“No I ain’t.” (Every year since he grew too big for a Shepherd, he had begun by refusing his part.)
Milo said, “Yes you are. Me and you’s Wise Men.”
Sissie said, “Who is the third?” and when Milo and Mama stared at her, she saw her mistake and bolted a mouthful of food for the first time that day.
But her question hung above them plain as the swinging light so Rosacoke laid her hands on the table. She pushed back her chair and stood and took the empty biscuit plate. Only Rato looked at her but she looked at Sissie and said, “The third one is Wesley if he comes in time.” Then she went to the kitchen and stayed there longer than it generally takes for biscuits.
When she was gone Mama said soft to Milo “Is he come?”
“He’s here. I seen him at the store just now when we passed.”
“Well, I called up his mother yesterday to see was he coming for the pageant. She said she just didn’t know his plans so I told her we would practice this afternoon and to tell Wesley if he come. Has Willie Duke come?”
“Oh yes. That scrap-iron fool flew her in last night.”
Rato said, “Is she in the show?”
“Looks that way,” Mama said but with Sissie there she didn’t name Willie Duke’s part.
Rato of course didn’t know what they meant, talking low, but he had finished eating, and as Rosacoke stepped back through the door, he looked to her and said “When is Christmas?”
She smiled and said “Wednesday” and sat down.
“How come you ask?” Mama said.
But Rato was on his feet and out to the hall and back with his duffle bag. He stooped to open it. “Because I have brought you all presents from the PX. Everything is real cheap there.”
Mama said, “That’s fine, son. But wait till Wednesday.”
He just said “No’m” and brought out six boxes. They were all very much the same size and in white paper with no name tags, but Rato weighed each box in his hand, trying to know them by touch. Finally he passed one to Baby Sister, and while the others watched his sorting, she opened it. At first it seemed like a red plastic sack, but she found a valve and blew, and directly it was a toy elephant with black eyes that rolled behind celluloid. She thought to herself it was a very strange gift for a twelve-year-old, but all she said was “Thank you, Rato.”
He said “That’s O.K.” and stayed on the floor, but everybody else turned to Baby Sister, stuck with her blown-up elephant, wondering where to set it. Mama laughed a little and the others followed, even Sissie, so Rato looked to see why. When he saw the toy he jumped to Baby Sister’s chair and grabbed it from her. “This here ain’t yours,” he said. “It’s a baby toy” and he put it to his burning face and bit off the valve with his teeth. The elephant shriveled to a sack again, and Rato stuffed it deep out of sight. Then he rocked on his heels and studied the five boxes left. “Listen,” he said, “I bought this stuff way before Thanksgiving so I don’t know what is what.” That was as much as he had said at one time ever in his life, and he started refilling his bag. The others tried but they couldn’t help staring at Sissie. Sissie for a change held up. But that was the end of eating. Mama stood and said, “That’s all right, son. Take your time. Christmas will be here too soon as it is. You and Milo just go in the front room and set. By the time me and Rosa wash dishes, we will have to get on to Delight and practice.”
Rato said “Who is we?”
“You all that’s in the pageant and me that’s managing it.”
Rato said, “Are you in it, Rosa?”
“No. I had my chance last year, remember?”
He said “Yes” and dinner broke up. Sissie went back upstairs to continue resting. Milo and Rato went to the front room to wait for Mama—Baby Sister followed in case Milo told jokes—and Rosacoke and Mama washed dishes.
In the kitchen when the last dish was dried, Rosacoke hung two wet towels on a line by the window and stood, looking sideways to the empty road, her face the color of the day. Mama saw her and knew she had put off speaking long as she could, that she had to find a way now to offer blind help. But Rosa was Rosa (her strangest child). She would have to study out what to say so she wiped round the sink and washed her hands and slipped on the narrow gold ring she always removed before working. When that was done Rosacoke was still locked at the glass. Mama walked up behind and not touching her, said, “Rosa, you have barely laughed since summer ended. I don’t know why exactly but even if you are my own flesh and blood, I ain’t going to ask the trouble. I just want to say, if you got any business that needs telling—well, I am your Mama.” She stopped to take breath but Rosacoke didn’t turn. “And another thing, if there is some person in that pageant you don’t want to see, just stay here tonight. I will understand.” (She didn’t understand. She hadn’t guessed what the real burden was.) Rosacoke stayed facing the road and Mama walked to the door to leave. At the door she tried again. “Did you hear me, Rosa?” Rosacoke nodded one time and Mama went out.
