Bess knew little about cars. She’d taken driver’s education in school, and she had her license, but her aunt didn’t own a car. Harriet had a perfectly maintained 1940 Ford sedan, but she didn’t like other people driving it, so Bess was rarely behind the wheel and had nothing to contribute to the moment’s conversation beyond “Really?” Donna, too, was out of her depth. But she had slipped into one of her film roles—Jane Powell in Small Town Girl, maybe—and giggled and asked all sorts of foolish questions, which Jim and Bob were tickled to answer.
Bess excused herself and went to the rest room to reapply her lipstick. She and Donna should leave soon. The longer they stayed, the more serious would be the Arliss boys’ expectations. She’d hoped Donna would follow her to the rest room to discuss this, but Donna was ankle-deep in valves and ratios.
Two other fellows had joined the group in the booth when Bess came out of the rest room. The one seated and facing her direction was Earl Ingbretson of Ingbretson’s Hatchery. The second, standing and leaning against the side of the booth, had his back to her. When men saw a uniform, they collected around it. Bess wasn’t sure why that was. To pay tribute? To suffer the war experience again or vicariously? Earl Ingbretson had been in World War II.
Bess ordered another Miller from Hammy and sat down close by at the bar.
“Did we crowd you out?” the second newcomer asked, noticing her at the bar. It was Doyle Hanlon. She only knew him by name. He was a lot older, maybe twenty-five or so.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Anyway, it’s cooler here.”
Hammy brought beers for Earl and Doyle, and the Arlisses ordered another round for themselves and Donna. The evening was getting bogged down. Bess didn’t want to talk about war and cars. She wanted to sneak out and walk home, but Donna would have a fit.
Doyle Hanlon and Earl Ingbretson were both married. Their wives had probably gone to the band concert. Or maybe they belonged to a ladies’ bowling league over in St. Bridget. Or maybe they were home in front of the electric fan, ironing dress shirts for their husbands and putting the kids to bed.
Husbands in Harvester came out for beer or a ball game without their wives. No one thought anything of it, except maybe the wives. Bess knew that young, newly married men were teased by their friends if they gave up going out with the boys. Henpecked. In Harvester a young man could be out with his friends three or four nights a week without his wife having an excuse to give him hell. If Bess were one of those wives, she’d give him hell anyway.
When the ball game ended, eight or ten fans drifted into the Lucky Club. The Harvester Blue Jays had lost to the Red Berry Red Sox, six to eight. No one was dispirited. The games were fun but they weren’t serious. The new arrivals ordered beers and slipped quarters into the jukebox. Bess glanced at her watch. Ten o’clock. The evening was three weeks long already and she couldn’t catch Donna’s eye.
“Would you like to dance?” Doyle Hanlon asked.
“I might as well,” she said, leading the way to the tiny dance floor.
“Sorry if Earl and I horned in on your date.”
“I don’t have a date. Donna and I came by for a beer after the band concert.”
“Earl saw the uniform and wanted to say hello to the kid.”
“Were you in the service?”
“Briefly.” He smiled. “I even enlisted. Had a crazy idea I needed the shit kicked out of me before I’d be a man. It’s not true, as rumored, that I shot myself in the foot to get out,” he assured her, still smiling. “I got drunk one night and flipped a motorcycle outside of Pusan. It only hurts when it rains,” he said, letting go of Bess’s hand to pat his left thigh. “I think the limp’s distinguished, don’t you?”
“I didn’t notice that you had a limp.”
Smoothly, for a man with a limp, Doyle Hanlon spun her around and dipped deeply as the song ended. Bess had no trouble following his steps. For that she was grateful to Harriet.
When Bess was in the eighth grade, Harriet had bought dance records—fox-trots and waltzes and Latin rhythms—at Mather’s Five and Dime, then rolled up the dining room rug and sprinkled talcum powder on the floor. A good dancer with a knack for leading, Harriet waltzed Bess around the dining room several hundred times as her portable phonograph played “You’re Breaking My Heart.”
Now Bess and Doyle Hanlon stood by the jukebox waiting for another waltz, this one “Remember” by Irving Berlin.
