Daisies
Joshua Senter
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 2014 by Joshua Senter
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition May 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-299-4
Ev’n thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine
—Robert Burns
Part One
He Loves Me
Gwen Hisel and Willie Barnett were from common folk. They grew up just a couple farms away from one another in Oklahoma when the land was still veined with dirt roads and pig wrestling was considered a sport. Gwen was shy, insecure about her large feet and hands and her rather masculine looks. She was half Cherokee on her mother’s side and half German on her father’s, tall and gauche in a permanent kind of way. Willie was awkward himself, didn’t try to throw his shoulders back like most guys, let his belly hang out a little. He was the relaxed sort who was known for telling jokes.
In the summertime, after the fields had been hayed, the neighborhood boys would play baseball in the alfalfa stubble left by the mowers back behind the Barnetts’ house, and Gwen would come watch with her three younger sisters, making sure the little ones stayed out of trouble while keeping an eye on the game at the same time. She wore sundresses—flimsy, simple things that had been washed too many times—and no shoes. Yet, although her feet were tough from walking around barefoot everywhere, Willie would sneak peeks at them, wish he could kiss them, wash the dust out from between the crevasses of her toes, off her ankles and calves. Gwen didn’t pay much attention to any of the boys growing into men around her or even her own body blossoming right alongside theirs. She let her mind wonder about more important things, like caring for the vegetable garden she and her full-blood Cherokee mother, Sila, had put so much work into and if they had enough Mason jars for canning all the okra they intended to harvest. Of course, this supposed disinterest only fueled Willie’s fire. He would walk by the Hisels’ house in the evenings and yell out for her. “Gwennie! Gwendolyn Sue, come out here! I got a joke to tell you!” She would roll her eyes in the hot kitchen, where she cut biscuit dough and snapped peas with Sila in preparation for supper.
“Momma, would you tell that boy to go away?” Gwen would huff.
Sila would just smile and call out the side door. “You go on home, Willie Barnett.”
“You sure do look pretty tonight, Mrs. Hisel,” Willie would say, unembarrassed at the rejection and hardly deterred.
This always got a laugh from Sila, who would shake her head doubtfully before disappearing back into the kitchen, where Gwen maintained her disinterest.
In the wintertime, Willie would offer to walk Gwen and her sisters to school. It wasn’t far, less than a mile. Many days they wouldn’t say a thing to one another, just trek through the thick pack that blanketed the flat prairie land they lived on. Willie would carry the youngest girl, Sadie, when her feet got too cold and sing songs to them all that he’d learned while working cattle out on his Uncle Chuck’s cattle ranch in Paul’s Valley during the fall roundups—songs like “Horses are a Cowboy’s True Love” and “The Hymns Coyotes Sing.”
Other times, Willie would ask Gwen how her studies were going, and she would answer quietly, eyes downcast, “All is well, Willie.”
“Why don’t you ever look at me when we talk?” he finally asked one day.
They were halfway home on a particularly warm winter afternoon. The snow beneath their feet was slushy, and it soaked through Gwen’s leather boots and woolen socks, chilling her toes. Gwen stopped and looked Willie squarely in the eyes, opening her mouth to say something, then quickly averted her gaze to the ground beneath her once again. She didn’t know what to say. Indeed, she couldn’t look at him. Why couldn’t she? Her heart began beating at an alarming rate beneath her peacoat, and suddenly she was hot, a gunshot sweat breaking out all over her body.
“I’m not gonna bite you, I promise, Gwennie,” Willie prodded.
Gwen’s sisters stood alongside a small puddle, breaking the frosty sheet that had formed over the top of it with their boots, creating little islands of ice in the murky, red water underneath.
“Look me in the eyes,” Willie said again.
Gwen thought about this a moment. Just look him in the eyes, she told herself. The sun was already on its way toward an early sunset, its blinding light glinting off the snow directly into Gwen’s face. She slowly lifted her head to Willie. Then she lifted her eyes to meet his.
He broke into a broad smile.
“What are you laughing at?” She quickly started off toward her house again, calling the girls to follow.