But all Rosacoke had heard was the last, which worked in her mind as she saw Milo lead the others to the car and drive off to Delight. After they vanished she said to herself, “Even if I do feel like crawling underground, I will not sit here tonight and moan with Sissie Abbott. Mr. Isaac may die any day. He has been good to us, and I mean to pay my respects with everybody else, including Wesley Beavers.” She had halfway turned to get her church dress and iron it when she caught in the side of her eye a cloud of dust at the far curve of the road. She had to look. It was nothing but Macey Gupton’s truck headed for the practice (he was Joseph and was hauling Mr. Isaac’s gift-chair on the back, held down by his wormy daughters that were Angels), but when it was gone Rosacoke couldn’t leave the window. She had to stand and take the sight of whatever cars passed by.
And the awful car she expected came soon enough—the Beavers’ tan Pontiac moving fast as if it was late, twitching to dodge great rocks and with one person in it who suddenly knew where he was and slowed at the Mustian drive almost to a stop but not seeing any sign of life to call him in (some reason of his own), rolled on by scratching his wheels. Rosacoke pressed her face to the cold pane and watched to the end. Then she could think, “That is all the proof I need,” and the thought, being what she had waited to know, came almost like relief. She had not seen a face or enough to swear who was driving but she knew. She also knew she could not attend any evening service—Mr. Isaac dying or not. But what she could do came to her next. “I will walk over now and take him his candy and tell Sammy I can’t be there tonight.”
She went to Mama’s room and found the candy where Milo had left it. She wrapped it like Rato’s things in tissue paper. Then she climbed the stairs to comb her hair and get her coat—she had dressed that morning for Rato’s arrival. On the way down she stopped by Sissie’s door and spoke through it. “Are you all right?” Sissie said she was. “Well, I am just going to step to Mr. Isaac’s—hear?—and give him our candy.” Sissie said not to mind her so Rosacoke went on.
* * *
She went the back way—off the road through a half-mile of bare woods. Near as they were, she didn’t really know these woods (Milo had warned her long ago—to keep her from always trailing him—that somewhere in here was a place named Snake’s Mouth where all snakes for miles got born, and the story had served his purpose till she was too old to explore), and looking down she walked through pine straw and waiting briars fast as she could, not because she was scared but because after watching the tan car fade, she didn’t mean to stay in silence longer than she could help, even if Sammy Ransom was the only thing to talk to. Still, it took much longer than she hoped, and when she broke out of trees at last on the edge of the grove with the naked road on her left and Mr. Isaac’s before her, she all but ran the hundred yards to the porch, and the pounding of her feet on dead earth flushed waves of screaming guineas into pecan limbs. The porch was not much help. The soft boards gave under her weight like carpet. The only thing moving was a dirty rock
ing chair, and the truck was nowhere in sight. She gripped the package and pulled with her chest for breath. Then she said, “Sweet Jesus, let somebody be here” and knocked.
And Sammy came, clean in blue work clothes, looking glad to see her. He stopped on the sill with the screen door between them. “How are you, Miss Rosa?”
She couldn’t speak at first but she blinked her eyes and smiled. “Kicking, but not high, Sammy.”
“You look a little pale, sure enough. I hope you improves by Christmas. Can I help you, please ma’m?”
She showed him the package in her hand. “Sammy, I won’t be going to Delight this evening to honor Mr. Isaac with the rest. I got to stay home with Milo’s Sissie so I brought him his candy. It’s from all of us though.”
“He be glad to see that, Miss Rosa. He and Miss Marina eat up all they had last Friday, and I ain’t been able to leave him to get no more. But he don’t understand that and yesterday evening after I got him in the bed, I left him for just ten minutes, and he worked hisself to the edge and commenced rummaging in his table drawer till he found one of them little cakes of hotel soap that he got twenty years ago—in Richmond, I reckon—and Miss Rosa, he eat about half of it before I come back and saw lather foaming round his mouth. (He is mixed up, you see—thinking about nothing but hisself all day.) But it didn’t seem to hurt him none so I just wiped him off and didn’t tell him no better. Yes ma’m, he be glad of this and so is Sammy.” But he stood on in the door, blocking her way.