“You work at the Loon Cafe, don’t you?”
“Right.”
“What’s your name?”
“Bess Canby.”
“Oh, yes.”
Did that mean, “Oh, yes, you’re Archer Canby’s kid. He got drunk and piled up his car back when I was in high school”? Maybe Doyle Hanlon had been driving home after a date that night. Maybe he’d seen Archer’s Ford wrapped around the cottonwood.
He said, “I saw an article by you in the Standard Ledger a couple of months back. There was a picture of you. I don’t remember what it was about.”
“Trying to get businessmen to donate money for new band uniforms.”
“That’s right. I mentioned it to my dad and we sent a check.”
“What exactly does your dad do?” She knew where his office was, above the Standard Ledger, but not what went on there.
When the song ended, they stood waiting for yet another. “The old man inherited money. Not millions, just what was left after the Crash. They were from St. Louis, my dad’s people. His old man jumped out of a window on Pine Street in downtown St. Louis. His uncle took a short swim across a wide river.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember either of them. I was two years old at the time, three when we came here. Dad had an old buddy up this way who was buying up foreclosed farms from banks. The old man bought a bunch of ’em and rented some of them back to the original owners—not a popular business. Then he started buying and selling cattle and raising purebreds on the side. But what he likes best is dabbling in futures. He’s a lucky SOB, made a small bundle at it.”
“Dabbling in futures? What’s that?”
“Oh, boy.”
“Oh, boy?”
“It’s hard explaining commodities futures.”
“Try. I’m smart.”
“Well, when you buy futures, you’re buying something that hasn’t been produced or harvested yet, and you’re gambling that it’s going to go up in price.”
“For instance?”
“Corn. Wheat. Hogs. Things like that.”
“A lot can affect those. Weather, for one thing.”
“That’s what makes dabbling in futures such a dangerous game. It’s not for boys.”
“Your dad must like it.”
“He’s a tough son of a bitch.”
Bess thought of the office on the second floor of the Standard Ledger. She’d never been up there, but she’d seen the gold lettering on the bay window all her life. HANLON LAND AND INVESTMENTS. The words were printed in thick, heavy-looking gold letters, as if matters of considerable import were carried on behind them. She imagined Oriental carpets on the floor, mahogany desks, leather-covered chairs. Maybe a leather sofa where the senior Hanlon stretched out in the late afternoon before descending the wide stairway to the street.
The senior Hanlon, a slender, upright gentleman, didn’t come into the Loon Cafe, but Bess saw him on Main Street occasionally. More elegant in his attire than other men in Harvester, he always wore expensive three-piece suits and, invariably, a hat, usually a gray fedora in cold weather, a fresh-looking Panama in summer. He was one of only three men in town who wore cream-colored suits in hot weather.
“And what do you do?” Bess asked Doyle Hanlon.
“I work for the old man. I keep his books, take care of his taxes, and oversee the farms.”
“He still has the farms he bought during the Depression?”
“Oh, yes. He’s never mortgaged the farms to play with futures. He’ll gamble with anything,
except what he calls ‘home base.’ ”
Bess thought that she could listen to a great deal more about the Hanlons. Was that because they were fascinating or because something about Doyle made what he said seem extraordinary? How had she lived seventeen years in Harvester and never had a conversation with him before? Well, of course, she had been a child most of those years.
“Have you dabbled in futures?”
“Only once or twice when something looked especially good. It’d be awfully easy to get hooked. The old man’s seen plenty of men wiped out. Anyway, I don’t have a lot of capital to play with, so I’m pretty selective.”
“Why doesn’t your dad tell you which ones to buy?”
Doyle Hanlon frowned. After a long moment he said, “I went to Korea to become my own man.”
The younger Hanlon looked nothing like his father. Though slender like Herbert Hanlon, he was only about five-eight. Bess was nearly as tall. His skin was olive and his hair the color of a tarnished penny. Herbert Hanlon, on the other hand, must once have had black hair since his bony face was dominated by prickly thickets of sooty brow, though the thatch on his head was now electric white.
