Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  I joined in the Lord’s prayer, as did Ella Jean. Aunt Roe did not.

  “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen,” we said loudly, and Ella Jean got up to pull out a chair for her mother, who was hugely pregnant again, I realized. Aunt Roe gave her a plate of food as she reached over to take my hand.

  “Now, I’m Trula,” she said. “Ella Jean has been talking about you coming up here for the longest time, and I love you, and God loves you.” Her eyes were as simple and blue as the sky.

  “I love you, too,” I said, surprising myself. This remark seemed to please her, and she began to eat. I looked at Ella Jean but she was looking down, not looking at me on purpose, I felt. Clearly, there was a lot she had not told me. The little boys tumbled off their bench and out the door, leaving a mess behind. The dogs were barking in the yard.

  “Where is Mister Bascomb?” I asked, for I was dying to know.

  “Why, he’s off doing the Lord’s work,” Trula said sweetly, in unison with Ella Jean, who said he was playing music at a honkytonk in Tennessee. Finally Ella Jean looked at me, and we both burst out laughing, Trula along with us, her laugh like little bells ringing. I got it, all right. I wondered if she had always been like this, or if it was more recent, the result of too many babies, or too much Jesus. I got up and cleared off the table and washed the tin plates in a basin of water that Aunt Roe had heated up on the woodstove so hot that it almost scalded me. I didn’t mind. I wanted it to scald me, the same way I wanted to eat what they did and do what they did.

  “Show her the garden, then,” Aunt Roe said to Ella Jean, who took me out the back door through the pecking chickens, past the “back house,” and up a dirt road toward the great overhanging mountain, where darkness and mist were already gathering.

  “There it is,” Ella Jean said, pointing at the large garden, which was as tidy as the house was messy, row on row of corn and glossy green plants such as squash and beans and potatoes, ripe red tomatoes neatly staked. “Aunt Roe got here just in time to help us put the garden in, thank God,” Ella Jean said. “Or else I don’t know what we would of done.”

  “You mean she doesn’t live here all the time?” I was shocked.

  “No, she don’t live noplace, I reckon, just goes where she’s needed. I was mighty glad when she showed up, I’ll tell you.”

  A big stuffed scarecrow in jeans and a black frock coat stood in the midst of the pumpkin vines, presiding over all. “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s Daddy,” Ella Jean said, not laughing. “Leastways, that’s his old coat. Daddy is something else. I wouldn’t of let you come up here if he was home.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “What would happen?”

  “Well, that’s the thing of it,” Ella Jean said. “He might be sweet as pie, or he might take drunk and start sworping around. You just don’t never know.”

  “Is he really a preacher, then? Like your mother said?”

  “Well, more or less. He’s been known to preach, let’s just leave it at that.” Ella Jean‘s quick grin flashed white in the gathering darkness. “Up there’s the tobacco field,” she added, pointing out a patch of ghostly-looking little white tents that didn’t look like tobacco—or anything growing—to me, and I said so.

  “That’s just how it gets when you go to cut it, all droopylike,” she said. “We’ll be getting it in the barn this week.”

  “You’ll be getting it into the barn?” I stopped walking and looked at her.

  “Yes mam.” She did not look back. “Along with a passel of otherunses. People around here are real good to help each other out when hit’s a job of work to do.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll hang it up, and let it get good and dry, and then we’ll take it to market. That’s good money and a good time,” she added. “Music and everything.” We turned back toward the house, where the sound of music already came drifting from the porch as if on cue. “Down there’s the privy,” she said. “We better go on down there and use it, fore it gets plumb dark,” and so we did, one after the other. There was a choice of dried corn cobs or old catalogue pages for toilet paper. When I came back out, Ella Jean took my hand and led me up the path to the front porch where several neighbors had gathered, including Earl, who was now playing a guitar almost as big as he was, while Granny strummed the “dulcimore” on her lap and Trula fiddled. Ella Jean grabbed up her banjo and there we stayed, all of us, singing the moon up, as lightning bugs rose from the brush into the trees and Wilmer came out to hunker down in front of his barn and listen.

