Nancy Culpepper

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  Suddenly Cat rushes into the room. “You’re missing Mick and Tina!” she says, turning on the small TV that extends from the wall on a long metal neck. She pulls the set toward Lila’s bed. “Mick Jagger and Tina Turner!”

  “Oh, you don’t want to miss Mick and Tina!” Spence says to Lila, clasping her arm.

  On the flickering screen, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner are dancing a sexy dance, each singing to the other in a taunting but strangely loving way.

  “Look at ’em!” Spence cries, excited by their movements.

  “I can’t see.” As she turns, Lila’s tubes dangle before her face. Spence pushes the tubes aside and tilts the TV closer.

  “Look at ’em go!” he says gleefully, watching Tina’s heavy black body—her big boobs and long legs and wide hips. She’s wearing a black leather skirt and fishnet tights. She stomps around in high heels, with her pelvis thrust out. She’s like a pickup truck, Spence thinks. Jagger, in contrast, is a lanky beanpole. His big rubbery lips remind Spence of a cow’s screw hole.

  “Who are they?” says Lila groggily.

  “Mick Jagger and Tina Turner,” says Nancy.

  Spence has a sudden memory—dancing with Cat to Ike and Tina Turner and the Ikettes on the radio. Cat must have been no more than nine.

  “How can she be so sexy?” Cat says. “She’s no taller than I am and look how wide her hips are.”

  Tina Turner turns Spence on, the way Lila does—Lila’s large, warm, sexy body. Tina is wearing a crazy Halloween fright wig. Her boobs shaking on the screen make him want to cry.

  “Hand me that water,” Lila says. “I can suck a little ice.” Spence pushes bits of crushed ice between her lips and she crunches it. Then her I.V. unit starts beeping. The fluid isn’t getting through the tubes. Nancy fiddles with the tubes, but the machine keeps beeping.

  “Where’s the nurse?” Spence says impatiently.

  Cat goes to look for her. If Lila were a heart patient and the beep signaled danger, she could be dead by now. Intensive care doesn’t mean what Spence thought it meant. The nurse ambles in, punches some buttons and jerks the tubes.

  “Just two of you are supposed to be in here,” she says.

  “I’m leaving,” Cat says, but her eyes are still stuck to the TV screen.

  The amazing thing, Spence realizes now, is that Lila’s color has returned. Her face is rosy and full, lighting up every blemish of her complexion, each freckle and age mark and wrinkle. Her face is restored, the way raisins plump up in water.

  “Your color looks good,” Spence says, holding her hand. She moans a little, a seductive moan, out of place here in the hospital. He is too happy to speak.

  He takes the washrag from Nancy and lays it on Lila’s forehead. She gazes at the TV. “Who are they?” she says.

  And then an incredible thing happens. Mick Jagger grabs Tina Turner’s skimpy black leather skirt and rips it off of her and throws it across the stage. There she is in her fishnet tights and black panties, still dancing as if nothing has fazed her. Spence’s mouth drops open. “Did you see that?” he says.

  “Uh-huh,” Lila says. “A colored woman showing her butt.” She tries to laugh and her hand goes to her throat, to the ridge of stapled flesh down her neck.

  Lila’s color looks so good, her face warm and full like a ripe peach. The blood is flowing to her face again. He keeps gazing at her, and she says, “I’ll be glad when I get home and don’t have everybody staring at me all the time.”

  Her words sound right. She’s not paralyzed. The stuff didn’t flow to her brain and damage it.

  The nurse reappears, her arm bent so that her watch faces them. “It’s been fifteen minutes,” she says.

  Spence squeezes Lila’s hand, and he touches her face. “Your color looks good,” he says. The nurse switches off the TV. Mick and Tina have finished their wild dance, and Spence turns to go. “See you tomorrow,” he says happily to his wife.

  21

  The airplane rumbles and shakes, the propeller whisking the dirt from the airstrip along the edge of Bill’s pasture. Spence holds his ears as Bill urges him to climb in. Bill has an oil-stained satchel with him— probably tools to fix the airplane in case it conks out in midair.

