Queen of October

by Mickle, Shelley Fraser

  I walked down the makeup aisle and stood politely thumbing through the nail files. In front of me was this picture on a poster of a gorgeous girl with auburn hair and a smile that could melt taffy and inch-long fingernails like my mother’s, painted ruby. My fingernails were bitten off. I walked down all the other aisles and came back. And after I glanced to see if Mr. Weiss was still reading his magazine, I slipped a tube of lipstick in between the pages of my math book like it was a pencil marking a spot.

  “Bye,” I said, walking out.

  Mr. Weiss looked up, smiling. “Didn’t find anything you just couldn’t live without?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Well, you come back now.”

  Outside in the hot sun I made a getaway toward the Mill Pond. The stream was the one that had given Coldwater its name, and it emptied into the river where I’d gone to fish with my father. The bank rose in a long graceful curve, perfect for manicured lawns. Everybody who lived on that street was rich. That’s why my grandmother wanted to move there. That was one of the things about the outhouse that was rubbing her raw. She was the only person in Coldwater who had to look at it all the time.

  I walked along the street, studying the houses. There were only six. Three of them belonged to parts of the Best family and one was Eshek Levy’s. The others were Miss Pankhurst’s and the Coldwater Funeral Home. I stopped and hid in some bushes near Miss Pankhurst’s house and opened my math book. The tube of lipstick I’d swiped was some dumb color called Purple Midnight. It’d look awful on me.

  Coming around the curve, and thumping some of the houses’ front steps with a thrown folded paper, was Joel Weiss. I stood to one side of the huge house that was the funeral home and hid myself in an azalea bush. Joel was a year ahead of me in school and always spent a lot of time at the Lucky Lion, a pool hall at the edge of town, which his father also owned. All through primary school, Joel’s mother would pack foreign foods in his lunch box. I knew what they were, because for a while Mrs. Weiss set up a counter in the dime store. Everyone who went in came out with something kosher. It was Mrs. Weiss’s hope to start a deli, but the farmers’ tastes were already too set on turnip greens and salt pork. Once I saw her talk a man into trying a bagel, and when he got outside he threw it down, saying he had no use for a stiff donut so old the sugar had fallen off.

  I watched Joel weave his way down the street past the hearse parked in front of the funeral home and take a short cut at the end of the street through a car lot. He scooted under a streamer that said YOU AUTO BUY NOW.

  I stood to the side of the funeral home. Just as I was about to leave my hiding spot, the door opened and Tommy Walters came out. I’d heard he’d gotten a job at the funeral home, driving hearses and learning the inside details of the business. Everybody was real happy for him. His mother was a widow, very poor. And it was a fine setup for him, everybody said. But I had also heard he couldn’t get a date anymore.

  I didn’t want to be seen, so I sat down behind the bushes and leaned over, easing the pain in my chest where the knot was like tight fingers squeezing my shoulders together. Probably that was one reason I wasn’t too worried about getting caught stealing. Something worse was going to happen. This thing inside me was a tumor, a cancer. It would spread. It was only a matter of time before I’d probably be in the funeral home with Tommy Walters working on me. It made me sick to think about that. But maybe if I wouldn’t know about it at the time it might not be so bad. And I could see my parents coming to my funeral. They’d be relieved I was gone. Yet they’d cry and grab each other for support, putting on a good show and all, and then they’d get back together. I’d die and they’d get back together over it. I’d have done it. I’d have made everything all right. Tommy Walters got in the hearse and started the engine. And I watched him drive off.

  Crossing the street was someone who for a minute I didn’t recognize. And then she half-trotted, or almost skipped, into the field beside the funeral home. Overgrown with bushes and tall weeds, this field had once been a pecan grove. Even though I didn’t see her face, I recognized B.J.’s clothes and also the way she walked. I had never seen anyone move like that, almost as though she didn’t touch ground. I also thought that I would have to be paid to walk through a field like that in shoes like hers, because of the snakes. But before B.J. reached the end of the field and turned onto the path beside the Mill Pond, I was tromping down knee-high Johnson grass and stepping on rotten pecan shells, trying to follow her. If I stepped on a fat moccasin, surely I would black out before he bit me.

