July 7th

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July 7th Page 25

by Jill McCorkle


  “Well, now I’ve had enough,” Kate says. “I have never seen such a fiasco in my life.” Ernie follows her down the steps. “We don’t even have time to get by the hospital and get to the party on time.” Kate just keeps walking toward the car, doesn’t even turn to wave. “I’m sure Rose will understand, though, that we simply couldn’t make it.”

  “Wait, Mr. Stubbs!” Janie Morris goes running down the steps, those pumps clicking down the sidewalk. “Am I still your protégée?”

  “Certainly not,” Kate says, without even glancing back at the girl.

  “Mr. Stubbs? What about all of that overtime that I did for you? What about last night?”

  “Well see. My wife is upset right now. You come in on Monday and we’ll discuss it.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss, Ernie,” Kate says. “Fire her!”

  “I can’t just fire her,” Ernie whispers. “Her boyfriend didn’t do it. She is a hard worker.”

  “Remember how you said that you needed me?” Janie Morris grabs his sleeve again and slips her thumb up under the cloth, rubs over the hair on his arm. Kate doesn’t see; Kate is in the car. “You said you were going to teach me so many things,” she whispers. Again Ernie is getting that tight feeling in the pit of his stomach, even if she does have a boyfriend, even if she does wear Tigress and sparkly shadow. Just once Ernie wishes that Kate would look like this. Just once he wishes that Kate would let go of this act that she puts on and act a little loose.

  “Ernie!” Kate screams, and he opens his door.

  “Come by Monday,” he says, and watches Janie Morris smile and wave, watches her almost turn her ankle on the edge of the sidewalk.

  “Why did you tell her that?”

  “Honey, I pay her peanuts. There is no place that I could get such a cheap worker.”

  “She’s cheap.” Kate nods. “Protégée! Ha. Like she could learn something. She needs to learn how to put on makeup.” Ernie nods in agreement. But, God, she could teach Kate a few things.

  “Let’s go get Tommy!” Janie Morris runs up the steps and wraps her arms around Bobbin. Corky isn’t paying attention to anything but that drunk boy. “Oh, poor Tommy, in that jail all day.”

  “Are you positive that you didn’t see the nigger in the foreign shirt?”

  “I swear it.” Harold lifts his hand. “I’m sorry, Bobbin. I’m sorry that I don’t know anything, cause I’d love to see whoever done it strung up by his balls.”

  “Harold!” Granner yells. She is glad that Kate and Ernie have left, glad that this commotion is near bout over. “Well, I’ll tell you about Corky’s Mama.”

  “You know lying is serious business, Harold! I could run you in,” Bob says and looks away; those guys at the station will have a fine laugh over this.

  “He didn’t mean to lie,” Juanita says. “He had too much to drink; he was scared and upset.” Juanita has both of her hands on his back now and she is kneeling beside his chair. She ought to be on her knees. “Please, just let it go at that.”

  “Yeah, okay. But take it as a warning, Harold. Don’t you never lie like that again!” Bob shakes his finger right in Harold’s face and Harold never in his life thought that he would back down to Bob Bobbin, but he is doing it now. He nods and Bob steps back, throws back his shoulders. He points to Sam. “He ain’t above suspicion. And if I didn’t know you as good as I do, Harold Weeks, you might be under question yourself.”

  “He’s the one that called the police!” Juanita screams.

  “That’s a trick used lots of times.” Bob rubs his chin. He’d like to stall as long as possible. He’d like to get in his car and drive as far away from Marshboro as he can. It’s going to be worse than when he saved that man’s life. Here, all day long, he’s told everybody that he caught a prime suspect and now all of this. God, the least Harold could have done was to go in and say, yep, that’s the man. Hell, he lied once, he should’ve carried it through and lied again. Though, if the nigger didn’t do it, that was that. But why couldn’t he have just kept his big fat mouth shut in the first place? That’s what Bob Bobbin would like to know.

  “Tommy will be so happy!” Janie Morris pulls on Bobbin’s sleeve and heads down the steps. “I’ve enjoyed being here. The cake was delicious!”