  “Buckle up, Spence.”

  “A lot of good that’ll do!” yells Spence, fumbling with the seat belt. He’s sitting in front, just behind the nose, and Bill is in back, with the dashboard and controls. This is like horse-and-buggy days, with Spence as the horse.

  The takeoff reminds Spence of the stock car races at the fairgrounds. Somewhere, Spence heard that certain racing cars were so fast they had to have a parachute in the back to help them brake, and Spence figured it also kept them from taking off into the air.

  The airstrip is bumpy with stubble. The plane buck-jumps. “Shake, rattle and roll,” Spence sings to himself, feeling a new meaning in that song.

  “Here we go!” Bill cries as he points the nose up.

  Spence is out of his head to go up with Bill. But it’s a joyride. Lila is out of danger, and she will be home on Friday, two days from now. The inspiration came to Spence at 3 A.M. two nights ago. He was dreaming about flying. Enemy planes were spraying the whole ocean with a deadly poison to kill the ships. He was in a Navy fighter, having to decide in a split second whether to live or die. In the dream, he was brave, as fearless and determined as those pilots in the war. He woke up, shaking with the horror of it, but he thought if you knew you were going to die, you should soar. It’s true, he realized. We know we’re going to die—sooner or later. He felt he had to go up in Bill’s plane then, to prove he could face the possibility of death as bravely as Lila had. Of course, when Lila hears about this little adventure, she’ll kill him.

  Up in the air, it’s a little smoother. The trees shrink, the fences become lines, the highway a ribbon. A school bus creeps along the highway like an inchworm. Then the airplane dips down and flies lower.

  “There’s your place, Spence.” Bill is shouting, but Spence can barely make out his words above the engine’s noise.

  They are just above the tree line at the back, where Bill’s property joins Spence’s farm. To the left is the Frost place. They are flying so low Spence can almost spot the marijuana plants he transplanted into Bill’s corn. They cross the line and gain altitude. Spence’s farm lies before them. The house squats at the far end. It’s pale green with brown shingles. The colors blend into the ground and the grass. The corncrib is barely visible through the woods; the barn sags; the old, unused henhouse seems out of place, parked in the center of the orchard.

  All his life, Spence has had a conception of the size and shape and contours of his farm, but whenever he studies the topographical map, it seems somewhat off, not exactly what he knows to be true. Now, above the place, seeing it whole, he realizes it resembles the map after all. The twists and turns of the creek surprise him, though he knows every feature by heart—the little plum tree on a triangular island, the stand of scaly-bark hickory near the crossing, the cluster of birches, the honeysuckle vines that stay green all winter—all the particulars. But up above, they lose definition and become small parts of something much bigger. His children used to paint pictures by the numbers, and now the farm looks to him like a large design for paint-by-the-numbers. The lone oak tree in the middle field was always so majestic, but now it seems small, a weed. The soybeans are a rich green rug. He is reminded of those giant designs the ancient Indians made in South America. He saw them on a special last year and couldn’t get them out of his mind. Those Indians could never have seen their designs whole—big frogs and turtles and cats—yet the outlines were laid out perfectly.

  The plane rides rough, but Spence doesn’t care. He loves it, the way he used to love riding a cranky mule. Below, the calves are frisking through the pasture, running at the sound of the plane. From up above, they are like puppies playing. Spence smiles. He feels great. Calves playing have always been one of his favorite sights. A surprise for Lila form
s in his mind. It’s time to stock the pond again. He’ll slip some large catfish, two- or three-pounders, in with the little fingerlengths. He wants to see the look on her face when she catches such a big one. She won’t expect that. He loves to see her when she’s happily surprised. She always laughs so big.

  Bill turns the plane and swoops back down over the farm. Spence gazes at his land, his seventy-three acres—cut through by the creek and a stand of trees—and suddenly he sees something new about the layout. The woods are like hair, the two creeks like the parting of a woman’s legs, the house and barn her nipples. Spence laughs to himself. He has been sending out a cosmic message to alien explorers and didn’t even know it. He wonders if Bill has noticed this configuration—probably not, or he would have pointed it out. Spence wonders if he’s losing his mind. Maybe seeing the land that way only means that his mind is on Lila coming home.

