Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  Brother Dane stepped down from the podium and picked up little Kevin, who everyone had forgotten about in the excitement and was sitting there by himself, wailing at the top of his lungs. I’m sure he was scared half to death. He probably thought his grandma was dead, too. Brother Dane took him outside to where Frannie was, to show him she was all right.

  Everyone else lined up and passed single file by the casket to get a closer look at Carlene, then craned their necks at the window as they went on around the room to see what was going on outside with Frannie. I hope they got their money’s worth. I wanted to tell them to take a picture—it lasts longer.

  Tripp and I filed out of our row and got into line behind a man none of us had ever seen before. It was hard to put your finger on why, exactly, but he looked rich. He was a lot older than us, probably nearly forty, and had on a midnight-blue gabardine suit that said money, and loafers made out of soft Italian leather with little tassels on the toes. He had the kind of even tan you get from lying out in the sun and basting yourself with expensive oil, and he smelled good, too, although I couldn’t recognize the cologne. His hair was shot with silver, nearly white at the temples, and long enough to brush over his collar. He wore a diamond ring on the middle finger of his right hand—six rows of fairly big diamonds; it covered the whole joint, from knuckle to hand. He was carrying a single rose, and when he stopped at the casket, he reached out and put the flower between Carlene’s hands, then leaned down and kissed her right on the mouth. Then he turned and walked down the aisle and out the front door, acting like he didn’t notice that everyone in the room was staring at him with big eyes. I stepped up to the casket next, in my turn, and saw that the rose still had the thorns on it; they looked like they were digging into her hands. I wanted to move it, but couldn’t get up the courage to touch her, so I left it there, even though it bothered me.

  I would have liked to follow him to see what kind of car he got into, but it was way too crowded, and he disappeared.

  I went on out and found Mama sitting on the porch with Frannie, who looked a little better. Aunt Juanita was holding the boy, letting him hunt in her purse for gum. Jim Floyd brought the limo around and they got them and Lucille in for the trip out to the graveyard. Frannie seemed so small, her ankles bony and white above her patent-leather shoes, as she climbed into the big car. It made me think of how Carlene used to look in the third grade. I hoped Frannie would hang on to her marbles for a while longer, but it didn’t seem likely.

  “Cherry, I’m going to go on out to the graveyard with Frannie. Y’all come on and I’ll see you out there,” Mama called to me as she followed Frannie into the limo.

  I was so proud of her. I don’t think she even knew Frannie all that well, and there she was taking care of her. I hope I can be just like that when I get older.

  I got into Ramblin’ Rose with Tripp and Baby and Bean, and we all headed up to the cemetery. There was a long funeral procession stretching out behind us for a mile or two. That whole crowd of people was going to the graveyard. They weren’t going to miss one minute of the carnival.

  16.Carlene

  As long as she could remember, Carlene never could do anything right as far as her daddy was concerned. If she was coloring, it was always in the place right where he needed to sit and eat. If she ate a piece of pie, it would be one he was saving for his dinner. If he tripped over anything, it was sure to be something she had left out. And the first reaction he always had was to pop her one on the butt before she even knew what was happening, and ask questions later. Sometimes he hit her for no good reason that she could figure out.

  “What’d I do, Daddy? Why’d you hit me?”

  “You know what you done, Ida Red. Don’t think I don’t know. Now, get on and let me alone.”

  It seemed like sometimes the very sight of her was enough to set him off on a tirade about something. She had bruises where he would stripe her legs with a hickory switch for mouthing off at him, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. It wasn’t in her to take what he had to dish out, even when she was little. Even when she knew what the consequences would be.

  “You’re not the boss of me, and I will eat anything my mother cooks if I want to,” she’d say. “It’s her that makes the money to buy it.”

  “Don’t you lip off to me, girl,” he’d answer. “I’ll whup you good.” And then she would run and he would be after her, chasing her out the door, across the woodpile, finally catching her and blistering her legs while she kicked and tried to bite him, just making him madder.

