. She had acknowledged long ago it was the first drink in the morning she had to get past; if she did, she was all right the rest of the day. She had finished the icing when he came in and said, “Tippy’s about to run me crazy to go for a ride. I reckon I’ll go out and get a haircut.”
“This late,” she said.
He said, “We’ll be back just at suppertime.”
Through the cold smoke-colored afternoon he drove over streets where long-abandoned street car tracks were still imbedded, that once he had travelled on his way to meet Poppa, to work. He was able to park in front of the shop and when he went inside Tippy scrabbled to the car window to watch. He decided on a shave and longer than necessary the barber held a hot towel to his face, bringing a color good to see. When he said so, Son said he had been to Hot Springs since he was sick and the attendants there said they never had seen anybody the baths did so much good. They talked about horse racing at Hot Springs. He hadn’t done any gambling in years, Son said, but use to like to throw his money in. The street lights came on; he looked out at cold, scurrying people, glad to be in the warm shop among the familiar masculine smells. Running a satisfied hand over smooth cheeks, he climbed from the chair as the barber shook out his white towel; he whisked a broom across Son’s shoulders. “Much obliged,” he said, paying.
The barber, holding the coat that seemed too big, too heavy, said, “Come back to see us.” Son put two pennies into a peanut machine and with a handful of nuts got into the car, Tippy greeting him. Again, he followed abandoned tracks until they disappeared, alternated eating peanuts and feeding them to Tippy. The smell of the cake, like Cally’s, had been with him when he left home and had made him think of some of the better times he had had as a boy. The peanuts reminded him of eating hot roasted ones at ball games on Sunday afternoons; that made him think back to all the steaks he had eaten and whisky he had drunk with all the old boys. It had been good seeing Buzz, that other dynamite fellow this afternoon; recently Holston and a couple of others had phoned to say they had been thinking of him. Things seemed to be getting a little better. He was proud as he could be of that walk down the driveway today, wondered if he could beat this thing yet. He looked forward to warmer weather, spring, thought of all the mornings he had started out into one to shoot ditches, could not help grinning as he turned into the driveway thinking of the ways he had invented to do it. He drove fast down the driveway to splay gravel, hear it hit the underside of the car, as he always did. Winter made him think of the times he had worked wet, of the bad case of flu he had had years ago; he always would believe those things had weakened his chest, made him get sick the way he had. He sat in the garage, a hand against his chest before, aware of the effort it took, he climbed from the car and entered the kitchen at ten minutes after six.
Kate had let Sarah go home; they were only having cake and soup for supper. She put two bowls, full, on the table and by the time it cooled and they had eaten it was six-thirty. There were some wrestling matches on he had hoped to see. She said go on, she’d bring the cake in the living room. Was she going to watch too?
She said she might as well. She put the soup bowls into the sink and had cut one piece of cake, was cutting the other when she thought she heard him call. She went to the living room. He was sitting in his chair, one hand flat against his chest. The television was on but there was neither picture nor sound. Turning his head as she entered, he said, “Kate, I never have felt like this before.”
As she started to reply, his head went back, his mouth opened and his eyes closed.
Over and over she would tell those who wanted to know, Laurel, Cecilia, Sarah, how it had been; she thought he had called her but she was not sure. She had gone to the living room at that instant, maybe just to continue the conversation it had taken them thirty years to start. Afterward, when the walls enclosed her and bars at the window, she would wake to hear again her own inadequate scream. She would tell the doctor how much time she had lost looking for an ambulance’s number before she dropped the book and called the operator instead. Taking her hands, he would say, “No, Mrs. Wynn, the ambulance was there at six forty-five. You held the book only an instant before you called the operator and told her to call Dr. Phillips too.”
“Oh did I do everything right?” she said.
“Everything,” he said.
“They put him on a stretcher and I kept telling them Frank took oxygen and begged them over and over to give him some oxygen. Then we were in the ambulance and the intern looked up and said, ‘But mam, we are,’ and he wouldn’t tell me anything. I waited in the corridor by myself, then Dr. Phillips came out of the emergency room carrying Frank’s wallet and a big ring of keys he carried even after he sold his business and his diamond ring. He opened my pocketbook and put them inside and I said, ‘Is Frank breathing?’