  By the time I got through the field, B.J. was halfway down the path behind Miss Pankhurst’s house. I stood a minute and looked across the Mill Pond. It was very shallow here. Some kids had built a footbridge out of planks, flattened cartons, and a couple of juice cans. On the other side, a bunch of long-horned cows and their calves grazed under trees. I set down my books and sugar-footed it across the makeshift bridge, then walked a little way to some bushes, where I hunkered down, folding my skirt around me, to watch as B.J. went up the long sloping backyard of Sam Best’s.

  Until the cow came toward me, I hadn’t even noticed her. But then I saw she wasn’t looking at me too kindly. And in another second she was coming at me full force, her head lowered and the horns curved like ice tongs aimed for the middle of my Tara dress. I took off in the opposite direction and nearly bumped into the cow’s calf, who must have come up beside the tree I had been hiding behind. I twirled around on my Popeye legs and headed sideways. I had to get anywhere else except between the mother and her calf. I headed straight for the railroad trestle that went over the Mill Pond.

  I climbed onto one of the concrete footings that held up the bridge and spent a while just breathing. Then I leaned out to look at the cow. She was standing near the water. “Asshole!” I said. Her calf loped up beside her and started nursing.

  Now I could hear the sound of people talking on Mr. Best’s back porch. Then the screen door opened and Gill Williams, Sam Best’s driver, along with Sam Best and B.J., came out. They went to the patio on the lawn. B.J. leaned her head toward Mr. Best and rested her hand on his arm. The patio was almost hidden behind a clump of gardenia bushes beside an oak tree. If I hadn’t been sitting under the train trestle I couldn’t have seen them. B.J. was talking, but I could only hear the tone of her voice. Then Gill brought a tray with drinks on it. I’d heard my mother talk about Gill; he’d brought her tomatoes and stuff out of Mr. Best’s garden. Sometimes Gill had sat out in the yard with us at night, cooling off and swapping stories. His chest was sunken because he’d lost a lung in the war. He’d been a pilot, and whenever the weather was cool he wore a leather aviator’s jacket. His face was the color of a baseball glove and looked about as punched as one.

  I heard B.J. laugh. She talked to Mr. Best the whole time she sipped her drink. Then after a while she bent down, put her glass on the tray, and kissed him. That seemed odd to me, seeing as how Sam Best loved my mother and B.J. was supposed to be carrying on with some man who just about lived in my parents’ house. She smiled at Mr. Best and walked to the Mill Pond path to start back the way she’d come. Sam Best watched her go. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  When I looked into the Mill Pond to compare my face with B.J.’s, the big flat-pointed head of a moccasin was coming downstream. My breath sucked in so loud that the cow stopped grazing. I stood up and flattened myself against the concrete, and the cow snorted. The snake saw me, or smelled me—whatever the hell it is that snakes do. Maybe he only liked the dry spot where I was, but he sure seemed businesslike in my direction. I stepped out of my hiding place and climbed up the embankment to the top of the trestle, grabbing clumps of bitterweed to help pull myself up with. The snake crawled onto my former spot and stretched himself out to dry. “Shithead!” I called down to him. Then I stood up on the railroad track and looked around.

  Sam Best seemed asleep, and the cow lay down in the shade below me. Across the highway at the Dairy D
ip I could see Joel’s bike propped against the side wall, and farther down the highway the tin roof of the Lucky Lion glinted in the sun that now was lowering in the sky behind Mr. Best’s house.