  “It’s homemade. Made it myself.” Granner waves and watches them get in the car. “She’s a right cute girl, ain’t she?” Nobody answers Granner, so she keeps right on talking. If what these people want to do is touch one another, then they should go on home and do just that. Nobody should touch and carry on on the porch. It’s so hicky, hicky, something awful. “That police ain’t too cute though. If I was that girl I’d probably date a nigra over him, too.” Corky looks up and laughs at this, and that is enough to get Granner to keep right on going. “Corky’s Mama was a sort of odd girl to begin with. She was real pretty when she was young, like Corky there, but when she took to the bottle, she got to where she looked haggy.”

  “Leave her alone,” Harold says.

  “Well, if the pot ain’t calling the kettle black. I’m telling of Corky’s Mama.” Granner looks right at Sam Swett, and he has to keep one eye closed to keep her in focus. He decides to open that other eye and forget being in focus. “I knew that woman was odd when I first heard of what she did with her coffee pot.”

  “Granner, that never has made a bit of sense.” Juanita realizes now that Harold has his arm around her waist, and he has slowly pulled her closer and closer to where she is near about on his lap. He looks so pitiful, so sad.

  “Yessir, it does. She was so afraid of running out of coffee or not being able to make it, so it got to where before she went to bed at night, she’d set up the percolator so all she’d have to do in the morning was plug it in You see?”

  “I don’t get it,” Corky says.

  “I never have gotten it.” Juanita rubs her hand up and down Harold’s back, and all of a sudden he turns on her.

  “You know if all that hadn’t happened, I never would have been at the Quik Pik so late at night, never would have seen Charles dead!” He pushes her away and she lands flat on the floor. “I must be slam damn crazy to have sat here thinking that maybe you really cared. I must have been drunk.”

  “Must have been drunk,” Sam says.

  “Get that goddamned mynah bird out of here!” Harold screams.

  “He didn’t do anything.” Juanita gets up from the floor and brushes off the back of her shorts. “And I do care, Harold Weeks. I care more than you know!” Juanita is crying now, brushing the tears so that they don’t make her mascara run. “You won’t even try to understand what happened!”

  “What happened?” Sam asks, but Corky just shakes her head. Things had been going along so well, it had seemed, and here all of a sudden the bottom has fallen out.

  “I understand that Charles Husky is dead, and I really can’t stand to think of nothing else right now.” Harold grabs Juanita’s arm and twists the skin, squeezes until her flesh goes white underneath his hand. “Your goings-ons ain’t worth nothing, just like you.” He knows that he’s hurting her, hurting her feelings as well as her arm, but she’s too damn stubborn to say so, too damn stubborn to admit that she’s the one that doesn’t understand anything.

  “You don’t get that about the coffee pot, Corky?” Granner asks. “It was your Mama.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my Mama any more, okay?” Corky raises her voice at Granner, something that she has rarely done, but she can’t help it. It seems like everybody has been after her today, bringing up old bad sad things. She wishes she was right by herself now. She wishes that she had never gotten out of her bed this morning, never met Sam Swett, never heard about Mr. Husky.

  “Well, pardon me for breathing.” Granner gets up and goes to the door. “I’d rather talk to Mr. Abdul right now than any of you others! This is the worst party that I’ve ever had!”

  “Granner, I’m sorry. Really, I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Corky runs over and hug
s Granner. Lordy, now Juanita’s got Corky crying. They are all out to make an old woman’s last birthday pure T miserable. “I just don’t like to think about my family sometimes.”

  “I know just how you feel,” Harold says.

  “Me too,” Sam Swett murmurs, and leans his head against the post. The shadows in the yard are getting longer now, almost cool-looking, and the sky is gray and hazy, as gray and hazy as Corky’s eyes. Sometimes he wishes that he was all by himself without any family at all, and then he wouldn’t have to think about them, then he wouldn’t feel so torn up so much of the time.

  “Well, very well,” Granner says and pats Corky’s head. “You all leave when you’re ready. I’m gonna rest a little.”

