The Maid's Version

by Daniel Woodrell

  At age nineteen she said, “I swan, I swan,” at a so-so joke and realized she had fallen in love with Ollie Guthrie. Her parents approved. She and Ollie both beamed during those dreamy weeks of engagement as if permanently amazed at the repeated wonders that took place daily between two hearts so opened and well matched. He gave her a ring and a necklace with a heavy brooch that she wore more than she did the ring, because the ring was too valuable to risk losing and she had to remove it to play. The couple were to visit his mother’s people out at Rover, but the regular Arbor pianist had been stranded in Cape Girardeau, and Lucille reluctantly agreed to sit in with the house band so the dance could proceed and her friends could frolic. Ollie sat on a windowsill watching her with a smile that never wilted. The explosion sent them in different directions, and three days later he identified Lucille by the brooch that had burned deeply into her chest.

  She has washed his shirts clean of her sister for months now, scrutinized collars, cuffs, taken a hard block of lye soap to lipstick smudges, and scrubbed away that smell the girl splashed on and the smell of him and her rutted into a smell that could not be mistaken by any wife for another.

  (“You need to stop puttin’ on that perfume.”

  “But he bought it for me. They like you to wear things they bought you.”

  “It catches on his shirts and lays a high smell in there.”

  “He likes it.”

  “I have to wash the stink out, though, and it ain’t easy.”

  “That fragrance is imported!”)

  In the wind of every season she aired his jackets on the line, ofttimes for two days or more. She washed his shirts clean of her sister and aired his jackets pure and turned a blind eye toward intimate caresses in the backseat of a rackety Ford pulled to the curb out front and the scarlet joy that on some nights set Ruby dancing merrily in the shack. It was a mess of wrongness she just had to take, she knew her place, and had three sons with stomachs pinging. Glencross eventually noticed how discreet and effective she was in keeping knowledge of the affair from reaching his wife through sight or scent, and began to covertly press dollar bills on her almost weekly. He never stated a reason for the increase in pay and didn’t need to, either—she caught his drift plain and clear and accepted the bonus dollars with a quick twisting of two or three confusions inside her chest.

  (“Are the both of you in love now?”

  “We’re somethin’, sister.”

  “Somethin’ what, though?”

  “Somethin’ that’s the berries, sis, call it any name you want, but it’s runnin’ mighty sweet, and I can’t see where it’ll stop.”

  “It had ought to stop now.”

  “He has this way of layin’ there eyein’ me all sleepy with just a tiny bit of his tongue poked out that reaches to my toes and curls ’em back … and … you see what I’m sayin’?”

  “Oh, I hope you never do make her know.”)

  On days spaced two weeks apart she would accompany Mrs. Glencross to the office of Dr. Thomason on Jefferson Avenue and sit in the shadowed waiting room while treatment was received. He was perhaps the oldest doctor in town and continued to apply remedies to women that most doctors had in recent years phased out of their practices. Noises that Alma could not associate with the practice of medicine did many times reach her ears through the walls as she sat and tried not to hear the intimate whimpers and grunts or comprehend too clearly when she did. Mrs. Glencross required the administration of rejuvenating paroxysms every fortnight and drank elixirs in tiny sips on all other days, rain or shine, but still she was wan and routinely lacked pep. The lady required Alma at her side to brace her upright as she sagged from the relief afforded by medically induced shudderings of the pelvis and remained loosened in her limbs on the return walk home.

  “I’ll hold your umbrella up, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, dear. My health, it’s as it has ever been.”

  “Did the doctorin’ treatment go good?”

  “I prefer you not pry, Mrs. Dunahew. I do appreciate your arm to lean on, always, but don’t pry.”

