Dessie put the steam gauge back on the hissing canner lid and set the timer on the stove for ten more minutes. She filled two tall glasses from the drainboard with ice and lemonade, then headed toward her sister. “I want to talk to Alan Ray, Billie,” Dessie said. “I’m going to need a car, and Ronnie is too. I’m planning to get my license.”
“You aren’t,” said Billie. Her mouth opened and closed again without a sound. She reached out her hand for the lemonade, her eyes fixed on Dessie’s.
“You watch and see if I don’t.” Dessie shifted her tired weight from left foot to right. “Now that Dad’s gone, how’re we supposed to get to the grocery or get the kids if the school calls?” Billie looked away from the set. “Umm, yeah.” Billie nodded. Just one more reason to grieve her father’s loss, Dessie thought. These many ways that he kept the world turning for them all.
“Well, uh, Alan Ray’s home most of the winter, and almost always on rainy days when they don’t cut timber,” Billie said. She paused. “What’d Lux say about you driving?”
“Lux said I could drive all right, if I can get a license and get legal.” She looked over at Billie. She knew Billie was testing to see how far the plan had gotten.
Billie stubbed out her Marlboro. “Well, I do declare, if he lets you do that, what’s going to be next?” she said, exhaling smoke rings, her mouth making big O’s. The smoke rings lingered like spectral presences, and, as the fan rotated around, they slid away in the breeze. In mock surprise, Billie began fanning herself with the TV Guide. “How much does it cost to take the test?” Billie asked, and added, “Have you got that rule book yet?”
“I do, remember? From when Ron got his learner’s permit.” Dessie reached up to a shelf in the hall closet among the cookbooks. “It don’t cost a dime to take the test, but if you pass you hand over four dollars for a permit. I thought I could get Ronnie to study with me since he passed on his first try.” Dessie placed the West Virginia Highway Safety booklet on the arm of the recliner for Billie. It had a bright yellow cover with a photograph of a station wagon stopped across from a school bus. The driver at the steering wheel waved as children crossed in front of him. But Billie’s eyes were directed at the TV. Dessie walked back to the kitchen to check the stove timer. The second batch of peach halves in the canner was nearly done, and the pot with the last of the halved fruit would have to come back up to a boil. What did Billie really think about her driving? Dessie wondered. Sometimes Billie could be hard to pin down, harder to second-guess.
Billie should take a look at the permit book too, Dessie thought, and together they should both get licenses. Hard to know if Alan Ray would agree to that plan. It isn’t hard to learn to drive, clutch, break, gas, forward and reverse. Just takes practice. Lux gave her the keys to the old farm Bronco when they lived up at the head of the Goshen Road. But the Bronco would not work as a road car, or for the driver’s test, since it would never pass the state inspection. The logical choice was the Lincoln, and it even had an automatic transmission. She’d have to master parking that big boat against a curb, steering it around cones, memorize the laws, but if she could manage to get the Bronco up and down the Goshen Road, she felt pretty sure the Lincoln’s power steering and brakes would be easy to figure out.
Dessie set the last of the jars on the stove top to warm near the remaining peaches in syrup and set the flame for everything to heat up slowly, then walked into the living room and stood beside Billie’s chair. “I just don’t see why Alan Ray had to take the Lincoln,” Dessie started. “You all have a perfectly good pickup setting out there, and he can’t drive more than one at a time.”
Billie’s head jerked up. “Hey, that pickup’s got a busted brake line and you know it, and anyway—and he just does what he does, that’s all,” she said, her dark eyes shifting rapidly between her sister and the show. Billie rose out of the recliner, walked over to the set, changed the channel to ABC for One Life to Live. Then she added, “You know Alan Ray.”
“He hasn’t got the money to keep up the insurance on two vehicles,” Dessie said. The words came rushing out of her mouth. “What’s he going to do? Leave that truck sitting there? A-1 won’t pay him to keep a Lincoln and a pickup on the road,” Dessie continued. It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Somebody had to take the lead here, Dessie thought, or nothing is going to get said. Was that what she wanted? She didn’t know. The timer interrupted with a loud buzz. Billie stood in front of the TV set, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked like she did not know whether to sit or to stand, whether to help out or to return to the recliner.
