Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  So Violet is real mad, she’s been mad for years, but she can’t get Rush to buck up and think of any way out of here. This seems to be the way of it. When you go down in the mine so long, something happens in your head so that you cannot immagine another life. It’s the only thing you know to do, the only way you know to live. You get scared of the mine and scared of everything else.

  Still and all, some times are real good. One day last week, Beulah and Curtis went off to town taking little Curtis Junior and the new baby Delores with them, and me and Violet spread a quilt in the yard between the houses like I was telling you, and laid out in the sun which felt so good after this long hard winter, and watched the kids playing in the yard. Joli is tough as nails I’m proud to say, and can hold her own with any boy. She is a sight, Geneva—may be she takes after you! She will go right up to John Arthur and grab whatever he’s got that she wants. She is not scared of a thing. Anyway we were laying out there drowsing while Rush fiddled slow, and then he speeded up and we sat up, and Joli came over to play patacake. The sun laid over us like a blanket, although it was scarcely spring.

  Listen here, Violet said all of sudden. I think it is Groundhog Day. She got up and ran in the house and looked in the almanac and sure enough, it was.

  Well, what is it? she asked. I forget how it goes.

  But I remembered of course, Lord knows I heard it from Granny a million times. If he can see his shadow, it’s six more weeks of winter, I said. If he can’t, it’s an early spring. So I reckon that this here is just unseasonal, I said.

  Hell fire, said Rush.

  Play Ivy’s song, Violet said, and then he fiddled and Violet sangJust go and leave me if you want to

  Never let it cross your mind

  If in your heart you love another

  Please, little darlin, I don’t mind.

  When Rush sings, you can see what a handsome man he used to be. Then he sang my verse.

  When I see your babe a-laughing

  It makes me think of your sweet face

  But when I see your babe a-crying

  It makes me think of my disgrace.

  Then Violet took a dive and started tickling me, and we rolled over and over on the quilt laughing. I do not feel too ruint when I am with Violet and Rush who have been through everything.

  Then Oakley came by in a clean blue shirt, I bet he’d been doing something down at the church again. He never says much about going, but he’s there every time they crack the door, he is faithful as the day is long. He is not a bit like Sam Russell Sage though, believe you me! And it don’t seem to bother him that I won’t go. Nothing I do seems to bother Oakley. In fact he is so nice that sometimes I want to hit him in the face, it’s the same way I felt about him years ago.

  Ever since I told Oakley I am not his girl, he has not said another word about it, or tried to kiss me again, or anything. But he does come by here right much even though Beulah is not always nice to him. Sometimes he brings things to Joli, a plastic brush or candy or a little book. She just loves Oakley. Sometimes he brings things to me, like Colliers Magazine. He still lives with his brother Ray in the bunkhouse and does not seem to want any more out of life than he has. He never asks me to go anyplace with him, and if he knows when I go with Franklin—he must know!—he never says a word.

  Franklin does not come here ever, he sends me word where to meet him, or sometimes he will come by the store. Oakley never mentions Franklin, so I don’t either. Why should I? But I am caught between a rock and a hard place, in all truth. Franklin is not any good and I know it. Oakley is real good but I dont love him. I don’t. And anyway I can’t quit on Franklin while Beulah and Curtis are still here, they still think Franklin is somebody for me to marry, and I am still beholden. Thank God they will be moving to Huntington soon.

  Although, Geneva, just between you and me—I don’t know how they will fare over there. Curtis is a good steady man, but Beulah wants so much that I don’t know if there is enough in the world to satisfy her, I honestly don’t. And also she is so scared, and ashamed of herself someway. Last week she got invited up to Mrs. Bolin’s house to make an alter cloth for the church, this is the kind of thing that is so important to Beulah. But then she fretted and fretted so much that she would say the wrong thing, or do something wrong, that she ended up flat on her back with a sick headache, and missed it all. And yet to see her, you would think Beulah more of a lady than any of these. She reads all the magazines and gets herself up just so, you know how well she can sew and always could. But somehow it’s like she is still playing party and doesn’t believe it herself. So I don’t know how she will do in Huntington, Geneva, I honestly don’t.

