Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Nothing is terrible except fear. Ignorance and fear. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. We’ll work out a schedule of appointments.” He stood up, came around the desk, held out his hand. He was standing very still, a powerfully built muscular man with kind eyes, dark brown eyes set deeply into a kind face. Olivia met his eyes and smiled, then looked away. It was too nice, too tender, she could not bear that much intimacy. That much love.

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She turned at the door. “What should I do about Bobby? Should I give him back the ring?”

  “I wouldn’t do that yet. Not while he’s unhappy. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

  She left the building and got into her father’s car and strapped the seat belt on and turned on a radio station playing country music. She drove through the city of Tulsa listening to music and thinking about Doctor Coder. Maybe it wasn’t so hopeless after all. Maybe she could have Bobby and keep it a secret from her dad. I ought to go and get some pills, she thought. I’ll do it tomorrow as soon as I get out of class.

  Bobby lay stretched out across his bed in the trailer. It was five in the afternoon and it was hot. The fan blew across his naked shoulders. His calculus book was propped up against a saddle. He studied the figures. He dove deep down into the calculus and forgot the heat and his father’s voice on the phone from the jail cell in Iowa City.

  “Forget about me,” the voice had said. “I got what I deserved and I got caught. If you break the law, you get caught. Take care of Sharrene if you feel like it or don’t even talk to her if you don’t want to. She’s going to Oklahoma City to stay with her folks in a few days anyway. You can move into the house when she’s gone. I got the rent paid for the rest of the month and there’s enough money in the bank to pay the utilities. You take what’s left of it and use it for yourself. I’m going to call Bunk Halliday and tell him to let you take out the money. They said I could use the phone to call him. So you go see him tomorrow.”

  “Can I help you?” Bobby had said.

  “No. Hell, no, I’ll be all right. Hell, they got the jails so crowded with criminals they may not be able to find a place to keep me. Don’t worry, son. I’ll be all right. There’s a spade in here who used to rodeo in Kansas City. He’s all right. He’s turning out to be a buddy. You go on and get your education. It’s time a Tree got a college education. Well, I got to go now. They don’t want me talking all night.”

  “I love you, Dad. I sure am sorry about all this.”

  “Sorry never bought a meal, son. I took a gamble and lost. You stay clean, you hear? Do your schoolwork. That’s what you can do for me.”

  The phone went dead and Bobby went back out to the trailer and took off his shirt and lay down to study the beautiful calculus of Newton.

  He had been studying for two hours. One more hour and then I’ll get washed up and wait for her to get back, he decided. I’ll take her out to the lake and we can go swimming and get some burgers and have a picnic. Hell, she knows who I am. She’s got the ring, doesn’t she? Not that she’d ever marry me anyway, much less now. Her rich kinfolks will be coming down here to collect her any day. Well, I knew that was coming. Who have I been fooling?

  “Bobby.” It was Sharrene outside the window of the trailer, calling out in her little nasal country voice. “Bobby, come in and talk on the phone. It’s your friends in Montana. They said to call you to the phone.”

  He got up from the bed and pulled on his pants and walked out of the trailer and went on a run across the yard to the house. “Thanks, Sharrene,” he called over his shoulder. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “What’s happening?” Tom Macalpin said. “Why did I dream about you last night and again this afternoon?”

  “What did you dream?”

  “I dreamed you ran into a room quoting Dante. You aren’t studying literature, are you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But my dad’s in jail for running coke, so if you dreamed I was in trouble you got that right.”

  “Sherrill, his father’s in jail. See, it was a message. She said it was a message and I pooh-poohed her.”

  “What did I say in the dream?”

  “You came running into the room and said ‘Dante,’ then you spread out your arms like wings and started quoting.

  ‘The day was departing and the darkening air

  was taking the creatures that are on the earth

  from their daily toil, and I alone

  was preparing to endure the hardship

  both of the journey and of the pity

  which unerring memory will relate.’