Dessie turned back to the kitchen and started taking the processed jars out of the canner with wooden-handled steel tongs, placing them to cool on a couple of folded towels on the kitchen table. She set out a long row, eight steaming glass jars packed with fruit and syrup, then rearranged them into two rows of four quarts each. She could feel the room start to shrink around her, her sister in the living room getting further away, smaller. Billie had sunk down into the recliner, the ashtray balanced on her knees. She didn’t turn around.
Dessie frowned at the TV, at the permit test book on the arm of the recliner, and at the clouds of cigarette smoke blowing away from the back of Billie’s head. Dessie almost stopped herself, but then she said, “You all don’t even have the money to fix the truck you got sitting out there now. How are you going to keep up the insurance on a second one? Y’uns don’t even have the money to share in the sugar and the lids for these peaches.”
“Hold on a minute, just hold it right there,” Billie said, shaking her head from side to side. Dessie waited, to see if she would say anything else.
Billie leaned forward in the chair, turned down the TV’s volume, and reached for a cigarette, turning her back to Dessie. She tapped the pack into her palm, then Dessie could hear Billie draw in her breath. She coughed and coughed again. From behind, Billie’s shoulder blades bounced up and down like the wings of a fledgling bird. Billie caught her breath and turned toward her sister, a weary look in her eyes. “What do you want, Dessie? You want the farmhouse? You want the Lincoln? Just go on then, but it don’t feel right, you two getting it all.”
Heaven protect me, can’t a person have a conversation, Dessie wondered, feeling heat rise in her cheeks, tears welling up. Now what? “Oh, that ain’t it at all,” she answered, almost under her breath. Dessie wiped her eyes with the back of her forearm. Billie’s head faced the TV set. Over the drone of the fan and the music’s pauses on the TV, Dessie heard the “ping” of the lids as they sealed themselves onto the cooling mason jars. Then, silence, as if all the sounds in the room had been switched off, even the whispers on the TV were barely audible.
Dessie headed back into the kitchen to check whether all of the jars of fruit had sealed. It was almost time to take the second set of jars out of the canner. She began to gather up the dirty bowls and the last of the utensils. With each footstep the floorboards creaked. She felt like she’d tracked sweet sticky syrup all over the floor. She hated how the plates and glassware rattled in the cupboards as she moved from the sink to the stove, how large and clumsy she felt, knocking into things as she walked, or like she was clattering things around loudly on purpose to get Billie’s attention. It reminded her of when they were teenagers, when they argued and couldn’t figure out how to make up.
The low rays of the sun landed on Dessie’s form like a spotlight; as she moved, her own shadowed figure followed her back and forth on the kitchen wall. Billie reached over and turned the volume back up on the TV set. On One Life to Live, a young girl had found out she needed an ovary removed but decided to go through with her wedding anyway, without telling her wealthy husband-to-be about the operation or its possible side effects. Dessie and Billie had always liked that girl. She dressed nicely but not suggestively, never looked or acted like a slut, and they could tell that she came from humble people. Together they had wondered whether she would ever get up the ner
ve to tell her future husband that she might be unable to bear his child. Now the two had set a date to be married, and that girl held onto that terrible secret, her grief and shame tightening like a noose around her slim, pretty neck.
Dessie couldn’t help it; she felt sorry for them both. Usually Billie, and Bertram too, could be counted on to make some sarcastic comment at these kind of overly dramatic, tragic points in the story. But Billie just smoked, stared at everything that flickered across the TV screen, including the commercials for baby food, plastic diapers, and laundry detergent, and occasionally whacked at the fly on the window sill. The timer rang again, and Dessie returned to lift eight more jars out of the canner. As the last bit of the show ended and the sign-off music came on, Billie stood up to leave. “I’m going to start supper,” Billie said. “It’s already three o’clock. The kids will be here soon, and you never know when that man of mine will show up, but you can bet he’ll be hungry as a bear.” She gathered up the lemonade glasses and brought them back to the kitchen, handing them to her sister at the sink.
