The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

“Oh my God, this is it, baby, this is the big one,” he said as the sky darkened and the wind picked up and rain came slashing down in sheets across their yard. The umbrella and two folding chairs from the patio sailed off in the air.

  “Maybe I’d better …” Catherine made a move as if to go outside, but Russell held her back. “No,” he said. “Stay here. Just stay.” He closed the French doors and locked them and stood with his arms around her as the wind increased until the rain stopped falling down and drove into the panes of glass with a rat-a-tat noise like BBs shot from a pellet gun. The whole sky turned black. Then, was it a siren? Or was it the wind which began to wail with an awful screeching noise, followed by all those explosions, cracks as loud as bombs going off, and then more thunder, and a sudden close flash of lightning that had lit up Catherine’s face.

  “Oh, Russell, what is it? It sounds like a war.”

  He kissed her. “It’s a tornado, honey. I always knew we’d get one sooner or later.”

  “But Tuscaloosa just had a tornado, not even three years ago,” Catherine cried. “It isn’t fair.”

  “No, baby, nothing is fair,” Russell said. Even the old saying that lightning never strikes the same place twice is not true; it strikes the top of the Empire State Building about five hundred times a year. Even if you’ve got terminal cancer, you can still die in a wreck. “We don’t get any guarantees,” he told Catherine just as something heavy hit the roof.

  “What was that?” she cried out in the darkness. And, “Russell, what do you think you’re doing?” though she knew perfectly well. And why not? What better thing to do while rain washes down your road in a river and trees fall all over your dream house? And afterward he must have fallen asleep because it was late afternoon by the time he opened his eyes again to see Catherine sleeping beside him spread-eagled in her bra and panties on the Persian rug.

  “Shoot,” she said, sitting up suddenly. “I can’t believe it. I’ve got rug burns.” She was rubbing her elbow. “Oh my.” Miraculously, the French doors were not broken, though all you could see was leaves. Green light filled the room. Russell pointed the clicker at the television, but nothing happened. He picked up the phone. Dead. He stood up and pulled on his pants, then zipped them. Sirens started someplace. Horns sounded. It was over, though it would be five more days before the power came back on. A long time without Susi Sergi. A helluva long time without air-conditioning. Finally Russell and Catherine fled to the new Phoenix Hotel in town for the last two days, what the hell.

  Here Catherine was soon fully occupied, calling roofers, calling tree surgeons, calling yard service crews, calling God knows who. Lying on the king-sized bed in the Phoenix Hotel watching her (watching Susi, too), Russell was knocked out by Catherine’s secret organizational capacity. If she weren’t so domestic, so artistic, she could be running Microsoft. Their house wasn’t hurt much, actually, once they got the trees off it. Some damage to the roof, the gutters, the porches. Russell didn’t care about the house. But the yard broke his heart. They lost fourteen trees, including the biggest, the most beautiful one of all, the giant hickory right in front, the one Russell had always identified with: old but upright, still here. The hickory had fallen to the right, splitting the largest maple tree where it remained lodged at a forty-five-degree angle, half its root ball exposed.

  “What do you think about pulling it back up?” he asked the tree guys when they finally arrived.

  “Can’t be done, sir.” The man took off his hat to scratch his sweaty head. “Won’t work. It’s a goner. But I’ll cut it up and get it out of here. A thousand bucks, that’ll run you. Let’s say around seven grand for the whole property.” For a Southerner, he was dismayingly definite, even terse.

  “I’ll tell you what. You go ahead and deal with the other trees. I’m going to see if I can’t find somebody to jack this fellow back up for me. I believe it’ll grow.” Suddenly Russell, too, was decisive; and he stuck to his guns though Catherine wept and begged him to let them cut it up and get it out of there, it was such an eyesore. “Catherine,” he said, imitating John Wayne, “I’ll deal with it.”

