The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  “That is amazing. If I ever knew about it, I don’t remember it either.” Anna slides her chair back from the table.

  Courtney stands up. “I’ll see all of you later,” she says pointedly, “at the dance.” She’s talked them into going, though Catherine is still trying to get out of it for some reason, and Harriet seems panicked at the idea of dancing.

  But Bridget clears her throat. “Ahem,” she says in the stagiest way. “Leonard wants me to tell you something.” She leans forward. Leonard nods vigorously, with his sly grin. Courtney struggles to hide her annoyance. Who are these people? Harriet sits back down.

  “Well”—Bridget surveys her audience—“Leonard likes to share our story with others; he feels it is his duty to spread the word. He and I were married in Hawaii nine years ago and only four months after the wedding, he developed prostate cancer.” Perky as can be, Bridget acts like she’s conducting a board meeting.

  “Oh my God!” Russell can’t help it.

  “Wait.” Bridget holds up her hand like a traffic cop. “Of course it was a terrible tragedy all around, since he had to have the entire prostate taken out immediately. I just couldn’t imagine doing without him—I mean, we were virtually newlyweds after all, so luckily we ran into a surgeon who suggested a penis pump, and Leonard decided to go for it.” Leonard smiles his lizardy smile at them all. “It was quite expensive, but let me tell you, it was worth every penny, every hour of surgery.”

  “You mean the thing works?”

  “Russell, don’t yelp,” Catherine says sharply.

  “It works great,” Bridget assures them, “but it takes a while. The first step is that when you go home to recuperate, you have to leave it pumped up for the first three weeks so that it will heal in such a way you can get an erection later. So you do have to maintain an erection for the first three weeks.”

  “Jesus,” whispers Maurice, who has joined the rapt circle.

  Leonard says something in Bridget’s ear.

  “Oh yes!” She nods brightly. “The biggest problem we had during the entire time was when Leonard got this terrible abscessed tooth and had to go to the dentist for a root canal. Well, we didn’t know what to do, because of course he’d just been staying at home ever since he got out of the hospital. But he was in awful pain.” Leonard puts his hand up to his face and grimaces, to demonstrate. “Well, I thought to myself, now how can we do this? Without attracting undue attention or even getting arrested, I mean. I knew we had to walk across a huge parking lot and into an office building and then of course we might have to wait in the dentist’s office … Finally I got creative and made him this little harness contraption out of an old Kotex belt and one of those orange juice concentrate cans with the ends cut off.”

  Leonard whispers again.

  “A large orange juice concentrate can,” Bridget adds. “He wore some of his baggiest old sweatpants and then I had a real inspiration; I tied his matching sweatshirt around his waist and let the ends just droop down, you know, like this, to cover his erection, sort of casual California style, and off we went. Nobody even noticed. And at the end of those three weeks, we tried it out, and it worked like a charm.” Bridget is radiant. Leonard nods slowly and constantly, eyes nearly closed, like a gator on a log. “Leonard thinks we should tell as many people as we can, so they won’t give up hope if this happens to them.” Bridget beams at Russell, who squirms in his seat. She reaches for Leonard’s spotty old hand and squeezes it. “Now I call him Ready Freddy,” she announces.

  “My goodness!” Courtney jumps up from the table. “That certainly was interesting. And now, if you’ll excuse me—” She’s gone, Anna following, but Harriet, secretly hysterical, can’t even get up from her seat, oh, she’s going to wet her pants, she’s going to die, but of course she can’t laugh out loud. Catherine looks amused, too, biting her full bottom lip as if she can’t trust herself to speak. Leonard whispers again to Bridget; finally they stand up.

  “See you at the dance,” Bridget says. “We’re going to have a little rest first.” She winks broadly. Leonard grins like a jack-o-lantern. Holding hands, they leave the dining room.

  “Have you ever? I can’t believe it.” Catherine is wiping her eyes. “I mean, I know it’s not funny, it’s very serious, but—”

  “It’s—the—orange juice can!” Harriet finally manages to say.

  “Oh man,” Maurice cracks up, clearing their table.

