The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The rattling, bumping bus pulled along for several miles over the road atop the steep ridge which it had barely managed to climb in first gear. At the end of the bus line he stepped out to the roadside and waited for his streetcar. The handful of passengers that were still on the bus climbed out too and scattered to all parts of the neighborhood, disappearing into doorways of brick bungalows or clapboard two-storieds that were perched among evergreens and oak trees and maple and wild sumac on the crest and on the slopes of the ridge. This would be a good neighborhood to settle down in. The view was surely a prize—any way you chose to look.

  But the sergeant had hardly more than taken his stand in the grass to wait for the streetcar, actually leaning a little against a low wall that bordered a sloping lawn, when he observed the figure of a woman standing in the shadow of a small chinaberry tree which grew beside the wall.

  The woman came from behind the tree and stood by the wall. She was within three or four steps of the sergeant. He looked at her candidly, and her plainness from the very first made him want to turn his face away toward the skyline of the city in the valley. Her flat-chested and generally ill-shaped figure was clothed with a baglike gingham dress that hung at an uneven knee length. On her feet was a pair of flat-heeled brown oxfords. She wore white, ankle-length socks that emphasized the hairiness of her muscular legs. On her head a dark felt hat was drawn down almost to her eyebrows. Her hair was straight and of a dark color less rich than brown and yet more brown than black, and it was cut so that a straight not wholly greaseless strand hung over each cheek and turned upward just the slightest bit at the ends.

  And in her hands before her the woman held a large bouquet of white and lavender sweet peas. She held them, however, as though they were a bunch of mustard greens. Or perhaps she held them more as a small boy holds flowers, half ashamed to be seen holding anything so delicate. Her eyes did not rest on them. Rather her eyes roved nervously up and down the car tracks. At last she turned her colorless, long face to the sergeant and asked with an artificial smile that showed her broad gums and small teeth, "Is this where the car stops?"

  "I think so," he said. Then he did look away toward the city.

  "I saw the yellow mark up there on the post, but I wasn't real sure," she pursued. He had to look back at her, and as he did so she said, "Don't that uniform get awful hot?"

  "Oh yes," he said. He didn't want to say more. But finally a thought of his own good fortune and an innate kindness urged him to speak again. "I sometimes change it two or three times a day."

  "I'd sure say it would get hot."

  After a moment's silence the sergeant observed, "This is mighty hot weather."

  "It's awful hot here in the summer," she said. "But it's always awful here in some way. Where are you from?"

  He still wanted to say no more. "I'm from West Tennessee."

  "What part?" she almost demanded.

  "I'm from Memphis. It gets mighty hot there."

  "I oncet know somebody from there."

  "Memphis gets awfully hot in the summer too."

  "Well," she said, drawing in a long breath, "you picked an awful hot place to come to. I don't mind heat so much. It's just an awful place to be. I've lived here all my life and I hate it here."

  The sergeant walked away up the road and leaned forward looking for the streetcar. Then he walked back to the wall because he felt that she would think him a snob. Unable to invent another conversation, he looked at the flowers and said, "They're very pretty."

  "Well, if you like 'em at all," she said, "you like 'em a great lot more than I do. I hate flowers. Only the other day I say to Mother that if I get sick and go the hospital don't bring any flowers around me. I don't want any. I don't like 'em."

  "Why, those are pretty," he said. He felt for some reason that he must defend their worth. "I like all flowers. Those are especially hard to grow in West Tennessee."

  "If you like em you like em more than I do. Only the other day I say to my Sunday School teacher that if I would die it'd save her a lot of money because I don't want anybody to send no flowers. I hate 'em. And it ain't just these. I hate all flowers."

  "I think they're pretty," he insisted. "Did you pick 'em down there in the valley?"

  "They was growing wild in a field and I picked them because I didn't have nothin' else to do. Here," she said, pushing the flowers into his hands, "you take 'em. I hate 'em."

  "No, no, I wouldn't think of taking your flowers. Here, you must take them back."

  "I don't want em. I'll just throw 'em away."

  "Why, I can't take your flowers."

  "You have 'em, and I ain't going to take em back. They'll just lay there and die if you put them on the wall. "

  "I feel bad accepting them. You must have gone to a lot of trouble to pick them."

  "They was just growing wild at the edge of a field, and the lady said they was about to take her garden. I don't like flowers. I did her a favor, and you can do me one."

  "There's nothing I like better," he said, feeling that he had been ungracious. "I guess I would like to raise flowers, and I used to work in the garden some." He leaned forward, listening for the sound of the streetcar.

  For a minute or two neither of them spoke. She shifted from foot to foot and seemed to be talking to herself. From the corner of his eye he watched her lips moving. Finally she said aloud, "Some people act like they're doing you a favor to pay you a dollar a day."

  "That's not much in these times," he observed.