  I am glad I am ruint, and don’t have to worry over such as that.

  But I was telling you about Groundhog Day, when me and Violet were sitting out in the sun and Oakley dropped by. I said, I don’t guess you want to gamble now do you? Oakley sat right down on the quilt and said Cut me in, honey, and Violet did while Rush fiddled Lonesome Valley. We played hand after hand and smoked cigarettes and had the best time, in spite of the gob pile that has caught on fire now and won’t quit burning, sending the sulfur smell down here like boiling eggs. But I guess it is always something! And we had a fine time in spite of the sour yellow smoke and in spite of knowing that all this pretty sunshine means winter is coming back.

  So I remain your faithful,

  IVY ROWE.

  Oh Silvaney,

  So much, so much has happened! and there is so much I can not tell to a living soul, I will write it to you instead. I hardly know where to start. I think I will do like Joli does with the crayons that Victor brought her from town—she takes the black crayon, and bites her lip, and outlines everything first. It takes forever, she presses down so hard. But then when she puts in the color, it’s easy.

  This is it. The mine fell in, and I got married.

  I will fill it in later.

  Because first I want to tell about Franklin Ransom, and I see that there is no place on the page here for me to put him, no black lines I can color him into. It was always like that. I never could see his outline clear. Franklin is the son of the richest man in Diamond, but yet he’s needy. And he has been to more schools than anybody else around here except the doctor, but he hasn’t got any sense. He likes to drink and laugh and play the fool, but he is sad inside. This is what he looks like, Silvaney—a long thin face with a large straight nose and a cleft chin and level eyebrows over dark eyes that look liquid. Franklin’s eyes are very large and seem to be always moving on to the next thing, somehow. His skin is like a baby’s, his hair is dark and fine, his fingers are long and thin. He doesn’t have hardly any hair on his body to speak of, and wears the prettiest clothes. Shirts you want to rub between your fingers. His teeth are white and even—well, he looks like a movie star and I’ll swear it. It’s the truth. And he is a man that knows how to get around women, too. I guess if you are born looking like Franklin looks, and you are an only child since your brother died, well you would be just as spoiled as Franklin. I don’t believe his mother ever told him No in all his life. But then of course he got so spoiled they didn’t know what to do with him, so they sent him off to school at the age of ten and he has mostly stayed gone since then, off at one school or another or else with his grandmother in Kentucky, I believe this is the only person he really loves. It is his mother’s mother, Nana he calls her, only Nana and his mother have not spoken for years since they had a big falling out.

  Mostly, Franklin stays over there and fools with horses. But then he comes over here to see his parents, only they usually don’t get on too good after a little while, and then he will leave again. He drinks a lot and has never had a paying job. One time his daddy decided that he would learn the mining business from the word go, so they set him to work running the mantrip, but he ran over his own foot on the track—you know you have to run a mantrip in the dark, mostly—and crushed two toes, and his mama got hysterical and said she could not permi
t him to go in the mine again, he is all she has. Doctor Gray had to go up there and give her a shot for her nerves. Her nerves is awful ever since Dennis—that was Franklin’s brother—got killed when he was 14 and Franklin was 12.

  Got killed or killed himself—there’s those that will tell it both ways. In any case he fell off, or jumped off, the cliff on the other side of Diamond Mountain. Everybody says that Dennis was too adventuresome for his own good, and always had been. Too high strung.

  So Dennis broke his neck and his mama’s heart.

  He also made it impossible someway for Franklin to grow up, and Franklin says that to this day he can still hear his brother screaming as he falls, or jumps, into Indian Creek. Franklin was right there when it happened. Franklin says he has to drink, to keep from hearing his brother scream. I guess if you come up in a big family like we done, you will lose one or two and take it as a matter of course. But I don’t know. I don’t know about that and I dont know about Franklin, either. I do know that he can tell you about his brother in such a way as to make you cry, and make you want to take your dress off.