  At the edge of the upper bean field, Spence notices something else—a tinge of brown. The row of trees at the edge of the field is turning brown. Spence realizes the trees must have been burned by the pesticide. Bill must have flown too low over those trees, or failed to turn off the nozzles when he flew over them, or miscalculated the wind and the distance. The leaves are burnt, the trees endangered. Spence feels sickened, and for a moment he can taste those fumes. He notices the tall oak barked up by lightning in an electrical storm last year. It is dead.

  Bill banks the plane and Spence’s stomach flips. Then Bill straightens out of the turn and heads toward the largest bean field.

  “Hey, Spence!” yells Bill.

  Spence turns and sees Bill fumbling at the buckles on the satchel he brought. He’s not even steering the plane.

  “Hey, watch what you’re doing!” Spence cries. They’re flying over the creek.

  But there are no other planes in the air, not even any birds. The plane is up high enough that they won’t crash if they hit a bump of air. It feels like driving down an immense, vacant highway—fast and wild because there is nothing to hit. Then from the satchel Bill takes out something familiar—a coffee can. It’s that can of seeds. With a grin, Bill snaps the top off the can and pinches some seeds between his finger and thumb. The seeds fly out the window into Spence’s soybeans. The first thought that goes through Spence’s mind is that he can’t strangle Bill here on the spot because they have to get the plane down.

  “You crazy idiot!” Spence yells. “You’re the one that planted those things in my back field, not the Frost boys!”

  “Can’t hear you, Spence!” Bill flings out some more seeds into the field, and the plane zooms on, aiming at some target of its own.

  “Stop it. I’ll turn you in!”

  Cackling with laughter, Bill shouts something Spence can’t make out.

  Spence yells back, “Well, they won’t grow! I’ll pull ’em up. You said they need a lot of water.” The forecast that morning called for rain. They are due for a good soaking rain, at last. Bill is laughing so much he’s paying no attention to flying. They are diving down, heading for the tree line near the barn.

  “I’ll get you back for this,” Spence says. “Set this thing down.”

  Bill doesn’t hear him over the noise of the airplane, but he cuts back on the throttle and the engine seems to stop. He makes a broad swoop just above the trees, then begins turning, heading back, aiming for his airstrip. Below, a herd of Guernseys at the Campbell farm scatters like pieces of a breaking dish.

  22

  “I’m real proud of you for quitting those cigarettes,” says Cat as she combs Lila’s curls.

  “I’m not coughing anymore. I can’t get over that.” Lila plucks at her blouse, holding the material out on the right side.

  “If you do that, people will notice it more,” says Cat, slapping at Lila’s hand. “Stop it! Don’t do that.”

  “I can’t help it. I feel so self-conscious.”

  “You look pretty, Mom,” says Nancy, who is gathering up Lila’s things.

  Lila is in pants and a blouse for the first time in two weeks. She feels warmer with something on her legs. Cat is wearing a wrinkled white cotton dress with a dropped waistline and patch pockets. The dress has threads hanging from the hem and Lila wants to snatch at them.

  “That dress needs ironing,” she says.

  “It’s supposed to look wrinkled.”

  Lila laughs. “All those years I spent ironing. I could have just let y’all go out in wrinkled clothes.”

  “When you get healed up you can start wearing this.” Cat holds up the sample prosthesis that woman left.

  “The sandbag,” Lila says with a grin. It’s still in its plastic envelope, with the pamphlets and letters.

  “Here, Nancy, let’s don’t forget this,” says Cat, tossing the package to Nancy. Cat lifts Lila’s overnight bag and says, “I’ll go get the car and bring it around to the front. When the nurse gets here to check you out, I guess we’ll be ready to go.”

  Nancy stuffs the package into a paper sack with the water jug, the lotion, the extra Kleenex, all the items that came with the room. She sets the bowl of houseplants from Mattie and Eunice and the basket of artificial violets from Glenda on top of the other things in the sack.