“I’m not laughing, Gwennie.” Willie walked in front of her and turned around facing her, walking backward.
“What are you doing?”
“I wasn’t laughing at you.”
Gwen stopped again, but only looked down at her feet. “You can’t walk backward.”
“I’ll stop if you’ll look at me again.”
“Land sakes, why do you need me to look at you?” Gwen huffed, exasperated.
“Just ’cause.”
Gwen shook her head like her mother would do when she was uncertain of the next action she should take. She bit her bottom lip. Her thoughts were flying dizzyingly around her head, and she couldn’t seem to grab just one to think of, something that would help extract her from her presently uncomfortable situation. And suddenly, she was crying.
Willie was mortified. “Oh, geez. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Gwen shook her head. Her little sisters were now watching, imploring Gwen to tell them what was wrong. She shooed them away, hissed at them to go on home. After a moment, Gwen and Willie were standing alone on the stretch of road between the schoolhouse and her dad’s farm. It was quiet, peaceful. A slight breeze had picked up, and Gwen pulled her coat in closer, but other than that, she didn’t move. Willie didn’t move either, his gaze averted to his feet now, too. Then, synchronized, as they would become for the rest of their lives, they both looked up at the same time into one another’s eyes. Willie didn’t smile this time. Neither did Gwen. They just stared at each other, sending messages by way of pupil, retina, visual cortex.
Then Willie extended his hand to Gwen. It was a rough hand, weathered for a fifteen-year-old, a little stubby with calluses and scars. She looked at it a moment, almost unsure as to what she should do with it. Then she removed her mitten and took Willie’s hand in hers, and they walked the rest of the way home without a word, occasionally looking over at one another, meeting each other’s eyes, knowing at once nothing and everything about one another.
After that day, it became common knowledge that Willie and Gwen were an item. Their parents weren’t displeased by the adolescent union. Gwen and Willie were both rural kids, their worlds rotating on the same axis. Besides, it wasn’t serious so far as anyone could tell. No, the differences were slight. In fact, the only thing that really changed was that now, whenever Gwen and Willie were near one another, they would look one another in the eyes, maintaining a conversation that spoke volumes no one else could hear. Occasionally they would be seen h
olding hands, especially that first spring, when the dead winter fields began to show signs of life, shooting up daisies that Gwen would pick and take home to fill her parents’ house.
Willie helped with this task of his own accord. Every Friday evening, once his chores were done but before the light of day had vanished, he would drop in on the Hisels’ house, dressed as though for Sunday church or going out on the town with his buddies, and he would wait on the porch with Gwen’s father, Charles, talking about the oncoming summer and whether it would be dry or rainy, while Gwen finished washing the dinner dishes and bleaching the kitchen countertops. Gwen would also don one of her better outfits and dab a fingerprint of her momma’s perfume behind each ear before she appeared on the porch to meet Willie. Then, with a wink, Gwen’s father would tell them he had a radio program he didn’t want to miss and head back inside the house, leaving the two youngsters alone. On these evenings, Willie would offer his hand to Gwen, and she would take it. He would lead her toward the field behind her parents’ house. At the old, wooden gate, he would let go of her hand and open it while she waited patiently. Then he would usher her into the field and close the gate behind them. If one were to watch them from afar, one might believe Gwen and Willie were indifferent to one another, their lips never moving in conversation, their focus seeming to reside solely on the plucking of flowers until Gwen’s arms were full.
Did they love each other? Neither Gwen nor Willie could say. Secretly each of them understood they couldn’t possibly know what love was at their age. Gwen would simply look over at Willie and see him picking daisies carefully from the base of the plant so the stems were nice and long, and she would admire his grace. Even if grace wasn’t a word you could use to describe a boy, that is how she would have described him. When he walked, he seemed to float. When he knelt down, his movements were gentle and smooth, effortless. Even his voice was graceful, soft but firm. There wasn’t a consonant that slipped from Willie’s mouth that Gwen didn’t savor in her own. Ultimately, she was safe with him. That’s what it was. Even when Willie left Gwen’s side, she never worried or wondered when she would see him next. She only knew she would.
