by Tony Earley
“Hold your horses, mister,” Mama said. “We still have to quilt the new piece, but that shouldn’t take long. You didn’t leave the motor running, did you?”
The sky was low and gray and hard-looking — not the roiled, booming sky of early spring, but the bitter, set face of deep winter. A cutting wind from the west chased trash from the fields across the road and occasionally dashed a thimbleful of sleet against the windshield of the Major. Jim drove with his mittens on and the flaps down on his hunting cap. Mama and Norma peered from above their scarves and turned-up coat collars like wary box turtles. In a week or two the trees would bud and the daffodils would bloom, but all that still seemed months, or even years, away. At least it wouldn’t snow. Snow in Jim’s part of the world always moved quietly up out of the south, and it was never this cold when it came.
“Who’s that on the bridge?” Mama asked.
Jim had already identified the plaid coat and the long black hair blowing wildly below a red knit cap and scarf.
“That’s Chrissie Steppe,” Norma said. “Where in the world is she going?”
Mama clucked her tongue. “Why, she’ll freeze to death.”
“We have to give her a ride,” Jim said.
“Where’s she going to sit?” Norma asked.
“In somebody’s lap, I guess,” said Jim.
“And I suppose you want it to be yours.”
“I’m driving, Norma.”
“Y’all hush,” Mama said. “We at least have to stop and see about her.”
The steel bridge over the river was a single lane wide. When they drove onto it, Chrissie moved as close to the guardrail as possible, then looked over her shoulder and recognized the car. She was carrying a package wrapped in newspaper but tied with a fresh-looking white ribbon. Below the hem of her coat her skirt flapped around her bare legs, but at least she had on gloves. She waved by lifting the fingers of one hand from the package. Jim pulled off his hunting cap and shoved it into his coat pocket and stopped the Major beside her. Mama rolled down the window. Chrissie leaned over and looked inside, from face to face to face. As she studied them, only her eyes were visible above her scarf and beneath her cap. Jim could hear one of the guy wires on the bridge banging in the wind.
“Hello,” Mama said. “Where are you off to on such a terrible day?”
“Allendale,” Chrissie said, pushing her scarf down beneath her chin. “I’ve been meaning to get over to see Ellie and this is the first chance I’ve had.”
“That’s five more miles,” Jim said.
“I’m hoping that once I get there, they’ll know somebody headed back this way.”
“It’s a small world,” Mama said. “That’s where we’re headed. To see the newlyweds. Why don’t you ride with us?”
Chrissie considered the crowded front seat, and Jim saw the shadow of some mischievous, secret thought peering out through her dark pupils. With a finger she brushed a strand of hair away from her mouth.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Y’all don’t have room.”
“Sure we do,” Mama said. “Jim’s going to ride in the rumble seat.”
“I am?” Jim said. “But who’s going to drive the Major?”
Mama giggled as she opened her door. “I am. Hop out. We’ll let you use the quilt, won’t we, Norma?”
Jim took the long way around the front of the car so he would have to walk by Chrissie on his way to the rumble seat. Mama shoved the quilt at him when she passed him on her way to the driver’s side. She knew what he was up to.
Chrissie had to push the passenger-side door closed to make room between the car and the guardrail for Jim to get by. Jim stopped in front of her. There wasn’t much room.
“Thank you for doing this,” she said. “I was about to turn around.”
“You’re welcome,” Jim said. “I’m glad to.”
She looked down at the box in the crook of her arm. “It’s just a cookie jar,” she said. “It looks like a cat. Its head is the lid.” She shielded her mouth with her free hand. “It was made in Japan.”
Jim held up the quilt. “Mama and Norma pieced this for Ellie and Dennis Deane. It was made in Aliceville.” He tried smiling at her.
She shook her head. “You know I’m still mad at you.”
“I know.”
“I expected better.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
She frowned a little, looking at him. “Do you want my cap?” she asked. “It’s awful cold.”