  Carl was temporarily out of work. It seemed that the boss over at the sawmill had it in for him, because Carl was a better sawyer than the boss’s new son-in-law, and said something to the boy about his uneven boards. The boss didn’t like Carl anyhow and was just looking for an excuse to let him go. At least that was Carl’s version. Some variation of that story ended every job Carl Moore ever had.

  They struggled along while Carl went from job to job until Carlene started school, then Frannie wanted to go back to work.

  “Carl, I been thinking of going back to the pickle plant. It seems like we don’t never have the money for nothing.”

  “No. You’re not goin’ back to the plant. I can take care of this family.”

  Carl was not about to let her work in the same place as Walter Tucker, who he, more than ever, suspected was Carlene’s real father. Frannie still took her late-night walks in the woods after Carlene went to sleep, and Carl usually followed her, sure that she was meeting some man, doubly sure it was Walter Tucker. Sometimes she would carry on conversations, and even though Carl couldn’t hear anybody reply or didn’t ever see anybody, that didn’t mean there wasn’t somebody there. It was enough to drive a man crazy.

  “Well, I got to find work somewhere, Carl. I’ll lose my mind if I have to stay here in this trailer all day. Maybe I could get on as a waitress at the Town Café, or someplace.”

  “No, Frannie. I won’t have it! You know how those men who hang out at the Town Café are—they’ll be looking at you, thinking all kinds of things.”

  Frannie sighed. “Then how about the chicken processing plant? Carl, I swear on the Bible I’ll not talk to any men. We don’t even have enough money to get decent clothes for Carlene.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” He hesitated, knowing the truth of what she said. “The chicken plant might be all right. But just until I get steady work. Then you quit and stay home.” The processing plant was the least of the evils, as far as Carl could see. The work was so rough that he didn’t figure there would be much heart for fooling around.

  So Frannie got on at the chicken processing plant. There weren’t many places a woman with only an eighth-grade education could work.

  The plant was kept freezing cold, for the chickens, and everyone wore as many clothes as they could move around in—layers of flannel shirts and long underwear under baggy overalls. The plant itself was a scene of carnage. After the catchers hung the chickens by the feet on a moving chain, their heads dragged through an electrified water pool that killed or stunned them and they passed by a saw that cut their heads off. The men who ran the saw wore head-to-toe rubber suits slicked over with the blood spray. The headless chickens were then dipped in boiling water to loosen the feathers and went past the pinning women, who pulled off as many feathers as they could snatch as the birds moved by. That’s where Frannie started out—the pinning line. By the end of that first shift, she couldn’t lift her arms, and the smell was so bad she had to go out several times and throw up; but she got used to it after a few weeks. At least she was away from Carl all day. He was driving her crazy with his jealousy. She was afraid he was becoming unhinged. She knew he sometimes sat across the street from the plant, just watching. He thought nobody noticed him, but several people asked her what her husband was doing out there sitting in the truck all day.

  She considered leaving him, but she was afraid he would come after her, and hurt her or Carlene in his rage
. He didn’t hit her too often, but she had a feeling that if he ever let go, he could be real bad. She could stay with him, at least until Carlene got out of school. He did seem to love her, in his way. If only he could get a job, it might be all right.

  “Carl,” she would say, “why don’t you get on at the chicken plant, too? You ain’t going to get no sawmill job, it seems like.”

  “I’m a master sawyer, Frannie. I’ll find a job in a sawmill, if you please. Don’t you worry about it. You won’t be working at that place long.”

  Deep down, he felt like he was too good to work in a factory. He wasn’t cut out for that kind of work—the tedium of it, the stench. He’d wait for a sawmill job to open up.

  Weeks, then months, went by and nothing came up. After a while he didn’t even pretend to look. He spent most of his days spying on Frannie. Sometimes he went squirrel hunting. Or deer hunting. Or coon hunting. But there were days, increasingly, when a mood settled on him, and he would go up on the Ridge to get a quart of moonshine and then drink from the time he got up until he went to bed, and read magazines that Carlene wasn’t allowed to touch. Those were the days he brushed her hair.