  Eventually he found a fly-by-night crew from South Carolina, young boys, who swore they could do it with a couple of tractors, and cable to fashion a “come-along.” Russell had thought the job would require a crane. But the boys said they had stood lots of trees back up before. “Trees this big?” asked Russell. Oh, sure, they said. No problem. “We can handle it if we can rent the tractors,” the blond boy, their leader, told Russell. “No sweat.” He wore a red bandanna around his head like a pirate. Russell believed them because he wanted to. He didn’t realize how unusual it was to stand a tree back up until the boys set to work and soon the road was lined with spectators. Some of them brought their lunch. Catherine was distraught. “I was just down at the post office,” she reported to Russell, “and everybody in there was talking about us.”

  “What do you mean, talking about us?”

  “About you trying to save this tree. They didn’t know it was me, I mean, they didn’t know I was a person who lives here. They think we’re fools, honey. Fools.”

  The boys attached cable from the fallen tree to two other trees, then to an iron spike they planted in the yard, forming a rough triangle. “This way,” the blond boy explained to Russell, “it’ll fall away from the house if it falls.”

  Russell was out in the yard with them, drinking heavily. “What do you mean, if it falls?” His question was drowned out by the arrival of the two big tractors and a dump truck, which they hooked up to the tree as well. The crowd grew. The boys from South Carolina posed for group shots of themselves beside the tree, beside the tractors, and in front of the house. The minute the cameras came out, Russell realized they had lied. They had never done this before. A reporter from the newspaper arrived. The boys ostentatiously retied the laces on their boots and drank a lot of bottled water. Two of them got onto the tractors, backing them into position until the cables went taut. The man who owned the dump truck drove it out onto the lawn and got in position, too.

  “They’re ruining the grass!” Catherine wept. “Russell, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Saving the tree,” Russell answered grimly. He nodded to the blond boy on the tractor, who took off his bandanna and waved it in the air above his head. Engines roared. The drivers started backing up. The cables quivered. Everybody strained forward to see. The great tree shook and groaned, losing leaves and even branches as they pulled it up. Half the maple shuddered, split, and fell. “Keep it coming, boys, keep it coming,” Russell yelled over the noise even though no one could hear him. He had always wanted to yell something like this.

  “I can’t watch.” Catherine ran inside.

  Slowly, groaning and creaking, the big tree rose. The crowd cheered. More men ran out to secure the cables. People came across the yard to shake Russell’s hand. The man from the newspaper interviewed him. Later, Russell would receive a citation from the Arbor Society. He would become a local hero. For the next four months, he watered the tree every night, all night. His water bill averaged $595 a month. He didn’t care.

  For the tree still stands: in fact, it is flourishing. Russell drinks his coffee out on the porch every morning so he can look at it, which gives him great pleasure. A big new shoot just popped up from the base this past spring.

  “Travelwise, it’s a pretty good day across America,” Susi Sergi says now, above the noise at the Calliope Bar on the Belle of Natchez. Susi Sergi turns from side to side as she sweeps the pointer in a wide arc across the weather map. But wait a minute! Russell leans forward on his bar stool. Either Susi has gained some weight, or—damn! Susi is pregnant again! That red dress and jacket is actually a maternity outfit. “Susi, you slut!”

  “Pardon, sir?” The bartender wheels to face him, with concern.

  “I’ll take one more …”

  “Sir, I hope you’ll excuse me for saying this, but maybe you’ve had enough for right now.”
>
  What do you know about it, you little—, Russell wants to say. Instead he says, “You may be right.” Relieved, the bartender smiles at him. “You may be right,” Russell says again, with more conviction. He could get into this. And it’s true that he wants to control his anger, he wants to live a long time, to grow old with Catherine, to grow old, old, old, filled with concentric ever-expanding circles like a tree. Russell has already lived a long time. He’s seen most kinds of weather, from floods to rainbows to New England blizzards to hurricanes in the Caribbean to the Santa Ana wind in California and sun dogs over the desert. But he has never seen the famous green flash just at sunset, over water. He’d like to see that sometime. Hey! Why doesn’t he take Catherine to an island next winter? Carpe diem. “Better grab the wife, buckle up the kids, and make that trip to Grandma’s,” Susi advises everyone, “before these storm systems collide beginning June 12, next Thursday.” Seize the day. The cables are holding up pretty good but there’s a helluva lot of weather still out there, Russell thinks as he pays up and leaves the Calliope Bar to go in search of Catherine.