  “So how about it?” Russell says to Catherine, his lovely Catherine, putting his arm around her. “How about a little roll in the hay, hey hey?”

  “See you later.” Harriet is out of there.

  “Baby?” Russell pulls her close against him and squeezes her, touching her breast. He nuzzles her hair.

  “Way to go,” says Maurice.

  “Russell, stop it. What do you think you’re doing, right out in public like this? You’re disgusting.” Catherine breaks away from him and leaves the dining room, fast. She does not look back.

  BY MORNING, 250 five-by-seven-inch color photographs of the dance will have been posted on the wall to the left of the dining room doors. They include:

  No. 111. A group shot of Russell Hurt with his arms spread wide to embrace all his “girls”: Catherine, serious and striking, at his side, with her long gray hair falling dramatically to her tan shoulders; Anna, enigmatic beneath a dressy pair of jewelled, smoked cat’s-eye glasses, on his other side; Courtney next, caught in an unfortunate expression, mouth open, lip curled, as if she’s about to tell somebody off; and then Harriet next to Catherine, standing straight and still with her lips pursed and her feet together just so, as if she were a girl from the previous century who had somehow strayed into this photograph.

  No. 112. Another group shot of the now-disheveled “girls” who appear to be doing something like the can-can, all turned to the side with their arms around each others’ waists, kicking their left legs up in the air. “Can we do it? No, we can’t!” Courtney was chanting. Their eyes are red and their teeth look shiny white in the flashbulb’s cruel glare. Their red mouths are open wide, very wide, laughing. (Courtney will humorously entitle this one “Can-Can Girls from Hell” later, when she puts it in her Belle of Natchez scrapbook.)

  No. 128. Russell and Catherine Hurt, posed in the flower-twined wishing well, embracing for the camera. Bending down to kiss her, Russell wears a white dinner jacket, Teva sandals with no socks, and a Hawaiian shirt with bright green parrots on it, neck open. His right arm encircles her; his hand on her waist looks startlingly big. Catherine’s white lace dress is not really vintage, just old—actually, it belonged to Mary Bernice. Normally she never dresses up, and Russell can’t get over how good she looks. Her left arm rests gracefully, if somewhat ornamentally, on his shoulder. Catherine’s head is back, her face tilted up, though we can’t see it; we can’t see Russell’s face either. You can’t even tell who they are. They could be anybody, anybody in love.

  Mile 364.2

  Natchez, Mississippi

  Tuesday 5/11/99

  0600 hours

  HARRIET WAKES UP SUDDENLY, too early again. She’s startled to see that they have already docked, with the landing right there and the ramp already down. The muddy river beats against the rocks. She remembers those rocks. And the narrow road winds up the steep bluff just as she remembers it, too. A fine gray rain falls on everything, turning it all pastel. Water color, impressionist. Two men carry a heavy box up the ramp to a waiting van that moves off slowly into the mist, lights blinking. Other men go into a lighted café across the way promising BEST COFFEE IN TOWN in pink neon, haloed by the mist. And there’s the Magnolia Grille, right on the water, still shuttered and closed. It is—let’s see—six hours until her lunch date with Pete. Harriet shivers again. It’s silly to keep it so cold on this boat when it’s so hot outside. It’s unnatural. Her eyes rise to the top of the bluff where, she knows, stand the great houses Natchez is famous for—Longwood, Rosalie, Stanton Hall, Melrose. She’s read about
them in the guidebook. If she ever saw them the first time, on the raft, she certainly can’t remember it.

  Her memory of Natchez is altogether different.

  IT HAD BEEN RAINING THEN, too, all afternoon as they ran downriver toward Natchez, a warm hard rain that sometimes seemed almost horizontal, driving under the tarp they’d lashed to the two-by-fours which made a frame on top of the raft. The rain soaked everything, going straight into your eyes. You had to keep your sunglasses on in order to see at all, but even so it was hard looking through water. It was already getting dark. Everybody was starving; they hadn’t eaten since breakfast. There hadn’t been any point in trying to make sandwiches in all that rain. Catherine had passed around apples and little packs of peanuts which worked just fine if you ate them fast enough. They all strained to see the Devil’s Punchbowl, a huge depression in the bluff that the captain was determined to point out to them despite the rain. “Some say Sir Henry Morgan hid his treasure there, and there’s folks looking for it yet, to this day.” Finally they rounded the bend and there was Natchez, the steep bluff, the ragged little settlement along the water. “There used to be four streets running along there,” the captain said. “Now there’s not but one.”