  What was even worse than the whippings he gave her was his way of staring at her hair, touching it as she walked by him, like he couldn’t keep his hands off it.

  “Ida Red, go and get the hairbrush,” he’d say. “Your hair is a rat’s nest.”

  He would sit her in his lap, then, while he ripped through the curls with a fierce energy, pulling and yanking the tangles, digging the bristles into her head until the hair was smooth and shiny. If she screamed or wiggled or tried to get up, he’d clamp his legs around her and hold her there until he’d had enough of brushing it.

  One night as Carlene was coming out of her bath, Frannie came in and noticed long scratches on her neck.

  “Honey, what happened to your neck?”

  She didn’t want to tell, but couldn’t think of some other reason quick enough. So she told the truth. “Daddy done it, brushing my hair.”

  “Your daddy brushes your hair like that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he does. He likes to brush it hard, for a long time. Sometimes it makes my head sore.”

  Frannie put some mercurochrome on the scratches and didn’t say anything else about it, but the next Saturday she brought home a bottle of Clairol hair dye, Raven Black, and dyed the red curls.

  “You have pretty hair, Carlene honey, but it seems like it’s like a red rag to a bull for your daddy. Maybe he won’t get so mad at you if he doesn’t have to see the red all the time. Besides, you look just like I do now. We’re nearly twins, don’t you think? Isn’t this fun?”

  Carlene didn’t say anything to her mother, just let her do what she wanted to. Sometimes, even at eight, she felt like she was the mother and Frannie was the girl. When she was little, they used to sneak off from Carl together. Sometimes they would go down to the brook that ran through the woods behind the trailer and make pretend houses on the cool, wet rocks. They would pick berries and mushrooms and cook them on pretend stoves. Frannie put dolls on layaway at the five-and-dime for Carlene and paid them out a dollar a week. Every payday, they would go add another dollar, and the man would take the doll off the shelf and let Carlene hold it for a minute. Then he’d put it back up until they paid the last dollar, when she could take it home. She had a baby doll with skin that felt like real baby skin, and a Sweet Sue walking doll almost as big as she was; a Ginny doll, small and blond, with blue eyes that closed and a tiny, turned-up nose. They had to hide them from Carl, though, because he would throw a fit when he saw them.

  “Frannie, you know that we can’t afford play-pretties! We don’t even have the money for a TV!”

  Carlene protected her dolls from Carl, just like her mother tried to protect her, but she never told Frannie about the switches and the bruises. If she could avoid it, she didn’t let her see them, and if she couldn’t, she said she tripped and fell over a rock or something. No point in having her daddy call her a snitch, and no telling what her mama would do. It would just make things worse. She could get along all right.

  —

  “What do you think you’ve done to your hair, Ida Red? It looks like a pile of dog mess.”

  “Mama dyed it to look like hers. We look like twins.”

  Carl laughed. “You ain’t ever goin’ to be as pretty as your mama, Ida Red, if you took a bath in a tub of black dye.”

  It seemed like the dye didn’t help them get along any better. He spent more and more time alone, reading his books. He hid them before Frannie got home. Carlene watched when he went out to put them away, and when he was out, she sneaked a look at them. They were all of naked women, which she knew her mother wouldn’t like. But she didn’t want to tell her about them. Instead, she stole a book of his, called Peep,and took it to school. She thought they would maybe come and arrest him or something. Instead, it just got her in trouble with the teacher, and nobody at the school ever said a word to Carl about it. The teacher kept the magazine, but Carl never even missed it, he had so many hidden in the tin box. Carlene used to crawl under the trailer when he was off hunting and look at them. The women were pretty, most of them, and looked like they were real comfortable posing in front of the camera. They didn’t look like they were forced into it. She tried to make up stories about the naked women, give them reasons for doing it, like if they had a mother in the hospital and needed money for her or something. She liked looking at the magazines. It made her feel like she had a secret on her daddy. When he was mean to her, she would think of the picture books; it somehow unsettled him.

