Tammy out of Time

by Cid Ricketts Sumner

  “Well, anyway, you’re too free with your money, Ernie. Look! You left two bits on the table. I saved it for you. Like as not you’d never have missed it even.”

  “Well, I’ll be—!” He held it in his hand, staring at it. Then he put it in his pocket and stood with patience while Tammy examined the things in the drugstore window.

  Tammy was reading the sign, THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL—SICKROOM SUPPLIES. Spread out on little racks and shelves were all manner of interesting things. There was a white tray with legs, a rubber sheet, a bottle marked RUBBING ALCOHOL HALF PRICE. There was a red-dish bag with a hose to it, a flat rubber bag, a big white thing with curved sides. “Whatever is that, Ernie?”

  “What? Oh, that. Well, to put it delicately——No, there isn’t any way to put it delicately.” But he told her just the same.

  “My, that would have been nice to have when Grandma was down sick abed and couldn’t get up. What a lot of inventions and contraptions for the easing of the way of living! You could get so taken up with them you wouldn’t think about anything else....I reckon some do,” she added, thinking of Barbara.

  “Seen it all, sugar? There’s yet more on Fairville’s Great White Way. Two blocks of it at least.”

  The sidewalks were thronged with people, some dressed in style, some shabby. “Saturday,” Ernie explained. “They come in from the country.”

  It was hard to see everything all at the same time, but Tammy tried. Once she dodged through the crowd to stand amazed at the edge of the walk. “Whatever can this be, Ernie?” she cried. “It’s got colors running round like a rainbow in a cage.”

  Ernie followed her, laughing. “I’m having fun, Tammy.”

  “Oh, so am I. But what is it?”

  He put on a voice like Professor Brent’s. “You see here the traditional sign of the haircutter, the mustache trimmer, the dispenser of news, gossip and hair tonic. The tonsorial artist. In short, the barber.”

  “It’s a curious notion.”

  “What? Having the hair cut?”

  “No. Having this to mean haircutting.” Then, when Ernie explained how the barber used to be a surgeon and a bloodletter, she said with admiration, “I reckon you know about everything, Ernie.”

  Ernie straightened his tie. “Well, almost.”

  “Look quick.” She turned him around to see. “Is that a hat?”

  “You mean the bunch of roses on her ear? Yes, that’s the name it goes by.”

  “And the other one, right behind her—looks like a thistle with the prickers pulled out. How can she see where she’s going, the way it sets on her head?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain women’s hats.”

  “Looks like they’ve got a far piece from the meaning of a hat because rightly it’s something to keep off the sun. They’ve got off the point, like Grandpa says the world has.” They edged their way across the walk again toward the store windows, Tammy searching the faces of people. They were all strange to her, unseen by her before. “All their lives have been going on all these years and me not knowing, nor being known,” she puzzled. “What do they come to town for, Ernie?”

  “To look at each other, to buy things.”

  “Work all week so’s they can come to spend it on Saturday?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “It don’t seem sensible.”

  “What should they be doing?”

  “I don’t know, Ernie, but something more than this—playing or singing or working at something different.”

  “You’ve got a funny head on you, woman.”

  “Professor Brent says it’s a virgin page.”

  “He does, does he? The old goat You’ve got him eating out of your hand all right.”

  Tammy shook her head. “He just wants to educate me.”

  “Better let me do that. I—I don’t know what it is about you, honey child. Must be you’re just so darn cute.”

  “Cute? That’s something I never aimed to be, but——” She stopped short, catching his arm, and cried, “Goshamighty, what’s she doing there plumb naked?”

  “Who? Where?”

  “Yonder in the store window!” Then she saw it was no live creature, just a big doll, a false figger.

  “Yes,” Ernie said, “this is Clarke’s Emporium. Ladies’ Ready-to-Wear. See, here comes a man to put another dress on the dummy.”

  They stood and watched while he stepped amid gloves and stockings to put a blue-flowered silky dress on the naked shape. “I declare,” Tammy said, “I’ve seen so many wonders I reckon I couldn’t be much more amazed if it had been a live one in there.”

  “I’d have been amazed myself at that,” Ernie chuckled.

  “You know,” Tammy said, “it would be a good thing maybe——”

  “What?”

  “Not if they really went naked, all the people in the world, but if they just remembered they were naked under their clothes. Might make them less apt to be warring all the time.”

  Ernie watched her instead of the window. “Now how did you get to thinking that?”

  “It would make them know every minute that they weren’t anything but blood and bones and flesh and purely mortal. They’d see how pitiful humans are and tender under their clothes.”

  “Jeepers,” Ernie said as they moved on down the street. He took her arm as they crossed to the other side and started back.

  “That little head of yours——”

  “Plumb full of notions. I know!” Tammy laughed. “That’s what Grandpa’s always saying.” They came now to a line of people moving slowly toward a large doorway plastered with pictures of men on horseback shooting guns. “What are they going there for?”