  It’s Beatrice’s opening canto on Good Friday. The sun that cheered Dante is going down.”

  “Well, it’s sure going down for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I know I’ve got to find someplace to live and I’ve got to go out tomorrow and find a job.”

  “Get one that will let you stay in school.”

  “I’ll find one. They’re building the turnpike around here so there’s plenty of construction work, or Kayo’ll give me work at the ranch. I’ll be okay. I may not have a girl by the time the day is over. She’s in Tulsa talking to some psychiatrist. I guess he’ll tell her to get rid of me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she’s haughty. She can’t stand for things to go wrong. She cares what people think of her. She won’t stay around me when people know my dad’s in jail. Hell, Tom, I know her. I been studying her for years.”

  “Then you have to stop loving her. You can’t throw your heart down on the ground for her to trample on.”

  “She isn’t mean, she’s just how she is. She’s proud.”

  “I thought you told me she got you to sneak into the school and change her records on a computer, so she’s not the soul of honesty and virtue, now is she?”

  “That was a one-time deal. It was a long time ago.”

  “Remind her of it.”

  “I couldn’t do that. Well, I better go get cleaned up. She’ll be back soon. She said she was coming by here but I don’t think she’ll do it. She’ll go home and wait awhile, then call me up and make some lame excuse.”

  “If I was as proud as you say she is, I’d act better than that before I started judging other people.”

  “She’s just like she is. She didn’t ask me to come down here.”

  “But she’s got the ring.”

  “She’s got it. She doesn’t wear it much, but she keeps it.”

  “Bobby.”

  “Yes.”

  “Take care of yourself. Protect your flank.”

  “Maybe you ought to fuck somebody else.” It was Sherrill getting boiling mad on the other phone.

  “Sherrill, not now.”

  “Hey, Sherrill, thanks for calling.”

  “Go out with somebody else if she doesn’t come by. To hell with her. I’ve had it with this girl, Bobby. I’m about sick to death of this goddamn snotty little Miss Hand. Her aunt was the snottiest broad I ever met in my life. I never did like her. Everyone was always sucking up to her at writers conferences and talking about her humanity. I thought she was a snob. This girl sounds just like her. Come on back up here with us. We need you. We’re shorthanded and Tom’s hurt his back.”

  “Hang up, Sherrill. Don’t start all that.”

  “To hell with this little bitch chewing on his heart. You could have plenty of good fine women, Bobby.”

  “Hang up, Sherrill. Let me finish talking.”

  She slammed the receiver down on the phone and Bobby started laughing. “Now you’ve done it, Thomas. Now you won’t get any for a week.”

  “Trust your instincts, Bobby,” Tom said. “If you want her enough to put up with all of this, maybe she’s worth waiting for.”

  “She is to me. She’s what I want. And I’m not giving up on her, not yet, if she doesn’t give up on me. But she might.”

  Chapter 30
<
br />   OLIVIA drove home from Tulsa in a driving rain. Hard, straight, gray rain that filled the valleys and woods with mist. Long trails of pale gray mist swirled upwards from the trees, mixed with the dark gray falling water. By the time she was ten miles down the road from Tulsa, it was dark from horizon to horizon. She turned off the radio, tightened her seat belt and tried to pay attention, remembering a night she and Mary Lily had turned the Pontiac around in the middle of the road coming back from a rodeo in Springdale. Goddamn this rain, Olivia was thinking. Now I’ll be late and Bobby will think it’s because his dad’s in jail. Well, I don’t have to solve his problems. That’s what Doctor Coder said. He said, Don’t try to solve other people’s problems. If you try to remove the impact, you’ll get shit all over you. He was talking about trying to fix a blocked intestine in a fat man when he was an intern. He said, Remember this, Olivia, if you try to remove the impact, you’ll get shit all over you. Well, I wonder if he’s going to tell me things like that all the time. I can’t stop thinking about it. God, it must be awful to be an intern. I’ll have to ask Georgia when I see her. I’ll go eat breakfast with her in the morning and tell her what he said. Look at this rain, will you. Look at all this goddamn rain.