  At one point, Ella Jean and her mother put their instruments down and stood together at the porch rail, almost touching but not quite, as they flung back their heads and closed their eyes and sang “Barbry Allen” in the old way, with that flip of the voice at the end, their high tremolo voices quivering out over the holler. The last note still hung in the air when there came the sound of a loud car engine—with no muffler, it sounded like—and then it was there below us, with slamming doors and voices raised. The dogs started barking like crazy.

  “Oh Lord,” Ella Jean said.

  “Who is it?” I asked. “Is it your daddy?”

  “Not hardly. And he ain’t my daddy, anyhow,” Ella Jean said, leaving me to ponder that as I watched the arrival of Ella Jean’s older sister, Flossie, who had not come back to stay, she told everybody at once, tossing her yellow ponytail. She just wanted her clothes, that was all, she was moving to Knoxville, and this was Doyle—the boyfriend who stood back by the treeline smoking a cigarette and wearing a snapbrim straw hat with a green feather in it.

  “Oh no, honey—” Trula flew down the steps to envelop her oldest daughter in tears and recriminations, but Flossie said she didn’t care if she was going to hell or not, she was going to Knoxville first, if everybody would just get out of her way and let her get her stuff.

  While Flossie made her way into the back house, trailed by all the rest, I decided to venture back down through the woods in the moonlight to the privy by myself. I found my way all right and was coming back up the path when suddenly I was grabbed from behind, one strong arm around my waist and another around my neck, a hard fist in my mouth.

  “Now don’t be scared, honey. I don’t want nothing but a little kiss.” Flossie’s boyfriend had a deep, insinuating voice. “I’ve always had a hankering for a city girl.” The bristles of his beard scraped my neck, and I could smell his awful hair pomade. I could not speak, for now he was choking me as his other hand moved under my blouse. It was pitch dark, with that woodsy smell all around. I could not move or breathe. I tried to struggle, but lost my footing on the dark path.

  “God damn it!” the man said, and suddenly I was thrown off to the side, into the bushes, as a dark furious struggle of some sort occurred, punctuated by the noise of blows and grunts, “Oof! Ugh! Ah!” like the balloons of speech in cartoons. Then it was over, and the man was gone, and Wilmer was leaning over me. He picked me up and set me on my feet. He smelled terrible.

  “Thank you,” I said, clutching the back of his rough wool shirt as I followed him out to the clearing where the man, seeming not much the worse for wear, was piling Flossie’s bundles into the car, cursing all the while. Crying now, Flossie herself got in and slammed the door. Granny still sat in her corner, in her quilts, watching—or not watching—it all from her high perch. The car rattled off down the mountainside.

  Trula picked up her fiddle again. She and Ella Jean sang “The Demon Lover,” and I soon joined in on the chorus. “Well met, well met, my own true love, Well met, well met,” says he. “I’ve just returned from the salt water sea, and it’s all for the sake of thee.” The demon lover talks the young wife into running off with him, leaving her husband, who is a “house-carpenter,” and a “tender little babe” behind. At the end of the song, both lovers drown in the “salt water sea” and then go to Hell. All the ballads ended tragically, and all the women died, or so it seemed to me, especially in t
he terrible “Omie Wise,” and yet I felt a pure, undeniable exhilaration upon learning these old tunes. Granny strummed her dulcimer in darkness with her eyes closed, yet she never missed a note or a single word when she sang solo on “The Wagoner’s Lad” in her strong old voice. That song seemed to go on forever, verse after verse in the night.

  The moon rode high in the sky, so bright it cast shadows behind every tree, when everybody finally drifted off to bed. As Ella Jean and I made a final trip down the path to the privy, I could hardly believe what had happened there; I did not tell her about it, for some reason I did not understand. We slept up in Ella Jean’s little loft in the back house, where I found a number of my old Nancy Drew books—I did not mention this either. Ella Jean’s breathing instantly grew slow and regular, her warm heavy arm flung across my stomach; but as for me, I was too excited to sleep, lying awake far into the night breathing the cool, scented mountain air and gazing out through a pie-shaped chink at the starry sky.