  “What happened?” somebody asked.

  “River took ’em.” The captain removed his glasses and wiped them with his wet bandanna. “All right now girls,” he called. “Prepare to land. You’re going to have to go in the water on this one.”

  “I’ll go,” Jane said.

  “Let’s go with her.” Baby grabbed Harriet’s hand.

  Then Harriet was in the water with a rope, sunk up to her ankles in mud, straining against the steady hard pull of the current.

  “That’s it, girlies! Keep a-coming, keep a-coming!” the men called from the bank. Harriet and Baby and Jane staggered up and handed their ropes over to the waiting men, then collapsed in a heap on a big revetment stone. Its rough surface was still warm, in spite of the rain. The captain gave orders and the others snapped to. The raft rocked at its moorings while they secured it. Finally the captain was satisfied and the rest of them clambered onto the revetment, lugging bundles of clothes and sleeping bags, calling out to the group of locals who were rapidly gathering to welcome them. Just then the rain stopped. Everybody cheered.

  Baby touched Harriet’s hand. “Look,” she said, pointing across the river. In the sky above Vidalia the clouds suddenly turned pink and parted like a curtain, revealing a window of blue. “Hey, everybody,” Harriet called to the others, but there was too much noise at the dock, and no one saw it but them.

  The captain sent everybody scurrying for driftwood, and soon a big fire was roaring between two revetment stones. Jane and Lauren had just started unwrapping the food when two beautifully dressed women appeared like apparitions, each of them carrying a covered tray. They were followed by two boys lugging a giant cooler between them. After so long on the river, Harriet thought the women looked bizarre in their linen summer dresses and white heels, their sleek blond hairdos.

  “Hey! I’m Mary Lane Biggs and this is Sissy Watkins,” the blond announced. “Mary Scott Class of ’51. We’ve been watching you all on the news every night and I said to Sissy, I said, ‘Sissy, I’ll bet they’ll be hungry when they get here, don’t you reckon …’ ” She prattled on while the girls fell on the food like jackals. Fried chicken, tuna salad sandwiches, little pecan pies, and the best deviled eggs Harriet had ever eaten. “Did you make them?” she asked Mrs. Biggs.

  “Oh Lord no, honey!” Mary Lane Biggs laughed and laughed at the very idea.

  Harriet can still close her eyes and remember that meal exactly: the girls’ sunburned faces in the firelight, how tired the captain looked, those beautiful women who vanished as quickly as they had come, like good fairies, when all the food was gone. Then Bowen went back to the raft for her guitar and somebody started passing a bottle of bourbon around. They were singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” when the sheriff appeared, looming up suddenly in the firelight, a fat red-faced man with flapping jaws. His gut hung over his belt and his gun hung at his hip. “Girls!” he shouted above the singing. “May I have your attention, please?” The singing stopped abruptly. The bottle disappeared.

  The sheriff introduced himself as Bull Tate. “Now we’re mighty glad y’all have chose to visit us here in Natchez,” he announced, “and I want to make sure your visit is a safe one. You girls may not be aware that there is some undesirable elements in this part of the world right now, and it’s a bad area you’re parked in. So I’ve brought you some protection. Rusty! Ralph!” he barked, and a little bowlegged guy with a weaselly face came forward, followed by a blank-faced giant of a man. “These here are my trusties, and I’m leaving them with you for the night,” Sheriff Tate said. “You have any trouble, they’ll take care of it, ain’t that right boys?”

  “Yessir,” the trusties said.

  “Oh no,” Baby whispered. “You mean they’re going to stay here all night long?”