  Olivia slowed down even more and drove steadily down the curving highway. There was hardly another car on the road. I guess no one’s fool enough to drive in this, she decided. I’m getting off at the next exit and wait for it to slow down. Well, it’s Green Country and we’re in Tornado Alley. Weather gets together from the whole country here. Gets together and gets wilder. Powwow. Tornado Alley, that’s about par, that’s about what they would give the Cherokee when they ran them out of Carolina.

  She pulled off the highway at Locust Grove and went to the doughnut shop and called Bobby. It took a long time for anyone to answer the phone but finally Sharrene answered it and said she’d look for him. In a few minutes she returned and said he wasn’t there. “What’s going on with Mr. Tree?” Olivia asked. “I’m stuck in Locust Grove, Sharrene. It’s pouring rain. Is it raining there?”

  “It sure is. It’s been raining all day. Bud’s in big trouble, honey. I’m going to Oklahoma City to stay with my folks. He sounds okay, though. He sounds pretty good. I guess he’s in for a while, though. The plane was stolen, but no one told Bud about it. It had papers. He thought the papers was good.”

  “Were good. Never mind. I don’t want to know about it. Listen, Sharrene, you have to leave Bobby a note and tell him I called. I wish you’d go find him, but I guess that’s too much trouble, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know where he’d be.”

  “Try the pool hall. Call and see if you can find him. Anyway, leave him a note, okay? Tell him I’ll call when I get home.”

  “Okay, honey. I’ll find him if I can.” Sharrene hung up the phone, got a beer out of the refrigerator, opened it, and sat down to write the note. She made a couple of beginnings but she couldn’t spell Olivia so she got frustrated and tore up the notes. She tried to call the pool hall but the line was busy so she went back to the note.

  “Dear Bobby, your girl called and said she was in Locust Grove.” She looked at the note for a while but she still didn’t like the way it looked, so she tore it up and started one more time. “Dear Bobby, your girl said she would call you when she got home. Love, Sharrene.” She looked at that for a while and decided she liked it. She was searching for an envelope when her brother called from Oklahoma City to say they would come the next afternoon to help her move.

  “You take plenty of furniture,” he was saying. “Don’t come out of this empty-handed like you always do, Sharrene. Me and Dad aren’t going to support you this time. We want you to come home but you got to carry your own weight. I got plenty of people to take care of without adding you to the list.”

  By the time she finished talking to her brother, Sharrene was so mad she had forgotten all about the note. She opened a second beer and went downtown to go shopping, leaving the note still attached to the pad and lying on the table.

  Olivia stayed at the doughnut shop long enough to drink two cups of coffee, then she got back into the car and pulled back out onto the turnpike. The rain was slacking but it was still falling.

  It’s possible to be alone and not be lonely. That’s what Doctor Coder had said. She could love Bobby without needing him so much that she’d give her life to him. Nothing’s draining all the lifeblood out of me every two hours, she decided. Then what will we do? Be like Georgia and her boyfriend and never have the courage to live together? Why should it take courage if it’s such a good idea? Tell me that. Did I ever see anybody who was married who lived happily ever after? No. The minute they get married, the honeymoon is over.

  So what do we do? I asked him. Get smart, he said. If you want to be happy you have to work for it. You have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and you have to take chances and you have to talk.

  So when I get home we’re going to talk about it. I’ll say, Bobby, it bums me out that your dad’s in jail. I don’t want to be mixed up in that. If my dad finds out he’ll never speak to me again. No one in the Hand family will be mixed up with criminals. So then what? So go with me to North Carolina in the fall. Oh, yeah. Well, first you have to meet my dad.

