When Larry Coppage returned home after visiting Dean Howell, he walked distractedly up the sidewalk to his front door. Several small children, most of them his own, were playing about the front steps, and he saw his wife glance at him out the living room window. He was late, and she was waiting for his return. Larry had not told Rachel that he would be stopping at Dean and Sarah’s. His going there had been an act of courage and that morning, before he had left the house for work, he had not been certain that he would go through with it.
Thrusting his car keys into his pocket, his fingers knocked against the strange gift that Jo Howell had given him for his wife. He pulled the necklace out and examined it briefly in the light of the declining sun. Two of the children, one of them his youngest girl, the other a little boy totally unfamiliar to him, noisily grabbed for the swinging, shiny metal, but he lifted it out of their reach.
Rachel Coppage opened the wooden front door to her husband, and talked to him through the screen. “What you got, Larry?”
Standing a few feet away from her, he held the piece up for her to see. She opened the screen a little, so as not to let in flies, reached round, and snatched the necklace from his grasp. “Where’d you get it?” she asked.
“Present for you,” he smiled.
Rachel looked at Larry sarcastically. “Where’d you get it?” she repeated.
“Dean Howell’s mama gave it to me.”
Rachel said, “Larry, you can’t wear a necklace, look like a hippie. You and me and all five kids would be laughed right out of town.”
“Rachel,” said Larry patiently, “I said this was for you. A present for you. Miz Howell said for me to give it to you.” Rachel was a good wife in many respects, but she had a habit of chafing her husband. She looked closely at the pendant, traced her finger round the circle of gold. “Jo Howell hasn’t spoke to me since 1958 when my daddy bought their farm when old man Howell died so funny.”
“Well,” said Larry, “I don’t know about that, but she and Dean wanted you to have it.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “It wasn’t funny. It was just a snake, some old snake out in the corn, bit him on the ankle . . .”
Rachel disregarded her husband’s remark. “I don’t know why she would have gotten mad at me, ’cause it was Daddy that bought the farm, not me. I didn’t have anything to do with it, and besides, she hated the place and was just dying to get off it. And you say Jo Howell give this to you to give to me?”
Larry nodded.
“Will wonders never cease,” Rachel commented, and shook her head pensively. “Next thing you know she’ll start coming to Sunday school and choir practice.”
Rachel opened the screen door, and allowed her husband entrance. A couple of their five children also asked to be let into the house, but she shouted, “No, no! You stay out here till I call you in to supper! I don’t clean this house so you kids can trample all over the floors!”
Larry followed Rachel into the kitchen, where she examined the necklace under the fluorescent light. There was no manufacturer’s mark.
“Wonder why they wanted to get rid of it?” mused Rachel acidly.
Larry repeated his remark. “Jo Howell said Dean wanted you to have it. He’s real bad, just real bad, Rachel. I don’t even like to think about it. I didn’t even recognize him. All them bandages over his face. I don’t even know if they feed him with a spoon or a tube.”
“Dean never liked me either,” said Rachel.
Larry did not dispute this. “Dean was funny, sometimes, in some ways.”
“Real funny,” said Rachel, with distaste, “but if he’s bad off like you say, then I feel sorry for him. I sure would hate to be laid-up in a house with Jo Howell keeping me company solid eight-to-five. And I really do feel sorry for Sarah, ’cause this wasn’t her fault and now she’s stuck with it.”
Her husband nodded solemnly. He felt very sorry for Sarah, sorrier for her in a way than for Dean himself. It was impossible to feel sympathy for that thing in the bed, with the pulsating black slit in the bandages, that really wasn’t like a mouth at all.
“Did he lose anything?” asked Rachel. “Like a arm, or eye or something?”
“He may have lost an eye, I think, but he looked like he was all there.”
“D’you count his fingers?” asked Rachel, and Larry shook his head.
“That would have been rude,” he said.
Rachel weighed the necklace in her hand. “There’s something funny about all of this,” she said and stared at her husband out of the corner of her eye. “This thing didn’t come from Woolworth’s.”
