Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  Nor did Martha! I introduced them on the porch before the service, and said real clear, Now Martha, this is your mother, who has come from a long way off.

  I’m getting married, Martha said to Violet, who said, I know it, dear. That’s why I came, and kissed her. Martha giggled, and seemed to know her then, and Violet helped me fix the flowers in her hair. Rufus sat out back on the steps smoking one Lucky Strike after another. We wouldn’t let him come in until we were ready, then Maudy went out and got him.

  To the surprise of all, the new preacher said right at the end like he was inspired, Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment, and everybody stared at him. But I said without thinking, Shakespeare. It was like an old rusty door swung open in my mind. He—Mr. Blue—looked at me very careful and nodded. I felt a pain shoot through me, like an arrow in my heart. Oh Joli, you get so various as you get old! I have been so many people. And yet I think the most important thing is Don’t forget. Don’t ever forget. I tell you this now, in particular. A person can not afford to forget who they are or where they came from, or so I think, even when the remembering brings pain.

  After the little service everybody gathered around for the Lady Baltimore cake that Ruthie had made, and ginger ale. We did not have any liquor out where you could see it because of Dreama Fox and Edith Fox and Ray Senior, and of course the preacher—who might not of minded at all! I cut the cake and gave Martha a piece and she gobbled it right down without passing it around first, and everybody laughed.

  That baby is going to be well nourished, the preachers wife said, laughing. She is a plain, cheery woman from the North.

  Now pass it around, I said.

  Would you like some of this cake mam, Martha said then, giving the next piece to Violet, you couldn’t tell if she really knew who Violet was or not. And why would she? For Martha has lived with us all of her life while her mother acted on principle, which I have not.

  Would you tell Ivy that I’d like another little piece of that cake? Dreama said to Oakley. She was wearing her awful hat.

  I was right there, of course, not ten feet away from Dreama myself, serving the cake. But she will not speak to me.

  Ivy, Oakley said, winking at me, Dreama says she wants another piece of cake.

  Well she can damn well get it herself then! I flung down the knife and went off to hug Violet Gayheart who was leaving, even though she is not the kind of woman you hug. But Violet started crying and I did too, we go so far back together—to those crazy days at Diamond when I ran around like I was in a fever. I guess you call it youth. Violet smelled like cigarettes and good perfume. She lives in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where I can not immagine her life. She strode off down the hill like a man going off to work, but stopped at the bottom and turned to blow me a kiss. Then she got in a black car that was waiting for her and they pulled off. I stood by the steps looking out at the misty June day and the blooming rosybush and the leaves of the trees like jewels. A little bit of rain makes all the colors deeper. Geneva ran down the hill arm in arm with Ruthie and they almost slipped, squealing like girls. Judge Brack was waiting for them in his Oldsmobile as he is too old to make the climb.

  One by one, they all left including Mr. and Mrs. Rufus Gook in Rufus’s new truck with the toolbox across the back and his two new hunting dogs in a cage in the back and Maudy sitting between them. She is going down there to keep Martha company for a while in her new house so she won’t get lonely. Nobody seems to wonder if I might be lonely with them all gone, or may be they know I will not! With the new library down in town, I can get all the books I want. And I have got your daddy here to look after, and Bill who has quit school awhile back and works with your daddy now, and Danny Ray who is horsing to go in the Army. By the way there was a Patterson boy killed, I forget which one, at Saipan. Danny Ray says he wants to go in because he don’t fit in here and there is nothing for him to do when he finishes high school, and I guess he is right. He has awful fights with his daddy who says he is wasting time reading, so I dont know.

  After Martha’s wedding, your daddy and me sat out on the porch taking a little drink until it got dark, which is not a bad way to pass the time. I was thinking about all of you. You know Joli, the older I get, the more it seems to me like you never can tell what will happen in this world. I bet you are like me and never thought—never thought for a minute!—that our Martha would up and get married. Now did you? But she has.