  She shook her head and drove on home. There weren’t any answers to any of this. Just problem after problem after problem.

  It was late when she got home and she was tired of thinking. She kept meaning to pick up the phone and call Bobby but she couldn’t get herself to do it. Finally, at ten-thirty he called her. “I decided to call you,” he said. “I figured that shrink told you to get rid of me.”

  “It bums me out that your dad’s in jail. I can’t be mixed up in that, Bobby. If my dad finds out he’ll never speak to me again. No one in the Hand family ever had to go to jail. My granddaddy is a lawyer. I don’t want to say this to you. Why’d you call me up? If you hadn’t called me, you wouldn’t be hearing this.”

  “I knew that’s how you’d feel. What can I do about it, honey? I didn’t do it. Maybe I ought to go up to Montana and go back to work for Tom. Hell, I don’t know what to do.”

  “What’d you do all day while I was gone?”

  “I got a job, for one thing. Driving a bulldozer for Jay Knight. Three hundred a week and I can do it in my spare time.”

  “Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”

  “You want me to come out and talk to you?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I have to think about it. I have to go to the shrink again tomorrow.”

  “Twice in one week?”

  “I’m going to go three times a week. Maybe four.”

  The line was quiet. He’s a man, Olivia was thinking. He never whines. He knows how to wait. “We’ll go somewhere day after tomorrow,” she offered. “I have to think about all this. And I have to tell the truth about how I feel, Bobby. If we start lying we’ll never figure out what to do.”

  “I know what to do. I don’t have any choice.”

  “I’ll see you day after tomorrow in the afternoon. Maybe we can go to the lake.”

  “I’m yours. Whatever you want to do.” He glanced down at the table. Saw Sherrill’s scribbled note. Thought about how poor and mean the world he lived in was. Looked off into the living room. He couldn’t love a thing he saw, and yet a huge strange thought was in his heart, the thought of Olivia in a home with him.

  “I’m sorry I’m this way,” she said.

  “The way you are is fine. I’ll see you in two days then.” He hung up the phone and went out into the yard and watched the last of the clouds moving across the moon. The trees were dark and wet, the world was saturated with water. The huge strange thought was in him still. It would carry him through the night.

  Chapter 31

  THE psychiatrist kept Olivia waiting the second day. She spent a long time looking through old New Yorker magazines and getting up and looking out the wind
ow. Finally, he opened the door and she went in and lay down on the sofa and began to cry. She told him about her aunt Anna and what it had been like to wait for her father to call her up and say he wanted to see her.

  “He didn’t know Momma had me. Why didn’t she tell him? What a mean thing to do. I think she was mean. Everyone says she was mean. I hate her for dying and leaving me and for not telling Dad. I think he’s mad at me because he didn’t know. Maybe he’s just mad at me for being here. All the time after I wrote Aunt Anna and she came to see me, all the time I felt like a beggar, like I was begging my own father to admit I was alive. And Jessie is so perfect, well, she’s a fool but she looks perfect. She’s so beautiful people go crazy when they see her. It didn’t change a thing for her to have K.T. If anything she’s prettier than she was. I miss her. I loved having her those two years we lived together at Dad’s. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to love.” She put her face down into her hands and wept deep hard tears. When she looked up the psychiatrist was waiting.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “What do you need?”

  “I want to get in the car with Bobby and drive down and see Jessie and King and K.T. I want to take Bobby to Tipitina’s to hear the Nevilles and introduce him to Andria and eat beignets in the French Quarter. I want to have a good time for God’s sake. I’m sick of Tahlequah already. Sick of school. Bobby’s better than King. If they high-hat him, I’ll never speak to them again.”

  “Have you talked to your sister?”

  “Yes. She invited us to come. It’s a thirteen-hour drive but I’ve got Dad’s car. We could leave on Friday and go down and come back Sunday night and drive all night and get here for our classes. It looks like I could have a good time some time, doesn’t it?”