The Girl from Charnelle

by K. L. Cook

  Where is he?

  As she put the phone down, she heard Fay barking. She looked out the window. John stood at the back gate. He seemed exhausted, his hair mussed, his long-sleeved plaid shirt untucked on one side from his jeans, his chin and cheeks unshaven.

  “Hush up, Fay,” she called and then went outside and quieted her.

  Laura pointed toward the house, and John quickly crossed the yard and went into the kitchen. She told Fay to hush up again and then followed him in.

  “Where were you?” she blurted out. She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I waited for more than two hours.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Willie’s ear got so bad we had to take him to the hospital. He’s been screaming and crying all night long. They had to drain it. He’s still there. I just got away for a few minutes.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He was clearly irritated by her question. “I don’t know. We can’t do anything right now. He’s in the hospital!”

  She didn’t say anything, just turned away from him to the sink.

  “What do you want me to do? I can’t leave like this. I feel like enough of a shitheel without doing that to them. For Christ’s sake, no one abandons his kid when he’s in the hospital.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. She turned to him. “You should go back.”

  He sighed heavily and pursed his lips. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll work it out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I gotta go.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  There was a short pause, and she wondered if he would at least hug her or perhaps reach out and touch her, but he just opened the door, and Fay began barking crazily. He stuck his head back in.

  “Can you keep the dog quiet?”

  She called Fay to the house. The dog came slowly and hobbled up the steps and into the kitchen. “Go on,” she said to him.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She nodded, and they stared at each other for a moment, and she felt as if more should be said, as if something would die between them if more was not said.

  Then he left, walking with his head down, and when he was out of sight, and she heard his truck come to life and roll away, she let out a long sigh. Something that had been wound tight in her body suddenly released. It had been crazy to believe that he could ever do it, that he would ever be able to do it. She had sensed that something might happen to prevent it. She had even half hoped that something would stop them. And now that it had, she felt strangely relieved.

  30

  Election

  Yes, it had been foolish, their plan. Over the next five weeks, they agreed that there was no way it could have worked. Willie’s sickness had been a sign. It would all be easier in a year or two, much easier, John told her. Laura knew, however, that it would never happen. It would never be like Galveston. She still fantasized about it sometimes, but she realized it could never be the way she had imagined. There would be too much hostility, too much opposition and upheaval. His boys would hate him, hate her. His wife—who knew what she would do? And her father? She couldn’t even think about his reaction. It wouldn’t work, and she resigned herself to that.

  She also tried to savor what they still had together, because she knew it had to change into something else, and she was afraid, too, of the way it would change.

  Things were already different. When John picked her up on election night, she tried to make small talk as they drove to the barn. She told him what she was studying—a novella by Herman Melville called Bartleby the Scrivener (all that preferring not to—a definite No), sines and cosines, the Lincoln-Douglas debates—but he just nodded his head absently, feigned interest. She knew he was bored. At the barn, they drank some Nehis, listened to the radio. He smoked a few cigarettes, and then they took off their clothes. She felt strangely sad, though, and maybe he did, too, because he could not keep an erection long enough to put on the condom, and he finally just rolled over and put his arm over his eyes. She lay against him, but he nudged her away.

  “Let me sleep a little,” he said.

  She put on her shirt and stared out the window as the light faded to different hues of black. Even with the kerosene lamp, the inside of the barn seemed very dark when she turned around.

  “John,” she whispered. “John, wake up.”

  “Just let me rest a few minutes more.”

  She finished dressing and waited silently by the window for a while, and then she knelt by the pallet, noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the deepening worry lines at the corners of his mouth.

  At eight-thirty, she woke him so they could drive to the Armory, where people from Charnelle Steel and the town were meeting to watch the election results. She had told her father that she was going to a football scrimmage and then the library and would catch a ride to the Armory to watch the results with him, as part of her homework for history class. Her father seemed delighted.

  John dropped her off about a block from the Armory. He drove on, parked, and went in. By the time she got there, he was eating a sandwich, drinking a beer, and talking to some men who were shooting pool.

  Her father was perched at the bar in front of the television, drinking a beer himself. Walter Cronkite was shuffling papers.

  “Who’s winning?” she asked.

  “Too close to call yet,” her father said. “A nail-biter.”

  There was half a cheeseburger and some french fries left on his plate.

  “Can I have that?” she asked. “I’m starving.”

  “Sure, go ahead. Hey, Luke, can you heat this up for my daughter?”

  “That’s okay, Dad. This is fine.”

  “Nonsense. It’s cold. Hey, Luke.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you put this back on the grill for a minute? My girl is hungry. And give her a root beer, would ya?”

  “Sure thing,” Luke said.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  As she ate and sipped her root beer, she watched John in the mirror over the bar. He shot pool with Beaver Mitchell and the Cransburgh brothers, concentrating on his shots but then laughing and cracking jokes, attempting impossible behind-the-back shots to the oohs and aahs of the men. Showing off, it seemed. For her? Maybe. Though perhaps this is how he was at work, with the men he knew. Every once in a while he would glance over to see if she was looking at him, but there was no special sense of urgency. There’d be no secret kissing behind the Armory. Neither of them was up for it. Tonight she was simply Zeeke Tate’s teenage daughter, the baby-sitter.