Chapter 9
The sun had sunk behind the screen of diseased pines that backed the scanty property owned by Jo Howell, and the room where Dean lay was now in complete darkness. Jo had been too lazy to get up and switch on a lamp, so that she might have continued with her sewing.
Presently, Sarah’s figure appeared in the doorway, a black shadow interrupting the dim light that struggled across the dark living room from the kitchen on the other side of the house. “Jo, will you get the light so I don’t fall with this tray?” Sarah had prepared Dean’s supper, several bowls of soft, mashed foods.
“Can’t see a thing, Sarah. If I was to get up, I might knock you down.”
Sarah knew better than to argue with her mother-in-law, though it was patently impossible that Jo would come in contact with her if she attempted only to switch on the bulb that was not three feet away from her. Sarah moved into the room very carefully, but still nearly tripped on the edge of the threadbare oval carpet beneath the foot of the bed. She set the tray down on the night table, turned on the small lamp that was there and then moved the straight chair to the bedside, just at Dean’s head.
Spooning the food into the narrow black slit that represented Dean’s mouth was an odious task to Sarah and she wished to heaven that Jo would do it. The old woman claimed that she felt no repugnance at all when she looked on her son, “but,” she said to Sarah, “you’re his wife, and you ought to feed him. It’s not for me to come between a man and a woman. I won’t be accused of that!”
Sarah set the tray in her lap and took up the spoon. Conversation even with Jo, she thought, might distract her from this tedious, unpleasant ritual. “Bad at the plant too,” she said, referring to the heat, which was still very much in evidence in the room, though the sun had gone down.
“I hope they rot in hell! Hell won’t be hot enough for ’em!” exclaimed Jo, with sudden bitterness.
“Who?” said Sarah automatically.
“Ever’body in that whole damn place, that’s who!”
Sarah had heard Jo Howell go on before; it was always in the same tone, and always to the same effect. Sarah composed herself to listen, and was actually thankful for the distraction.
“Dean,” said his mother in a low voice, with her sewing not yet picked up off the floor beside her chair, “Dean was the only good man in Pine Cone, in this whole damn town of layabouts and whores, and he was the only one of ’em to go in the army. They was all in that plant, ever’ one of ’em got a job and they ever’ one of ’em stayed at home, niggers and white people too. And it was a Pine Cone rifle that liked to tore off his head!”
Sarah sighed, she rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. How was she supposed to tell if that black hole wanted more, how would she know when it was satisfied?
“D’you make that rifle, Sarah?” said Jo, viciously. “D’you put your hands on it? That rifle that put out one of his eyes, and we don’t even know what he’s gone look like now? D’you touch it, Sarah? Got the whole damn town’s fingerprints on it . . .”
“Don’t blame me, Jo,” said Sarah calmly. “Wasn’t my doing, what happened to Dean.” She stuck the spoon into the black hole. “You might just as well blame me for the whole Vietnam War.”
Bitterly, Jo Howell continued, “Them women down at the plant, on the ’ssembly line, they got silver dollars rolling out their ears, and the
y got their boys and their men at home. They get cane sugar from the niggers down the river, and they make cookies and send ’em to Saigon. And you just know them cookies go stale ’fore they’re halfway there! I hate them women!”
Sarah knew that Jo Howell could go on for a good half hour with such speeches. It was better to have her talking, but she wished that she would speak of other things. As soon as Jo had paused to draw in a short breath, Sarah said, “Jo, where’d you get that thing?” The necklace, which she had almost forgotten about, suddenly occurred to her as a convenient change of subject.
Evidently feigning ignorance, Jo inquired testily, “What thing, Sarah?”
“That thing you gave Larry Coppage. That necklace. You know what I’m talking about.” Sarah pushed the spoon through the hole in the bandages and pulled it out clean.
“Not no necklace,” said Jo, after a moment’s consideration. “Called a amulet.”
Sarah looked up briefly. Why had Jo’s response been so reluctant? Another spoonful. There was no motion in the body, but the spoon always came out clean. Sarah didn’t think that she would ever grow used to this disgusting operation.