  "It's just like I was saying to a certain person the other day, 'If you are not willing to pay a dollar and a half a day you don't want nobody to work for you very bad.' But I work for a dollar just the same. This is half of it right here." She held up a half dollar between her thumb and forefinger. "But last week I pay for all my insurance for next year. I put my money away instead of buying things I really want. You can't say that for many girls."

  "You certainly can't."

  "Not many girls do that."

  "I don't know many that do."

  "No sirree," she said, snapping the fingers of her right hand, "the girls in this place was awful. I hate the way they act with soldiers downtown. They go to the honky-tonks and drink beer. I don't waste anybody's money drinking beer. I put my own money away instead of buying things I might really want."

  The sergeant stepped out into the middle of the road and listened for the streetcar. As he returned to the wall, a Negro man and woman rode by in a large blue sedan. The woman standing by the wall watched the automobile go over the streetcar tracks and down the hill. "There's no Negro in this town that will do housework for less than two and a half a day, and they pay us whites only a dollar."

  "Why will they pay Negroes more?" he asked.

  "Because they can boss em," she said hastily. "Just because they can boss em around. I say to a certain person the other day, "You can't boss me around like a nigger, no ma'am.' '

  "I suppose that's it." He now began to walk up and down in front of her, listening and looking for the streetcar and occasionally raising the flowers to his nose to smell them. She continued to lean against the wall, motionless and with her humorless face turned upward the car wire where were hanging six or eight rolled newspapers tied in pairs by long dirty strings. "How y'reckon them papers come to be up there?" she asked.

  "Some of the neighborhood kids or paperboys did it, I guess."

  "Yea. That's it. Rich people's kids's just as bad as anybody's."

  "Well, the paperboys probably did it whenever they had papers left over. I've done it myself when I was a kid."

  "Yea," she said through her nose. "But kids just make me nervous. And I didn't much like bein' a kid neither."

  The sergeant looked along one of the steel rails that still glimmered a little in the late sunlight and remembered good times he had had walking along the railroad tracks as a child. Suddenly he hoped his first child would be a boy.

  "I'll tell you one thing, soldier," the woman besi
de him was saying, "I don't spend my money on lipstick and a lot of silly clothes.

  I don't paint myself with a lot of lipstick and push my hair up on top of my head and walk around downtown so soldiers will look at me. You don't find many girls that don't do that in this awful place, do ya?"

  "You certainly don't find many. " The sergeant felt himself blushing.

  "You better be careful, for you're going to drop some of them awful flowers. I don't know what you want with 'em."

  "Why, they're pretty," he said as though he had not said it before.

  Now the blue sedan came up the hill again and rolled quietly over the car tracks. Only the Negro man was in the sedan, and he was driving quite fast.

  "How can a nigger like that own a car like that?"

  "He probably only drives for some of the people who live along here."

  "Yea. That's it. That's it. Niggers can get away with anything. I guess you've heard about 'em attacking that white girl down yonder."

  "Yes . . .Yes."

  "They ought to kill 'em all or send 'em all back to Africa."

  "It's a real problem, I think."

  "I don't care if no man black or white never looks at me if I have to put on a lot of lipstick and push my hair up and walk around without a hat. "

  The sergeant leaned forward, craning his neck.

  "I'm just going to tell you what happened to me downtown the other day," she persisted. "I was standing looking in a store window on Broad when a soldier comes up behind me, and I'm just going to tell you what he said. He said he had a hotel room, and he asked me if I didn't want to go up to the room with him and later go somewhere to eat and that he'd give me some money too."

  "I know," the sergeant said. "There's a mighty rough crowd in town now."

  "But I just told him, 'No thanks. If I can't make money honest I don't want it,' is what I told him. I says, 'There's a girl on that corner yonder at Main that wants ya. Just go down there.' '

  The sergeant stood looking down the track, shaking his head.

  "He comes right up behind me, you understand, and tells me that he has a room in a hotel and that we can go there and do what we want to do and then go get something to eat and he will give me some money besides. And I just told him, 'No thanks. There's a girl on that corner yonder at Main that wants ya. Just go down there.' So I went off up the street a way and then I come back to where I was looking at a lot of silly clothes, and a man in a blue shirt who was standing there all the time says that the soldier had come back looking for me."

  The sergeant stretched out his left arm so that his wristwatch appeared from under his sleeve. Then he crooked his elbow and looked at the watch.

  "Oh, you have some wait yet," she said.

  "How often do they run?"

  "I don't know," she said without interest, "just every so often. I told him, y'see, if I can't make money honest I don't want it. You can't say that for many girls." Whenever his attention seemed to lag, her speech grew louder.

  "No, you can't," he agreed.

  "I save my money. Soldier, I've got two hundred and seven dollars in the bank, besides my insurance paid up for next year." She said nothing during what seemed to be several minutes. Then she asked, "Where do your mother and daddy live?"

  "In West Tennessee."

