Crossing the River

by Fenton Johnson

  She had hopes for this new, strange woman, emerging from an old and familiar self. At first she ignored her hopes. Then she fought them, or tried to forget them. It was useless. Wherever she’d been since she’d married, her heart was taking her in a new direction now, from which there was no return.

  As surely as she came to hope, she saw Talbott come to fear. After sex their sweat cooled quickly in the chill November air. Then she saw the fear in his eyes. Without asking she knew why it was there.

  They both felt the fear of being caught, of course. New Hope would have proof that Martha was the woman that for years they’d known her to be. Talbott stood to lose less, but his professional standing would be damaged among the Kentucky connections who arranged just the sort of country contracts that brought him to New Hope and gave him his excuse to flee Detroit.

  But Talbott had a man’s fears: He feared her love. He brought her roses once, roses in November! She threw her arms around him, overwhelming him with her surprise and joy. He left early that day, muttering excuses about mud in the equipment. She hid the flowers in the fruit cellar, where they wilted in the dark.

  After that she was careful to restrain herself. She indulged in her hopes when she was alone, before her bureau mirror. They came as a flood, too large and too wide and too deep for Talbott to understand that only a portion of what he felt from her was love for him. Beyond that what she felt was love, pure and simple, for herself: for the chance to love, after all these years, and to be loved, in whatever way, in return.

  On a cool bright November day, Big Rosie pulled in the Miracle drive. Watching the Uptegrove’s long white Lincoln roll up, Martha suspected that Talbott might have other reasons for the fear lurking in his eyes.

  She had been thinking what to fix for supper. With Rosie at the door Martha decided on vegetable soup, because she could start it quickly and keep her eyes from Rosie’s. Martha retrieved a jar of tomato juice from the fruit cellar. When she returned Big Rosie was already standing in the kitchen.

  “Whatever I’m interrupting, it can wait,” Rosie said.

  “I’m just making supper,” Martha said. “Have a seat.”

  Rosie had taken to wearing stretch pants, something she’d seen in Lexington at the university. When she walked the seams hitched up her broad hips. She shrugged them down now and sat with an impatient hiss at the Miracle’s big round table. “I’m not going to beat around the bush, Martha Pickett,” she said.

  “I’ve never known you to.” Martha sliced across an onion, turned it ninety degrees, sliced again.

  “I’ve heard rumors—too many and too much to call it rumors. Martha, you know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.” Heat the oil, stir in the onions, chop the garlic.

  “Are you going to stand there and make me tell you, when half of Mount Hermon and all of New Hope has been talking of nothing else for the last two months?”

  “I guess so.” Rosie settled in her chair. Martha heard the soft squeak of polyester against wood. She chopped at the carrots.

  “You’re a disgrace. It’s worse than marrying Bernie Miracle, at least that was legal even if it was Catholic. You’re a married woman and more than forty years old, Martha Miracle, do I have to remind you of that?”

  The hiss and pop of the vegetables in the hot oil filled the silence. Martha finished chopping the carrots, dumped them atop the onions. “Nobody knows that better than me,” she said at last.

  “Well, then, why don’t you act like it.”

  Martha faced about then, crossing her arms and pushing back a thin strand of red hair with the tip of her knife. “Rosie, would you please tell me what you’re talking about?”

  Confronted with a bald request Rosie wilted. She slumped in her chair, picked at a piece of lint on her pants. “Why, I’m talking about your—behavior,” she said.

  “Meaning?”

  Rosie sighed, took up her purse. From a gold case she extracted a cigarette. From deep in her purse she pulled a silver flask. “You don’t mind?” Martha retrieved a glass from the drainer, set it with ice and a soft drink on the table. Rosie poured a belt of vodka over the ice, ignoring the soft drink. “Martha Pickett,” she began. “My oldest and dearest friend.”

  “Could you stop using my last name?”

  “My oldest and dearest,” Rosie repeated. “I don’t mind telling you that I have hopes for Talbott Marquand—”

  “So it’s Talbott you’re talking about.”