  “Do you want to keep these get-well cards, Mom?” she asks.

  “Yes. I didn’t get to read all the verses.”

  “People send these cards because they can’t think of what to say on their own.”

  “Well, it’s the thought that counts.”

  But it occurs to Lila how true it is that people either won’t or can’t come out with their feelings. She appreciates all the cards and the visits from the preacher and the kinfolks and her friends. But there’s something wrong, like a wall she’s slamming against, like those ocean waves Spence sometimes dreams about. She recalls Rosie clamming up and hiding in herself, for years, where nobody could get to her. Lila married into a family that never knew what to say. Spence is all bottled up and Lee and Nancy are just like him. All those books Nancy reads, and she never has much to say about what she really feels.

  Lila says, “You girls sure have been good to me.”

  “You’ve been through a lot, Mom,” says Nancy, curving her arm around Lila, giving her a tender hug. Lila holds on to Nancy, clutching her close.

  “I can’t say what I want to say,” Lila says. “Maybe I should mail those letters that woman left.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Mom. We understand.”

  “I never would have thought you all would care this much about me as you’ve shown,” Lila says. “I was always used to doing for y’all, and I never expected you to do for me this way.”

  “But you deserve it.”

  It’s not words Lila wants. Holding her child is enough, and Nancy is clinging to her, the way Lila once held her baby and read her those meaningless words, those letters from the ocean.

  “I guess Spence figured he could get out of coming to the hospital this time,” Lila says after Nancy lets go.

  “He’s busy with a surprise for you,” Nancy says, rubbing away a tear. “We offered to come and get you.” She glances at her watch. “I’ll go find the nurse. This is ridiculous.”

  It is strange how happy one can be at the worst times. When Spence was on leave from the Navy, before he was sent overseas, Lila felt happy just to be able to see him once more, knowing she might never see him again. Now she feels exhilarated. When the cleaning woman comes in with a cart of equipment and starts talking about her son whose wife suddenly left him, Lila listens eagerly, as if it were the most fascinating story she’d ever heard. The cleaning woman, who is fat, with hair that sprouts out in tufts, says, “His wife left the kitchen in such a mess he had to get me over there to help clean it up! She’d spilled the meat-grease can all over the stove and it was all down in the burners.”

  The woman begins swabbing the commode with a rag, using her bare hand. Spence would gag if he saw that.

  The woman says, “He was in shock. He thought she care
d about him, and then she just up and left.”

  “It can be the other way around too,” Lila says happily. “You think your family takes you for granted and then you find out they care a whole lot more than you thought they did.”

  “I bet that criminal down the hall don’t have no family that’s standing behind him,” the cleaning woman says.

  “Wonder what’s wrong with him.”

  “I heard ’em a-talking and they said he swallowed razor blades, and they went in and didn’t get ’em all and had to go back in again.”

  “Law! And I thought I had troubles!”

  “What did they do to you here?” the woman asks, as she swishes her rag in a bucket.

  “Oh, I’ve been through the wringer!” Lila cries. “I’ve had my tit cut off and my neck gouged out and steeples put in, and I’ve been stuck with needles all over like a pincushion and put down in cold storage long enough to get pneumonia. And they stole my cigarettes—I ain’t had one in two weeks. Did I leave anything out? Oh, and I need new glasses!” Lila pauses to laugh. “I’ll be glad when I get out of this place!”

  “We sure are going to miss your laugh,” a nurse says.

  She backs the wheelchair into the room, and Lila sits down. The nurse buckles Lila in, and she feels as if she is in that airplane taking off for Hawaii. As she goes wheeling down the hallway, for some reason she remembers playing ball with the neighbor boys on Sunday afternoons at Uncle Mose’s. They liked to pick fights with her, teasing her so much she would beat them up. Her breasts had gone through a short growing season, like something shooting out fast after a long, wet spring. “Been eating sassafras buds, Lila?” they would say, and she would fly into them. She could beat those boys to pieces. She loved that.

  23

  “I can’t go to bed,” Lila protests to Spence that afternoon at home. “I don’t care how weak I am. I’m sick of laying.”