“And he said, ‘No, he isn’t.’”
It rained the morning of the funeral and Laurel, waking in her old bed, thought, He never saw Roll-o again; don’t let it rain too.
The baby slept in his crib and George beside her. For thirty-seven hours her suitcases had remained in the middle of the floor and she could neither unpack nor move them. They held all her clothes; it had been her intent, packing, never to see California again, as if everything had been that place’s fault. She heard Kate pass, breathing and a rustle of taffeta robe, down the dark hall. In the kitchen tap water ran and a glass was replaced. Kate cleared her throat passing along the hall again, into her bedroom. Laurel spoke to herself so clearly it might have been aloud, glancing once at George as she left the room. Entering Son’s, she woke Cecilia sleeping in a voluminous white gown, only her face visible against the white sheets. Afterward Laurel would think Cecilia had not even questioned, had merely gotten up in the dark hour to help, and would sense again what it meant to have left her family. She said, “Aunt Cecilia, I’m determined about one thing more than I’ve ever been in my life. She’s coming to the funeral sober or not at all.”
“What should we do?” Cecilia said.
“We’ve got to throw it all away,” Laurel said. Finding the cabinet open, she thought how it must have been for Kate, in possession of the keys at last. They emptied the bottles into the bathroom sink. The last fifth, full, went slowly, the fumes in the room overpowering, and Laurel could not help smiling, heard him say clearly, Phew! if that’s not the biggest waste of good whisky I’ve ever seen. She should have hidden the bottles or at least given them away. In raincoat and boots, she took them across the yard to the alley, tumbled them breaking into the trash and looked up to see Sarah watching. She came through the gate and closed it and around to Sarah’s door, which stood open. Fire in the stove made the room hot. Sarah, holding her robe close, said, “Dr. Phillips come and get me that night and I stayed in the house with her. She kep’ on getting up and opening that cabinet all night. I tried to tell her. I said the house going to be full of folks in the morning. She going to see the baby soon. She say, ‘He been looking forward all this time to that baby coming and now he going to be here and so what?’ Seem like she don’t care about nothing no more, Miss Laurel.”
Not about doing one final thing for him, with dignity and with love, Laurel thought. She said, “She’s not coming to the funeral if she’s been drinking.”
“No’m,” Sarah said.
The rain had dwindled to sea spray, a mist; against the window, a final moment, there were drops the size of tears. Kindling settled, making the fire spurt, fade, and shadows loomed on the ceiling, life-sized. It had been dark in the house that night too; he had said, I’m going to murder somebody around here! and she had been embarrassed after the fear, once he had turned like a rumpled mistaken animal back to its lair. Now she was embarrassed about that, having known compassion too late. Standing in Sarah’s small room, she swore she would never make that mistake again. She turned a face that was wi
ser toward the other who said, “I guess he was about the most lonesomest person I’ve ever seen,” and she thought, I’ll bear it because I have to: I can’t run anymore. She would restrain Kate however she had to, publicly or by law. She had glanced once around the room and Sarah said, “You remember this?” From her rocking chair, she took a large stuffed dog.
Laurel said, “I think so.” Against her face the false fur smelled like dust; she held it, looking at two incongruous rhinestone buttons glittering, for eyes.
“She was fixing to throw it away cleaning out the attic,” Sarah said. “It didn’t have no eyes and one leg tore up. I carried it home and sewed it, bought it those eyes.”
Laurel would like it for the baby, had not known where it was; so many times the animal had been comfort she wondered it had fur she had matted it so with tears. Sarah said, “You want it?”
I couldn’t take away the eyes you shopped for, Laurel thought and said, “No.” She opened the door on a day the wind no longer disturbed saying, “I think it’s going to clear.” The roses were rain-stripped; the bereft garden smelled of their final sweet scent but that smell soon would be obscured by the musky one of the leaves dead and beginning to fall. The funeral parlor had had the same sweet cold scent, only of flowers from the refrigerator. Laurel said, “Are you coming to the funeral?”
“Miss Cecilia going to carry me to view him this morning, then seem like I rather stay home with Roll-o,” Sarah said. She closed the door to dress as Laurel ran with the empty wastebasket across the sodden yard.