  “—and my Rosamund. It’s seldom enough that a man with clean hands and a little money comes through this town, and a mother can’t be blamed for thinking of her daughter’s welfare. I’m sure you’d feel the same, if your Miracle was a girl.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “He’s been dating Rosamund, Talbott has. He’s had patience and he deserves to be rewarded.”

  “I thought Rosamund was in Nashville.”

  Rosie took a long gulp of vodka, closing her eyes while she swallowed. “That don’t—doesn’t matter. He can visit her there.”

  “I’m sure he has, Rosie, if that’s a comfort.”

  “I hope he has,” Rosie said. “It’s a marriage made in heaven, Martha Pickett, it’s what I’ve prayed for and hoped for all these years.” She flicked her lighter with a thick, rose-tipped finger. When she took the cigarette from her lips a bright red ring encircled the butt.

  Martha unscrewed the lid from the jar and dumped the tomato juice in the pot. If she kept her mind and her hands occupied she might survive this afternoon without doing something stupid. She heard the ice tinkle as Big Rosie sipped her drink. “He’s a jewel of a man,” Rosie said. “He’s kind and thoughtful. He brought Rosamund roses once, for no purposes that I could imagine. Roses, at this time of year! Can you imagine?”

  “I can imagine,” Martha said dully.

  “He’s the only thing that can get my Rosamund out of this cowtown and onto someplace that’s as big as she deserves.”

  “She’s in Nashville now. That’s not big enough?”

  “And he’s the only thing that could get this Nashville manure out of her head. I won’t stand by idle while you ruin him for her,” Rosie said. Her voice dropped an octave, to the tone she used when she talked religion, or gossip. “I’ve waited for years for this man to come along. I told Willie, when I heard that contract was to be let, I said, ‘Willie, I don’t want to see any old pot-bellied good ol’ boy come down here.’ It took some influence to get that contract awarded out of state, and to a Yankee on top of that. It took money, Martha Pickett, and while that may not mean much to you on this side of the river, to me it means time and work and sweat.”

  “Willie’s sweat,” Martha said. “Although I bet Willie could go a week without changing his shirt, for the work he does.”

  “Don’t you sass me, Martha Pickett. I’m telling you this for your own good. You might have been married by a Catholic witch doctor but you were married, I heard you say it, ’til death do you part, I stood up with you, I still remember how you begged and pleaded with me to be your witness, when nobody else would do it, and I said no, no ma’am, you’ll be sorry for this and you said you’d use Ossetta for a witness if it came to that. I told you you’d be sorry for this and you are, and I stand here ready to give you my shoulder to cry on and are you grateful. No, ma’am, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Well, that’s OK, Martha Pickett, you be as stubborn and Catholic”—she relished the word like a curse—“as you want. But I’m not going to give up my daughter’s husband, I am not. When Ossetta told me you’d been seeing Talbott Marquand—”

  “So Ossetta told you.”

  “She did, but it could have been practically anybody else in this town. I must say I wasn’t surprised, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  Rosie sucked on her cigarette, twice. “Considering your blood, and the crowd you’ve married into.”

  “Then what about Michael Miracle.”
r />   “What about him.”

  “He’s been dating Rosamund, or mooning over her, anyway. You know that, Rosie, as well as me or better.”

  “He’s been seeing Rosamund. Or maybe I should say Rosamund has allowed herself to be seen. That’s all that’ll come of that, I guarantee.”

  This sounded too familiar to Martha; she’d heard it all before, in stereo, from her own mother and father, in those short weeks between meeting and marrying Bernie. But Miracle was her son, after all, and a far sight better man than Rosamund Uptegrove deserved. Judgment and manners told Martha to keep her mouth shut. She asked the question anyway. “What have you got against him, Rosie? What would be so terrible about Rosamund and Miracle seeing each other?”