  Mile 364.2

  Natchez, Mississippi

  Tuesday 5/11/99

  1205 hours

  “EVERYTHING’S GOOD HERE, ACTUALLY. Frances Barker runs a great kitchen. I try to stop in every chance I get.” Pete leans across the pink-linen-covered table in the Magnolia Grille where he and Harriet sit on the screened porch. Downriver, the Belle rides at anchor, flags flying, big red paddle wheel glistening in the sun. It looks like a floating party. Harriet looks at everything except the Riverlorian, right across the table from her. Close up, Pete Jones is disturbingly large, disturbingly male, he even has hair growing out of his ears which Harriet has read someplace—she thinks it was Marilyn vos Savant’s column in Sunday’s paper—is a sign of lots of testosterone or too much testosterone or something. She tries to read the menu.

  “May I recommend the crab-cake sandwich?” Pete has a gallant old-fashioned manner of speech.

  “Fine, I’ll take it. I love crab cakes.” Harriet’s voice sounds squeaky in her own ears. Who was that hippie killer? Squeaky Fromme.

  “Maybe a stuffed artichoke to start off with? That’s one of Frances’s specialties.”

  “Fine, I’ll take it. I love artichokes.”

  “And what if I also ordered you a blackened catfish and a chicken pot pie?”

  Finally Harriet looks straight at him.

  “Would you take those, too?” He’s smiling at her, well, he’s just some old guy, after all.

  “No, I …”

  Pete puts his menu down and touches her hand. “Hey, I’m just pulling your leg, just funning with you, as my daddy used to say. Actually, I’m pretty harmless.” But he keeps smiling at her. Why, he’s got a gold eyetooth, of all things! Harriet can’t believe she didn’t notice it before. She smiles back. “The stuffed artichoke and the crab cakes sound delicious,” she says. “You’ll have to excuse me, too. I’m a little bit out of my element here.” To put it mildly, she does not say.

  “What element is that? What do you mean?” Behind the glasses, Pete’s eyes are sharply blue.

  “Oh, I teach school, I live very quietly, so this is all new to me.” Harriet sips her water. “I guess I’m a little bit nervous.”

  Pete orders their lunch from Frances herself, who calls him “hon,” and pushes her hip against his shoulder as she writes it down. She’s a big woman with curly black hair, wearing a tight pink pantsuit. “So what do you teach?” Pete hands their menus back to Frances.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be …”

  “Sure I would.”

  “Well, I guess you’d have to say I teach English, but it’s not literature or anything, though it’s not just grammar either. I work with these returning students—”

  Pete leans forward while she explains; by the end of her recital, Harriet is exhausted, but she actually feels interesting.

  “I used to teach school myself,” he surprises her by saying. “High school history, like my father before me.”

  “Where?”

  “Cairo, Illinois.”

  “Why, I’ve been to Cairo!” Harriet says. “We stopped there the first time I went down the river.”

  “Oh, you’ve traveled with us before?”

  “No, I was on a raft with a lot of other girls, it was the summer of 1965. This trip we’re on right now is kind of a reunion for some of us.”

  “Well, I was wondering about that, trying to put you all together. You don’t look like sisters, or like you might be having a family reunion—we get a lot of those. A raft, you say?”

  The stuffed artichoke is good and so is the Chablis he ordered to go with it, but Harriet barely touches her appetizer while she tells him about the raft trip. She’s embarrassed when Frances comes over to clear away Pete’s appetizer plate and flashes her an accusing look. “And what about you?” Harriet asks him. “I mean, I was wondering how you—how a person, I mean—just up and becomes a Riverlorian. It seems like such an unusual occupation to choose.” Now she sounds like a fool.