Dessie blinked her eyes and swallowed hard. “Well, I’ll finish up the last of these. Lux said he’ll be home around five today.” She looked past her sister at bits of coming attractions flashing across the screen. “Nothing worth watching tonight, anyway, still reruns,” she mumbled. Nodding agreement, Billie opened the screen door to the porch. Dessie noticed a dirty fingerprint next to the door handle. She tried to think of something to say. “Hey, Billie, wait,” she started, then she said, “You taking down any of these jars?”
Billie paused, looking out across the yard toward home. “You just keep ’em all.”
“Now look here,” said Dessie. It was the best she could manage. Her soapy hand gestured at the table, where the double line of canned peach halves cooled in the sunlight, two dozen cornflower-blue quart jars, two dozen shiny brass lids, the bright shimmer rising above the shadowed pattern on the kitchen wall.
Without turning, Billie stepped out onto the porch, and her thin face disappeared under the clothesline. “Nah,” she said, heading across the porch, and then added, “Oh, the boys will probably come up for some later.”
From the sink, Dessie stared across the yard while her hands scrubbed away at the shreds of fruit that were burned onto the edge of the deep enamel pot. With each step Billie’s slender form became smaller and slighter; her long black hair almost disappeared in the glare of the sun as she set out across the hayfield. Taking hold of the tongs, Dessie placed the final batch of filled quart jars into the rapidly boiling canner and set the lid. She leaned against the counter, eased herself down onto all fours, bunched up a towel under her knees, and, working her way backward from the stove, past the sink, to the doorway, she scrubbed at the floor of the kitchen, working the sticky spots off the linoleum and then drying the floor with a towel. The canner began to hiss once more. She set the valve on the lid, reset the egg timer; one last time, ten minutes. She headed to the bathroom next, and washed her bare feet.
In the living room, she picked up the Highway Safety book, glanced at a couple of random pages, then put it back on the shelf in the closet. Some man on the TV set was yelling about Super Value Days at the Ford garage, shiny rows of cars and trucks lined up behind him. His face was distorted, pushed hard up against the screen. His unblinking eyes popped out of his face. “Who the hell are you staring at, mister?” Dessie asked the announcer, smacking her palm into the switch on the set and shutting him off. Then, pressing her moist cheek against the sleeve of her blouse, Dessie closed her eyes and sat down on the recliner in front of the clattering fan to wait.
TWELVE
NOT TO TOUCH THE EARTH (1990)
I’M A DEER. MY LEGS ARE LONG, LEAN, POWERFUL. I take great leaps and bounds, I can fly over the earth. Over the road, Lissy races. Up near the top of the ridge. Sky spreads out before her, wind streams against her upturned face. I can leap I can fly I can run.
Her body stretches, her heart races—her deer’s heart thumps faster and faster in her chest. I can run. I can run. Her legs pump and her arms pump too, they’re like second legs, propelling her through space. Her body bounding, perfectly fleet and nimble, leaping effortlessly.
The sun is setting. It is late for her run. Not too many people live on this strip of road; no one is around. Freedom to be alone. To not be seen. Complete freedom. Finally. To run alone.
To feel her feet fly in spurts of strength; in high school she had been a sprinter, not a miler, but tonight she wants to run her animal heart into the ground. How would it feel to be a deer? How would it feel? Her deer hooves are light. They barely touch the ground. Down the hill. Keep going. Not done. Don’t turn back. Do not go home.
Home. Her husband is home. Their little girl. Home—their house—or is it? Her car is at home, and it’s broken. Useless. Who needs it? She can run over road, over field, over hillside. She leaps off the blacktop, over the ditch, down onto the path along the corn. Into the field. She is fleet. She is free.
Well, maybe not fleet. Maybe not free, either. The day’s events charge at her. How her Jeanie, in a fit of anger, locked herself into the car. They were all in town. At the supermarket. It was a crowded Saturday afternoon. Jeanie was mad, pouting; she couldn’t get her way. She is only five. She acted, well, childish, in the store. Jeanie was pouting. So I could see—see what? see what I did to her? I had to get a job. No one’s buying timber these days. When will they call Glenn back to work?
Lissy’s legs begin to throb from the rough ground. She looks back to the road. Briars and burrs grab at her shins. She looks for a way to get back onto the blacktop. At the end of this endless field maybe. She urges her legs on.