  “I’ll take Petie Rose home with me if you want,” Juanita says.

  “Yes, please do. If I hear ‘Tom’ once more I might slap her. It has been some kind of day.” Granner comes back out and gets her Uncle Sam hat, puts it on her head and goes back inside where she can hear the T.V. going full blast. It’s just gotten to be too much for her all of a sudden, all of that talk and fussing and fighting. If Buck Weeks was alive all that wouldn’t go on. If Buck Weeks was alive she probably wouldn’t care if it did go on. “You left me with the short end of the stick,” she says right out loud, mostly to herself but partly to Buck just in case he can listen in on her. Sometimes she even gets a picture of Buck, sitting right up there with Jesus, happy as a Jew lark and feeling pity for her that she’s got to live with all this craziness on earth. Course, Buck got to be right crazy himself in his old age, when he’d slip into the bathroom and read what Harold Weeks calls beaver books. Granner thought for the longest time that Buck had took up drinking, but when she checked the back of that commode there was a baggie hanging there with naked pictures. It liked to have given Granner a stroke, and it’s a wonder that she outlived that man. Granner goes and gets on her bed and pulls her afghan up around her neck, closes her eyes, and in her head says the pledge of allegiance. Usually that puts her right to sleep and if that doesn’t work, she goes to reciting scripture and that does the trick, especially if she tries to remember who begot who.

  Well, I guess I’ll be going.” Juanita moves closer to the door. “I’ll just get the kids and go on.”

  “Yeah, we need to leave, too,” Corky says and stands up. She nudges Sam’s knee with her foot. “Come on. I knew you shouldn’t have had all those drinks. You need to take a nap.”

  “You taking him home with you?” Harold asks. “Damn, Corky, I didn’t know you were that way, too.” He nods toward Juanita.

  “I’ve invited Sam to eat dinner with me and we’re going to babysit M. L. McNair.”

  “Just ignore him,” Juanita says.

  “Well, that sure is what you did, wasn’t it?” Harold stands now, scratches his chest, and Juanita catches a glimpse of the chain that she gave him on their last anniversary, solid gold filled, and she thought it looked so good hanging there in all those hairs. Harold didn’t give her a thing for that anniversary, but he did take her over to Newton to the Long John Silver restaurant. At least he’s still wearing it. “What if I said that I’m going home and that you can go to the trailer park?”

  “I’m not about to go to any trailer park.” Juanita steps back out on the porch. “Patricia would have a fit and we’re not going to do it!”

  “Well, see y’all later.” Corky pulls Sam Swett up from the porch and down the steps. “It was good to see you.”

  “Take care now, Corky,” Juanita yells, and smiles as if nothing else in the world is going on. It has always amazed Harold the way that Juanita can put on that friendly cheerful show right in the middle of a fight. “You’ll have to go to Nautilus some time, you hear? You two have fun. Nice meeting you.” She waves and that boy just nods his head, says some funny sounding word and does his hand this odd way.

  “Don’t do that, you damn fool!” Harold screams. “Nobody is supposed to know those secrets!”

  “What secrets?” he asks and stops, thinks. “Oh yeah. I won’t do that.”

  “Put him on a bus, Corky,” Harold calls. “He’s crazy and he’s drunk.”

  “Thanks to you,” Corky says, and pulls Sam Swett on down the sidewalk. It surprises Harold so to have Corky speak right up to him that he doesn’t even say anything back to her.

  “Oh, leave them alone. They’re having fun.” Juanita puts her hands on her hips and steps closer. “I can’t live in that trailer. But, you know, you can come home if you want. I never said you couldn’t come home.”

  “Damn right you never said that, cause a hell of a lot of good it would do!”

  “So do you want to come home?”

  “I might! I might just!” He slaps his hand against the post. “I wouldn’t want to mess up your love life, of course.”

  “I don’t have any love life. I haven’t had a love life since you left home!”

  “Had two and then none. That’s how it works. Didn’t you ever hear of a bird in the hand?”

  “Does a wild bear shit?” she asks, thinking she can get him to smile. It doesn’t work. “I didn’t really have you in my hand, now did I, Harold?”