  But he smiles—Harriet loves his big square teeth! “Well,” he says, “the truth is that I fell into it by accident, the way most people fall into things.” Do they? Harriet thinks. Do they? “Here’s the way it happened.” Pete leans back in his chair, nodding at Frances who brings in his grouper and sets it down before him with a thud. “I grew up right there in Cairo, then went down to Ole Miss and played a little football, then hurt my leg and turned to history. I always liked history. Went into the navy, then went back to school and got a master’s degree. Married my childhood sweetheart Lois and settled down to live in Cairo for the rest of my life, five streets over from my parents’. Finally had a little son, Clifton, named for my father. Loved Clifton, loved Lois.” Inadvertently, Harriet glances down at his hand: wide gold wedding band, oh no. “Lived like this for years and got used to it. Used to having her there every evening, when I’d get home from school …” Pete was also the football coach, so that took up a lot of time. “My boy played football, too, grade school through eighth grade. He was a real chip off the old block in those days.”

  Oh no—in her peripheral vision, Harriet sees the girls peeping around the screen door at the restaurant entrance—damn them! Why did she ever tell them she was having lunch with the Riverlorian anyway? Catherine puts her finger to her lips in an exaggerated “ssssh” gesture, Courtney wiggles her fingers in a little wave, while Anna tiptoes over to the rest room, looking outlandish in a huge African print dress.

  Pete leans back and laughs. “Yes, I see them,” he says without turning around. “Just checking up on you, I guess. Want to give them a little shock?”

  “Well, sure,” Harriet has scarcely said it when suddenly Pete leans forward across the little table and grabs both her hands and kisses them. Or she thinks he’s kissing them, there’s something wet going on, so he must be, but mostly it just tickles. He’s got that Mark Twain moustache. When Anna comes out of the rest room, they all scuttle out of the restaurant like crabs, eyes big as plates.

  “That got ’em!” Pete says.

  Harriet, flushed and laughing, does not withdraw her hands. “You were saying—”

  “I was saying I had a life, a good life, there in Cairo. It was so good I never thought about it, if that makes any sense to you”—Harriet nods, it does—“Me and the missus, we owned our own home, she had a nice little C.P.A. business downtown, doing people’s taxes and such. On the weekends we’d ride up and down the river here in my Boston Whaler, maybe we’d fish a little. Lois liked to fish, too. Our boy was doing good in school, oh, he got in a few scrapes, but nothing unusual for a teenager. Got into skateboards, then into dirt bikes, that was okay by me as long as he kept up his grades and stuck with the football. I guess I thought of life in terms of football in those days, this must sound simpleminded to you. I reckon those early years were the hardest, but they were the most exciting, too, when we were building the football pr
ogram from scratch, building the team. Then in 1975, 1977, 1980, 1982 and ’83 we were conference champions. Nobody could touch us. You know, high school football means a lot to people in a town like Cairo, people that work all day long in a mill, say, or a factory, or in a machine shop. They come out to a game on Friday night and they can leave all that behind them. They can win. And of course they’ve all got an opinion as to what the coach did, or what he didn’t do, they’ve all got something to say about it. Well, it means something, is what I’m trying to say. It means more than what it is. But I was so wrapped up in it, I didn’t even understand that until it was over.”

  “What happened?”

  “Lois was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the summer of 1986. I didn’t know what hit me. I didn’t really have time to take it in. Five months later, she was dead.” Pete shakes his head, looks down.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “You think, oh, there were so many things we were always going to do, you know, but we just never did get around to them, like go to Nova Scotia, Lois always wanted to go to Nova Scotia, don’t ask me why. We were going to remodel the kitchen, too. I know that sounds stupid, but there’s these little things that come back to haunt you in a time like that. But that Lois, now—she was sweet, she was something, a fellow ought to pay more attention to a woman like that.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Harriet says again. These crab cakes are delicious, but it would be trivial to mention it now.

  Pete wipes his moustache with a napkin, then pours himself another glass of wine. “All hell broke loose after that,” he says matter-of-factly. “Some of it was my fault, and some of it wasn’t. Bottom line was, my son got on drugs while Lois was dying. See, she was over there in the hospital and so I was over there, too, every minute I could spare from school, I wasn’t home much, I reckon. And then I was one holy mess after she did die, and I swear I never even noticed what was going on until the police showed up knocking at my door. They had caught him red-handed, him and some other boys breaking into a 7-Eleven to get money for drugs. Old story. It was crack cocaine, what it was. He was selling the stuff, too.”