  The congregated silhouettes of ruin attracted steady visitors who arrived most evenings around sunset to stand and behold in the everyday wonder of sinking light just what contortions tragedy had wrought and left in view. Remains of wall torn to fractions still somehow stood here and there to make partial and keening shapes in the gloaming. Dogs had for a time gathered on the spot in snorting packs, but the siren stench of rot from the pit had finally wavered and blown away. Burned wood, sprung wires, shanks of cloth, bits from scarves and hats and handbags and crushed shoes were sifted among the tumbled bricks and blackened debris. Rainwater stagnated at the bottom of the pit and made muck beneath returned chunks of the scattered building.

  Sheriff Shot Adderly did his rounds there at that hour whenever he could and observed. There were regulars in grief and tourist connoisseurs of the tragic and regulars again. Some knelt in prayer, some recounted news of their day on this earth in an intimate babble of words directed to the crater, and others stood at the edge and gazed upward, seeking a flashed revelation in the twilight. Arthur Glencross now and then arrived in finery to stand at the edge and look down and only down toward the dank and jumbled mess. He seldom stood there for long, but might arrive in any weather and ignore it, foul or fair, and stare always with such emphasis that his presence was felt and eyes were drawn toward his figure.

  Adderly again and again approached him slowly and attempted a conversation along these lines, “Somethin’ here draws us back over and over, don’t you think?”

  “Something does indeed.”

  “Say? How’s that burn scar of yours doin’ these days?”

  “That’s three times you’ve asked that, Shot.”

  “And three times you don’t answer.”

  “Good evening.”

  Preacher Isaiah Willard did on occasion arrive at the pit to spear those assembled in hurt with flung condemnation, blaming the dead and their damnable desires for their own deaths, bellowing that the gospel truth was now made obvious to even the blind and most unrepentant among them—sin here and sin there if you please, fools, but know God’s wrath will find you even as you jerk about to pagan sounds and bounce reveling in said wickedness. They who perished here in a sudden burst only received that which had been earned by them, yea, verily, by their own will and wicked ways, and … Shot Adderly did twice warn Willard that forbearance in regards to this broad loss mightn’t be the chief virtue of the citizenry hereabouts, and as he understood it the Lord didn’t hate polite silence altogether, and Willard gave his retort, which was, In the face of idolatry and sloth and sin He does. Don’t tell me He doesn’t, as when others sleep I hear Him direct while alone in darkest hours, and remain fearless in His embrace and at His command.

  Leo Adderly, Jr., Shot’s middle child, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Arbor Dance Hall blast, said to a sophomore daughter who reported it in Ridgepath, the student magazine, “Papa, in secret, had a real dislike for being ordered around by the big cheeses in our midst. Told to say something wrong was really okay because the drunk kid came from a good family, or the silverware thief was an important so-and-so’s wife, all that run of thing. About half of what a sheriff does is to bend laws a little to keep the right people out of jail—he knew that from the start, and it’s an elected job. He generally bent the law when he had to bend it, Papa was not slow thinking, but on the dance hall deal he intended to settle that hash so honest and direct there’d be no doubts left about what was what, who was who, where the blame fell. He wouldn’t let himself be turned left if the trail turned right, not by anybody, and if he had to leave town after he’d got the truth, he’d leave, and leave well pleased. I’d guess he was awful pesky to deal with. Of course he didn’t get to see it through. And the main thing he ever said about the whole deal was that he’d been at a meeting in an office above the square, and had three or four of the biggest cheeses suggest to him that he back off, look
somewhere else and don’t find nothing. He said they put it to him just this straight: ‘Some calamities are best left unexplained, Sheriff. Aren’t the fish biting on the Twin Forks?’”

  Buster Dunahew did when flush smoke Helmar Turkish cigarettes. (Most of his days he’d resorted to discarded butts of any make found on the floor, sidewalk, barroom ashtrays, sometimes shadowed on the street those citizens who favored his brand and graciously littered.) He stood in the vacant lot across from the rental cabin at the Current River ferry, leaning against a blackish Model T sedan, and lit a virgin factory smoke. He always tried to park far enough away that he wouldn’t hear his sister-in-law moan and yip, groan and succumb, talk dirty or tell lies. This cabin was a favorite, and the pole-driven, rope-pulled, one-man ferry across the Current was seldom in heavy use. Forest erupted springtime-green rose unbroken on the slopes to a high vee, and blocked from view all but a split of blue sky and the river. The water had a clarity that would in afternoon light allow Buster to admire his face on the surface and see through himself to count individual rocks on the riverbed.