  IN THE MORNING we ate anything we could find and then sat out on the porch in the sunshine playing checkers and drinking black coffee out of tin cups while we waited for Earl to come back and get us. Granny sat in her corner as if she had never left it—maybe she hadn’t!—picking out a fast little tune on Earl’s guitar. The little boys wrestled in the dirt yard below while Trula sat on the steps painting her toenails pink. She could scarcely reach them over her big stomach. Up the hill, Aunt Roe was already out working in the garden. “I’ll fly away, oh Lordy, I’ll fly away,” Granny sang. “When I get to heaven by and by, I’ll fly away.” We joined her.

  “Y’all sound good,” Trula said.

  “King,” I said to Ella Jean, crowning the black disc. I had scarcely slept yet felt strangely rested and alert, with every nerve on edge. Mist still hung in the trees though the sun shone hot and bright already; the deep blue sky was cloudless.

  “Don’t y’all want to do your nails too?” Trula asked, offering the little bottle of nail polish.

  Ella Jean and I had just finished painting each others’ toenails when Earl’s old truck rumbled into the clearing. We grabbed up our shoes and bags and ran barefooted down the warm stairs and across the yard to jump in the back of the truck. “Bye! Bye!” the little boys cried, waving. Trula waved, too, and even Baby Doll, who came out to sit sullenly beside her mother. Granny dozed in the sun in her corner. We bounced down the hill past the barn where Wilmer suddenly appeared in the door with a big smile on his face, wearing his familiar overalls and wool shirt and that snap brim straw hat with the green feather on it. He touched the brim and nodded, once, as we rode past.

  EARL DROPPED US at the stone gate and we set off up the hill, swinging our bags. The grounds of Highland Hospital had never looked more beautiful—the long green slopes of perfect grass punctuated by flowering oak-leaf hydrangeas and crape myrtles, stone benches and birdbaths placed here and there, the bright, orderly flower beds as we neared the top. Everyone we encountered waved or spoke to us, and we spoke back. But suddenly Ella Jean grabbed my arm, jerking me off the driveway with such force that I almost fell down.

  “What are you . . .” I began, but stopped as I saw the Carrolls’ long, black, shiny Lincoln shoot past us like a bullet, with Johnson at the wheel.

  “Something is wrong,” I said.

  Instinctively we both slowed down as we continued on up the hill, achieving a literal snail’s pace as we neared the top in time to witness the Lincoln slide to a stop in front of Homewood. Its huge front door and the car doors sprang open at the same time. Out came Mrs. Hodges, almost falling down the stone steps as she rushed to envelop Mrs. Carroll in such a hug that Mrs. Carroll’s red pillbox hat went spiralling down along the pavement. “Ai-eee, ai—eee!” Mrs. Hodges wailed. Her hair stood out from her head in big clumps. Miss Malone and Mr. Axelrod appeared in the open door behind her with serious expressions on their faces.

  “Come on,” I said.

  But Ella Jean hung back, pulling me into the honeysuckle arbor. “Maybe we ought to wait awhile,” she said. “They ain’t seen us yet.”

  Through the trellis we watched Dr. Carroll himself, tall and grave, climb out of the car and take off his navy blue suit coat and his hat and hand them carefully to Johnson. Then Dr. Carroll stood in the hot sun in his brilliant white shirt with his hands on his hips, surveying the two women as if they presented a job of work to be done—a familiar stance I had often witnessed as he surveyed a new garden plot to be put in or a flagstone walk to be laid. Mrs. Hodges kept on talking and waving her arms while Mrs. Carroll covered her face with her hands.

  “She’s crying,” Ella Jean said.

  Mr. Axelrod and Miss Malone moved forward awkwardly. Johnson carried the Carrolls’ suitcases inside. Ella Jean and I stood like statues in the arbor, watching through the vines. The smell of the honeysuckle was overpowering. Now Dr. Carroll had put his arms around Mrs. Carroll in a tight embrace while Mrs. Hodges stepped back, still speaking and wringing her hands.

  “Look,” Ella Jean said, pointing. We were both transfixed by a sudden influx of yellow butterflies that fluttered down to land in a bed of orange day lilies just beyond our hiding place. They stayed for only a second before flying up again in a yellow cloud that rose erratically into the cloudless sky. I rushed out into the sunshine to see them go, shading my eyes with my hand.

  “Well, you’ve gone and done it now,” Ella Jean said from the arbor.