Glenn sent Jeanie to the car. He gave her the keys. She went there to sulk. Glenn took her car keys and gave them to Jeanie. Jeanie sat there. This is the weekend, Lissy wanted to say. Time to shop. We all need to help choose food for the week. We don’t live on grass and bark.
She limps a bit as she runs. The ruts and rocks are hard to jump. The sun has set. Up ahead a streetlight flickers on at the intersection of Route 20. It is getting cooler. Cool damp pockets of air brush against her cheeks. Her animal eyes narrow. A slender shape along the road. Is it a mailbox? a hitchhiker? It is getting too dark to tell.
She knows she is out late. Time to go back. To the child. To him. To hell with Glenn. To the car. To the broken-out window. To my new car that I drive to my new job. My job. To my only car with my window smashed in. What a joke. Driving to work with the window rolled down. But there is no window. It shattered in a million pieces. Not even one large chunk. Just a spray of glass all over the inside. All over the dashboard. The shifter. The seat. Jeanie.
She locked herself in. “No,” said Jeanie. “You can’t come in here.” She had Barbie in her hand. She made a face. A slightly satisfied, slightly unsure face. She is such a child.
“Give me the keys, honey. Please, Jeanie. Don’t get Daddy mad. Pass it through the window, doll.” The shopping cart behind the car was filled up with groceries. Frozen peas getting warmer. Ice cream melting. Jeanie looking at her Barbie doll. Cars pulling out of spots all around them. New cars pulling in.
Lissy’s heart pounds in her chest. The memory weighs her down. Her knees buckle. Her deer arms grab at the air. He kicked in the window. Glenn kicked in the passenger window to get at a little girl. He dragged Jeanie out and his arm was cut and bleeding. Served him right that his arm got cut. The whole car shook sideways once, toward her, and then his foot crashed through the window. Glass was everywhere. The keys were on the seat. Then the door was open wide. Jeanie was crying and out of the car and Lissy was loading groceries into the trunk. In the parking lot on a sunny afternoon on the chunks of glass. While a small girl in pink suspenders was crying and a tall man’s bare arm was bleeding. And Lissy’s stomach cramped hard enough to knock her down. And cars of all sizes were waiting for parking spots.
Lissy’s chest heaves. The soft ground gives under her feet. Jeani
e was bad all day. She shouldn’t have done it. Words pile up like stones. He’s been off work a lot lately. She’s just a child. I can’t take it anymore. I’ll take her. I can’t go to work anyway. What can I tell them? I have no window. I have pieces of window. Pockets full of rocks. I can’t tell a soul. Shiny bits of glass and pockets full of rocks. At least I can run. Like a sleek and silent deer. I can run.
She rounds the field. She reaches the intersection. She jumps the ditch and climbs up over the embankment. Time to turn back. Her legs are burning. She’s panting and grasping at the air—the dark air. The edges of the road are very dark now. A new shape’s coming up the road. It’s a long shape, a man, on the road. A motorbike. She hears it before she sees it. Why isn’t its lights on? Her senses prick up, her deer ears. She hears a noise. Where is it? Her blood pounds. Her thighs ache. Coming toward her. She rounds the turn and feels her bad knee begin to give out. Not now. She stiffens her leg. She won’t limp. She won’t look tired.
She starts back up the hill. She stretches to full height. There were rapes. Not on this spot, but closer to town on roads much like this one. Girls have gone missing. She seeks out the brightest spot in the road. A woman needs to be in the light. Or does she? The brightest spot is not very bright. And soon it will be gone. She can’t run any more. Her legs are drained. Her deer heart has pumped out its blood. She knows she is jogging slowly and she knows she is prey for someone. A stranger. A hunter. Anyone. She rounds the hill toward the cutoff to her house. No one follows.
It is pitch-black on the gravel lane. She can barely see her own hand. She has to walk carefully. She could trip. She looks for the trees that hug the sides of the lane. Their branches point toward the distant sky like long slender fingers. Long limbs arch and intertwine, like a steeple over the road, like her mother’s fingertips pressing against hers a long time ago. Open the doors and see all the people.
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