  The cabin was built of raw wood from trees felled nearby, sawed into wide planks and pegged into place neither varnished nor rubbed altogether free of curled shavings or splinters. The pioneer roughness of the cabin oddly gave it considerable appeal as a love nest. The bed was near to ground with a fat mattress and the dabbling pan sat on the dresser. Ruby dragged the sponge from the pan under her arms and through her pungent narrows, smiled his way, said, “Okay, yup, I do like their hats. But it’s their shoes give me shivers. People notice shoes. You think it’s rings or necklaces or maybe just eyes—but it’s shoes that make ’em look close and get a first idea of you.”

  “I’ll give shoes some thought.”

  Ruby came bedside and knelt, laid the sponge onto him where it mattered and rubbed. “Can’t have her catchin’ my smell left on you.”

  “She won’t smell it there.”

  “It might soak into your britches.”

  “She won’t there, either.”

  “Maybe I just like washin’ you.”

  “I didn’t say stop.”

  Buster sober and alone had to regrow his life from the dirt up, and it was a harrowing process but a solemn duty, too, rising from flat on his face to his knees, to standing, to standing upright and walking on with a lessening wobble to his stride. Different clothes helped, gave him a different posture. He became straighter and taller when resplendent in a cloth cap from Galway, tweed jacket, flannel slacks—in return for secret chauffeuring he received favors from Mr. Glencross, whose greatest favor of all was to share Buster’s height and waist size and to quickly tire of excellent clothes. Buster in recent times wore fine and sporty threads with labels from New York, London, Boston and Havana. Glencross sometimes teased him with the aroma of scotch whisky (a political figure supplied him with Teacher’s Highland Cream by the case throughout the years of Prohibition) raised and passed beneath his nose, sometimes teased too much and meanly appealed to Buster’s gross familiarity with defeat, but otherwise they got along swell and there were the woven benefits that fit so well and modest tips in cash. Glencross could not have his Lincoln Phaeton seen parked in front of country hotels, highway motor courts, cabins at the river, and under no imaginable circumstances would it be proper for Ruby DeGeer to be seen alone in his company—any scandal provoked by his Phaeton being noticed where it ought not be, or even whispering of a possible scandal might cripple or sink a banker in a town so small, and he found his public ease now at no other level but the heights and was not willing to fall.

  During the week before the Arbor Dance Hall blast, Alma pleaded with Ruby in the shack to drop this new fella and return to Glencross, he kept weeping so in empty rooms and neglecting business, disrupting his own household with sadness and unaddressed odd talk. Buster’s drunken death was yet so ugly and fresh and she craved calm, calm, why won’t you see Arthur Glencross loves you as best he can? Ruby sat listening with her shoulders down but hopped up with eyes averted and with a weak toss sent her last hat toward the nearest wall. It fell short and went down limp as a harvested dove. She said, “This will be sorry news to hear, sister, and I didn’t want to say it, not ever say it for you to hear, but it’ll give you the answer you’re huntin’”: Buster would not drink. He would not drink and drove very carefully on those slender bumpy backroads, eased over sections that had washed out and become rolling wrinkles of dirt or eroded to a steep tilt that required he drive at a slant. Glencross sometimes had one too many and other parts of who he truly was inside slipped out and went on display. He liked to taunt folks just a little bit when pie-eyed. He and Ruby were riding in the back so they could duck from sight when ducking was required, and he opened the second bottle for another slug of scotch he didn’t need. They came across two grinning kids with switches and a mutt driving hogs to the sale barn at Mountain View and that slowed them. The weather was fine, all kinds of sky and not cold or hot. It was called Eleven Point Road and only lightly stamped into the dirt and narrowly snaked those leaning hillsides. The kids used switches and the mutt to part the hogs at the next wide spot and Buster picked a way through. The bigger boy trotted beside the window and asked, “How fast will she go?”