  “What are you thinking, Ida Red? I know you’re thinking something about me.”

  “I don’t always think about you, Daddy.” She would say with a little smile. It drove him mad.

  Carlene had her own collection, too—of movie-star pictures. Frannie could always come up with the price of a matinee ticket for herself and Carlene, and they would go and get lost in the movies for hours. They went on Saturday afternoons while Carl waited for them out at the sale barn with some of his old buddies, passing around a jar of moon. Frannie had always loved the movies. She wrote to stars like Rochelle Hudson and Shirley Temple when she was a girl, and they sent her autographed pictures. She had a stack of them: Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Clark Gable, and a lot of others. Since Carlene had gotten old enough to write, they also had new ones, like Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue and Carlene’s favorite, Shirley MacLaine. Most would never answer the letters, but now and again a signed photo would arrive.

  “When you grow up, Carlene, you could be in the pictures. You are as pretty as Rita Hayworth. You’ll get on a bus one day and go to Hollywood and then I’ll write you for one of your pictures!”

  It was a dream she kept secret and thought about a lot, even though she knew it probably would never happen.

  —

  Most of the movie stars smoked. You had to smoke if you wanted to be a star. When she was twelve, she started sneaking her daddy’s Camel cigarettes. She would only take one or two at a time, so he wouldn’t notice. She felt good, sitting on the big gray lichen-covered rock out behind the trailer, taking the blue smoke deep into her lungs, pretending to be on the big screen. She had watched Bette Davis do it, and she practiced French-inhaling and blowing smoke rings until she looked like a pro. She got away with it for more than a year, until he began to notice.

  One afternoon, she was so taken with watching the smoke rings drift up and break apart that she didn’t hear Carl come up behind her until he had grabbed the cigarette out of her hand.

  “Ha! I caught you red-handed, Ida Red. You thought I wouldn’t miss those cigarettes, didn’t you?” He threw down the cigarette, stomped on it, and leaned close to her face. She could smell the sour liquor on his breath, and tried to pull back.

  “You want to smoke? Okay. Here. I’ll show you what cigarettes taste like.” He took a half-filled pack out of his pocket and crammed it into her mouth. Sh
oved it in until she started to gag. Then, as she bent over to retch, he kicked her, and when she fell to the ground, he grabbed the pack out of her mouth and crumbled the cigarettes over her face.

  “That’ll teach you to smoke my cigarettes. That’s the last pack of mine you’ll ever get.”

  She lay in the dirt with the tobacco in her mouth, giving him one of her Ida Red looks that seemed to make him even madder at her. She fought as hard as she could not to cry while he looked at her.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” She wiped her mouth. “I’m looking at nothing.”

  “Are you saying that I’m nothing?”

  “You said it, I didn’t.”

  “I’ll show you who’s nothing. Get up from there, girl.”

  He grabbed her by the arm, and she spat a mouthful of wet tobacco in his face. Then something took hold of him, like a red screen of rage had rolled down over his eyes. He twisted her arm and threw her back down on the ground, falling with her. She bit him hard on the fleshy part of his hand, drawing blood. He roared, and with the pain, it seemed like a demon entered his body. He shoved her back, and she began kicking at him, her dress riding up. He tried to hold down her legs, and at the same time he grabbed at her white cotton panties. They tore as easy as if they had been made of paper.

  She was a big girl for thirteen, and the first fuzz of red hair covered her private parts. He stared for a moment, the sight hitting him like a punch in the face. He grimaced, then in a single motion thrust her legs apart, unzipped his jeans, and released himself, falling onto her. One hard jab ruptured the small slit covered by soft red down.

  She screamed, tried to bite, tried to hit, but couldn’t do anything except lie there and gasp while the weight of her father mashed her into the rocky ground.