Where the senior Hanlon’s eyes were ice blue and seemed oblivious to who or what was immediately before him, Doyle’s eyes were mahogany brown and took in everything, finding it all amusing. The skin at their corners creased, and his mouth persistently curled in a wry half-smile.
His amusement intrigued Bess. She wished she could see the world from inside his head. What did it look like? His private world was exotic compared with hers. His grandfather and great-uncle had both committed suicide over lost fortunes. His father dabbled in futures. All her life she’d heard grain and livestock futures quoted on the radio, without any notion of what they were. Now that she knew, they seemed enthralling.
Why hadn’t her father been like Doyle Hanlon’s, someone who made money instead of trouble? Well, she’d loved Archer, if it came to that. When you were little, you didn’t know how not to love your father. She didn’t love him now. She knew too much.
Celia had been too damned Christian to walk away from Archer or too crazy about him. And the teacher in Celia had imagined that Archer was educable, that he could learn peace and patience from her example. Whatever he did, she forgave him, and her forgiveness drove him crazy.
Bess now thought that he had wanted to be despised. He’d wanted Celia to get drunk and throw things at him, wanted to subdue and humble her at the height of her rage. He had wanted her to loathe him for his crippled arm, and then he wanted to punish her for her loathing. Like something out of Dostoyevsky. That was his way of loving her. Insane, but it was his way.
Poor Celia had been incapable of cooperating. That sort of cooperation was something that she would not even have grasped. Bess recalled times when Archer had seemed ready to kill her mother for not loathing him, for not cooperating in his needs.
But two weeks before the accident, Celia’s patience had run out. Or so Bess had thought. Aunt Kate did not know that, and Bess would never tell her. If she knew how miserable Celia had been in the last days, Kate would never have a moment’s peace.
Over Doyle Hanlon’s shoulder, Bess stared into the turquoise blue streaks of the rainbow on the front of the jukebox. Celia had worn a turquoise blue dress occasionally, a summer cotton dress with a deep square neck that she’d run up on Aunt Kate’s old Singer.
She’d worn that dress to Methodist Ladies’ Aid Circle one summer afternoon two weeks before the accident. The Circle had met in the church basement that day because the women were sorting clothes for the September rummage sale.
Bess and Donna had come along with their mothers, and Celia had settled them at a table in the Sunday school area, each girl with a pair of round-tipped scissors for cutting out paper dolls.
By midafternoon Bess had cut out all the gowns for her Ginger Rogers doll, and Donna had lined up the paper wardrobe for Betty Grable. As they were getting down to serious play, Donna had said, “I gotta go to the bathroom. Come with.”
“No.” Bess fastened a slinky gold frock to Ginger’s shoulders.
“Why?”
“ ’Cuz. It stinks in there like mothballs. It’s the stuff they put in the toilet. You better go before you wet your pants.”
A moment later Donna was back. “Mommy won’t let me in. What’ll I do?”
“Well, go in the men’s.”
“The men’s?”
“You want to wet your pants?”
“What if a man comes in?”
“What man?”
In the end Bess had had to go with Donna into the men’s room. When they came out, they stood for several minutes outside the women’s with their ears pressed against the door.
Celia and Donna’s mother were on the other side, their voices muffled. Celia was crying and Florence kept saying, “It’s gossip, old gossip.”
Bess began pounding on the door.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Donna told her. “They’ll get mad. Come on.” She tugged at Bess.
But Bess continued, crying, “Let me in, Mommy. What’s wrong? Let me in!”
Florence Olson opened the door. “Shhhh,” she shushed Bess, putting a finger to her lips. “Your mommy’s feeling a little sick, Bess. She’ll be okay. Go get your paper dolls, both of you. We’re going home now. Don’t say anything to the other women.”
Inside the disinfectant-reeking bathroom, Bess could see her mother hunched into a corner, staring straight ahead and weeping, her face sort of broken into pieces. Bess tried to push past Donna’s mother, but Florence was firm. “If you want to help your mommy, get your paper dolls and go out to the car and wait.”