  Rosie dropped her cigarette into the melting ice of her drink. On its quick hiss she stood. “It’s in the genes, Martha Pickett. His genes. All those Baptist genes and Catholic genes that hadn’t been mixed up for four hundred years and that ought never, really now, never have been mixed up at all. And he’s got ’em both, you can read it in his face; he’s in between, not here or there, just in between. I don’t want my daughter mixed up with a man that’s in between. I want to set her up with a man that knows where he’s been and where he’s going and that has the money and the gumption to get himself there. And your Miracle does not meet that description.”

  “Is that all.”

  “That’s enough, let’s just say that.”

  “Well, it’s not enough.” Martha removed her apron, slowly and deliberately. “He’s married, Rosie.”

  “Who’s married.”

  “Talbott Marquand. He has a wife. In Detroit, as far as I can tell.”

  Rosie shrugged down her pants. “That’s a low trick, Martha Pickett, when I come over for your own good, with only your own good in mind, and you resort to telling me—stuff, just to get back at me, for doing you a favor.”

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe I am getting back at you by doing you a favor. But you know me well enough to know that why ever it is I told you, I tell the truth.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want. You will anyway.”

  Rosie stood still for a moment, a white mountain of doubt. Then she bent to her purse and snapped it shut with a decisive click. “He’ll divorce,” she said, with the force and certainty of the midnight coal freight.

  Martha opened the door. “Nothing you, nor Bernie, nor Talbott can say will be enough to change my mind, Rosie. I don’t know who told you all you’ve heard and I don’t know or care how much truth there is in it. I do know that I’m going places I ought to have gone a long time ago. If you take my advice, which you won’t, you’d send Rosamund to Nashville and tell her to sing her guts out, if that’s what it takes. I don’t like your daughter, Rosie Uptegrove. She’s a priss and a prig and she’s dragging my son along with no more care for him than if he were—” She searched for the comparison, but only one came to mind. “—a Yankee that she thought might give her money and a good time.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for money and a good time,” Rosie said. “If you ask me you could have used a lot more of both in the last twenty years.”

  “So life with Willie has been constant joy and excitement. Please leave, Rosie. Take your gossip elsewhere. I’m sure you’ll find plenty who’ll kill to hear it.”

  Rosie left. Martha left the door ajar and opened the windows as well, to air out the smell of Rosie’s cigarette. In the chill November air she sat at the big round table, her head in her hands, taking stock.

  If Rosie knew, everyone knew, or would know. No one would know for certain, but they would believe the worst. She was ready for that. She’d known it all along.

  Whether she was ready for her lover’s unfaithfulness—that was a different matter. She could hardly call him faithless, he with a wife in Detroit. He’d even tried to tell her about it—a little late, maybe, but he’d tried, and with all the upbringing of a Southern woman she’d refused to listen. She’d been unfair to Rosie, telling her to believe what she wanted, when she herself, Martha Pickett of the truthful ways, was deceiving her husband and lying to herself about Talbott and Rosamund. And about Miracle, her own son, a single boy, beginning to be a man, with every right to fall in love with a single girl his own age, without worrying about whether his mother’s lover was going to steal his girlfriend away. She’d lied to herself about all that, as surely and completely as Big Rosie pretended before her own husband that she’d never touched a drink in her life.

  Behind her the soup hissed and bubbled. She lowered the flame, then threw the cabinets open and banged down mixing bowls for cornbread. In that loud, angry moment she decided what to do: nothing.

  She never told Talbott of Rosie’s visit. The question of his marriage did not trouble her—they were both married. As for his visits to Rosamund—they were Talbott’s affair. For herself, she knew this affair could go nowhere, at the same time that she knew she did not want it to end, not now, when she was awakening to something much larger than her love for Talbott. To leave him now would be to return to the inert stuff she’d been for more than twenty years. If she lied in not telling Talbott of Big Rosie’s visit, these were lies of omission, not commission. She told no lies. She simply hugged the truth to her heart.

  6

  Smoke and Mirrors

  The weather turned. The river bottoms froze and thawed. On a cold day you could walk the river bank on a crust of frost; then the sun would emerge from behind the gray sheet of the sky and you’d be standing in muck to your knees.

