“The wonder was that Lexie could tell about it cool and dry-eyed. But can you think how she must have been feeling?
“She went into mourning then for a long period, wearing black and sometimes veiling her face. She and Preacher Hardy had made all the necessary final arrangements and he performed the funeral rites. Lexie saw to the stone. Maybe you’d like to visit it sometime with me over in Pleasant Hill Cemetery. It is unusual because it only has that one single word on it—no dates and no inscription and not even a last name. ‘Selena.’ That’s all it says, but Lexie was right. It is one word that speaks libraries.”
* * *
“After a decent time had passed, Lexie did a most surprising thing. She asked a few people in for a ladies social at her house. She called us long distance and I went over to the settlement with Aunt Ona Caslin and a few others and we were all burning with curiosity.
“Lexie met the five of us at the front door and brought us into the foyer. ‘Before we have our tea and sweetmeats,’ she said, ‘I thought you might like to see the house, the rooms where we lived together, me and Selena.’
“We followed her up the stairs and inspected their bedrooms. I won’t describe all she showed us, except to say that everything was scrubbed clean and as neat as a pin and without the least touch of luxury. It surprised us to see how sparely they lived. We expected a more showy style from Lexie.
“She took particular care to point out a little sewing room that must have been a favorite place with its two comfortable stuffed chairs facing close together under a lamp. On one of the footstools lay an embroidery hoop with a pattern half-finished. Lexie explained that Selena had been stitching a flower piece for Granny Martin’s birthday. ‘But of course that occasion passed by many months ago,’ she said, and dabbed at her eyes.
“Then she led us downstairs through the shining kitchen and the big guest bedroom they had dutifully kept up, though it had never been occupied. There was a cozy reading room off of one of the smaller hallways. Then we went into the front parlor and sat to sip our tea and nibble the cinnamon cake Lexie had baked.
“As we were eating, Lexie sat down and gathered herself, straightening the bodice of her black wool dress and crossing her ankles. ‘So you see how we lived,’ she told us. ‘As quiet as mice. I can’t think that any Quaker ever lived more quietly than Selena and me.’ She looked at each of us for a long moment, then said, ‘Now I know you’ve all been curious about us and I’m here this afternoon to answer any question you might care to ask.’
“Well, naturally, nobody would own up to being curious, but after an embarrassing minute Aunt Ona spoke up with the question that had been on our minds since always. ‘Is it really true that Selena never talked? That she never spoke a word, even when you-all were alone in the house?’
“Answered Lexie: ‘She never did.’
“‘Why was it that she never spoke? Was she afraid of somebody, or did she bear a deep-seated grudge?’
“‘No,’ said Lexie, ‘she never held a grudge against a living soul. And I’m not real sure why she didn’t talk. A guess is the best I’ve got and I don’t have any idea whether it’s close.’
“‘What, then?’
“‘I believe there was something she wanted to say but didn’t trust any words she knew to say it for her.’
“‘What was it she wanted to say?’
“‘It wasn’t a thing for words. It was more like a picture. One time we were sewing together in the room upstairs. I was mending a tear in an old work dress and Selena was knitting I don’t remember what, something dark blue. Anyhow, I noticed that she laid her work aside and closed her eyes for a spell. That was something she used to do pretty regular and I always took notice because she wasn’t just resting her eyes. There was a matter came to her mind at these times and I could feel the silence deepen all around. When she closed her eyes like that, everything went dead quiet. There was no sound to be heard in the sewing room or anywhere else in the house or coming from outside. When she closed her eyes, all the sound everywhere stopped.’
“She unfolded the bitsy linen handkerchief from her palm and dried her eyes again. ‘So this one time I thought to myself, If I close my eyes, too, and think real hard, maybe I can see in my mind what Selena is seeing in hers. So I tried it out. I shut my eyes and concentrated with all I had in me.’
“Aunt Ona asked if the trial succeeded. We all five leaned forward, holding our breath.