The rest of that afternoon Celia and Florence bent their heads together in the Olson living room, sighing and murmuring in pale, painful shades of conversation, while Bess and Donna sat glumly speculating in the backyard. Once the girls crept around to crouch beneath the open living room windows, listening to words they didn’t understand, at least not then.
“Her name was Millie Jessup. Don’t you remember, Flo? She graduated with us.” Celia’s voice was weak, as if she’d said the same things over and over and was tired and even bored, but with a boredom that weighed about a thousand pounds.
“I thought she died of a ruptured appendix. Someone told me that.” Again and again the words “ruptured appendix” came into the conversation. Then, in a shudder, “She bled to death, Flo.”
After a reverberant pause, “Archer was hired man for the Jessups.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Florence told her.
“Yes, it does. Meredith Smitt said he sent the girl to a butcher in Sioux Falls.”
A butcher, Bess pondered. Why would you send a girl to a butcher?
Bess had been made to stay for dinner at Donna’s, while her mother went home. She had no appetite although Florence had fried up a chicken and made mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Bess tried not to play with her food, but she couldn’t stop wondering what a butcher in Sioux Falls had to do with a girl’s bleeding to death. And even if Archer had told the girl to go to the butcher, how did that make him to blame? It didn’t make sense.
Bess knew that while she sat at the Olsons’ kitchen table, Celia was talking to Archer about Millie Jessup. What was Archer saying? At one point Bess thought she heard her father shout, “Ten years!” Despite the heat, Florence got up and closed the kitchen window.
After dinner Florence sent the girls into the living room to listen to the radio with Hy Olson. But Mr. Olson turned the dial to war news, so Donna got out the playing cards. Bess didn’t feel like playing rummy, and after a couple of hands she’d put her head down on the Axminster carpet and fallen asleep.
When she woke, Bess thought at first that she’d slept all night on the Olsons’ floor. Hours seemed to have passed. But Hy Olson was still listening to the radio.
Bess’s cheek was sweaty and chapped from the rug, and her hair was sticking to the d
amp skin. Crusted sleep prickled in the corners of her eyes, her ears buzzed, and she was having trouble thinking straight. She wanted to go back to sleep, but Celia was there, waking her, being cross, holding her hand and pulling her to her feet.
“She can stay here,” Florence offered.
“No.”
Celia was weeping in front of Hy Olson. Even in her daze, Bess found that alarming. Staggering, she strove to keep up as her mother pulled her out the front door and down the steps, while Florence Olson stood in the doorway looking helpless and calling, “Telephone me tomorrow.”
Bess was fully awake now as they waited beneath a streetlight for a car to pass. Her mother continued to weep soundlessly as if she might never stop. Would the people in the car see Celia crying? A sense of doom crept over Bess. If your mother cried in the street, the future was not safe.
They heard Archer behind them, calling for them to wait. There was liquor in his voice and, worse, tears. Bess tried to pull away from her mother and run to Aunt Kate’s. She didn’t want to be part of this spectacle. Celia held Bess’s hand in a painful grip, forgetting entirely that the child was there.
Archer, smelling of bourbon and breathing hard from his run, grabbed Celia’s arm, pulling at her roughly.
“Come home,” he demanded.
“No.”
“There’s more I have to say. Things I didn’t tell you.”
“No.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. Let me go now.”
“You’re taking Bess?”
“Did you think I’d leave her with you?”
Celia reeled as he swung the back of his hand across her face. She stepped off the curb, pulling Bess with her.
Archer stood on the spot, yelling after them, “Goddamn you, go then. Fucking bitch.”
Inside their open-windowed houses, people could hear Archer, could see them all under the streetlight. Trying to shut out the sound of Archer’s yelling, Bess huddled against her mother as they stepped along, holding tightly to each other’s hands the rest of the way.
The neighbors had probably shaken their heads, Bess now reflected. On the street they probably eyed Archer askance for his brutality and drunkenness. But no one said anything to him, and what they spoke to one another was by way of oblique and fragmentary references, uttered in half voices on the post office steps, or in the back booth of the Loon Cafe.
What a Woman Must Do Page 6