  She wanted to go home, but her father was determined to stay until the end, even though it was a weeknight. The election was too close to call. The popular vote seemed neck and neck, though Kennedy had a slight lead in the electoral college. Her father stayed glued to the television, even though the reporters said the election might not be settled until the morning. He called Mrs. Ambling, arranged for the boys to spend the night at her house.

  At a quarter to ten, John grabbed his coat and announced, “I gotta get home.”

  Beaver Mitchell bellowed, “The old ball and chain calling, Letig?” The few men and women still at the bar laughed, including her father.

  “You got it,” he said, smiling. Laura grimaced at his response.

  “Can you give me a ride home?” she blurted out suddenly, hopping off the stool, grabbing her coat.

  “I don’t know.” John shot her a look that said, What are you doing? “I suppose so,” he said calmly.

  “Now, wait a minute,” her father said, his hands up, his voice suddenly gruff. “You’re not going anywhere, little lady.”

  John’s eyes darted nervously back and forth between her and her father. She felt panicky for a moment, wondering why her father would protest. She’d pushed their luck. How ironic would that be�
�after all that they’d gotten away with, to be caught like this?

  “Who’s been lecturing me for two months now about the American dream?” he said loudly, wrapping his arm tightly around her shoulders. She looked at John to gauge his reaction. He just grinned at her father, put on his coat and his hat. “Well, here’s the American dream in action, honey,” her father continued, pointing to the television set propped on the end of the bar. “And we’re gonna see it through to the bitter end.”

  John shook her father’s hand, tipped his hat to her, and then lifted up his collar and started for the door. She wanted him to turn back around, but he didn’t. She could see his silhouette on the porch, where he hesitated before heading down the steps, maybe a little drunk. Who could blame him for hesitating? she thought. Going home to his wife. The ball and chain.

  A little after eleven—after almost everyone in the Armory had left except for Laura and her father, the Cransburgh brothers, and Luke—the vice president and Mrs. Nixon finally appeared at campaign headquarters.

  Nixon said that “if the present trend continues, Senator Kennedy will be the next president of the United States.”

  The crowd at his headquarters started chanting, “We want Nixon! We want Nixon!”

  But Nixon just smiled and held up his hand. He thanked them for their support and was gracious, more gracious than he had seemed throughout the campaign, her father said.

  “Look at that old phony, plastic smile,” Luke said. “You know he’s torn up inside.”

  Wiping the froth of beer from his upper lip, Jimmy Cransburgh said, “Serves the bastard right.”

  Even though, like her family, she had been rooting for Kennedy and Johnson, and she thought maybe her father was correct about Nixon, that he was a dirty fighter, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him again. She kept watching Mrs. Nixon standing by his side—stoic, grim, trying to smile, the cords in her neck tight. Mrs. Nixon’s face seemed like it was about to crack open.

  Up on the screen, the election results were posted. Still very close, and she wondered if Nixon felt he’d made a mistake, conceded too early. On the television screen was a photograph of Kennedy and Johnson holding their hands up high in victory. The screen switched to Nixon’s headquarters. No one there. Balloons littered the empty floor.

  Her father laughed. “The aftermath,” he said. “You lose and the party’s over quickly.”

  “Yep, everyone disappears fast,” Luke said.

  She was depressed, just wanted to be in her bed, asleep. She said, “Can we go now?”

  “We gotta hear Kennedy’s victory speech,” her father said happily and ordered another beer from Luke. “Why do you look so glum, sweetheart? We won!” He propped his elbow on the counter and leaned toward her, touching his forehead to hers. “Aren’t you happy?”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘I guess so’?”

  “I feel sorry for Nixon.”

  “Ha!” Her father laughed and then called down to the end of the bar, “Jimmy, Luke, Bob, did you hear that? She feels sorry for Dick Nixon.”

  “You’re a softy, sweetheart,” Luke said.

  “Yep,” her father said and grabbed her hand. “Just an old softy.” He kissed her hand. “Somebody’s gotta lose, honey. Politics isn’t about who’s nice or whose feelings get hurt.”

  “I know,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  Her father woke her right before two o’clock. She had gone to lie down on the old couch behind the Armory bar just after midnight. This was the second time he’d woken her with an update. The first was about some controversy with the Illinois primary. She had nodded her head and fallen back to sleep.

  “It’s gotten closer,” her father said now, animated, sitting by her.

  His eyes were glassy, and she didn’t know if it was because of lack of sleep or because of the beers he’d been swigging.

  “Kennedy won’t give his speech until he hears personally from Nixon. They say it may be morning now before we know for sure.”