  The railroad track smelled like creosote. It was too late in the season to think of anything as being green or lush, but the dryness of the earth and its toning down was a sort of lushness, too. Spring might be the catchy season, but knowing what I knew now—being a woman—fall was also a sexy time. The whole earth was lying back, looking as though it were going to drop its fruit and sleep a while, yet quietly underneath it was scattering seeds like crazy. And standing up there, it seemed that all the colors in the world were overripe, fierce, and too bright. It was said that when you were dying, things got special—colors got bright, minutes could swell into hours. Then I realized that I was mad as hell about that. All this shouldn’t be happening to me. I probably ought to tell my grandfather about the knot. I probably ought to let him or somebody else cut it out. When my parents found out that I was dying, surely they’d do something special about it. It seemed that every kid I’d ever read about who died got to go to Disneyland first. Hell!—why couldn’t they get back together in Disneyland?

  I stomped a little on the railroad ties, and then I hopped onto the rail in a sort of step-ball-change that started both feet flying out in a rhythm that in another minute settled into a tune. I twirled my skirt and as it lifted from my waist I saw it as an umbrella, and in another two seconds I was doing “Singing in the Rain” up and down the rails in the driest season of Arkansas. Next I added the words with a full orchestra in my head; and the magic of it was even greater than on the big screen at the Ritz. I could have danced all over the stage at the county talent show and won the whole damn thing. But I was nearly fourteen years old now, and dying. I was bad enough to bust up a family and steal from a dime store. It was only a matter of time until I landed up in the State Reformatory School. But I wouldn’t have to stay there long. The Coldwater Funeral Home was next. And while the sun turned the color of a peach and burst open behind the high peak of Sam Best’s house, I twirled toward the highway and looked straight at Joel Weiss, who was standing beside his bike behind the Dairy Dip watching me. “Oh shit,” I said, and turned away, facing the sun. Below me Mr. Best was watching me too. And beside him Gill was in the seat B.J. had been in, eating potato chips out of a bag. His eyes in his baseball-mitt face were like two knuckleballs aimed on my Popeye legs that had gone crazy under the Tara dress. “Damn,” I said. No doubt the cow and snake were watching too. The only sure way out of this would be if I got run over by a train.

  Almost in answer, something rumbled through the rails, and the light switch down the track signaled green. When the feeling of thunder came up through my feet, I jumped off the side of the trestle straight into the Mill Pond. And not a sound came out of my throat.

  I hit the water holding my nose so the muddy stuff wouldn’t go up it. But my head didn’t even get wet. My feet went straight into the deep muck on the bottom, and I stood chin-deep in the Mill Pond staring at the moccasin. He probably didn’t want me any more than I wanted him. Though maybe he’d been sent for me. Even if he was my punishment for being so damn rotten, I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit still for him.

  I stepped out of my shoes on the bottom and swam in an Esther Williams breaststroke, with my lips pinched together. The snake was going upstream, but he didn’t seem to be moving against the current and I was sure he and I would end up together no matter where I aimed.

  “He ain’t after you,” someone said. A leafy branch fell on the top of my head. I put my hands in the leaves and looked up to the bank at Joel. “You sure can dance.” He pulled the branch toward him, with me hanging on it.

  “Let’s get her out on this side.” Gill was on the opposite bank, holding out a garden hoe in my direction.

  Standing a little behind him was Mr. Best. And he was staring at me. “You’re as pretty as your mama,” he said, his eyes still on my face. “And when you sing, you sound just like her.”

  Above us there was a clattering on the rails. I grabbed the end of Gill’s hoe, and we all looked up. A little cart with railroad workers passed over, two of the men pumping the thing down the rails as if they were seesawing. They waved.

  “You’re gonna smell awful.” Joel laid his tree branch down. “I bet your grandmother won’t let you in the house.”

  I was out of the Mill Pond now, standing on the bank with Gill and Sam Best. Joel was on the other side with the trestle between himself and the cow. I was dripping water the color of coffee, and I smelled dead.

  “Gill, take her up to the house and get her a towel,” Sam Best said.

  “That’s all right.” I looked down at my feet. Holes were in my socks and weeds were stuck between my toes. My grandmother would really give me the business. I’d lost my shoes. They were stuck in the bottom of the Mill Pond and would probably stay there unless they popped up and floated like something dead. “I’d better just go on home,” I said.