“‘I don’t know,’ Lexie said. ‘There’s no way to tell for sure. But a picture did enter my mind as powerful as the electric coming on. Nothing I’d ever thought or remembered in my head, so I thought it was Selena’s picture. Anyhow, when I opened my eyes and heard the sounds of the house again, I saw that she was looking me full in the face with the sorrowfulest expression you’d ever see on anybody.’
“‘What was the picture?’
“‘All right, I am going to tell you,’ she said, ‘but I won’t be able to make much sense out of it. It was the picture that came in my mind, but whether it was the same one in Selena’s, I can’t know.
“‘What I saw is this little girl. She is about five years old, maybe six. She is naked and her lips are purple with cold and she is sick with I don’t know what illness. She is lying on a heap of smelly old rags in a dark place. She has been lying there a long time and she will go on lying there. She cries sometimes, but if she makes any noise, some green-faced creatures come out of the shadows and put their claw hands on her and in her. So she weeps and tries not to make a sound. She does not move her arms or legs. She will go on lying in this foul place forever and her suffering will never come to an end.’
“We couldn’t figure what to make of it all. ‘Who is she?’
“‘I don’t know,’ Lexie replied. ‘I don’t know anything but that picture in my mind. It was there clear as a bell till I opened my eyes. Now it never goes out of my head. I wish it would, but it won’t.’
“‘Is that little girl anybody we know, somebody in our settlement?’
“She shook her head. ‘No. Wherever she is, it is far away in a strange land that is cold and dark.’
“‘But—’
“‘And now,’ she said, getting up and going to the teapot, ‘you’ve heard my last word on the subject. I’ll never mention it again and I’ll thank you not to ask me. But I want you to have some more tea and to try one of these sugar cookies I made yesterday with some vanilla drops I put in them.’
“‘But we wanted to hear more about the little girl. Where—’
“‘No,’ she told us. ‘You’ve heard my last. No use in asking.’”
* * *
The ruby curls of Rome apple peel lay heaped on the table and the quarter-moon slices floated in the pan of water. My grandmother and I looked not at each other but into the snow that was funneling down in tiny bitter flakes, twisting around the tree trunks in the grove and whispering against the windowpanes. Looking through the grove, we could see the snow wild above the fields, flaring in thin curtains like cheesecloth tattered and torn. The ground was beginning to whiten, the sheet-ice patches furring over. The fields were otherwise empty, no animals, no birds, only the snow tingling the wind with noiseless tumult.
I started to say something but she forestalled me. “No, I don’t understand it, either, Jess, not anything about it. Lexie Courland said it all that one time and never said again. Lexie is gone now and Selena before her and Aunt Ona has passed on, too. Most of the women of that generation are gone and their loss is a destruction to us all, for they were a good and faithful company and the generations that have come after don’t seem to me to have their hardiness or savor.” She began brushing the peels off the table into her aproned lap. “Maybe I’m wrong about that. I’d like to think I am.”
I felt like I ought to say something, so I said, “No, I don’t think you’re wrong.” But even that was too much and I hushed and looked out again into the snow that was coming down harder, the wind raw behind it now.
>
THE FISHERWOMAN
My grandmother was not partial to the story of Earlene Lewis because it was speckled with profanity. It was only a mild spring-scallion type of profanity, nothing like the raw, hot Spanish-onion oaths that have lately become so common a part of discourse. But cusswords irritated my grandmother; she called them “bywords” and avoided the tales in which they were necessary. My mother, too, kept her modest distance from warmly seasoned diction, but she admired Cousin Earlene so much and was so pleased with her story that she could not resist telling it to me one long November afternoon while we waited for my father to come home for supper. He was engaged with his friend Virgil Campbell in a project that was either serious business or sheer deviltry; we wouldn’t know which for weeks, and maybe not ever.