  “It’s Robert,” I screamed. “Something has happened to Robert. I know it has.” The minute the yellow cloud of butterflies disappeared over the brow of the hill, I set out toward Homewood, at a dead run.

  But it took me forever to get up that hill, for the closer I got, the slower I seemed to go, running now as if in a dream. The Carrolls stood locked in their embrace like a statue, but Mrs. Hodges opened her arms wide to catch me up in a stifling hug.

  “Oh honey,” she cried, “he’s gone and kilt himself.”

  “Evelyn!” Mrs. Carroll said to her sharply.

  But Mrs. Hodges could not stop herself from telling it, again and again, her jumbled recital punctuated by those odd cries, “Ai-eee, ai-eee!” The facts were these: Robert had been on vacation from Oxford, at home with his new family at the grand house his mother had bought for Dr. Jerome Livingston on the coast of Cornwall. There had been a nature hike that afternoon, led by Dr. Livingston, then croquet on the lawn, then a jolly dinner for everyone, including the three stepsisters and several of their friends, with two visiting uncles thrown in. Nothing unusual had occurred at this dinner, according to all. Lamb, potatoes, peas, and carrots had been served. Robert had been pleasant and talkative, excusing himself just before dessert.

  “But he loved dessert,” I said.

  “Ah yes, remember how he used to steal my sweeties? Ai-eee!” Mrs. Hodges had always kept cellophane-wrapped hard candy in her pocket for him.

  No one had thought anything of it when Robert left the table, assuming of course that he had gone to “the necessary,” as Mrs. Hodges called it. Nor was Robert missed when he did not immediately return, for one of the uncles chose the interval between courses to perform a few magic tricks, and everyone was enthralled. Robert had simply folded his napkin, excused himself quietly, and walked down the hall and out the front door where he circled the house to take the “Cliff Walk” which ran through the woods to the great red cliffs above the sea, continuing in a circuitous fashion down to the “shingle” or stretch of sand where the family swam and sunned at low tide only. Robert did not take the lower path. He climbed out onto the rocks, into the sunset, then “cast himself into the sea,” as Mrs. Hodges told it. No one in the world could have shut her up at that moment.

  The family might never have known what happened to him had not a kitchen boy, taking a smoke break on the lawn, seen him go. There was something about the way Robert was walking, the boy said later, something about the way he looked back before ducking into the woods on the cliff path, that bothered him. The boy ran in t
o sound the alarm, which took a moment, for he was a stutterer. When those at table realized what he was saying, the entire company threw down their napkins and leapt up to follow him down to the cliffs, where they found only Robert’s wristwatch, which he had left for some reason on the rocks, and the gorgeous sunset, and the huge waves crashing on the rocks below.

  “But he couldn’t swim!” I cried, remembering Robert out by the hospital pool, fully dressed.

  “Well, that was the point then, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Hodges snapped. “Suicide, it was, and now he’s gone straight to Hell in a hand basket, he has, there’s the pity of it, there’s the shame.”

  “Evelyn, this is rubbish, and you know it. You are overwrought. Let’s step back to the office. I’m going to give you something for your nerves.” Dr. Carroll spoke firmly.

  “And Evalina, you must come with me, dear. Let’s get out of this blinding sun.” Mrs. Carroll was disengaging me from the overheated Mrs. Hodges, trying to draw me away. “We have a lot to do,” she said, “and a lot to talk about.”

  BUT I WAS unable to talk about Robert then, or for years to come. He had been my most precious friend, my most private memory, purely my own amidst my oddly public adolescence at Highland Hospital. He was the still point at the center of the kaleidoscope.

  In only ten days, I would leave for Peabody. In the meantime, I was supposed to shop, pack, and practice—practice the piano above all—but I could not. I crumpled into a ball when I sat upon the piano bench. Nor could I eat any supper later. Finally I was allowed to go to bed, where I pretended to sleep so that they would let me alone while I watched the terrible film that played over and over in my mind, Robert’s body smashing against the rocks, his head broken apart in pieces like Humpty Dumpty, that huge head crammed too full, too full of dreams and facts and lore and bits of odd knowledge . . . and love, I thought, for Robert had loved the world, and all the facts and bits of it, every name and every living thing.