  “I never went after another woman!”

  “But you never went after me, either.” Juanita steps closer. “You know it was so nice a little while ago when you let me touch you.”

  “It was all right.” Harold sits back down in his chair. “I swear it’s just too much to think about. I mean I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened, and so it might be hard for me to forgive it all.”

  “It’ll take time.” Now Juanita is perched right back up on the bannister in front of him, those hairless shapely thighs right in his line of vision, that key chain that he gave her that says Massey Ferguson dangling from her fingers. “But we got that, Harold. Think of all we’ve got in the past. Think of those nights over in Pedro’s country; think of the children.”

  “That’s who I am thinking about. I don’t want to get them all confused, cause it might not work right. What if something happens again?”

  “I swear it won’t!” Juanita lifts her hand. “I’ve been to a doctor, Harold. I tried to tell you that I have and I’m fine now, I tell you, I’m fine.”

  “What was it, sexitus?” Harold starts to laugh great big, but then catches himself when he sees that serious look on Juanita’s face. She is serious; she wants him to come home.

  “I told that doctor that I have never loved anybody but you,” she says, and those blue eyes start to fill up with tears. “I don’t know what made me go out and do what I did, Harold. If I did know, then I reckon I never would have done it, you know? I never would have done something to make my husband and my children, the only people that I care for, to hate me!”

  “You told that to a doctor?” Harold takes his cap off now and runs his fingers through his hair. “What did he say?”

  “Well, he said I ought to tell you so.” Juanita sits there playing with that key ring, staring down at it like a baby with a rattle. “He said I might have been frustrated for a long time and the more I tried not to think that I was, the more crazylike my thoughts got.”

  “So it was my fault,” Harold says. “Well, here we go again.”

  “No! It was nobody’s fault, really, or mine. It was my fault, okay?” She tries to smile, but it looks like she’s gonna bust out crying any second. “So, can we try again?”

  “Maybe we’ll try it. That trailer park is so loud and dark, dark as pitch, just about wrecked the pickup coming in the other night. But,” he points his finger at Juanita, “we can’t rush it cause deep down I’m still mad as hell, Juanita. Deep down, I feel like I could break your neck when I think of Ralph Britt. I mean the whole town knows! Ralph Britt’s wife knows, everybody knows.”

  “Well, I can’t change that.” She wipes her eyes again and straightens up. “I thought about moving away.”

  “I can’t get in that bed next to you right yet.” Harold puts his cap back on but
keeps messing with the bill, flipping it up and down. “I mean, maybe a lot of men would make fun of me but that bed was like a church, you know, just like what I used to tell you on Sunday morning.” He flips his bill down now so that it hides his eyes. “It’s special that way, Juanita. It’s just like what I do at the Mason Lodge. If it means something to you, then you got to treat it right and it’s your private business.”

  “I know, Harold.”

  “No, it is. It was like all them years me and you had had our own club with our own rules and our own secret words and such, you know like me calling you cooter clam. That was our private joke, a bedroom secret, and then when you done what you did, it was like you had broken every rule of our club.”

  “Harold, I’m sorry. I’ve never told anybody about cooter clam or anything else. I’ve never told a living soul about how you like to have me pinch the arches of your feet when we’re in bed!”

  “Well, it’s going to take a while. Take me a while to be able to trust you.”

  “But you’ll come home?” Juanita is begging now, and this is just what he’s been hoping to see, ever since that day he moved out. He nods and she smiles back at him. He feels like he could take a little nap himself right now. “Are you going to come now?”

  “I’ll be there directly. Might wait for Mama to get up.”

  “What would you like for dinner?” Juanita is talking a mile a minute now. She goes to the screened door. “Come on, kids! We’ll go get Slurpees if you like.” She walks back over and he starts to tell her about that Slurpee machine, about how Charles looked, but he doesn’t. If those children want themselves a Slurpee and if Juanita wants one, he sure doesn’t want to ruin it for them. “How about ribs? I can run to the store, the A&P, and get us some pork ribs and we can do them on the grill.”

 

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