The Bible was small and thin. Without reason she had removed it from his room and put it in her own; an old hand had written the inscription; the thin ornate script was shaky: Frank Wynn for Perfect Sunday School Attendance. Now another church of the same denomination had supplied, after a search by Cecilia, a young minister who had never seen Son but stood speaking of his loss and his life to come. Amen, he said. Laurel raised her head to look once again about the room crowded with everyone he would have wanted to see, except Roll-o and Sarah; we’re here because he’s gone, not because we could do him some good, Laurel thought a numberless time.
The room’s entrance was rounded and coming into it for the first time she had unexpectedly faced the casket seeing, above its rim, his profile; not meaning to, she had called to him aloud and gone slowly forward. His look had been perfect, his grin askew, as if he had played a giant trick: gone off and left them without saying he was. Why did you? she had said.
From their various distances, as quickly as possible, they had come, Martha and Will, Buzz and his wife, Mace, Holston, a woman named Scottie she had never seen who said, Honey, your daddy had the key to the sweetest music, B natural. Each, hugging her, communicated sorrow, and differences in their ages had permanently disappeared. Buzz’s wife smelling of many sweet things like Kate said, Buzz said he knew if he had lost his own brother he couldn’t have lost more. Buzz told Laurel, One night soon after we moved into the office together I was home and the phone rang. Frank said, What the hell are you doing? I said, I’m reading the paper. He said, Why the hell aren’t you down here in Room 1403 of the Andrew Johnson? I didn’t ask any questions. I just put on my coat and went. I knew somebody was there I would get a lot of business from. Frank always had his ear to the ground. He never stopped thinking of business. Then Buzz’s eyes filled with tears; he went away and Laurel thought how strange it was the things people remembered to remember.
Kate had lifted the veiling, cupped her hand too late about his face. Laurel had put her hand out to touch him too and George had put out his as if to stop her. Why? she had said, having touched his shoulder before Kate put back the veiling. He said, I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s barbaric.
It’s southern, she had said. It’s better than shoving people into furnaces, being afraid to look.
Holston gripped her arm too hard: That old rascal, not a day’ll go by we don’t miss him. People are always stopping in the office, seeing his picture, asking about Frank.
Will gave the reason: When God made him, He threw away the mold; there’ll never be another like him.
Mace said, He was a ditch-digging genius.
The night had ended and they had taken pills to forget it. In the morning it had rained. She had run from the sodden yard into the house with the empty wastebasket, passing Kate who said nothing. In the dining room, Cecilia fed Roll-o. Does she know? Yes, I heard her go in there and come out as soon as I left the room, Cecilia said. I found the one hidden in the ice box and threw it away too.
They had lunch. Winston, Leila and Joe came. They crowded to the table where he was absent. Leila said, One time Frank came to our house and he and Winston and old Doc Barker drank up two fifths of whisky. I had been pickling tomatoes and Frank screwed on the tops of the jars. That winter, I started getting out jars of tomatoes and I couldn’t, nobody could get the tops off. She laughed. I had to throw away almost my whole afternoon’s work. I never did tell Frank that. He had the strongest hands I’ve ever seen.
Kate seemed to eat what was bitter, her face dour. Laurel thought, Tomorrow she’ll be all right. Afterward they stared into closets that were full saying they had nothing to wear, then dressed appropriately. George sped them through a day dazzled by the sun, where no wind soughed, and cold was barely insistent, past heartless strangers who turned blank faces, not acknowledging their grief. Laurel wanted to cry, This day’s not like another. A particular man has died and the world will never again be exactly the same. But the world went unheedingly about its afternoon pursuits. In a car next to them, briefly stopped, teenagers entwined and she told them through silent lips it was not a day for love.
The minister had said, Amen, and she raised her head. He shook their hands and Kate gave him the envelope with the amount over which she had worried. Grave and on silent feet, the funeral director drew a curtain which even the minister waited beyond. Laurel knew what was in George’s mind but the rest of the family were not horrified at all: he and Joe stood behind. Cecilia said, I always thought Brother such a handsome man, and turned away with Joe. Laurel said, Was he cold? knowing he was; she only wanted something to say. Kate said, Of course, and went away too. Laurel thought, When I turn, they’ll close the casket. I’ll never see my father again. George’s hand insisted at her elbow and this time she went, without choice.