  “Okay,” she answered, and then he was back at the bar with Luke and Jimmy. She kept dozing in and out of weird, groggy dreams. She and Senator Kennedy were at the barn, lying on the pallet together, she with her arm over her face. She couldn’t stop sweating. She asked Kennedy, who wore a green cardigan sweater, if she could rest a few more minutes, just a few more minutes. Standing at the window, staring at them, Mrs. Kennedy wore bright orange pedal pushers and her riding boots and an orange cap, her hands resting on her pregnant stomach.

  Her father woke her again and said that Kennedy was about to speak. Her back felt sore, her head ached, and her clothes reeked of cigar and cigarette smoke. She staggered to the bar and climbed up on a bar stool. Luke pushed a stack of warm pancakes and syrup and a glass of tomato juice her way.

  A tired but grinning Senator Kennedy appeared and praised Nixon for being a good citizen. He assured the nation that the vice president would continue to serve the country in an important capacity but declared that this victory symbolized a new generation of leadership and a new hope. He then put his arm around his young, pregnant wife, who looked tired but smiled benignly, and said he needed to go now, “to prepare for a new administration and a new baby.” The reporters chuckled.

  Kennedy’s simple speech momentarily lifted Laura’s spirits. She watched the Kennedys leave the podium, his hand touching his wife’s back. The way things should be, she thought. She poured the syrup over her pancakes and took a bite and thought again of the Nixons. She still couldn’t shake the image of Mrs. Nixon from her mind, standing by her husband’s side. Bereft. It must have been a bitter night for her, Laura thought, for them both. More bitter days to come.

  31

  Accident

  Laura knew that she would have to be the one to end it. He wouldn’t do it. Knowing that the end was near made her want to hold on to and protect this time even more, but another part of her just wanted to get it over with. They had not met much in the two weeks following the election, and the sense of failure from that evening still clung to her. She did not want to see him, did not want to have the conversation that she knew they needed to have. So she made excuses. She would show up late at the warehouse on their scheduled days, pretending to be tired, and would hurriedly tell him she had to go, she couldn’t get away this night or the next night, and no, she couldn’t keep the boys on Friday. She had a cold, she’d say, wiping her nose, pretending to sound sniffly and congested. She had to cook supper. It was Marlene’s birthday, and she was having a party. Even with the legitimate excuses, she felt like a phony, and though he accepted her excuses without question and kissed her quickly on the lips, she could tell, by the way he shifted his eyes, that he didn’t believe her. She realized that it was easy for her to lie now, even to him, and it began to make her sick. She knew that she was avoiding the inevitable, and finally, after two weeks, she resolved that it had to be over. Why continue with it if it seemed like a senseless duty?

  But the end did not happen as she imagined or planned.

  Her period was late. Two days. Three days. She was pretty regular, unlike Gloria, who always said she never knew when it was going to hit. So she began to panic, even though she knew they had been careful. She didn’t know what to do. Should she say something to him?

  And then it was four days, and then five.

  Mrs. Letig called, asked if Laura would watch Jack for her the next afternoon. She had to take Willie to the doctor; she would drop Jack off after Laura got home from school. John would pick him up when he got off work.

  “Of course,” Laura said.

  She worried all day about whether or not she should tell him. She felt on the verge of tears, her eyes brimming every few minutes, and she was sick to her stomach but didn’t know if it was an indicator of pregnancy or just nervousness. She stared out the windows at school, ignoring her teachers. She skipped her choir class, spent the first few minutes in the bath
room vomiting, and then walked outside and sat in the stands at the south end of the football field. It was cold, the temperature dropping rapidly, the sky dark and turbulent. The wind kicked up and blew off her wool cap so that she had to chase it down the bleachers and felt sick again. It began to snow, and she sat there shivering, with her hat pulled low over her forehead, her hands thrust into her pockets. The snow just lightly spit at first, but the wind blew harder and the snow grew heavier, coming down at an angle. It had been warm just yesterday, a sunny autumn day in the mid-forties, but that was the way the weather was here, turning suddenly and violently. She thought she should go back inside, on to Mr. Sparling’s class. They were discussing The Scarlet Letter now, but she’d struggled with this story about a woman branded with shame, raising her daughter on the outskirts of town while the woman’s lover continued to deceive everyone. She had started it several times and had only just last night been able to get through it all, though it pained her to do so. She believed it was, on some level, an evil book. She didn’t want to discuss Mr. Sparling’s theories about Hester the martyr, stoically keeping her secret, proudly wearing her shameful brand, a heroine for the simple fact that she got pregnant and kept her mouth shut about the father.

  The snow fell harder now, and it was sticking, starting to collect on the bleachers. She fled from the field and grabbed her bicycle from the racks, wiped off the seat, and then headed for home, moving as carefully as she could over the back streets, slick with falling snow, hard to navigate. By the time she arrived home, she was soaked, chilled to the bone. She took a hot bath, staring down at her stomach, which didn’t seem any different. She ran her fingers over her taut abdomen, wondered if there was life there, wondered what she could do.