by Maxine Clair
From somewhere beyond, October could hear thunder, and saw the conveyor belt start up—like an oversize bicycle chain—moving near one wall, high up over the floor. The sight of one brown cow—eyes huge, body hung upside down and coming toward her through the passageway—and she figured out the thunder. A stationary stampede of panicked cattle. And the hum under the thunder? Broken ululations of pinned cows cut off from the herd. Cows being hosed down, Mr. Guide said, though she didn’t need him to tell them that. This mewling brown animal being pulleyed along low over the floor was at just the right angle to receive the full blow of the stunner’s sledgehammer. A bolt of blood parted the hair on its head, blood trickled from its nose, its mouth drooled red. And still it whined. Stunned now, it surrendered to the conveyor’s smooth and steady grind, surrendered to the will of the bleeder, who wielded a bloody knife. One hack at the throat and blood splashed over the floor and over the rubber suit of the bleeder, over his arms, spattering his goggles. Then a wash from a large hose, and another gash, and the crinkle of hide being torn away and the smell ... Jagged pieces of guts being thrown like rags into a barrel, and the smell ... the “Look who’s here, Punchinella” smell.
“Look who’s here, Punchinella little girl,” twirling until they are dizzy, and upstairs somebody is mad Poppa is cussing. Momma is cussing back. “What can you do, Punchinella, Punchinella, What can you do, Punchinella, little girl?” Something falling down is making the ceiling shake. She and Vergie washing dishes, the cricket Vergie smashes with the broom. “We can do it too, Punchinella, Punchinella.” Momma is crying, they can hear her. She and Vergie run up the steps and Poppa is standing at the head of the bed and he’s got his fish knife in his hand, blood on it Vergie yells crying and Poppa runs right over them down the steps. Momma is kneeling beside the bed pulling on her dress, her eyes are closed and she can’t hear, can’t see the blood all over the bed, on the floor, blood soaking through her filmy dress. It smells like something ripe. She bends more, holding her chest lays her head down on the bed like she is falling asleep praying—
In the ladies’ room Cora splashed cold water on October’s face, wet a paper towel and mopped the vomit from her chin. Her clothes were probably ruined, Cora told her.
October leaned against the cold tile of the wall, quaking crying. For all these years, how could she not have remembered the smell of blood?
That evening she wasn’t able to sit still. Killed now took on real meaning. She cut a wrong seam, paced until Mrs. Pemberton tapped on the ceiling with the broom. Who could possibly fathom what it was like? A killing. No wonder Aunt Frances had always come down on her and Vergie if they so much as mentioned Cleveland, or their father’s name, or even their most tender memories of Carrie Cooper Brown.
She needed to talk to someone. Unless she wanted to blab it to the whole world, she would have to use some telephone other than the one in the downstairs hallway. Cora, of course, had some inkling. October had made no secret of the fact that both her parents were dead, and once, when Cora had asked how they died, October had said that her mother had died suddenly and her father had died in jail. That had been close enough. After the episode at the packing house, Cora might fill in the blanks. But she wanted to talk first to someone even closer.
That night October stole out of Pemberton House to Manny’s Drug Store, four blocks away. With a handful of dimes she dialed long distance on his pay phone. She hadn’t known what she would say—only that she wanted Vergie to answer.
“Hello.” It was her Aunt Frances.
“Hi, Auntie,” October said.
“It’s Saturday—what’s wrong honey?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just wanted to hear you-all’s voice, I guess.” And she ventured, “Is Vergie home?”
“Sure, she’s here, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing Auntie. I wanted to say hi to everybody. Where’s Aunt Maude?”
“Well, hi yourself. We just got back from the progressive dinner at church. You talk about good cooking—we had the best. Went to five places—Miss Hatgraves, you remember her? Miss Foster ...”
October had to listen first and finally her aunt Frances put her aunt Maude on the phone, and then finally Vergie.
“Hi,” Vergie said. “What are you doing calling us on a Saturday night—gettin lonesome?”
“Hi, Verge,” October said. “Something happened today.”
“What?”
“Is Auntie listening?”
“Chile, Amos ’N Andy is on the radio. Auntie can’t hear a thing.”
October began spelling out the details of the packing-house tour. When she got to the part where blood spilled, she started to cry.
“Oh,” Vergie breathed. She waited until October got quiet again. “I’ll bet I know what happened,” she said softly. “You remembered Momma.”
“Yeah,” October whispered. “I remembered all of it”
“It happened a long time ago,” Vergie said. “There wasn’t anything you and I could do about it. We were little girls. That’s what Auntie was always trying to tell us.”
“He just killed her,” October said. “I don’t think I really understood that until today.”
“Oh,” Vergie said. “Yeah, he did. But he got what he deserved. He went to hell.”
“I don’t see how I could have not known that,” October said.
“That he died in jail?”
“No, just how awful it was—the knife and all.”