It was heavy for old Mr. Will and drooped slightly at his corner. He spoke over it to Buzz who looked back and smiled. Aren’t they going to grieve either? she thought. They bore him on who had seen him through so much else, shaking the blanket of roses, buds tight-curled against the day. Mace and Holston stepped carefully over the uneven way. Winston’s face was flushed from the weight and he looked only at the ground. Joe, with regret, saw the path ahead lay over the edge of Cally’s grave.
They were alone for the first time. Coming into the living room, Laurel said, “George’s plane is about halfway there.”
“The night you were born,” Kate said, “I couldn’t find him. I called his hotel all night. He never would tell me where he was.”
Plaintive and unanswered the question was in the room as urgent as ever it had been; being women, they still wanted to know. “Cecilia was there and Joe. The doctor and the nurses. They all knew and there wasn’t anything I could do.” As pliant and soft as once it had been young, Kate’s face held the same dismay until she said, “After that, I didn’t look for him anymore. I didn’t care where he was.”
They sat at the table and Sarah circled the empty chair and left dessert, crying. The back door slapped sharply shut behind her. I’ll never make that mistake again, she had promised herself in Sarah’s own room. She got up. Sarah’s shoulders were soft and quite round. “Sarah, you didn’t know him before. He was so strong and rough. It was terrible to see him this way and Dr. Phillips said there was nothing ahead but what was worse.”
Sarah said, “I know. But he set there that last morning so long telling me things about my sister buying her h
ouse.”
Cedars were slender spires against a sky the moon revealed full of clouds and the stars were glimmerless speckles, faint and far. Kate had come into the kitchen, seen them on the back steps and turned abruptly away. She doesn’t feel anything anymore; she doesn’t even understand, Laurel thought; as badly off as he had been, Kate was worse. Laurel thought how long ago it all had been; that if he had lied a moment thirty years ago, everything that had happened since might have been different. She and Sarah were cold and came inside.
This morning, no one she knew was beyond the plane’s window. Staring from a taxi it had seemed beyond belief; in her life she had never ridden in a taxi in Delton before. Friends could have driven her but she would have had to tell them why and she could not explain in part. She would have had to tell it all.
Kate had said, “I want to tell you one thing. He ran my life, now you’re not going to. Put all those bottles back.”
“I threw them away,” she had said.
She had planned to stay a month; Kate would have begun to adjust. She had always said she wanted to be free; now she was, and Laurel thought she would stop because the reason she had always said was the reason was gone. But she had not; she was worse. Dr. Phillips came and the house was filled with the smell of paraldehyde, like a smell of serious illness, of hospitals and operations. Kate lay in a darkened room and Laurel and Sarah unintentionally tip-toed. Even when Kate was walking again the smell clung; she went about without expression, like a corpse, and it was like the smell of death inside her. “What are you going to do?” Laurel said.
She said, “I’ll be all right.”
“But you won’t be,” Laurel had said. Yet they went about their days as if she would, not knowing what else to do. They shopped, bought black dresses and new shoes for the baby; friends came and they went out to lunch. Laurel waited, knowing it must be the way he had waited; it had been his problem, now was hers. She wanted him to know she had accepted it. Dr. Phillips said he had brought something from the hospital. Thinking of Kate, Laurel had not asked what. She had wandered into the empty bedroom and on the bed saw a rumpled brown paper sack, curious, opened it. She was too horrified even to cry. Mutely, the contents seemed to say: this is the sum, and she arranged them on the bed, shoes together, sleeveless undershirt, undershorts, very lightly stained, he had worn the night he died. She stuffed them suddenly back into the sack and left it. That moment, going quickly from the room, she swore her own life would come to something more. He had sat seeing nothing ahead, done nothing about it, but she would not. His other clothes Kate sent to the sisters in North Carolina to be distributed among husbands, sons, fieldhands. Laurel mentioned only these, said how strange it was to have your clothes outlast you: remembered the day he had come home proud of the suit he was buried in, never dreaming he would be. Another day, going into the bathroom, she saw his toothbrush and threw it away.
Old Powder Man Page 34