  For Franklin has that way about him which makes a woman want to make it better, all the time, and that way about him that makes you know you never can. And fun? Lord, Franklin is a lot of fun.

  I remember one time I went up there. His parents were off someplace gallivanting, and we had the house to ourselves. He had asked me to dinner. Dinner? Shoot! All we had for dinner was corn beef out of the can and saltine crackers and bourbon whisky from Kentucky that went down smooth. Franklin wasn’t studying dinner, nor was I. It was summer, hot as blazes. We turned on the overhead fans. Mrs. Ransom had covered all the furniture up with white sheets, which is what she did every time her and Mister Ransom went out of town, to try and keep off the coaldust. Her whole life is a battle with coaldust.

  So I was up on top of the hill visiting Franklin Ransom in that fine house and eating saltine crackers and corn beef out of the can and drinking some, and when it started getting dark, all that whitesheeted furniture came looming up like ghosts, like islands, and Franklin went over to the phonograph and put on a record, Who’s Sorry Now and said Ivy, come here.

  What for? I said, and he said, I want you to dance with me.

  Dance? I said. I can’t dance like that.

  Come on over here honey, he said, but I said no. I was sitting on the floor eating off the coffee table.

  He came over and reached down for my hand. Ivy, he said, and I got up and danced and it was easy. I never have danced like that before, Silvaney, it was like movie dancing. And may be I will never do so again! But it was easy, easy.

  The overhead fan blew down on us and Franklin swirled me around and around like the wind, in the dark, between all the looming rising mounds of white. I felt like I was dancing in the clouds, in the midst of a thunderstorm.

  The music stopped but we went on dancing, and every time we would dance by the coffee table, Franklin would lean over and grab the bourbon and we’d take a drink straight out of the bottle. Later he took me in his parents bedroom and laid me down across the pale green satin bed. And later still, he turned on the bedside light and got me to look in the mirror door. I had never seen a mirror door before. I had never looked at my whole body all at one time.

  And Silvaney, oh Silvaney, I am beautiful! Beulah said we look good in red but we look even better in nothing. I am beautiful!

  Then there was a real storm, and then after that, Franklin and I sat out on the lawn chairs naked and smoked cigarettes, all I could see of him in the night was the glowing tip of his cigarette burning red, and then we made love again right there on the wet grass. It smelled so good. It brought me around, a little.

  I have to go home, I said, getting up, but Franklin said, No Ivy, it’s too late, they will be asleep and you’ll wake them up. Just stay here.

  I have to go, I said, but he wouldn’t take me, and I was too crazy drunk to walk down the mountain myself and I knew it.

  We slept in his parents bed, and in the morning, we did it again, and then he said Ivy, do you know what I like about you? This? I said. I got to giggling. No, he said, you are like me, Ivy. You will do anything. And I said, Franklin, that’s just not true. But he said, Oh yes it is, honey. Yes it is. Franklin thinks he is quite a judge of women and horses. And he is fun!

  I did not feel half bad walking the red-dog road down the mountain that next morning, in fact I felt like running and whooping it up, yelling and swinging on grapevines like we used to do up on Pilgrim Knob. Because it is a fact that if you are ruint, like I am, it frees you up somehow.

  I walked in the house and Joli ran up and hugged me. Mama, Mama, where did you go? she said. Beulah was frying eggs with her baby propped on her hip, I have been visiting, I told Joli. Then I went over and took the egg-turner from Beulah and she sat down. Well, Beulah said. She looked at me and I could tell she wished it was her coming down the mountain ruint instead of me.

  I certainly hope you will make sure to get what’s coming to you, she said.

  I immagine I will, I said.

  Curtis came through then and said, Good morning Ivy, in a different way, a way I didn’t like. But I didn’t say a word. I decided that I had made my bed and I would lie in it, Silvaney, same as before.

  I thought, I am getting to be a expert at making beds!