  "Where do you stay? Out at the camp?" She hardly gave him time to answer her questions now.

  "Well, I stay out at camp some nights."

  "Some nights? Where do you stay other nights?" She was grinning.

  "I'm married and stay with my wife. I've just been married a little while but we have rooms up the way here."

  "Oh, are you a married man? Where is she from? I hope she ain't from here."

  "She's from Memphis. She's just finished school."

  The woman frowned, blushed deeply, then she grinned again showing her wide gums. "I'd say you are goin' to take her the flowers. You won't have to buy her any."

  "I do wish you'd take some of them back. "

  The woman didn't answer him for a long time. Finally, when he had almost forgotten what he had said last, she said without a sign of a grin, "I don't want em. The sight of em makes me sick."

  And at last the streetcar came.

  It was but a short ride now to the sergeant's stop. The car stopped just opposite the white two-story house. The sergeant alighted and had to stand on the other side of the track until the long yellow streetcar had rumbled away. It was as though an ugly, noisy curtain had at last been drawn back. He saw her face through an upstairs window of the white house with its precise cupola rising even higher than the tall brick chimneys and with fantastic lacy woodwork ornamenting the tiny porches and the cornices. He saw her through the only second-story window that was clearly visible between the foliage of trees that grew in the yard.

  The house was older than most of the houses in the suburban neighborhood along this ridgetop, and an old-fashioned iron fence enclosed its yard. He had to stop a moment to unlatch the iron gate, and there he looked directly up into the smiling countenance at the open window. She spoke to him in a voice even softer than he remembered.

  Now he had to pass through his landlady's front hall and climb a crooked flight of stairs before reaching his rooms, and an old-fashioned bell had tinkled when he opened the front door. At this tinkling sound an old lady's voice called from somewhere in the back of the house, "Yes?" But he made no answer. He hurried up the steps and was at last in the room with his wife.

  They sat on the couch with their knees touching and her hand in his.

  Just as her voice was softer, her appearance was fairer even than he had remembered. He told her that he had been rehearsing this moment during every second of the past two hours, and simultaneously he realized that what he was saying was true, that during all other conversations and actions his imagination had been going over and over the present scene.

  She glanced at the sweet peas lying beside his cap on the table and said that when she had seen him in the gateway with the flowers she had felt that perhaps during the time they were separated she had not remembered him even as gentle and fine as he was. Yet she had been afraid until that moment by the window that in her heart she had exaggerated these virtues of his.

  The sergeant did not tell her then how he had come into possession of the flowers. He knew that the incident of the cleaning woman would depress her good spirits as it had his own. And while he was thinking of the complete understanding and sympathy between them he heard her saying, "I know you are tired. You're probably not so tired from soldiering as from dealing with people of various sorts all day. I went to the grocery myself this morning and coming home on the bus I thought of how tiresome and boring the long ride home would be for you this evening when the buses are so crowded." He leaned toward her and kissed her, holding her until he realized that she was smiling. He released her, and she drew away with a laugh and said that she had supper to tend to and that she must put the sweet peas in water.

  While she was stirring about the clean, closet-like kitchen, he surveyed in the late twilight the living room that was still a strange room to him, and without lighting the table or floor lamps he wandered into the bedroom, which was the largest room and from which an old-fashioned bay window overlooked the valley. He paused at the window and raised the shade. And he was startled by a magnificent view of the mountains that rose up on the other side of the city. And there he witnessed the last few seconds of a sunset—brilliant orange and brick red—beyond the blue mountains.

  They ate at a little table that she drew out from the wall in the living room. "How have I merited such a good cook for a wife?" he said and smiled when the meal was finished. They stacked the dishes unwashed in the sink, for she had put her arms about his neck and whispered, "Why should I waste one moment of the time I have you here when the days are so lonesome and endless."

  They sat in the living room and read aloud the letters that had come during the past few days.

  For a litt
le while she worked on the hem of a tablecloth, and they talked. They spoke of their friends at home. She showed him a few of their wedding presents that had arrived late. And they kept saying how fortunate they were to have found an apartment so comfortable as this. Here on the ridge it was cool almost every night.

  Afterward he took out his pen and wrote a letter to his father. He read the letter aloud to her.

  Still later it rained. The two of them hurried about putting down windows. Then they sat and heard it whipping and splashing against the window glass when the wind blew.

  By the time they were both in their nightclothes the rain had stopped. He sat on a footstool by the bed reading in the heavy, dark history book. Once he read aloud a sentence which he thought impressive: "I have never seen the Federal dead lie so thickly on the ground save in front of the sunken wall at Fredericksburg." This was a Southern general writing of the battle fought along this ridgetop.

  "What a very sad-sounding sentence," she said. She was brushing her hair in long, even strokes.

  Finally he put down the book but remained sitting on the stool to polish his low-quartered military shoes. She at her dressing table looked at his reflection in the mirror before her, and said, "It's stopped raining."