  Talbott came less and less often to New Hope because, Martha hoped, construction on the bridge had slowed. If she stopped to think on that, and on Rosie’s visit, she knew there were more substantial reasons for his absence, but with Christmas approaching it was easy to stay busy. Martha made sure to stay very busy, too busy to think on the whys and wherefores of Talbott’s absences.

  On Christmas Eve Miracle and Bernie worked the Inn together. From Bradford, Miracle had heard that Rosamund was back in town, but only for the holiday. She had a demo tape arranged with a friend in Nashville, who could only get a studio the day after Christmas. Rosamund would leave Mount Hermon on Christmas night.

  Miracle was miserable. Partly he was miserable because Rosamund had not called, partly he was miserable because after three months of being gone she could still make him miserable. He thought to call her, but shied away. Instead he sent letters, which went unanswered. If there were justice in the world, Miracle thought, surely he would have recovered from these fits by now. Yet on his trips to the north pilings (infrequent, now that it was winter) Rosamund haunted his memory with the persistence of the tank gunners firing on the artillery ranges behind Strang Knob.

  On Christmas Eve the Inn was like times before Vietnam. No draftees stood at the bar; they’d been sent home for the holidays. Only the wind shook the windows in their frames. The war games behind Strang Knob were canceled for the night. The men at the bar argued about the war but they might as well have argued the price of tobacco. They argued the summer’s race riots in Los Angeles and Detroit and Louisville, but on a cold Christmas Eve those events were as far away as Vietnam. They just made for good talk. Nobody really disagreed about anything, except religion. Regarding any other subject the assumption prevailed that south of the Ohio all white men (and black men of any count) agreed.

  Miracle set himself up with a good supply of bar towels. Early on he learned that bartenders polish bars not from compulsive cleanliness but from a finely honed instinct for self-preservation. Without a bar to polish, bartenders would soon be driven crazy by the sort of people who hang around bars.

  Miracle was polishing the golden oak top of the colored bar when the driveup window buzzed. He crossed to it and flipped up the plastic square. He stuck his head into the foggy breath of a December night. It was Rosamund.

  She seized his hand. “I’ve got to talk to you, Miracle,” she said. “About Talbott. And—
” she paused “—forever.”

  “OK,” Miracle said. “Shoot.”

  “Not here!”

  “You got a better idea? Your apartment in Nashville, maybe?”

  “Come on, Miracle, I’m sorry if I haven’t gotten in touch but there wasn’t anything I could do. I’ve just been running around like a chicken with its head chopped off. Not a second free since I got down there.”

  “You could have stopped dating Talbott Marquand. That would have given you more free time.” A second car pulled up behind Rosamund.

  “Please,” Rosamund said. “It’s important, Miracle.”

  The driver behind Rosamund tapped his horn. “You’re blocking the window,” Miracle said. “Do you want something?”

  “A bottle of Asti Spumanti.”

  “And a fifth of Wild Turkey.”

  “Miracle, stop it!” She shook his hand free. “Get me my wine.”

  He bagged her a bottle and stuck it through the window without leaning out. She leaned up to his hand. “I’ll be back here when you close to pick you up,” she said. “If you’re not here, well, I’ll know you don’t love me any more.” She cranked up her window and spun off into the Christmas Eve night.

  Love? Rosamund Uptegrove mentioning love? Miracle was so taken aback that the next customer had to repeat his order, and still Miracle got it wrong.

  By the time Miracle took up his cloth, his Uncle Leo had joined the other men. They formed a circle at one end of the bar, arguing in the way Miracle knew so well. Each man threw his opinion down with the force and certainty of God delivering the commandments. He assigned everybody else opinions counter to his own, then argued with himself for as long as they would listen. Pretty soon everybody would be hot under the collar, with a few choice names flying and a little elbow jostling for show. Listen long enough and they’d work their way back to where they started—everybody in agreement. They’d throw their arms around each other, buy a last round of beer, and stagger into the night. It was the Southern way to argue.