  And so I remain up here on Sugar Fork

  Your loving,

  MAMA.

  June 26, 1945.

  Dearest Joli,

  You are sweet to want us to come to the wedding and please tell Taylor, he is real kind to offer to pay our way. Your daddy and I would give anything if we could come honey, but you know it is just too far. The fact is that your daddy has not been feeling good atall lately, he could not make the trip. So you will just have to get married without us present I reckon, if you can stand it! And we will be thinking about you all that day and wishing the best for you honey. I sure hope you know what you are doing! Lord knows you are old enough to know what you want by now, not like so many here who do it without a thought. I feel like they say, Oh I might go to the store today, or I might get married—and then they up and get married, with no more thought than that! Well, I was young myself once.

  Ethel sends her love and so does Victor. And Geneva says to tell you some advice, it is, Do not ever go to bed mad. This is good advice and you ought to take it. Geneva may not be very good at marriage, but she is good at men.

  So, have a fine wedding honey, and a real good honeymoon. I hope you can go before too long. I know you will love Paris France. Kiss the groom for me! And you all come home to visit when you can.

  For I am thinking about you all the time.

  And you can rest assured that there never was a daughter in this wide world that brought more joy to her mother’s heart.

  I remain your loving,

  MAMA.

  Oh Silvaney,

  I have just wrote Joli a letter declining to come to her wedding which has fair broke my heart. For I would love to go, and travel across Virginia on a train paid for by Taylor Cunningham the Third, and see what there is to see! But Oakley does not feel up to the trip, plain and simple. His breathing has not been good ever since we left Diamond, now it is worse. And it is more than that.

  Oakley feels we ought not to go, and in my heart of hearts I know he is right.

  Last night we went walking after dinner as we have taken to doing lately, down the holler to the road and down the road to where Bill has cleared the new field, and it was one of those summer nights when the mist rises up real thick and soft from the creek, and lots of lightning bugs were blinking. Maudy was back up at the house catching them, her and that little Rolette girl. They had took a mason jar and made a hole in the top and they were filling it up with lightning bugs for a lantern. Remember when me and you used to do the same? Bill is growing tobacco in the new field, it gives Oakley a deal of pleasure to see it grow. Him and Bill are building a little tobacco barn by that stand of pines, to cure it.

  So Oakley and I were down there looking at the tobacco and watching the mist rise.

  I was still thinking that we might make the trip. What do you reckon I ought to wear? I was saying. I bet I can borry something from Ruthie, for we are about the same size.

  Now Ivy—Oakley took my hand.

  What? I said, jerking my hand back, for I knew what.

  I just don’t believe we ought to go out there, Oakley said.

  Why not? She wants us to come, she will send us the fare, she said so, I told Oakley. But I felt something settle in my chest.

  Now Ivy, Oakley said again. She could of come here and got married if she had chose.

  But she has got all her friends over there where she has been living for so long, I said.

  Her whole family is here, Oakley said. I could not even see him by then through the mist, just hear his hateful voice, so ca
lm and full of sense.

  So you are saying that if she had wanted us at the wedding, she would of done it here, I said.

  I am not saying a thing, honey, Oakley said. And it may be that Joli has not had too much to do with it anyway. I think you ought to let a sleeping dog lie. Anyway, didn’t she bring him out here to meet us?

  Yes, I had to say.

  Well then, Oakley said. That is enough right now.

  Then the hoot owls started up, there is a real old one that has been down there for years, someplace back in the woods close by the steppingstones.

  Where are you? I said, and Oakley said, Right here, and we walked up to the house together. The hoot owls sounded like people calling back and forth through the trees. Other times they sound like cats, or like the inside of your head, screaming. That is what I used to think, the summer after LuIda died. Oh Oakley, I said, and he put his arm around me and we went on to bed early despite of Maudy and Ronda Rolette making fudge in the kitchen.