* * *
“Earlene Lewis was different from all the other girls,” my mother told me, “because she was a trout fisherman. That was what she was born to be. Mighty few women at that time took an interest in fly-fishing, and most of them were so clumsy at it that all nature shuddered to glimpse them on the stream, fat in their hot waders and with their hair all in fancy dos. They took few fish and didn’t much care, since they were only trying to impress boyfriends.
“But Earlene owned to a genuine interest from the start. In fact, she met old man Worley because he had spotted her in the back of Ronnie Dacy’s Western Auto store one Saturday morning in early March while she was looking at fishing rods. She admired the colors—the dark green and the malt brown and the splotched gold-and-black—and she was tapping a red one lightly with her fingernail to feel it throb along its length.
“The old man stood behind her and, just as she was turning away, spoke abruptly. ‘What’s your name, girl?’
“Mr. Worley was a picturesque old fellow. His face was weathered to the color of a cured burley leaf and so wrinkled it appeared to be caving in, but his blue eyes were alert and as bright as the shine on a table knife. He wore faded brown coveralls and a beat-up black felt hat pulled low on his brow. The colorful patch of his costume was the clean red bandanna knotted around his neck.
“‘Earlene Lewis,’ she said.
“‘Who’s your folks?’
“‘My mother is Maidy Lewis. She works at the Challenger factory.’
“He nodded. ‘So your daddy would be Jimmy Devoe Lewis. I know Jimmy Devoe. Know your mama, too. Know all your folks for a long time back. You never saw your grandaddy, did you?’
“She shook her head, staring at the knot of his red bandanna. When he talked, it bobbled up and down like an apple on an October limb. The way it moved seemed part of his voice.
“‘Where is your daddy now?’
“She answered this question straightforwardly, though it required a kind of courage that Earlene was learning young. She looked old man Worley right in the eye and said, ‘He had to go away for a while. He was drinking too much and it made him sick.’
“Mr. Worley nodded again. ‘That’s what I heard,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you, around these goddamn parts I never expect to hear anything that’s half the truth. How are you and your mother getting along? What shift have they got her working?’
“‘Three to eleven,’ Earlene said. ‘We’re doing okay. She says if I’ll keep the house, she’ll bring in the money and we might do better than before.’
“‘Maybe so,’ he said dryly. ‘But here you are, looking at these fishing rods. Have you ever been fishing?’
“‘Yes, sir. My daddy took me.’
“‘Where?’
“‘We went to the lake one time. And we went to Brurnley’s Trout Pond.’
“‘That ain’t fishing. That ain’t even a proper way to drown worms. Did you catch you a fish?’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘What was the biggest you ever caught?’
“She held her hands out.
“‘That ain’t very big.’
“She looked away from him, out the window of the store, at the sleepy railroad depot across the street, dingy in the morning sun. ‘I guess not,’ she admitted.
“‘If you don’t learn to tell a lie, ain’t no way can you be a fisherman. Here—’ he said, pulling her hands a yard apart. ‘Every fish you ever caught is this big.’ He spread them a yard and a half. ‘And every one that got away is this big.’ He let her hands go and leaned down to peer at her solemnly. ‘That’s the first thing you have to learn.’
“Then she smiled at last. ‘Yes, sir.’
“‘About how old would you be?’
“‘Twelve.’
“‘Going on thirteen?’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘Do you like to climb trees? Do you like to get up in a big old cherry tree and climb all the way to the very tip-top?’
“She nodded, not admitting to anything, and was relieved to find he liked her answer.
“‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘I thought I might be looking at a tomboy when I spotted you with these rods. How would you like to go fishing? I might take a notion to bring you along sometime.’
“‘I don’t know.’
“‘Tell you what, I’ll talk to your mama. If she says it’s okay, we’ll go one of these days, you and me. But I don’t go to no little pissant pond. I go in the mountains where it’s rough, up to the real fish. You reckon you could scramble over them big old rocks?’
“‘I guess so.’
“Suddenly he bent down and held his face close to hers. ‘Take a real good look,’ he said. ‘How old would you say I am?’