“Where’d you get it though?” Sarah asked.
“Always had it,” said Jo. Jo watched the feeding carefully and smiled grimly, though at what Sarah had no idea.
“Well, I never saw it before. I never saw it around here.”
“Well,” said Jo, “there’s lots you never saw. My cousin Bama gave me that thing one week to the day ’fore she drowned herself in Burnt Corn Creek. I used to wear it a lot when Dean’s daddy was still alive. I had it on the day Jimmy got bit by that water moccasin in the creek on the farm. I sure do wisht we was still out there,” she said dreamily, and Sarah glanced up at the sudden change in tone. “Dean used to kill them snakes with a hoe, when they was still in the water. He never missed. After they killed his daddy, he used to go out in a little boat, with a hoe and a gun, ’cept he never used the gun, ’cause he could always get ’em with a hoe. I don’t hardly see how he done it, killing snakes in the water with a hoe. But he said it was even better than blasting a covey of quail. Dean was happy out on the farm, ’cause there was the creek, and there was all the quail in the county, and I wisht we was still out there.” Jo sighed nostalgically.
“You hated the farm, Jo. You told me you couldn’t wait to get off that farm. You told everybody in town that. You also told everybody in town that Dean’s daddy got bit in the cornfield. I have never heard anybody say a word about a water moccasin when they was talking about Dean’s daddy dying like he did. How come you start to say now that you wish you was back on the farm?” Sarah demanded, and started on the mashed carrots.
“I was talking about for Dean. I wisht we was out there for Dean’s sake. If I knew he would be happy there, I’d go back out there in a minute. I’d do anything for that boy.”
Everything, Sarah thought, except feed him. Suddenly, Sarah realized how Jo had turned the subject away from the amulet that she had given to Larry Coppage, as if she were hesitant to speak of it. Sarah didn’t believe that Jo had always had it, for she was positive that, in that case, she would have seen the thing before. It was a small house, and Jo didn’t have much anyway. It was Sarah that cleaned her room, and Sarah had never seen anything among her mother-in-law’s belongings that resembled the amulet.
She turned to ask Jo about the amulet again, but just at that moment the spoon got somehow caught in Dean’s mouth, and she had difficulty withdrawing it. Finally, after some seconds of pulling, it jerked out, and Sarah upset the last of the bowls of food onto the floor.
By the time she had returned from the kitchen with towels to clean the spill up, she had forgot the question that she had intended to ask.
Chapter 10
Making supper for her husband and five children, who ranged in age from eight months to seven years, was a task that Rachel Coppage had grown used to. She had married Larry in the course of their sophomore year at the university, much against her parents’ wishes, but her parents had not known just how much money there was in Larry’s family. Other married student couples might have had a rough go of it, but Larry’s father had pushed Larry into college, and wanted to make sure that he came out the other end, diploma in hand. Larry’s father sent Rachel a substantial check every month and told her he didn’t want his boy worried about financial matters. Rachel had seen to it that he was not.
But Larry grew weary of school, and in an effort to escape the intellectual rigors of the University of Alabama for a space, he enlisted in the air force. With the first two of their children still in her arms, Rachel had followed Larry first to Texas for his basic training, then to Virginia for a year and a half. At the end of that time, Larry declared he was still not yet ready to return to school, so they spent a further two years at the air station in Panama City, Florida, in which place they were blessed with two more infants. The fifth—and Rachel hoped the last—was born sometime after they settled in Pine Cone.
No place that Rachel had lived was much better or much worse than any other. She didn’t think so badly of her existence in Pine Cone. What she did like, however, was financial security, and she knew that as long as she remained with Larry, money would never be lacking. Rachel was not so interested in having things—a big house or a motorboat, or anything like that—she just didn’t want to be bothered by bills, and debts, and monthly payments. If Rachel went to Montgomery and saw a pair of green shoes that she wanted, she bought them; if she felt like getting away from Pine Cone in June, then she asked Larry to rent a house in Pensacola, and she knew he wouldn’t complain of the expense. Rachel’s parents had worried about money, and fought about money, and yelled at her about how much money she cost them, and Rachel hadn’t liked it a bit; life with Larry was decidedly a change for the better.