  “I think that dress looks better wet.” Joel was wiping the mud off his shoes. “Before, it stuck out like a tent.”

  “Don’t make fun of the girl,” Mr. Best said. “You don’t know anything about fashion. Gill, get her a towel.”

  Gill pulled me up the sloping bank and I trotted to the back door. Sam had gotten a towel and was wiping my arms. Joel walked back to the highway.

  “Where’d you learn to dance?” Mr. Best was squeezing water out of my hair, using the towel as a blotter.

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  He shot my feet with water from a hose.

  “You know how, just naturally?”

  “I guess. My mother taught me for a while. But then she quit. And my grandmother said I shouldn’t do it anymore.”

  He turned off the hose. “Why?”

  “She says it’d develop my calves. And they don’t need any more developing.”

  Gill came and put a towel around my shoulders and another one around my waist. My hair was like mud-coated strings. “I think I’d better go on home,” I said.

  “No need to walk.” Sam told Gill to drive me. Then he reached for the end of a towel and wiped my face with it. “I’ll go call your grandmother and explain what happened. If I was you, I’d want to warn her before I just drove up.”

  My head was down, but I could tell he was still looking at me.

  Gill put newspapers in the backseat of Sam Best’s Land Rover and I slid in, making crinkling noises as I did. It looked like the kind of car somebody would drive in Africa. Yet I was too much of a mess even for it.

  Then, before we drove off, something so very strange happened it was as if the afternoon stopped. It was like a minute had been caught, taken and framed to hang in my mind. And it began with Sam Best reaching into the back window and touching my hair. Yet this time he wasn’t wringing it out, and he wasn’t worried about me being wet.

  He looked at me, and then still looking at me, he laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh like somebody making fun. It was instead a low sound that felt to me as warm as sun stirring around in the dark of leaves, or something like that. And I laughed too. With my mud-coated hair and memories of the snake, I felt like the Medusa. I could see by the way he looked at me and by his laugh, which now met mine, how funny it all had been. It hadn’t been so awful. It wasn’t even quite so embarrassing anymore. And then Gill put the Land Rover in gear.

  As we drove off, I turned around to see Sam Best still standing, watching. The way he had looked at me was there on the inside of my eyelids when I turned around and looked out at the street and the houses going by, and then the magnolia in front of my grandparents’ house. And it may have been the world I was looking at, but inside my head I was seeing the way Sam Best had looked at me, where it was stuck now like a photograph. The trail of cuss words I left, that never got past my mouth, was as blistering and mean as the aimed barrel of a bazooka. Because Hell! why was it me who had to die to make every
thing all right?

  7.

  The Return of Foster Collins and the Poodle Substitute

  In the next few days I nearly died from the fear that my mother was dead and nobody knew it. Or that my father had gone out to some farm to see about some equipment to insure and had gotten run over by something like a combine. They were crazy, unconnected fears; they made no sense. And because I couldn’t sleep or do much of anything else but wonder if my parents were alive—I even failed a P.E. test—I got out the letters from under the Man-from-Shiloh’s bed and read them. They didn’t say much. Just day-to-day stuff about what my mother and father were doing. It was night and my grandparents were asleep, and I went into the back hall and called my mother from the phone there. It took my mother five rings for her to answer.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Sally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  My damn heart was beating like a bongo, and the fist inside my chest was swelling up. For a minute I thought I’d die on the spot. My grandparents would find me in the morning, dead in the hall. But at least she wasn’t dead. “I just kind of wanted to talk to you a minute,” I said. “You going to Jackson Friday?” Her last letter had said she was.

  The conversation went on about like that—with me saying a few things about what I was doing, and her telling me about the places she was going to sing. Then, since I thought I’d save my grandparents the cost of another long-distance phone call so I could check up on my father, I told my mother that my grandmother had said my father was sick and that it was serious. My mother laughed. “Nanny Maulden tends to blow up everything. He’s probably just had a little cold. I really wouldn’t know. Haven’t you heard from him?”