That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  Sometimes I went with my mother when she put flowers on the graves of my grandparents. The cinder roads wound through the cemetery in ways she understood and I didn’t, and I would read the names on the monuments: Brower, Cadwallader, Andrews, Bates, Mitchell. In loving memory of. Infant daughter of. Beloved wife of. The cemetery was so large and so many people were buried there, it would have taken a long time to locate a particular grave, if you didn’t know where it was already. But I know, the way I sometimes know what is in wrapped packages, that the elderly woman who let us in and who took care of Miss Brown during her last illness went to the cemetery regularly and poured the rancid water out of the tin receptacle that was sunk below the level of the grass at the foot of her grave, and filled it with fresh water from a nearby faucet and arranged the flowers she had brought in such a way as to please the eye of the living and the closed eyes of the dead.

  PETRIFIED MAN

  Eudora Welty

  Eudora Welty (1909–2001) mostly wrote novels and stories set in the American South, where she was born and died, in Jackson, Mississippi. Her 1973 novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize. She published over forty stories in her lifetime, many of them winning awards, and she became the first living writer to have her work included in the Library of America.

  Reach in my purse and git me a cigarette without no powder in it if you kin, Mrs. Fletcher, honey,” said Leota to her ten o’clock shampoo-and-set customer. “I don’t like no perfumed cigarettes.”

  Mrs. Fletcher gladly reached over to the lavender shelf under the lavender-framed mirror, shook a hair net loose from the clasp of the patent-leather bag, and slapped her hand down quickly on a powder puff which burst out when the purse was opened.

  “Why, look at the peanuts, Leota!” said Mrs. Fletcher in her marvelling voice.

  “Honey, them goobers has been in my purse a week if they’s been in it a day. Mrs. Pike bought them peanuts.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Pike?” asked Mrs. Fletcher, settling back. Hidden in this den of curling fluid and henna packs, separated by a lavender swing-door from the other customers, who were being gratified in other booths, she could give her curiosity its freedom. She looked expectantly at the black part in Leota’s yellow curls as she bent to light the cigarette.

  “Mrs. Pike is this lady from New Orleans,” said Leota, puffing, and pressing into Mrs. Fletcher’s scalp with strong red-nailed fingers. “A friend, not a customer. You see, like maybe I told you last time, me and Fred and Sal and Joe all had us a fuss, so Sal and Joe up and moved out, so we didn’t do a thing but rent out their room. So we rented it to Mrs. Pike. And Mr. Pike.” She flicked an ash into the basket of dirty towels. “Mrs. Pike is a very decided blonde. She bought me the peanuts.”

  “She must be cute,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Honey, ‘cute’ ain’t the word for what she is. I’m tellin’ you, Mrs. Pike is attractive. She has her a good time. She’s got a sharp eye out, Mrs. Pike has.”

  She dashed the comb through the air, and paused dramatically as a cloud of Mrs. Fletcher’s hennaed hair floated out of the lavender teeth like a small storm-cloud.

  “Hair fallin’.”

  “Aw, Leota.”

  “Uh-huh, commencin’ to fall out,” said Leota, combing again, and letting fall another cloud.

  “Is it any dandruff in it?” Mrs. Fletcher was frowning, her hair-line eyebrows diving down toward her nose, and her wrinkled, beady-lashed eyelids batting with concentration.

  “Nope.” She combed again. “Just fallin’ out.”

  “Bet it was that last perm’nent you gave me that did it,” Mrs. Fletcher said cruelly. “Remember you cooked me fourteen minutes.”

  “You had fourteen minutes comin’ to you,” said Leota with finality.

  “Bound to be somethin’,” persisted Mrs. Fletcher. “Dandruff, dandruff. I couldn’t of caught a thing like that from Mr. Fletcher, could I?”

  “Well,” Leota answered at last, “you know what I heard in here yestiddy, one of Thelma’s ladies was settin’ over yonder in Thelma’s booth gittin’ a machineless, and I don’t mean to insist or insinuate or anything, Mrs. Fletcher, but Thelma’s lady just happ’med to throw out – I forgotten what she was talkin’ about at the time that you was p-r-e-g., and lots of times that’ll make your hair do awful funny, fall out and God knows what all. It just ain’t our fault, is the way I look at it.”

  There was a pause. The women stared at each other in the mirror.

  “Who was it?” demanded Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Honey, I really couldn’t say,” said Leota. “Not that you look it.”