  You know Silvaney, it is a funny thing, but that time I ran off with Honey Breeding helped not hurt, with me and Oakley. He has been new for me ever since, some way, and me for him, and even though I am way too old now to think on such things, I blush to say they come to mind often, they do! I am always ready for Oakley to lay me down. Back when I was lost in darkness, it was not so. For when you are caught so far down, you can not immagine the sun, or see a ray of sunshine any place. You can not get out of yourself enough to see even the outline of any one else. But now Oakley stands before me full in flesh, with those steady eyes and that onesided grin and that same shock of hair that will not lay flat. He is the same old Oakley yet he is different, I can not explain it. I am yearning towards him always. Of course Oakley doesn’t say much, he never did, but I have got used to it now.

  I have just remembered something.

  In my mind I go back to a time when I was a girl and Momma and Geneva and some other women, I forget who, were sitting out on the porch down at the boardinghouse talking about men. And one of these other women hove a big sigh and said, Well, I will tell you girls, my marital duties have about wore me out. She looked like they had too! And this other woman said she did not have to do it any more because of her spastic colitis. And I remember how Geneva winked at Momma, and even sad thin Momma could not stop a little smile from coming to her lips. Momma closed her eyes and leaned back in her rocker and rocked and smiled and rocked, while the other women talked on about men.

  I was a little girl sitting on the porch steps, listening.

  And now I am old. But Silvaney, it is still real good with me and Oakley, it is better than before, in spite of us being so old! I know you are not shocked by me saying this even though you are still a maiden lady, for you are my soul, and my soul is as wild as ever! I am glad of it too. Anyway Oakley went on to sleep right after we done it, and then the girls went to bed too. I could hear them talking for a while and then they went to sleep and it got real quiet. I could still hear the hoot owls down by the creek but soft now, like doves.

  I got up and went out on the porch where I set for a while and smoked one of Oakley’s cigarettes. It seemed like no time since that night that I come out here to find Babe passed out cold in the yard, and you sitting right there with him in the moonlight.

  It seems like yesterday. I can still see the way your hair looked, rippling and long and light. Oh Silvaney, do you wrap it up around your head now, as I do? And is it not turning gray?

  Maudy and the Rolette girl had left their lightning bug lantern out on the porch, so I picked it up and held it. It glowed and moved and changed, it was always glowing and always changing, right there in my hands. I will tell you quite frankly, Silvaney—Joli has broken my heart. For she is the child of my childhood, and in losing her, I have lost my youth. I can not say it better than that. I wanted her gone, I wished her godspeed, but now I am about to die because she has took me up on it! Oh, I am contrary. It is true! She has travelled far beyond me now. Martha is more my girl, in all truth, and I do feel good when I think of her wedding. I know she is in good hands with Rufus Cook.

  I wish I could say the same for Joli.

  But I was not impressed with Taylor Cunningham Three when they came to visit. Joli was nervous, which put me off. You know she has always been quick and changeable, this is her nature, and the light comes and goes in her face like a lightning bug lamp. But I had never seen her nervous. So what was she worrying about? What was she afraid of? Did she care so much what Taylor Three was going to think?

  It would not have worried me none if I’d been here, for as far as I could tell, he didn’t think a thing! I mean nothing. Taylor Three had one of those faces you have seen before on fine china plates, white and exact, painted in tiny detail, too pretty. He has a dimple in his chin, which I have always hated in a man. He has a wide forehead and curly blond hair that is too brassy, fixed too careful, and soft white hands that look like he has never worked a day in his life. He is a lawyer. He grew up in Richmond and went to the University. Joli says he is real smart, and this must be so since he is marrying her! He must have something to him. But I’ll swear, I can’t see it. All I know is that he has real good manners and carries a leather cigarette case and makes her nervous.