None of Willie’s buddies ever asked why he had fallen for the tallest girl in their school, who was freckled and big-boned. They knew better than to question Willie’s reasons for doing anything. He was a sensible guy who did sensible things. He wasn’t the smartest guy in school, but he made good marks. When they went out, Willie drank, but never to excess. His buddies could always count on Willie to keep them out of trouble, and he kept many a nose intact through humor when the rare fight broke out among them. Maybe it was Gwen’s seriousness that drew Willie to her. She was one of those people who laughed on the inside, he thought. He couldn’t joke around with her. He couldn’t make her laugh. In many ways, Willie thought Gwen was so much better than him, better than anybody because she was so quiet. She carried an air of wisdom around her like the sun. She was what his uncle had called an “old soul,” filled with decades of knowledge despite her tender age of barely sixteen, and Willie loved that about her. She was like the flowers they picked, quietly coloring the world, not surprising at all, coming back year after year, constant, simple, safe. And, despite learning all he could about Gwendolyn Sue Hisel, the truth was Willie never allowed himself to let her stop being a mystery.
The day Willie decided to ask Gwen to marry him was one year and three months before they were to graduate high school. He hadn’t planned to pop the question. He had thought about it only briefly, as one might think of something that was already a given. They were on their way home from school on a Friday afternoon. It was warm despite being midwinter. Gwen’s sisters ran ahead of Willie and Gwen. They had decided over the past couple years that Willie and Gwen and their verseless handholding were too boring to care about. It was true that Willie and Gwen were hardly a dramatic couple, having learned principles from their parents early on that endowed them with a maturity that was necessary to survive the harsh landscape on which they grew up, besieged with tornadoes, blizzards, and unwieldy food crops that had endgames all their own despite human attempts at intervention. If a person had sustenance and a roof over his or her head, the world was good, and they knew anything else was cream, including having a husband or wife that you actually enjoyed sharing those simplest pleasures with.
“Aren’t you hot in that coat?” Willie asked Gwen.
She was, and she unbuttoned it without answering.
“If you want me to carry it for you…”
“You already got my books.”
They walked on in silence a little longer. Gwen had been taking this route home from school for thirteen years, yet every day it surprised her, the something new that appeared. Some cloud. Some bird. A flower that seemed to have sprung up overnight. The way the shadows of the electric poles fell across the road at angles today, even though only two weeks ago at this same time they fell across it in straight lines. It was God’s little way of reminding us he existed, she thought.
“You haven’t said ten words to me this entire week. Is everything okay?” Willie asked.
“What do you want me to say?” Gwen replied.
Honestly, Willie didn’t know, but he blurted out, as if it fell in line with the conversation, “Do you want to marry me?”
This was the first time the idea of any permanent situation between Gwen and Willie had been brought up. Gwen didn’t look at him, just answered. “Of course I do.”
Willie nodded his head and, for some reason he couldn’t quite explain, continued the train of thought.
“When?”
“When, what?”
“When do you want to marry me?”
Gwen shrugged and looked off into the distance. “Anytime, I guess.”
“Today?”
She finally looked at him. Was he serious? He was. She stopped, looked down at her feet, her mind considering the different answers she might give, as though they were written on her boots. But only one came to mind. “Sure,” she said.
Willie nodded. “Well, I guess we better go tell your momma and daddy so we can get down to the courthouse before it closes.”
Gwen looked ahead to where her sisters were kicking at some piece of road-kill.
Willie started walking again. For a moment, Gwen didn’t follow. In fact, she turned and looked back at the road behind them, the direction they had just come from. Yes, she had taken this route so many times, but each time it was different.
“You coming?” Willie asked.
She smiled and turned to Willie. “You can’t get married without a wife.” And she walked toward him and took his outstretched hand.