  “Where’s Thelma? I’ll get it out of her,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Now, honey, I wouldn’t go and git mad over a little thing like that,” Leota said, combing hastily, as though to hold Mrs. Fletcher down by the hair. “I’m sure it was somebody didn’t mean no harm in the world. How far gone are you?”

  “Just wait,” said Mrs. Fletcher, and shrieked for Thelma, who came in and took a drag from Leota’s cigarette.

  “Thelma, honey, throw your mind back to yes-tiddy if you kin,” said Leota, drenching Mrs. Fletcher’s hair with a thick fluid and catching the overflow in a cold wet towel at her neck.

  “Well, I got my lady half wound for a spiral,” said Thelma doubtfully.

  “This won’t take but a minute,” said Leota. “Who is it you got in there, old Horse Face? Just cast your mind back and try to remember who your lady was yestiddy who happ’m to mention that my customer was pregnant, that’s all. She’s dead to know.”

  Thelma drooped her blood-red lips and looked over Mrs. Fletcher’s head into the mirror. “Why, honey, I ain’t got the faintest,” she breathed. “I really don’t recollect the faintest. But I’m sure she meant no harm. I declare, I forgot my hair finally got combed and thought it was a stranger behind me.”

  “Was it that Mrs. Hutchinson?” Mrs. Fletcher was tensely polite.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson? Oh, Mrs. Hutchinson.” Thelma batted her eyes. “Naw, precious, she come on Thursday and didn’t ev’m mention your name. I doubt if she ev’m knows you’re on the way.”

  “Thelma!” cried Leota staunchly.

  “All I know is, whoever it is ’ll be sorry some day. Why, I just barely knew it myself!” cried Mrs. Fletcher. “Just let her wait!”

  “Why? What’re you gonna do to her?”

  It was a child’s voice, and the women looked down. A little boy was making tents with aluminum wave pinchers on the floor under the sink.

  “Billy Boy, hon, mustn’t bother nice ladies,” Leota smiled. She slapped him brightly and behind her back waved Thelma out of the booth. “Ain’t Billy Boy a sight? Only three years old and already just nuts about the beauty-parlor business.”

  “I never saw him here before,” said Mrs. Fletcher, still unmollified.

  “He ain’t been here before, that’s how come,” said Leota. “He belongs to Mrs. Pike. She got her a job but it was Fay’s Millinery. He oughtn’t to try on those ladies’ hats, they come down over his eyes like I don’t know what. They just git to look ridiculous, that’s what, an’ of course he’s gonna put ’em on: hats. They tole Mrs. Pike they didn’t appreciate him hangin’ around there. Here, he couldn’t hurt a thing.”

  “Well! I don’t like children that much,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Well!” said Leota moodily.

  “Well! I’m almost tempted not to have this one,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “That Mrs. Hutchinson! Just looks straight through you when she sees you on the street and then spits at you behind your back.”

  “Mr. Fletcher would beat you on the head if you didn’t have it now,” said Leota reasonably. “After going this far.”

  Mrs. Fletcher sat up straight. “Mr. Fletcher can’t do a thing with me.”

  “He can’t!” Leota winked at herself in the mirror.

  “No, siree, he can’t. If he so much as raises his voice against me, he knows good and well I’ll ha
ve one of my sick headaches, and then I’m just not fit to live with. And if I really look that pregnant already –”

  “Well, now, honey, I just want you to know – I habm’t told any of my ladies and I ain’t goin’ to tell ’em – even that you’re losin’ your hair. You just get you one of those Stork-a-Lure dresses and stop worryin’. What people don’t know don’t hurt nobody, as Mrs. Pike says.”

  “Did you tell Mrs. Pike?” asked Mrs. Fletcher sulkily.

  “Well, Mrs. Fletcher, look, you ain’t ever goin’ to lay eyes on Mrs. Pike or her lay eyes on you, so what diffunce does it make in the long run?”

  “I knew it!” Mrs. Fletcher deliberately nodded her head so as to destroy a ringlet Leota was working on behind her ear. “Mrs. Pike!”

  Leota sighed. “I reckon I might as well tell you. It wasn’t any more Thelma’s lady tole me you was pregnant than a bat.”

  “Not Mrs. Hutchinson?”

  “Naw, Lord! It was Mrs. Pike.”

  “Mrs. Pike!” Mrs. Fletcher could only sputter and let curling fluid roll into her ear. “How could Mrs. Pike possibly know I was pregnant or otherwise, when she doesn’t even know me? The nerve of some people!”