Rachel knew many women who would complain of having to raise five children, but she didn’t mind so much. There was a maid hired to help seven days a week, and there was no problem about getting clothes for them, or braces or whatever it was that they needed. Rachel took a great deal of care with her children, though she didn’t coddle them. She took pains with her house, and though she often was sharp with Larry—that was her nature, which probably would never change—she loved him, and did what she could to make things go easily for him. Larry’s relationship with his father was strained, for Larry was not so ambitious as he might be, the old man considered. But it was Rachel who dealt with the senior Mr. Coppage when that man wanted Larry to do this or that for him in Pine Cone. Rachel knew how to mollify the old man with a short visit from her and the grandchild of his who seemed most likely to be quiet and respectful for a couple of hours.
But even with a maid, the running of so large a household was an arduous undertaking, and Rachel Coppage thought herself entitled to half an hour’s rest each afternoon before she began preparations for supper for the seven of them. This was always a major business because the children were sometimes finicky—one wouldn’t touch collard greens, another couldn’t abide fish—and Larry himself almost gagged at the smell of baked sweet potatoes. And of course the baby had to be fed separately. The children, who were noisy enough at other times, seemed hardly to breathe between six-thirty and seven, when their mother’s bedroom door was closed and locked. Even the baby slept peacefully in its wicker basinette at the foot of the bed for that half hour, and after taking the phone off its hook, Larry sat in the den to read the Birmingham News front to back.
When Rachel woke this early Wednesday evening, she rose from the bed, straightened the covers placidly and kissed the baby, which woke softly at the touch of its mother’s lips. Then she sat before her dresser, and stared at herself in the mirror. This was not mere vanity, but a part of her routine which she considered absolutely necessary for waking up; for Rachel Coppage, it was the most delicious two minutes of the day.
While she sat on the little wicker bench, with her hands folded in her lap, th
inking only that she felt very pleasant indeed after her short nap, she noticed the necklace that Larry had brought back to her from the Howells’. He had laid it atop her jewelry case. She stared at it, still wondering what could have possessed Jo Howell to send it over to her. Usually when Rachel got a piece of jewelry as a gift, it was a rhinestone clip in the shape of a poodle or something like that; this piece seemed very stylish, but also very peculiar. She was almost positive she had never seen another like it.
It occurred to Rachel suddenly that maybe it was really Sarah that had given it to her and that Larry had misunderstood. Rachel liked Sarah, but because Rachel couldn’t stand Dean it had not been possible for the two women to become close. Sarah realized this and had not pushed the relationship. But why would Sarah send her a present out of the blue—unless it was to thank her for the two casseroles that she had carried over on the day after Dean got back from the Fort Rucca infirmary. It was the kind of thing that Rachel would have done for almost anybody in town, but maybe no one else had done it and Sarah felt grateful to her. Rachel felt better about the gift when she allowed herself to think that Sarah had sent it over. Rachel liked the necklace and wanted to keep it.
She picked it up, and weighed it in her hand. It was heavier than she had remembered. It looked to be real gold, but that was impossible of course; the Howells didn’t have money, and there was no reason for Rachel to think that even if they did have any they would be spending it on gifts for her. They ought to be buying themselves a car first, for instance.
Rachel brought the chain close to her eyes, looking for the clasp, for it was very small and she had trouble locating it. It seemed just another two links, and she couldn’t figure out at first how it worked: there was no pin or spring or screw. She touched it lightly with her finger, and to her great surprise, the catch—or whatever it was—flew open, and the necklace came apart in her hands. She lifted it around her neck, wondering how she was going to get it back together, when it suddenly snapped shut, just as mysteriously. Well, she said to herself, I sure do wish every piece of jewelry I had went on and came off this easy . . .
The Amulet Page 6