“Um-umm, girl. Don’t think about it. Let it go. Remember what Auntie always said—things come to pass and then they’re over. It’s been over.”
“Okay,” October said. “I guess I just wanted to know if you remembered, too.”
“I don’t think about that part but it doesn’t mean that I can forget it. I was there. Me and you. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that.”
Word got around. A few people thought it was funny, the sickening-at-the-sight-of-blood episode. At any rate, October would not be recommending a field trip to the packing house, and James Wilson would have to wait. A day or so later he came by school, and offered October a ride home.
Once she was inside the truck, he told her he had something to show her, that it would only take a few minutes. He turned away from the usual route and drove out to the highway. Patches of snow glistened in the last sunlight, water ran in the gullies. A few miles outside the city limits he turned into a new housing development where work had been halted because of the weather and pulled over to one of the houses that was nearly finished.
“I put in all this,” he said. Foundation, gate stones, ornate retaining wall—he had done it all. “Over there, too,” he said, pointing across the street “That’s mine. It’s my real work, what I really like doing.” He showed her where he had worked slate into shingles around a small fountain at the center of a little park, showed her the flagstone he’d made into a garden walkway to be.
Parked and watching the sun sink, James remembered what he’d heard.
“Hey,” he said, “I heard you fainted the other day at the packing house. What happened?”
“I didn’t faint,” she told him. “I got sick. I hate the smell of blood.” The cab of the truck was cooler, now, and she buttoned her coat again.
“I saw a lot of blood and guts in the war; I don’t know whether it bothered me or not. I do know something changed.”
He told her about flying in planes and sailing on ships to jungles, places he hadn’t even known existed.
“There was something about being cut off from everything.... Anyway, when I got back stateside, I knew I needed to get my bearings some kind of way. It was like I couldn’t feel right couldn’t be my old self. The day I got out of the Army, we were in Norfolk, Virginia. They sent us to Oklahoma, then to Fort Riley. Eighty miles from here. Almost home. But what did
I do? I got on a bus in Fort Riley and went to Sacramento, California—as far as the bus would carry me. Sacramento. I guess I couldn’t come home, like it was this little-bitty corner where I was supposed to fit. I went to San Francisco and to Los Angeles. San Diego. I would stand down right next to the water and look at that ocean, that Pacific Ocean, and try to feel the way I had felt in the jungle. The same ocean was all around me in the jungle, but I wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the war so much as finding out that you can be one way and never know the other ways you are.”
October kept quiet, pressed her gloves in her lap until he asked, “You know what I mean?”
She nodded, understanding that something had happened to him, something that words couldn’t capture. Some things just couldn’t be explained.
“Anyway, I stayed away from home a whole month,” he told her. “Pearl never knew what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her. Hell, I couldn’t understand it myself. Still don’t.”
He breathed deeply and took her hand.
“I’d better get out of here—it’s probably six by now,” she said.
He drove her home and squeezed her hand as they drove up to the front of Pemberton House. “Thanks,” he said.
And so this was to be their haunt. The Estates, out of building season. Every so often James would appear and drive her to school or home, and they would park and talk. He told October once that he and his wife never got used to each other after he came back.
But he didn’t low-rate his wife. October was glad of that. He didn’t talk bad about her. Just said they fussed and fought about every little thing. That they couldn’t hold a conversation without getting angry. Things like that.
For October, it was simple. All that she knew about marriage was that people should love each other or leave each other alone. For right now, James needed someone to talk to. Nothing more. They had a lot in common, or at least they could talk to each other forever and not get tired. She told him about growing up with her aunts, that her parents were dead, but not how they died. Talked about slaving away at Emporia State, having to live with five different Negro families. About The Boy her senior year, and getting her first job.
October had gotten to know James. She liked him. He needed someone to talk to. He never touched her or talked about touching her. If she thought about the two times he had kissed her, they were only memories that meant nothing. And wasn’t it natural to wonder what he really thought of her?
Natural until the day he turned to her and said, “Look, I know I’m wrong for thinking this, let alone saying it. All these days we’ve been together ... I can’t help it. You’ve got to know how it makes me feel.”
Her heart jumped. He felt like she felt. Her heart stopped. Nothing had happened nothing could happen. Just knowing he felt for her was enough. Had to be. There was the line they couldn’t cross.
“Don’t say any more, James,” she said.
“Damn,” he said. “You make it hard.”
She took his rough hand in her smooth one. “There’s nothing we can do,” she said.
All through the Christmas holidays she thought about him, though she didn’t dare think dilemma. He was married. Infatuation came nowhere close. And she tried to let it go, only to come back to the two kisses, the look on his face when he said thanks, his profile, his bowl of pearly teeth, the way his pants might ride his hips in the summertime.
Back at school toward the end of January, he telephoned her. A first. A serious first. And he got quickly to the point.
“Tomorrow after school I want you to go someplace with me. Don’t worry. You can trust me. I won’t let you down.”