  “Well, here’s how it was. Remember Sunday?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Sunday, Mrs. Pike an’ me was all by ourself. Mr. Pike and Fred had gone over to Eagle Lake, sayin’ they was goin’ to catch ’em some fish, but they didn’t a course. So we was settin’ in Mrs. Pike’s car, it’s a 1939 Dodge –”

  “1939, eh,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “– An’ we was gettin’ us a Jax beer apiece – that’s the beer that Mrs. Pike says is made right in N.O., so she won’t drink no other kind. So I seen you drive up to the drugstore an’ run in for just a secont, leavin’ I reckon Mr. Fletcher in the car, an’ come runnin’ out with looked like a perscription. So I says to Mrs. Pike, just to be makin’ talk, ‘Right yonder’s Mrs. Fletcher, and I reckon that’s Mr. Fletcher – she’s one of my regular customers,’ I says.”

  “I had on a figured print,” said Mrs. Fletcher tentatively.

  “You sure did,” agreed Leota. “So Mrs. Pike, she give you a good look – she’s very observant, a good judge of character, cute as a minute, you know – and she says, ‘I bet you another Jax that lady’s three months on the way.’ ”

  “What gall!” said Mrs. Fletcher. “Mrs. Pike!”

  “Mrs. Pike ain’t goin’ to bite you,” said Leota. “Mrs. Pike is a lovely girl, you’d be crazy about her, Mrs. Fletcher. But she can’t sit still a minute. We went to the travellin’ freak show yestiddy after work. I got through early – nine o’clock. In the vacant store next door. What, you ain’t been?”

  “No, I despise freaks,” declared Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Aw. Well, honey, talkin’ about bein’ pregnant an’ all, you ought to see those twins in a bottle, you really owe it to yourself.”

  “What twins?” asked Mrs. Fletcher out of the side of her mouth.

  “Well, honey, they got these two twins in a bottle, see? Born joined plumb together – dead a course.” Leota dropped her voice into a soft lyrical hum. “They was about this long – pardon – must of been full time, all right, wouldn’t you say? – an’ they had these two heads an’ two faces an’ four arms an’ four legs, all kind of joined here. See, this face looked this-a-way, and the other face looked that-a-way, over their shoulder, see. Kinda pathetic.”

  “Glah !” said Mrs. Fletcher disapprovingly.

  “Well, ugly? Honey, I mean to tell you – their parents was first cousins and all like that. Billy Boy, git me a fresh towel from off Teeny’s stack – this ’n’s wringin’ wet – an’ quit ticklin’ my ankles with that curler. I declare! He don’t miss nothin’.”

  “Me and Mr. Fletcher aren’t one speck of kin, or he could never of had me,” said Mrs. Fletcher placidly.

  “Of course not!” protested Leota. “Neither is me an’ Fred, not that we know of. Well, honey, what Mrs. Pike liked was the pygmies. They’ve got these pygmies down there, too, an’ Mrs. Pike was just wild about ’em. You know, the teeniniest men in the universe? Well, honey, they can just rest back on their little bohunkus an’ roll around an’ you can’t hardly tell if they’re sittin’ or standin’. That’ll give you some idea. They’re about forty-two years old. Just suppose it was your husband!”

  “Well, Mr. Fletcher is five foot nine and one half,” said Mrs. Fletcher quickly.

  “Fred’s five foot ten,” said Leota, “but I tell him he’s still a shrimp, account of I’m so tall.” She made a deep wave over Mrs. Fletcher’s other temple with the comb. “Well, these pygmies are a kind of a dark brown, Mrs. Fletcher. Not bad-lookin’ for what they are, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t care for them,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “What does that Mrs. Pike see in them?”

  “Aw, I don’t know,” said Leota. “She’s just cute, that’s all. But they got this man, this petrified man, that ever’thing ever since he was nine years old, when it goes through his digestion, see, somehow Mrs. Pike says it goes to his joints and has been turning to stone.”

  “How awful!” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “He’s forty-two too. That looks like a bad age.”

  “Who said so, that Mrs. Pike? I bet she’s forty-two,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Naw,” said Leota, “Mrs. Pike’s thirty-three, born in January, an Aquarian. He could move his head – like this. A course his head and mind ain’t a joint, so to speak, and I guess his stomach ain’t, either – not yet, anyways. But see – his food, he eats it, and it goes down, see, and then he digests it” – Leota rose on her toes for an instant – “and it goes out to his joints and before you can say ‘Jack Robinson,’ it’s stone – pure stone. He’s turning to stone. How’d you like to be married to a guy like that? All he can do, he can move his head just a quarter of an inch. A course he looks just terrible.”