It was obviously a girl’s cap — it had snowflakes and happy snowmen knitted into it — but Jim nodded stupidly, hoping the bill of his hunting cap wasn’t sticking out of his coat pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. “That would be a help.”
When Chrissie pulled off her cap and handed it to Jim, her hair popped with static electricity and began to levitate in the wind. She tried, with no discernible success, to pat it back down.
“I better get in,” she said.
Jim plopped down into the rumble seat, pulled his hunting cap out of his pocket, and dropped it onto the floorboard. He looked over the side of the bridge. The river was dark and swift, metallic-looking, almost silent beneath the whip and yowl of the wind. He winced as Mama ground the gears, looking for first. The car bucked twice, then moved steadily forward and off the bridge. Jim pulled the quilt up over his head and — once hidden from view — Chrissie’s cap down over his face.
Mill Hill
AS THE Major began to descend the steep hill across the river from Allendale, Jim pushed Chrissie’s cap above his eyes and lowered the quilt from his face. The white, uniform houses of the mill village clung to the hillside opposite, strung together along muddy streets. Below the houses lay the ornate WPA bridge, complete with wrought-iron lampposts, that spanned the river and connected the two hills. The river here had been backed into near stillness by a dam wedged into the gorge downstream, and the four-story mill building loomed over the water as if studying its reflection. The mill’s opaque windows glowed against the dim afternoon, although here and there black windowpanes lurked mysteriously among the mostly silver-painted glass. Slightly distorted by the otherwise imperceptible movement of the river, the reflection struck Jim as belonging to a structure grander than the cotton mill running a full Sunday shift that actually produced it — a citadel guarding an ancient port against Barbary pirates, or a castle in a brightly colored book, a jolly king raising a toast to his knights in the banquet hall.
As they crossed the bridge, the anxiety Jim had always felt as a baseball player entering Allendale to play the Spinners began reflexively buzzing in his gut. Allendale High had always whipped Aliceville School unmercifully, and — though he would never have admitted it — Jim suspected it was because boys who grew up in mill towns were simply tougher than boys who grew up farming. If you ever got a hit against Allendale, you knew that the next time you batted, the pitcher would try to stick one in your ear. Teams that managed to beat the Allendale nine routinely had to fight their way off the field and — if the game was played in Allendale — all the way to the bus. Jim figured that the only good thing to come from the school board’s decision to cancel the baseball season was not having to face Allendale. He of course hated himself a little for being afraid of another baseball team, and for worrying that one of the lintheads from the dance might recognize him. When Mama downshifted into first for the pull up Mill Hill, the straining note of the Major’s engine struck his ear as puny.
During the summer, when its houses were partially shaded by the chinaberry and locust trees that had found purchase on the hillside, Allendale, at least from a distance, presented to the world a face of superficial loveliness. But when the leaves were off the trees, as they were now, that same countenance revealed nothing so much as a regimented hardness of situation. To the right of the road a metallic glacier of trash worked its way down a deep, smooth-sided gully toward the river, while to the left each of the village streets opened in the moment the Major passed
it onto what seemed to Jim an identical sad vista. The white-frame houses were all built from the same story-and-a-half plan; an identical shed dormer peered from the roof of each house into the backyard of the house immediately downhill from it. Each house was marked near the ground by a splattered red stripe of mud, and each was tethered by a wire to one of the black power poles sprouting up out of the hillside. Coal smoke spun into the air from each chimney, where, in the light wind still blowing, it unraveled into a gray haze that gathered close to the rooftops and moved aimlessly off. The yards and streets were connected by capillaries of what looked like cow paths, down which, three times a day, a fresh shift of workers spilled toward the mill, followed, once the whistle blew, by the previous shift trudging home. Nobody was about in the cold afternoon, however, and only the cold, round headlights of old cars stared back at Jim.