  Bill liked him because Taylor Three asked him all about raising tobacco, and listened hard to the answers. Then he asked Oakley all about the mines and the union, and Oakley has never talked so much nor so well, before or since. Joli looked from Taylor Three to her daddy, back and forth, while all this was going on. It made her so happy she was about to bust, you could tell. Don’t you think Daddy likes him? she asked me later, and I had to say honestly, Yes.

  But as for me, I am not so sure. I think Taylor Three is mighty pretty, mighty cold. I think he might be the kind that will be real interested in you for as long as you’re offering what he needs, and then drop you like a hot potato. I hope I’m wrong. But I can not bring myself to trust a man with soft hands and a dimple. Franklin Ransom had a dimple too.

  That lightning bug lantern reminded me so much of Joli—not Maudy, never Maudy, who is a girl like a 100-watt bulb. I sat and held the lantern in my hands, listening to the owls, watching it glow, and change, and glow, and change. Like all of us. This thought came to me all of a sudden. For Danny Ray is back from Germany now and going to East Tenessee State, I don’t know if I told you that or not, and our Bill has moved into a house down on Home Creek with a young widow woman named Marlene Blount whose husband did not come back from the war. She is ten years older than Bill if she’s a day! And has two big old boys. Plus she is sort of fat. But she is real good-natured and keeps Bill grinning, I will say that. The other day when Oakley and me were driving to town, we went right by her house and there was Bill out in the yard throwing a baseball with her two boys, and she came outside and hollered them all in to supper! It beats all. It is like Marlene Blount has got one more kid. But Bill has always been real happy-go-lucky, just like a kid, and Marlene is a good mother. As for me, I’d never say a word against it anyway. I couldn’t. Not after what I did.

  So I sat out on the porch in the pulsing light of the lamp and after a while I started getting sleepy. But before I went back to bed, I unscrewed the lid of the jar and dumped the lightning bugs out on the porch. At first they kind of crawled around as if they did not want to go anyplace. But then they seemed to figure things out and they rose up together like a little blinking cloud—up, up, and out across the yard and up into the trees until they were out of sight.

  And I remain your loving sister,

  IVY.

  August 8, 1947.

  Dear Joli,

  I know Ethel has called you up on the long distance telephone which I could not bear to do.

  So I know that you know about your daddy.

  We buried him yesterday. But somehow it did not seem real to me, not even then. It does now, for I am writing you this letter.

  I will try not to go on and on as is my want.

&nbs
p; The funeral was preached by Rev. Ancil Collins, the old preacher they used to have who came back here special to do it, as he said he has never known a better man than Oakley Fox in all his life. Rev. Collins uses a cane now and can’t hardly see. He was assisted by Mr. Blue and by Delphi’s boy Cord who has got the call. Cord told about how he knew your daddy from a child and how your daddy carved him a little horse when his pony died. I had never heard this story before. It was real sad. Everyone was crying and fanning themselves. The little Ramey’s Chapel Church was full to overflowing, with folks sitting out in the grass and standing back in the shade of the trees. Somebody had dug up ferns from along the creek and filled the whole front of the church plum up with them. It looked so pretty and was fitting for your daddy too, who loved these mountains so. Dreama cried and fainted dead away when they carried him out. She has always got to be the center of attention. Your grandmama Fox could not come as she is in the hospital down at Majestic. Your grandpa came to the church but could not make the climb to the house nor to the burying ground.

  All I will say about the burying is, there has never been so many people up this holler before, not ever. And it so hot, with a thunderstorm coming up! But yet they came, all the folks from church and town and Home Creek, more besides. You would not think a quiet man would know so many, nor be so loved. For a man who did not say much, he got around a good bit! All kinds of people come up to speak to me and Ethel and Bill and Danny Ray and Victor, telling stories of how your daddy fixed their bridge after it got washed out, or how he gave them some money when their old man died, or he gave them one of those little carved bears to give to their boy for Christmas, or he drove them into town to see the doctor or catch the train and I don’t know what all.