So she had to ask. “Well, if he is all right now, reckon could I speak to him a minute?”
Sammy smiled and lowered his voice and peeped behind him. “Yes ma’m. I was just holding off to let Miss Marina hide. She don’t see folks in the winter.” Then he stepped back and Rosacoke passed.
She had been in the house maybe forty-five minutes of her life, but she knew right away it was all the same, the way it had been every Christmas-visit since she could remember—the dark low hall, broad floor boards stretching to the back (bare and polished from the little walking since Miss Marina threw out the rugs, saying “Moth hotels!”), green curtains drawn across the four room doors (Miss Marina hiding back of one), the rose love seat and the tired, preserving air that held it all from one year to the next, unchanged and clean and stifling as a July night. The one new thing was hung by the parlor door—a calendar for the present year (with a picture of a new Buick car and the sea behind), turned to December with each day circled through the twenty-first. Sammy saw Rosacoke notice that—“Miss Marina is counting off the days to Christmas”—and led her to the far door on the left, saying, “Stand here, please ma’m, while I get him fixed. I got him in the bed, resting up for this evening.”
She thought, “I have never been in this room. It is the last place on earth Mr. Isaac in his right mind would ask me,” and she said, “Sammy, don’t bother him now. You give him this.”
“Oh no’m. He be glad of company. It’s the only thing he glad of now. He might not know you though,” and he went through the curtain, but Rosacoke could hear every sound. Sammy said, “Set up, Mr. Isaac. I got you a guest,” and there was heaving of the bed as he propped the old man on pillows. Mr. Isaac bore it quiet as a sack of seed, but when Sammy had finished and headed for the door to get Rosacoke, Mr. Isaac tapped on wood and Sammy went back. Rosacoke could hear him hawking at his throat and finally his whisper, “Brush my hair” so Sammy poured water to damp his head and brushed him and said “Now you ready” and called Rosacoke.
She stepped through and saw first thing on the opposite wall three pictures of people—the only one she knew being Franklin D. Roosevelt, torn off Life magazine, tacked up, crisp and curled and happy, over a bureau that lacked a mirror and had nothing on it but dust from the road and a tortoise-shell hairbrush. The rest of the room was just that bare—her eyes passed over a low washstand with a pitcher and bowl and the black leather chair and one wide window and a long rusty wall till she found Mr. Isaac in bed way round on her left, too far to see his pictures. She went three steps towards him, and Sammy said, “This is your friend Rosacoke, Mr. Isaac.”
She was not his friend. She had never been more to him than one of Emma Mustian’s dusty children in the road—the one that had grown up bringing him every Christmas the horehound candy her Mama bought to offer in partial thanks for the fifty dollars he gave when the children’s Daddy was killed—but facing him now she knew she was right to come. He filled her mind already with something but bitter dread—set up on white pillows in a white flannel nightshirt with spotted hands flat on white sheets and still, for all Sammy’s pains, looking dirty because his face had yellowed too deep to fade now and the hair above was streaked like old piano keys.
She went the rest of the way and held out the package. He looked at her offering hand and at her—the dead smile on the right side of his face but both sides blank as paper—and to Sammy beside her. Sammy said, “Take your present and thank Miss Rosa.” He turned to his own hands before him and stared as though he would move them invisibly, by sight. Then his live hand commenced a flutter on the sheet like a learning bird in hopes of flight and reached out slowly to Rosacoke.
When his fingers had the package, she said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Isaac. I hope you have many more.”
But he didn’t speak and his face didn’t show even recognition. He carried his hand back halfway and held it at seeing distance, studying what he had. Sammy spoke though—“You want me to open it for you?”—and before Mr. Isaac could nod, took it and tore off the paper. “Look here, Mr. Isaac, you got you some horehound again. Ain’t you glad?” The old man looked at the candy and then to Rosacoke for a long try at remembering, but if he knew her or why she had brought him this or was thankful, he gave no sign. Sammy said, “I told you, Miss Rosa” and broke the bag and laid two sticks of candy in Mr. Isaac’s hand. The hand shut on them like a trap. Sammy said, “Miss Rosa, take a chair” and fetched her one with a horsehair bottom and set it near the bed.
