Quite a Year for Plums

by Quite a Year for Plums (retail) (epub)

  Then, inspired perhaps by the gleaming blades of the well-oiled Emerson Seabreeze, or the summery smells of green plants, or the flickering glow through the little window in the door of the stove—the last remnants of the Portsmouth boatwright going up in smoke, Jim Wade leaned over and gave Ethel a kiss. But it was an ill-placed kiss that landed on the angle of her jaw, and Jim Wade was left with the impression of a hard, sharp edge against his lips.

  His van didn't have time to warm up on the short drive to his house, and he sat at the stoplight, feeling the cold wrap around his legs, and tried to imagine himself heading west on 84, away from all the glitter and sparkle of Christmas, through the narrow winter days, and right out the other side to summertime in some vast midwestern state where the blades of elec trie fans would spin and the air would be filled with the hum of their hollow-shaft motors—Zephair, Northwind, Seabreeze, Vortalex, Star Rite. But it was cold and dark—the bleak midwinter—and as he drove past the tiny white lights twinkling so cheerily on the azalea bushes in the park, he found that he couldn't think about anything but the deaths of fleas.

  15. BETTY SHEFFIELD SUPREME

  Who is Betty Sheffield?” asked Delia. “ ‘Betty Sheffield’ is a variety of camellia with semidouble blossoms, white with red and pink splotches on the petals. It's a nice camellia, but it's most famous for producing many fine mutations, called ‘sports,’” said Roger.

  “Oh,” said Delia, looking out the car window for a wood stork. Sometimes when she thought about seeing a certain bird she could develop such a longing for it that her eyes would smart and the spit would change texture at the back of her tongue. All day she had been wanting to see a wood stork against this gray sky, but there she had been since the morning, at a camellia show, shut up in that long room with rows and rows of flowers in glass jars and hundreds of men and women stooping over each one, clutching sweaters around themselves and saying strange-sounding words: ‘Alba Plena,’ ‘Mathotiana Rubra,’ ‘Betty Sheffield/ and ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme. Deep rose pink, ruby red, glowing crimson, pink stripes, red splotches, pink shading into white and white shading into rose, frilled petals and scalloped petals, and petals with elaborate ragged edges; all that richness, thought Delia, when what I need is so very simple, just black and white and gray, that sharp clean shape against the sky. Sometimes in her painting she would get the same feeling, an anxious longing for something to come out right—the primary and secondary feathers sharp, but not overdone with outlining, the drop of water on a lily pad fat and round and shiny, but not detracting from the eye of the nearby moor hen, also round and shiny, and as she came at the paper with the brush, she would have to stop for a second and blink and swallow. It was a desperate, helpless feeling, as if in spite of her skill she had no more control over those feathers or that drop of water than she had over the wood storks in north Florida on a winter day.

  She leaned up against the car window and watched the telephone wires swoop and lift and swoop and lift. If I see a wood stork before we get to the store, then I will be able to finish the upper right-hand section, she thought. It was a difficult tangle of pickerelweed, with sunlight shining through the leaves. But the store came and went, with a flashing sign, “Christmas Sausage on Sale 2-Day,” and there were only a few doves and a kingfisher on the telephone wire. It was almost dark and Delia leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes through Panacea with its crab houses and the laboratories of the Marine Institute, and then, just on the other side of town where the marsh starts up again, Roger stopped the car and said, “Look!” Delia gulped and scrambled for her binoculars, peering through the windshield into the last light. There on a stump in the ditch was a bald eagle, so fat and complacent it looked almost stuffed. “Oh,” said Delia, and she slumped back in the seat, trapped by a longing for birds.

  “Why in the world did you take her to a camellia show on such a dreary day?” said Meade. “What could be worse for depression than a room full of little old ladies all fussing over the ‘Betty Sheffield Blush’ and the ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme’?”

  “For the flowers,” said Roger. “It always worked with Mrs. Maxwell. You should have seen her face brighten up every time I set those roses down on the railing at Shady Rest.”

  “Mrs. Maxwell was ninety-eight years old, Roger,” said Meade. “She was dying. Her needs were simple.”

  “I miss Mrs. Maxwell,” said Roger.