  But even way back then, even that sunny morning that I felt so good, I knew Franklin had something wrong with him. He does not mind making a mess, but he won’t clean it up. For instance I said, Now we have got to straighten up here, when I woke up and I wasn’t drunk any more and I saw what we had done to the house. But he would not let me touch a thing. Stop it, Ivy! The colored women will do it, he said. But I never knew if they did or not. I believe he halfway wanted his folks to come back and find the mess. I never knew if they did or not.

  Another time he tried his best to get me to wear one of his mama’s dresses out to the Busy Bee roadhouse, where we used to go, but I would not. I think he wanted somebody that knew her to see me in her dress. She hated me, so they said. I don’t know, myself. I never met her. I knew Franklin’s daddy, Mister Ransom, who used to come in the store, and liked me fine. Anyway this was a rose-colored sheath dress that I would give my eye teeth for, but I wouldn’t wear it, even when he tried to make me put it on.

  Franklin is good-looking and fun, but he is so strange. He went to all those fancy schools and never read a book that he will own up to. He will be so sweet one minute, and then go funny the next.

  I remember one time towards the end of summer when we were out riding in his daddy’s car. We got to the new bridge, which is where we always turned back, and that day Franklin just kept on going. What are you doing? I asked. He said, Let’s go on a little trip, honey.

  I can’t go on a trip, I said.

  Why not? Franklin put his hand on my leg and turned in the seat to look at me. Silvaney, he is so good-looking!

  When he drove across the bridge, I looked down and saw some little boys fishing and they waved.

  I’m going to take you to Memphis Tenessee, Franklin said. He was drinking, had been drinking all that day. His daddy didn’t even know he had the car—thought Franklin had driven it down to the machine shop to get Buddy Thigpen to change the oil.

  I said, Franklin, I can’t go to Memphis. You know I can’t go to Memphis. That’s crazy. He was driving fast and I was getting scared. He crossed the bridge, turned right, and headed south.

  Franklin, I said. Turn around.

  Instead he grinned at me. Honey, I am going to take you to Memphis, he said. I am going to buy you a new red dress and take you to the Peabody Hotel.

  Turn around, I said.

  They’ve got ducks in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, he said. They swim in the fountain there. But I guess you wouldn’t know about that. You haven’t been there, of course. You haven’t been anywhere.

  Turn around, I said. Trees went flashing past us on both sides, now a house, now a
glimpse of the river. The road stretched out straight in front of us like a ribbon in the sun with the end of it shining. It was August, and hot. Dust devils danced by the side of the road, and the end of it shimmered like fairyland. I think it was then that I started crying. Because I wanted to go, Silvaney, I really did! I wanted a new red dress. I wanted to see the ducks in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, and see how funny they waddle, and find the end of that shiny road. Franklin finished off the bottle and threw it out the window and it sailed shining through the air into the woods at the side of the road. Hot air rushed past my face. I was having trouble breathing.

  You’ve got to turn around, I finally said.

  Stick with me and I’ll take you places, Franklin said. You’re my baby.

  No! By then I was screaming. Joli is my baby. Because I knew that by then they’d be wondering where I was, what was taking me so long getting home from work, and Joli would be pulling on Beulah’s skirt and asking where Mama was, and Beulah would be short with her, moren likely Beulah was still packing. Stop this car, stop it stop it. Turn around, I said.

  Goddammit Ivy! Franklin skidded over to the side of the road and we screeched to a stop. Dust rose up all around us in great clouds and suddenly it was so quiet. The woods were thick and green around the car. Franklin jerked my skirt up higher on my legs and pulled my panties down,

  I am not your baby, I said. I have got a baby of my own, I said. I could see her little face in my mind. I could hardly speak.

  O.K., he said. O.K. He started the car again and pulled back out in the road with the tires squealing, and turned the car around. He never looked over at me once, driving back, and I didn’t say a word. He drove too fast. Then when we got to the bridge, Franklin slowed down and started driving way over on the shoulder of the road.