  “Fast enough to get me there.”

  “Bare feet’ll get you there, mister.”

  “Not as fast.”

  “Show us how fast, would you?”

  They needed to make time back to town and came up fast and honking behind an old man in a mule-drawn wagon who didn’t pull aside but gave them looks over his shoulder that hinted he did not much respect the assumed dominance of automobiles on the road or those modernized people who did. Glencross said to pass the sonofabitch but there was no room and Buster said so.

  “Pass that sonofabitch.”

  “There’s no room.”

  “Maybe if you had just one tiny drink you’d get the nerve up to pass that sonofabitch.”

  “There’s no room.”

  “Here, perhaps a mere smell of this will do the trick.”

  “Get that away—I don’t drink—hold on to your hats back there.”

  The road-mud skirting broke away beneath the wheels when Buster drove wide to pass and dropped them down-slope to the south. The car slammed along with tires touching ground to bounce and ended as part of a tree with the hood crushed upward almost straight and Buster wasn’t moving. The steering wheel pushed into his chest. Released dashboard pieces, sprung seats, dust and personal items scrambled about inside the car or flew out. The motor ticked and wheezed and wheels spun and creaked. The windshield showed green leaves and blue sky behind cracked glass and Buster’s blood had reached the cracks to flow them as tracings. He made sounds but did not speak or move.

  Ruby had a broken left forearm and bruises on her neck and brow, but rolled from the backseat onto weeds. Gasoline smell was strong and spreading. Glencross heaved in his chest and hacked blood and phlegm but joined her in the weeds. When he could stand he looked in on Buster. You could see the future cross the banker’s mind and scare him cold. He saw tomorrow forget his name and title and stroll past him without so much as a fond glance his way, and dulled years ahead living faded from wealth, and didn’t care a bit for the depleted sights or sensations. Blood leaked onto his own coat and shirt collar from his nose. He went down to his knees at the car aimed up and reached under for the bottle of scotch and carried it to the steering wheel where he sprinkled whisky over Buster, whose eyes moved his way and blinked. Buster impaled was sloshed by whisky he craved in anguish every day but denied to himself of late in his strengthening pursuit of benediction, and weakened horribly as the homing smell gathered and rose about him. Glencross pulled Ruby to her feet, and said, “We’ve got to get to West Table.”

  “What about Buster?”

  “He’s a goner and we aren’t. I can’t be caught here.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “They’ll smell him and that will be that. I
can’t be caught here.”

  “We need to find help.”

  “There’s no help around anywhere near—look at that old man drive those mules away. Think he’s going for help?”

  “I think he might be.”

  “I can’t be caught here—coming?”

  And Ruby did so state to her sister that she considered running, gave thought to fleeing Buster as he died, but something in her center came awake and she saw … she had not suspected him to be this brute bigwig now revealed in alarm before her, but understood on the instant that he was, he was, and felt sickened in a manner she’d never been sickened before. She reported, “Everything about him said it. If one more of us was gone forever in a crash he considered that not much lost. He left me, too. East Side dirty-leg. Everything about him … we just don’t mean spit where it counts.”

  She did alone and with pain crawl back into the Ford, gas smell or no, and raised her working arm to touch her fingers to Buster, on the face, the shoulder. She stroked his hair murmuring whatever noises bubbled up, whispered the same, and he watched clear sky dimming through the bloody cracks and no help arrived for almost five hours. He was dead after one. She touched him for two, woke on the grass and weeds when somber kids with switches and a mutt returned leading adults carrying lanterns. In sleep she had stiffened. She couldn’t swing her left arm or stand unaided. The next day Glencross said to her immediately after a plaster cast had been applied at the Bogan Hospital on Osage Street, “I did what I did for us, Ruby.”