Dennis Deane and Ellie Something lived on Leila Street. Colonel Allen, who had built the mill and the village in 1901, had named the town after himself and the streets after his children, but the street signs had been knocked down long ago, leaving the names to be passed along by word of mouth. Leila, Dennis Deane had directed Jim on a postcard, was the sixth street up from the river. He hadn’t bothered to tell Jim the names of the other streets they would pass, and, as Mama slowed to turn off the main road onto Leila, Jim thought that all the streets could have been named Leila for the difference it made.
Mama stopped the Major in front of the eighth house, which differed from the seventh house and the ninth house in only the spindly-looking staircase that climbed the outside wall toward a small landing and a low doorway cut into the gable. Jim folded the quilt as best he could while Chrissie and Norma tiptoed out of the street toward the unevenly placed steppingstones that wandered through the yard toward the front steps. They carried the food basket between them. Norma sneaked a look at Jim and from behind her mitten whispered something to Chrissie, who giggled and whispered something back to Norma. Mama walked carefully around the rear of the car. Jim stepped onto the fender and hopped down.
“Did you get too cold, honey?” Mama asked. “At least the wind died down some.”
“I’ll live,” Jim said. He handed Mama the quilt.
“I hope we didn’t get it dirty,” she said. “Let’s at least refold it before we go in.”
Jim turned his back to Chrissie and Norma, who seemed to be having a private and mutually satisfying conversation in the yard. “So when did those two get to be friends?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mama said, handing him back two corners of the quilt and briefly raising her eyes to glance at the girls. “I didn’t really get the feeling that they had ever been enemies. Maybe being stuck in the car together did them both some good.”
“What are they snickering about?”
“I think they like your hat.”
Jim snatched Chrissie’s cap off and shoved it in his coat pocket. “And why are you grinning?”
“Nothing, really. I’d just forgotten what it was like to be a girl. I had fun.”
“Did y’all say anything about me?”
“Of course we did. You know you’re the only thing we ever think about.”
“Really?”
“Sure. With us it’s Jim, Jim, Jim. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“All right. All right,” Jim said. “Did you like her?”
“This isn’t the time, sweetheart,” she sang softly.
“Did you?”
“I think she doesn’t have an easy life.”
“So?”
“But you do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t really have anything against her personally.”
“And?”
“You should be careful what you wish for.”
“Are you slowpokes coming?” Norma called.
“There. That looks much better,” Mama said. “I wish we could wrap it.”
As they approached the house, a black-and-white hound stuck its head between two of the wooden front steps and snuffled loudly. Then it pulled its head back and disappeared into the shadows beneath the porch, followed seconds later by a moaning, theatrical howl. An unseen dog immediately across the street took up the call, followed by two farther down the hill. Soon, dogs were howling all over Allendale.
“Goodness,” Mama said. “It sounds like the Blitz.”
“This . . . is London,” said Jim.
The front door opened and a short, round old woman appeared behind the screen. She put her hand on the latch but didn’t open it.
“Y’all made the dog bark,” she said.
Mama moved around Chrissie and Norma and spoke from the bottom of the steps. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Elizabeth Glass, from Aliceville.”
“Mrs. Tessnear.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tessnear. We’re here to see Ellie and Dennis Deane.”
“We don’t like for them to have visitors.”
Mama cocked her head slightly and touched her throat with her fingertips. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Really?”
“Who is it, Ma?” a man’s voice called from inside the house.
“It’s for upstairs,” Mrs. Tessnear said loudly over her shoulder.
“But they do live here?” Mama said. “Ellie and Dennis Deane.”
“They do.”
“And that staircase around the side of the house. Is that the way to where they stay?”
“The boys all work third shift,” said Mrs. Tessnear. “They’re in bed.”
“What do they want, Ma?” called a second voice.
“I don’t know. It’s for upstairs.”
“What does who want?” asked a third voice. “Is somebody here?”
“Upstairs. Upstairs, I said.”
“Did Ma go upstairs?” somebody else called.