  “I should think he would,” said Mrs. Fletcher frostily. “Mr. Fletcher takes bending exercises every night of the world. I make him.”

  “All Fred does is lay around the house like a rug. I wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up some day and couldn’t move. The petrified man just sat there moving his quarter of an inch though,” said Leota reminiscently.

  “Did Mrs. Pike like the petrified man?” asked Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Not as much as she did the others,” said Leota deprecatingly. “And then she likes a man to be a good dresser, and all that.”

  “Is Mr. Pike a good dresser?” asked Mrs. Fletcher sceptically.

  “Oh, well, yeah,” said Leota, “but he’s twelve or fourteen years older’n her. She ast Lady Evangeline about him.”

  “Who’s Lady Evangeline?” asked Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Well, it’s this mind reader they got in the freak show,” said Leota. “Was real good. Lady Evangeline is her name, and if I had another dollar I wouldn’t do a thing but have my other palm read. She had what Mrs. Pike said was the ‘sixth mind’ but she had the worst manicure I ever saw on a living person.”

  “What did she tell Mrs. Pike?” asked Mrs. Fletcher.

  “She told her Mr. Pike was as true to her as he could be and besides, would come into some money.”

  “Humph!” said Mrs. Fletcher. “What does he do?”

  “I can’t tell,” said Leota, “because he don’t work. Lady Evangeline didn’t tell me enough about my nature or anything. And I would like to go back and find out some more about this boy. Used to go with this boy until he got married to this girl. Oh, shoot, that was about three and a half years ago, when you was still goin’ to the Robert E. Lee Beauty Shop in Jackson. He married her for her money. Another fortune-teller tole me that at the time. So I’m not in love with him any more, anyway, besides being married to Fred, but Mrs. Pike thought, just for the hell of it, see, to ask Lady Evangeline was he happy.”

  “Does Mrs. Pike know everything about you already?” asked Mrs. Fletcher unbelievingly. “Mercy!”r />
  “Oh, yeah, I tole her ever’thing about ever’thing, from now on back to I don’t know when – to when I first started goin’ out,” said Leota. “So I ast Lady Evangeline for one of my questions, was he happily married, and she says, just like she was glad I ask her, ‘Honey,’ she says, ‘naw, he idn’t. You write down this day, March 8, 1941,’ she says, ‘and mock it down: three years from today him and her won’t be occupyin’ the same bed.’ There it is, up on the wall with them other dates – see, Mrs. Fletcher? And she says, ‘Child, you ought to be glad you didn’t git him, because he’s so mercenary.’ So I’m glad I married Fred. He sure ain’t mercenary, money don’t mean a thing to him. But I sure would like to go back and have my other palm read.”

  “Did Mrs. Pike believe in what the fortuneteller said?” asked Mrs. Fletcher in a superior tone of voice.

  “Lord, yes, she’s from New Orleans. Ever’body in New Orleans believes ever’thing spooky. One of ’em in New Orleans before it was raided says to Mrs. Pike one summer she was goin’ to go from State to State and meet some grey-headed men, and, sure enough, she says she went on a beautician convention up to Chicago… .”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Fletcher. “Oh, is Mrs. Pike a beautician too?”

  “Sure she is,” protested Leota. “She’s a beautician. I’m goin’ to git her in here if I can. Before she married. But it don’t leave you. She says sure enough, there was three men who was a very large part of making her trip what it was, and they all three had grey in their hair and they went in six States. Got Christmas cards from ’em. Billy Boy, go see if Thelma’s got any dry cotton. Look how Mrs. Fletcher’s a-drippin’.”

  “Where did Mrs. Pike meet Mr. Pike?” asked Mrs. Fletcher primly.

  “On another train,” said Leota.

  “I met Mr. Fletcher, or rather he met me, in a rental library,” said Mrs. Fletcher with dignity, as she watched the net come down over her head.

  “Honey, me an’ Fred, we met in a rumble seat eight months ago and we was practically on what you might call the way to the altar inside of half an hour,” said Leota in a guttural voice, and bit a bobby pin open. “Course it don’t last. Mrs. Pike says nothin’ like that ever lasts.”