  “Of course Delia didn't enjoy the flower show,” said Hilma. “So claustrophobic with all the people and that gray thick fog outside.” She sat still and thought for a minute. “I know what; Meade and I will take her to Maclay Gardens on a high, bright, windy day and walk around among those ancient camellias.”

  And so they had fought the after-Christmas traffic to walk Delia down the wide brick paths of this old camellia garden. Some of the bushes were over a hundred years old and formed a towering canopy overhead, casting a dense, cold shade. The bricks were slippery with damp.

  ‘“Mathotiana Rubra,”’ said Hilma, “an old one, but not one of my favorites. They turn purple at the edges as they die.”

  “The dead ones look just as good as the live ones,” said Delia. The ground under the bushes was littered with deep rose and purple and finally brown, the blossoms retaining their perfect “imbricated double” form even in decay.

  “Heartless flowers,” said Meade, “contrived by foolish people for their own amusement. They have no fragrance.”

  “Ah,” said Hilma, “here it is.” In the middle of a patch of bright green rye grass a full camellia bush was covered with semidouble white blossoms, each petal neatly bordered with deep pink. “The prized ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme,’” said Hilma, and she picked up a spent blossom off the ground and handed it to Delia.

  “Winner of the Sewell Mutant Award,” said Meade.

  “A most unusual camellia, and very rare,” said Hilma. “Roger has had his name on a list at Hjort's for years, but crooked collectors keep slipping in ahead of him.”

  Delia poked at the quivering yellow stamens with a finger and sniffed it, but all she could detect was a coolness rising up out of the petals.

  “See?” said Meade. And suddenly, among all the pink and white, a bright smiling face appeared, and a voice cried out.

  “Oh! Here she is, my wonderful painter!” Then there were two of the faces. “This is Delia, Maryann, she's painting a beautiful picture for our den, a wildlife scene, it's supposed to be a surprise, Herbert commissioned it for my birthday, but I can already see it in my mind, she does the most wonderful things with light. Her pictures have been exhibited at the same show where the duck-stamp painting is displayed every year, and that painting sells for over a million dollars. Luckily for us, Delia doesn't command quite that figure yet, do you, Delia? Oh, how appropriate to see you here, surrounded on all sides by beauty; it must make you want to just go right home and paint paint paint paint paint.”

  And then just as suddenly the talking stopped, and the two women looked expectantly from Delia to Hilma and Meade. But Delia stood there helplessly, holding the bright dead flower in her hand, and seeing in her mind a full third of the whole painting blank, a startling white gap sketched over with little dim, frightened-looking pencil lines, and in the end Hilma had to step in. There was the lighthearted sentence to smooth over the awkward pause, then the necessary remark about the beauty of the gardens, and then the introductions were begun.

  “I am Hilma Martin, a friend of Delia's, and this is—” But before she could continue, Meade stepped forward, plucked the flower out of Delia's hand by its bunch of stamens, hurled it over her shoulder, and said in a loud voice, “Betty Sheffield is my name.”

  “Meade …” said Hilma, feebly trailing off, and Delia stared down at her empty palm. A few parting remarks were thrown out, and they watched the two women saunter down the brick walkway toward the Maclay House.

  “Betty Sheffield!” said Hilma, recovering herself. “My goodness, Meade!”

  “I could
n't help it,” said Meade. “There we stood, ankle-deep in the dead blossoms of ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme.’ It just slipped out.”

  “But how would Betty Sheffield feel, having her name tricked about like that?” Hilma persisted. “It's not respectful.”

  “Betty Sheffield is dead,” said Meade. “And besides, she's used to hearing her name tripping off the tongues of camellia fanciers on three continents.”

  Then Delia held up both hands. “Wait,” she said. “There is a real Betty Sheffield? It's not just a name? A real woman was named Betty Sheffield?”

  “Yes,” said Hilma, “a lovely little lady. She lived in Quitman with her sister. The original ‘Betty Sheffield’ camellia came up in her yard as a seedling.”

  “She lived in Quitman with her sister?” said Delia breathlessly. “Betty Sheffield? And now she's dead?”