“She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
“‘Take a guess. How old?’
“She imagined an astronomical figure. ‘Fifty-three years old.’
“He cackled like a treaded hen and straightened up and announced with grand pride, ‘I’m seventy-five. Three-quarters of a century. You think about that. Seventy-five years old.’
“She thought, but seventy-five didn’t mean anything. He might as well have claimed a thousand. She looked glumly at the dull toes of his boots.
“‘I’ll talk to your mother when I get a chance. We’ll see if she won’t say you can go. You’re a peart-looking youngun; we might could make you a fisherman. I’ll have a little talk with Maidy.’ He turned and walked away. Halfway down the aisle, he spun about and called to her. ‘What was the biggest fish you ever caught?’
Without hesitation she showed him her whole wingspan.
“‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s a keeper.’”
* * *
“In this way, Earlene met the old man she never afterward called anything but Mr. Worley, and she had remembered for three years every detail of that encounter and she expected she would remember all her life. She had become his fishing partner, just as he’d proposed. He was not some filthy old man thinking to do shame on a young girl. He was Mr. Worley, whom everybody knew, cranky and good-hearted and famous for his devotion to the art of trout fishing.
“After Mr. Worley had spoken to Maidy, she came to ask her daughter if she actually did want to go off every Saturday morning before daylight. ‘He’s a dear old soul,’ she said. ‘He’ll treat you good. But he goes into some tight and rugged spots and he’s getting on in years. It could be dangerous. You’d have to use your good sense not to get hurt.’
“She looked into her mother’s face, searching for a hint. She wanted to ask if it would be any fun but was not certain the question was polite. Maidy seemed distracted, as if she was thinking hard, but not about the subject at hand.
“‘That’s if you want to go, I mean. Do you want to?’
“They were sitting cross-legged on Maidy’s bed and Earlene began to pluck at the blobs of pink chenille. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I guess so.’
“‘Well, don’t tear up the bedspread just because you can’t make up your mind.’
“‘I don’t have any fishing stuff,’ Earlene said. ‘I don’t have any … tackle.’ She mumbled the word shyly and for the first time. She had gleaned it—a
long with words like trolling, walleye, and duck blind—from the pages of Field & Stream, the magazine she used to read in the barbershop while her daddy got his hair cut. She liked the bright covers with flushed birds in flight or big fish breaking water in the foreground and the handsome, capable men in the background taking the excitement in stride. She studied the advertisements for telescopic sights, oilskin kayaks, snowshoes, and Johnson motors. She memorized the photos of hunters and fishermen with their trophies, because they looked like people she might know; the rich people pictured in Look and June Bride appeared unreal.
“‘Mr. Worley says he’ll loan you something to fish with while you learn,’ her mother said. ‘All you’ll need is some old blue jeans and tennis shoes. Your feet would be wet all day long, and no telling how much else of you.’
“‘I don’t have any tennis shoes.’
“‘Well, I reckon we can manage a pair of those, honey. But first you’ll have to make up your mind. I’m not certain why he’s asking you along. Over the years he’s taught a lot of boys all about the streams, but you’re the first girl he’s took an interest in.’
“‘I am?’
“‘That’s what I hear.’
“So she decided yes. She wanted to be the first girl to do anything. She’d always hoped to strike upon adventures, and now she was twelve and had her chance. No other girl she knew of went trout fishing. Of course, she didn’t know them very well. She had no close friends at school, probably because of her daddy’s reputation. But she didn’t care about that, either. She liked Jimmy Devoe. When he was drunk, he wasn’t cruel or ugly, only sad and helpless and lonesome. A long time ago something dreadful had happened to her father, something that caused him to drink like he did. Earlene knew she was too young to understand what that might be. She’d have to grow older to find out, and she wasn’t looking forward to that. There was a time when people said, ‘You’ll understand when you get a little older,’ and she had taken it as a promise. Now she heard that sentence as a threat. ‘I want to go fishing,’ she said.
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