  All the girls were scared of them. Eventually the captain convinced the trusties to stay back from the revetment near a big sycamore tree where they soon fell asleep, but Suzanne organized a watch anyway. “Why, we could be raped, or—or—anything could happen!” she said. “Those men are criminals.”

  “I wonder what the sheriff meant, ‘undesirable elements’?” Ruth asked. “Don’t you think he probably meant black people?”

  “I think he meant civil rights workers,” Lauren said softly. “You know they’re all over the place this summer, registering voters and such as that.”

  “Of course he does,” Harriet said.

  “Well, I’m going up that hill to find some cigarettes,” Baby announced.

  “You can’t go by yourself,” Courtney said immediately.

  “Then come with me.”

  “Oh, Baby, it’s too far. Why don’t you just go to sleep? Or bum one from somebody.”

  “I’m jonesing,” Baby said, “but I want my own pack. Bye. I’ll hitch a ride or something.” Sure enough a car stopped for her almost immediately, its red taillights blinking in the night. Courtney shook her head. Bowen strummed her guitar and started singing “Four Strong Winds.”

  “Harriet! Harriet!” Harriet hadn’t even realized she’d fallen asleep when Baby was back, shaking her shoulder. “Ssh! Come on, wake up. Come with us.”

  Harriet sat up and looked around the smoldering campfire at the sleeping girls, the captain lying spread-eagled on his air mattress snoring like a chainsaw with his glasses still on. The trusties were snoring, too, under the sycamore tree. Nobody was keeping watch. “Baby! What are you doing? Where have you been?” she asked.

  Baby grabbed her notebook and some other things out of her pack. “Hush,” she said. “Come on, let’s go. I met the neatest guys.”

  “Guys! What do you mean?” But because she always did everything Baby suggested, Harriet put on her shoes. She stood up.

  “Sssh.” Baby pulled her out of the circle of firelight and into the dark.

  “Who are these guys? Don’t you want to get some sleep?”

  “Look, we can sleep when we’re old. We can sleep when we’re dead. These guys are Bull Tate’s worst nightmare.”

  “What do you mean?” Harriet breathed in the steamy air. She looked back at the cozy circle in the firelight. But now the moon had come out, big and low. It made a shiny path across the river to the landing where the raft lay at anchor and the old car stood idling, lights off.

  “This is Jesse and this is Noah,” Baby said, opening the car door. “Okay, y’all. This is Harriet.”

  “Cool,” said Noah, sticking out his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Jesse, driving.

  Both boys had long dark curly hair. Noah’s was pulled back into a ponytail. Baby jumped into the front seat. When Harriet got in back, Noah handed her a paper cup that held a liquid that burned the whole way down her throat. “Lord! What is this?” she asked.

  “
Local product.” Noah smiled at her. “I’m developing a real taste for it.” When the old car reached the top of the bluff, Jesse turned on the lights. “We can’t really take you girls out anyplace,” he said. “We’re not welcome in the white bars, even if they were still open, and it might not be a good idea to take you into a juke joint this late at night, either. So if it’s okay with you, we’ll just go back to our place.”

  Baby said, “Sure, that’s fine,” before Harriet could open her mouth. What are you doing? she wanted to shriek. But as they drove through the dark town with its boarded-up stores and its Confederate statues in the center of the intersections, she began to relax. These guys went to Antioch, which she had at least heard of. Noah was from New Hampshire and Jesse was from Boston. They were only here for the summer. They had taken a politics course from a radical professor who had convinced them to come down here with him this summer to register voters. The girls would meet him, too, later when they got to the house. Now they were driving along with flat open fields on either side, broken by the dark lines of trees.

  “This summer is a turning point in my life,” Noah said earnestly. “I don’t think I can ever go back to the way I was.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the way you were’?” Harriet edged across the torn seat to hear his answer.

  “Privileged,” Noah said. “You know, a car at sixteen, daddy’s a doctor, the whole bit. I just didn’t know shit,” he said, shaking his head, passing her the paper cup again. “I couldn’t have even imagined how people live.” For some reason he reminded her of Jeff, even though of course they were very different, but yet there was something …