  “Oh yes,” said Hilma. “She registered the camellia in 1948, and she wasn't a young woman then. It wasn't until it started throwing all these sports that it got so much attention. It was Mrs. Green Alday's Betty Sheffield that sported the first ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme.’”

  A few robins were scratching in the rye grass vista. Delia sat down on a cast-iron bench and stared down toward Lake Hall. Her eyes began to water, and she felt the spit thicken at the back of her tongue.

  “What was her sister's name? Is her house still there?”

  “Somewhere in downtown Quitman,” said Hilma, “and her sister had an odd name, but why, and what—”

  “Court Street,” said Meade. “A Queen Anne house with front- and side-crossed gables and a wrought-iron fence around the yard.”

  “I don't understand it,” Hilma said to Roger. “I don't understand it, Roger. Meade hates camellias, and Delia seemed quite indifferent, even at Maclay Gardens with all those specimen plants. Then Meade flew off on some wild tear in the garden about Betty Sheffield and her sister with the odd name, and Delia fell right in with her. She really seemed to brighten up, Roger, and next thing I knew, off they went to Quitman, to Court Street. I don't understand it. Come in out of the cold, Roger. Wasn't this your fungicide night in Pelham? You must be tired.”

  Roger sat down on Hilma's sofa in the middle of the winter clutter—the dog-eared seed catalogs, the tray of tea things, and the Boston ferns brought in from the cold. He took off his shoes and stretched his legs. Hilma was concerned about him; he recognized the signs—the fussings to make him comfortable with afghans and pillows, the little glances, and her face so worried. He knew that the tea would be Earl Grey from a tin, not just tea bags from Publix. He could smell the bergamot.

  “Odette was the name of Betty Sheffield's sister,” said Roger.

  “I told Delia that you would know that” said Hilma. “Such an odd name.”

  But it wasn't a conversation that they could really take hold of, and after a few minutes of silence Roger said, “I'm an ordinary man, Hilma. All day long I study cause and effect. I'm good at it, but it's not helping me.”

  “Oh, Roger,” said Hilma, and she almost stood up, and then sat back down again and put her teacup down and fumbled with her hands in her lap. They sat for a while, not saying anything. Then, “I want to give you something,” Roger said, and without even putting on his shoes, he went out to his truck and came back with a little camellia bush in a black plastic pot.

  “I finally got my ‘Betty Sheffield Supreme’ from Hjort's,” he said, “but I want you to have it.”

  It was supposed to be for Delia, thought Hilma, but all she could say was, “Oh, Roger,” and “Thank you.”

  It had a few tightly closed buds, not showing color yet, but ‘Betty Sheffield’ camellias are famous for throwing out odd sports, and they would have to wait until it bloomed to see what a fine mutant this little plant would be.

  16. VECTORED BY THRIPS

  That spotted wilt is going to be the death of you, Roger” said Eula, “all these meetings late at night in every little town, typing into that computer hours on end all those articles about thrips, and every summer day stooped over in the peanut field, steeped in sweat. If you don't get snakebit first, you're going to die of exhaustion. ‘Vectored by thrips,’ now what is a thrip, Roger, I don't even know that.”

  “Thrips,” said Roger. “Even if you're talking about just one, it has an ‘s’ on the end. Thrips are the insects that spread the virus among the peanut plants. Tiny little things, you can hardly see them.” “Well, damn their little souls, Roger,” said Eula. They were on their way home from the Agricenter in Calvary, where Roger was holding a series of Thursday night meetings with peanut farmers on the subject of tomato spotted wilt virus. “Eula needs to get out some,” Lucy had told him. “Louise is driving her crazy with all this talk of spacemen, Tom had another fight on the long-distance telephone with Judy about Andy, and she worries about Ethel. Eula needs something to get her mind off it.”

  So Roger had invited Eula to come with him to his peanut meeting, and there she had sat for over an hour, bolt upright on a folding chair in the front row at the Agricenter with all the Grady county peanut farmers, listening so attentively it almost broke his heart.

  Now on the ride home she was perched on the edge of the seat of his truck, hanging on to the dashboard with both hands. “Fasten your seat belt, Eula,” Roger told her. “You never know what kind of drivers might be out on these roads this time of night.” And then, strapped in, she settled down a little and seemed to relax.