“Go to sleep,” Mrs. Tessnear said. “All of you. Right now.”
“My,” said Mama. “How many boys do you have?”
“Seven.”
“Are they all in the house?”
The old woman blinked suspiciously. “All except Ernest,” she said. “Ernest ain’t here.”
“Ma? Why do they want to know about Ernest if they’re going upstairs?”
“They didn’t ask about Ernest.”
“That staircase around the side of the house —” Mama said.
“What did you say about Ernest, Ma?”
“There ain’t nobody said nothing about Ernest,” Mrs. Tessnear almost yelled. “Go back to sleep.”
“Ernest ain’t here,” a new voice said.
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up and he was gone.”
“Did he take the truck?”
“Hush,” said Mrs. Tessnear.
Jim heard someone hurrying down the outside stairway. Ellie Something peeked around the corner of the house before stepping onto the porch, her mouth agape. Jim immediately caught himself studying her breasts and just as quickly blushed. If she was showing, he couldn’t tell. She crossed to the top of the steps and clapped her hands together underneath her chin. “Oh . . . my . . . goodness,” she squealed. “Did all of you come to see us?” She ran down into the yard and violently hugged everyone, even Mama, whom she had never met, and Jim, who tried to get away. “Are those presents? Is that a quilt? And do I smell chicken? Oh, I can’t believe how sweet you are to come all this way. Jim, are you cold? Your face is so red. Did you have to ride in the rumble seat?”
“The boys are in bed,” Mrs. Tessnear said from the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie Something said, turning her head to the side and speaking to the ground. “We know that.”
“You know we don’t like for you to have company.”
“We have a right to have people come see us, Mrs. Tessnear. The boss man said so.”
“I don’t care what the boss man said. This was my house before you were even born.”
“Well, we’re sorry, but now we live here, to
o.”
“I didn’t have no say in that,” Mrs. Tessnear said. She stepped backward into the house and slammed the front door.
“You’d think she would be nice to me on a Sunday,” Ellie Something said.
“Let’s just go upstairs,” said Mama.
Chrissie and Norma left the food basket on the bottom step for Jim to carry. He leaned over the railing so he could see around Mama and watched the girls as they walked up in front of him. Maybe Ellie Something’s behind was a little bigger than it used to be, but Jim couldn’t remember what it had looked like before. He didn’t think he had ever looked at it. She had only been a freshman. Norma’s waist and hips were curvier than Chrissie’s, which somehow made him feel virtuous for choosing Chrissie over Norma. Not that choosing Chrissie had done him any good. Mama glanced back over her shoulder and he straightened up. On the landing, Ellie Something opened the door and extended her arm.
“Welcome to our home,” she said.
Jim ducked into a long, unpainted room with a low bead-board ceiling whose pitch matched that of the roof. A cheap cookstove and a tiny sink dominated the room near the entrance. Beyond the stove, a narrow bed with an iron headboard lay partially hidden behind a chifforobe with a work shirt hanging from the door. The room was almost alarmingly hot. Dennis Deane, wearing an undershirt and owly horn-rim glasses, stood up from behind the table in the alcove underneath the dormer. The windows in the dormer overlooked the street, and Jim wondered why Dennis Deane hadn’t come down to greet them.
“Well, I’ll be,” Dennis Deane said. “Look who’s washed up on Leila Street.”
“Oh, no,” Ellie Something cried suddenly.
“What?” Dennis Deane said.
“This is just awful.”
“What is? What’s awful?”
“We only have two chairs, Dennis Deane. Where is everybody going to sit?”
“Chrissie and I will sit on the floor, won’t we, Chrissie?” Norma said. “And so will Jim.”
“And I can sit on the floor, too,” Mama said. “I’m not as old as I seem. You and Dennis Deane take the chairs. This is your home.”
“But why do we only have two chairs?” Ellie Something said. “Those awful Tessnears have probably got eight chairs down there. Maybe nine.”