She had no reason to stay (no reason she could mention), but what else could she do?—walk back through those woods again? or up the road where whoever passed could see her alone? and pull herself upstairs and feed her stove and sit on the bed with Sissie sealed in next door, needing comfort? and feel, one mile down the road, everybody she knew at Delight (Milo and Wesley and Macey quizzing Rato about women and joking with Landon Allgood—drunk but trying to sweep—and Baby Sister bossing Guptons and Mama pleading every two minutes, “You all please behave”)? So she said, “Well, I will stay awhile” and pulled back the chair and sat and turned to Sammy, hoping he would talk.
He said, “You say you got to set with Miss Sissie this evening—how is she, Miss Rosa?”
“Dr. Sledge says she is all right—her body. It will take her some time yet to stop grieving though.”
“Yes ma’m. It was a boy, won’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?”
“Rato.”
“Named after Mr. Rato?”
“Rato was our Daddy’s name.”
“Yes ma’m.”
Rosacoke turned to Mr. Isaac then, thinking he might help her change the subject, but he was only watching his shut hand and Sammy began again. “Well, I hope she gets her a new one soon.”
“Sissie you mean?” but she didn’t face Sammy.
“Yes ma’m.”
“I don’t know if she could stand it again.”
“Yes ma’m. Don’t look like folks been having much luck this year, does it?—Mildred Sutton, she died, and now Miss Sissie’s boy.” He waited but Rosacoke still didn’t turn. “Is you seen Mildred’s baby, Miss Rosa?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t he take after Mildred? I seen him last week. Estelle had him at Mount Moriah, and I seen him just from a distance. First time.”
Rosacoke had looked for comfort from Sammy, but with what he said her heart was wild again, and she had tensed her legs to stand and leave when Mr. Isaac cam
e to life. He turned far as he could and tried to whisper to Sammy, “Who is her Mama?”
Sammy said, “Miss Emma Mustian. This is Rosacoke.” And Mr. Isaac nodded. He didn’t look at her or smile, just opened his hand and carried one stick of candy to his mouth.
Rosacoke had stayed to see that, and once it was done Sammy said, “Will you set here, Miss Rosa, while I go fix his medicine?”
She could only say “Yes” and Sammy went. Mr. Isaac watched him go and as his steps died out towards the kitchen, stared at the curtain, wondering maybe was that the last of Sammy. Rosacoke wanted to set him at ease, but he didn’t look at her. He went back to his hand and took the next stick of candy and crammed the room with the noise of eating as if he was grinding teeth to powder. Rosacoke had to stop him. She said, “Mr. Isaac, I hear you are going to church this evening.” But he didn’t stop. He chewed to the end and swallowed, and she thought he hadn’t heard. Then he turned on her—his eyes—and he started, “I—I can’t die. If you was to shoot me, I wouldn’t die. So I don’t pray.” He pointed to a spot on the bare floor between them—“I—I—I don’t pray no more than that dog does yonder.”
There was not any dog. There hadn’t been a dog for fifteen years. There was only—out the wide window—high black trees stuck up on the far edge of the pond where woods began (where the deer was and the spring and the broomstraw field) and nearer, crawling cherries and water, hard on the surface but swarmed with cold slow-blooded fish, locking the rotten boat by the rotting pier, and there was no sound of Sammy coming so Rosacoke got to her feet and walked to the wall and the pictures. She had saved them to look at if she needed—the ones she had not recognized, tintypes in round walnut frames on each side of Roosevelt, a lady about her age and a man about fifty. At first sight she knew the lady. It was Mr. Isaac’s mother (Miss Marina, even crazy, was her image), and the man was his father—stern and bald, screwed to the chair he sat in, one empty sleeve pinned up at his shoulder. He had given an arm in the War. (Mr. Isaac had told her years ago when he met her one day in the road and asked for the hundredth time who was her Mama. She had said “Emma Mustian” and then asked who was his Daddy. He had told her, “Dead—died at ninety and his last words were, ‘I do not understand.’ But Cas was his name. He fought at Vicksburg and lost his arm and didn’t eat nothing for forty days till him and his men caught rats.” She had said, “No wonder he died” and had gone on home, Mr. Isaac laughing behind her.) Recollecting that was a help and she turned to the bed. “Mr. Isaac, is this your Daddy here?”
A Long and Happy Life Page 14