  “Now this is nice, Roger,” she said. “Riding along in this truck with you, seeing them plowed fields stretching out in the night. Before you know it it'll be summer and you'll be walking down those very rows in the hot sun, looking for sickly plants.” Actually, the very rows Roger would be walking down were in the research plots in Attapulgus, the next county over, but Eula had a thought going, and he didn't interrupt her. “Andy will be here, God willing and Judy don't pitch a fit, Ethel will be out of school, I'll have my tomatoes in; it's something to look forward to, ain't it, Roger?”

  They rode on in silence for a while, past the bleak-looking fertilizer plant outside Bainbridge, past Jones Meats with its flashing sign in Climax. Roger thought Eula was asleep, but then she said, ‘Thrips, with an's.’

  Now you learn something new every day, don't you, Roger.”

  She invited Roger in, but he better get home, he said, and probably a good thing, she thought as she crept around in the kitchen making herself a cup of Ovaltine to take to bed, better not to wake up Louise with talking. Night was no different than day to Louise; if she got waked up in the middle of the night, she would go right to bustling around with her crazy schemes and not stop until noon the next day. But sometimes when the house was quiet like this, Eula could almost imagine that she lived here alone, like in the old days, after Melvin died, before Louise lost her mind and Tom moved back home. She sat up for half an hour, sipping her Ovaltine and thinking about Roger standing up there at the Agricenter, all those serious-looking peanut farmers sitting in chairs lined up in rows, listening to him.

  It had a noble sound to it, “vectored by thrips,” she thought. Roger had always reminded her of a prince, ever since he had come back from that university in North Carolina, bald-headed and with a Ph.D., and married Ethel. “Vectored by thrips,” she whispered to herself, “with an's.’ ”

  “She wasn't even his mother-in-law,” said Meade.

  “Well,” said Hilma, “you can't really think of Louise as anybody's mother. Eula was the one who raised Ethel, after all. I would certainly consider her Roger's mother-in-law.”

  “Ex-mother-in-law,” said Meade.

  “She's a good woman,” said Hilma, “and now she has all these worries. Tom is no help to her, always flying off the handle, and now they say his wife Judy out in California has caught this sickness where she can't do anything for herself. I wouldn't be surprised if Eula ended up having to take on Andy to raise, just like she took on Ethel.”

  “Ex-wife,” said Meade.

  �
�And on top of it all, there's Louise,” said Hilma. “Roger might be able to take her mind off it with these peanut meetings.”

  Roger was standing beside a chart at the Agricenter explaining the factors of the tomato spotted wilt virus “risk index”: peanut variety, planting date, planting density, location of field, volunteer peanut population from previous crops, and at-planting thrips control. “Add the numbers for the factors that apply to your planting and compare that total to the numbers in the scale to find out your projected relative level of risk for TSWV,” said Roger. Then everybody had a question to ask and five or six men all said “Roger” at the same time, and Roger smiled and held up his hands and then answered the questions one at a time. “I wish we could tell you more,” he said. “It's slow.”

  “I felt so proud, Roger,” said Eula, as they drove home. “All those men sitting so still and listening to you like they was memorizing every word you said.”

  “They're worried about their peanut crop,” said Roger. “They think the cure for this epidemic might come out of our research, and they're disappointed when all we can tell them is ways to manage the virus.”

  “A ten,” said Eula. “I couldn't help but notice my own county had a 10 on the scale where it said ‘location of field.’”

  “The southwest counties have been hit hard,” said Roger.

  Louise was up when Eula came in, sitting at the kitchen table arranging a trail of Cheerios and the letters from a Scrabble game on a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil. “Well,” she said, “H, U, Y, and M. That should do it.”

  “I've been to Roger's Thursday night peanut meeting in Calvary,” said Eula. “Tomato spotted wilt virus. TSWV they call it. Vectored by thrips, with an ‘s.’ Roger says it has spread quicker than any plant disease he's ever seen, and here we are, sitting in the middle of Grady County, with a ten on the index scale. Lumpkin only had a five.”