What could she say, but okay?
chapter 6
A new blue shirt, the spring sun in February, ice floes on the river they were crossing, the rows of nice duplexes in Missouri where nobody knew or cared what she was doing, a touching, child-built snowman in the vacant lot next to the apartment house where James stopped the truck—October noticed signs.
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just follow me.”
She was out of the truck and climbing three flights of stairs before she thought of James’s friend School Boy, who had said he lived in Missouri. James was using a key that fit the first time, pushing open the door before she got a little shaky thinking this could be a mistake.
“Go ahead in,” he said. And she did, to an altogether different style of pretty: studio-couch geometry in blue and green, triangular tables with spread-angle legs, papyrus lampshades, oval ashtrays.
“Who lives here?” October asked.
“You like it?”
“Um-hmm,” she said “but whose is it?”
“Mine,” he said. “Mostly mine, anyway,” he admitted.
She would get details later, but for now she had trouble believing what he was saying. “When did all this happen?”
“Last weekend,” James said. He closed the door and peeled her out of her coat. “Pearl and me split up,” he said casually, folding her coat and straightening the rug under the coffee table.
This had to be no joke, no kidding, no by-the-way maybe. She took her coat back.
“What are you talking about?” Looking directly into his eyes.
“Well,” he said, walking around in a little circle, scratching the back of his neck. “I guess it was really same-ol’-same-ol’. We can’t make it—we’ve been knowing that. One of us had to do something and she sure couldn’t, so I did.” He took in a resigned breath.
“You mean ...” She was catching on.
“Yep,” he said. He was in front of her again, shrugging. “It’s been coming for so long it was just a matter of me moving my clothes.”
“What about Irene?” she said—why was she saying this? “I wouldn’t want to hurt anybody....”
“Whoa,” James said. He took her coat again. “Nobody is crying, nobody is having a fit. This doesn’t have anything to do with you—I told you, it’s been coming for a long time.”
“It’s just a big surprise,” she said. A real surprise.
“You thought I didn’t have the guts. It’s been over—it was time, that’s all.”
October looked around. Back in the kitchen she could see a little dinette, no curtains, but a teakettle on the stove.
“Put down your purse and stay awhile,” he said. “I’ve got soda pop and Bacardi, what do you say?”
Before she could turn her frown brighter, he said, “Okay—pop, then,” and went to the kitchen.
What was that he had said once, about being one way and not knowing the other you? How quickly things change.
She called after him, “What did you mean, almost yours?”
He yelled back, “It’s School Boy’s place, but now I’m paying half the rent. The couch is mine, too. Wait till I show you the rest.”
October sat on the studio couch and put her purse on the triangle. His place. She added up details to see if they pointed in the right direction. James had left his wife. He had gotten himself half a nice place. Finally decided to move on. People don’t buy furniture unless they plan to keep it. He had left not because of her. No. But because his marriage didn’t work out. He was decent, he had never said anything ugly about his wife. He was honest, he had never lied about what was going on.
It counted that she had never pressed him. Instead, she had been a patient friend, and cautious at the same time. They had gotten to know each other. Very well.
“Okay, a drop of Bacardi!” she yelled to him.
James came back clinking two glasses. “Don’t worry, School’s working swing shift. He won’t be here until tomorrow morning if he comes then. He stays over to his woman’s house most of the time.”
October wasn’t worried. If all this was true, she didn’t care who knew what. How soon things change. One day a person
is afraid to dream, and the next day she is folding dreams neatly in a hope chest.
He sat down beside her. “October, you know how long I’ve been waiting for this day to come?” he said. “Here’s to you and me.”
She sipped.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
She felt like laughing. “I can’t believe it,” she said. Her face felt hot. He pushed back her crinkled hair, put down his glass, and kissed her cheek. “This spot is mine,” he said, then seemed to remember something and picked up his drink again.
“I’ve got steaks, I’ve got stuff for spaghetti, fruit cocktail—what do you want?”
She wanted to touch him. “Nothing,” she said. She had a clear sense that there was a deep place she wanted to get to, and that she didn’t know the way. Maybe true love. Because she was convinced that his leaving his wife meant that he wanted to go there with her, she was sure that together, they would find the way. She took his drink from his hand, set them both on the table, placed his hands on her waist took his stubbled face in her hands, and bussed his mouth lightly, hoping that it would be enough for him to take the lead.
In his bedroom she sensed him slowing his hands as he undressed her, and it excited her. Once he touched her nakedness, he went wild, couldn’t slow down. That excited her, too. He kissed her closed eyes, slipped inside her with sweet pain, and filled her up.
Now that they were lovers, October saw no need to be discreet. James and I, James and I, she told the world. She set aside Wednesday nights and weekends—Saturday and Sunday—as theirs, overtown, where they seldom saw people they knew. But why hide? October wanted to show off her newfound love to people who could appreciate it.
Cora could not appreciate it. “A man who leaves his wife for another woman will leave the other woman, too,” she told October.