The rest of the way to Gwen’s house neither of them said anything. They didn’t rush. There was no zing of static in the air. Her parents were not surprised by the news. Gwen’s father gave his blessing with a wink to them both and sent them on their way with five dollars. Willie’s mother, Faye, was even more agreeable and took them in her car to the courthouse downtown, where she stood witness to their union. Just before walking inside the impressive brick building, Gwen picked the head of an early blooming daisy from a flowerbed along the sidewalk and slipped it into the lapel of her coat. She and Willie held hands while the judge issued their marriage certificate. He was the only one who seemed skeptical of the arrangement. But a job was a job, and kids did all kinds of crazy things these days. After signing the marriage license, he announced them man and wife. Willie’s mother cried and hugged both Willie and Gwen. Then she gave them seven dollars, enough for dinner and a room at the hotel down the street.
The Royal Peacock was the first hotel Gwen had ever stayed at. It was sherbet green, one story, shaped in a horseshoe, with parking in front of each of the royal blue room doors. When Willie and Gwen approached the carport of the hotel, the woman behind the front desk looked at them skeptically. Willie went on inside and talked with her while Gwen stood alone on the outside of the glass and w
atched. When the woman gestured at Gwen during what appeared to be a spirited conversation with Willie, Gwen immediately looked down and didn’t look back up again until ten minutes later, when Willie appeared with the key to a room.
“She didn’t believe we were married. She called my momma and everything, just to check!” Willie exclaimed.
Gwen said nothing and let Willie lead her to room seven—a lucky number, Willie pointed out. Willie had been to a hotel in Arkansas with his family when his great-grandmother had passed. He’d had to sleep on the floor along with his two other brothers while his parents shared the bed.
The room at the Royal Peacock was small and dark and smelled of hard alcohol, wet cigarettes, rosewater perfume, and disinfectant. The bed stood like an anchor against one wall with a turquoise blue quilt folded across the end and a green duvet covering the whole of it. A beat-up side table barely appeared to stand next to the bed on tiny legs, holding up an unlit ceramic lamp with peacocks painted on the sides and a chipped ashtray that had been emptied, but not cleaned. The floor was covered in a few braided rugs, laid out over its oily smooth, wood surface. The only wall hangings were the curtains covering the window, a small mirror hung next to the bathroom door, and an oil painting of a still life of daisies hanging opposite the bed over a chest of drawers.
Willie let Gwen into the room ahead of him and then closed the door. It was quiet inside despite the groans of the building as it stood against the prairie winds that shoved against it. Willie tried to reach out and touch the small of Gwen’s back. Then didn’t. She heard the fabric of his shirt unfold as he reached for her and wrinkle again when he pulled back like a silent accordion. Neither of them knew quite what to do. They both just kept looking at the bed in the middle of the room, lit in the darkness by the filtered early evening light streaming in the window. But it was the lack of sound that made Gwen move. It was the safety of that silence, like the inside of her mother’s belly, that caused her to place one foot in front of the other and step toward the window. She gently took both curtain panels and pulled them toward one another until they met in a starchy kiss. Now everything in the room existed in ghostly outline. Willie could barely make out Gwen’s frame but could hear the rustle of wool against cotton as she removed her coat and laid it across the only chair in the room. He had barely allowed himself to think about this moment before—he and Gwen alone in a room. He had certainly touched himself in his uncle’s barn, lying in the hay alone with his eyes closed. But in those moments, he had only ever imagined Gwen’s breasts as a sort of vapor, as he had only ever seen them hidden behind layers of silk and cotton or her fanny curving out from beneath her skirts. He’d never kissed a woman before, let alone seen one naked. And he wasn’t sure quite what to expect. He’d seen cattle mate, as well as dogs and cats. He’d heard his buddies mention sex ever so discreetly and knew, after marriage, as much was expected on the honeymoon. So he understood what lay before him in the next few seconds, minutes, hours of his life, but he was uncertain about how to initiate such goings-on. Dogs snuck up on one another, as did cows, and then they just went to town. Tomcats would violently bite the scruff of their female counterpart’s neck to hold them in place while they did their work. Willie knew he needed to be erect in order to mate with Gwen, yet he felt, as nervous sweat beaded up on his forehead, such arousal was a near impossibility. He wanted to make a joke to lighten the moment. He’d always had something funny to say. But his mind was racing so fast it was blurred, and he couldn’t seem to grab ahold of a cohesive thought. So he just stood there in the dark, arms at his sides, eyes full of fear, knees weak.
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