  “Regular Saturday show. Western. Want to see it?”

  “A moving picture? Oh, Ernie, would it cost a lot?”

  “Not too much. Let’s go in.”

  It was dark inside and the people were talking. It was not until they were seated that Tammy could look to the front and see the words that flashed and changed, the pictures that came and went. There was a room with elegant furnishings—“Hunt’s for Fine Furniture. Try Our Easy Time Payments. Why Wait When You Can Enjoy Our Sleeping Princess Inner Springs Now? A Small Down Payment.” On and on it went: “Leave Your Films with Us. Twenty-four-hour Service.”...“When Clothes Are Dirty Ring Seven Thirty. It Pays to Look Smart, Try Our Glamour Girl Permanent.”...“For That Sweater-Girl Line See Our New Up-Cups.”

  Tammy turned and found Ernie watching her. “If you did everything they told you to, you wouldn’t have time for anything else. Why do the people talk all the time? I can’t half take it all in.”

  “This is just the ads. Same thing every week. The real show isn’t on yet.”

  “It’s awfully exciting.”

  Ernie put his arm across the back of the seat behind her. “You’re what’s exciting.”

  “Am I, Ernie?”

  “You bet.”

  Then a hush came over the crowd. “Is this it, Ernie?” Tammy whispered.

  “This is it, and I don’t believe I mean what you mean, sister.” His arm came round her shoulder and he drew her close.

  Tammy watched the changing screen, but it was mostly names, on and off. She stirred under Ernie’s arm, drew away. “Set over yonder way more, Ernie. I got to keep my mind on this.”

  Ernie said, “When I build a theater, the seats won’t have any of these old arms on them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cramp my courting.”

  “Are you courting?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Is that what people do in movies?”

  “Take a look around you, little one. You’ll see.”

  Tammy looked. There were couples with their arms around each other, for a fact, and right in front of her, two were kissing like they’d forgot to quit. “They ain’t looking at the picture. You’d think they might better go home and go to bed.”

  Ernie choked and coughed till a lady behind them tapped
him on the shoulder and said, “Here, son, have a cough drop.”

  Then a man on a horse went galloping across a wide-open land, and shooting began. Tammy sat on the edge of her seat, barely breathing from then to the end. She was still in a maze when they came out into the bright lights of the street, pushing their way against the second-show crowd. Then all at once she caught Ernie’s arm. “It’s dark, Ernie! We ought to have been home afore this. I never thought—I was just thinking would the man get there in time to save the girl.”

  “Why, the evening’s young, sugar. Just nine o’clock——”

  “I don’t care. I don’t go by clocks. Where’s the car? Oh, Ernie, please!”

  He was looking at her with a puzzled look. “First time I ever took anybody home before midnight. What’s your hurry?” But he lengthened his stride to keep up with her.

  “Grandpa’d give me a beating for sure if he knowed I’d stayed after dark, Ernie. I’ve just got to get back.”

  “Okay, baby, but it’s a record for little Ernie.”

  The car went quickly through the dark, the lights seeming to lay down the road before it. Their music was flung out into the night and they trailed a backwash of song. They went without a care for those who had to walk, but when they passed a slow, plodding figure, Tammy looked after it, remembering how the road felt underfoot and how slowly one went, just putting one foot before the other. Her mind was filled with the story she had just seen in the movie. She thought it might be enlarging to the mind to see into the lives of the cowboys and the girl and the turmoil they lived amidst. But they didn’t hardly seem like real humans, when you considered it. Who was the girl’s pa and ma, and where were they? She was just sprung up, like. None of the people had roots to them, they were tumbleweeds blowing in the wind. Folks in a big hustle-bustle, that was all. And all the time you sat watching, your own life wasn’t getting any mind paid to it at all. It was just slipping off from you in the movie-dark.

  Tammy looked round to Ernie to tell him what she had been thinking. Then it seemed ungrateful to say such things, so instead she asked. “Do you live with your folks, Ernie?”

  “Haven’t got any. The woman that gets me won’t have in-law trouble.” He hummed along with the music for a minute, then added, “All my family ever did for me was leave me a little scrap of no-count land down below Bogue Chitto. At least it’s been no count——” He broke off to whistle along with the music.

  It was a wonder, Tammy thought, how people had land and didn’t think much of it. Then her thoughts went on to Pete.

  They turned in the gate at last and saw the lights of Pete’s house streaming out to meet them. The black trees of the drive swished past and they drew up at the side with a grating of gravel and a grinding of brakes.

  “There you are, my pretty. Have a good time?”

  “Oh, Ernie, the best time in the world. Thank you.” She was about to jump out of the car when his hand on her arm stopped her.

  “Wait a minute. You don’t get off that easy.” He pulled her closer. “Just one kiss for Ernie.”

  Tammy drew back. “Not in the dark, Ernie. It would not be seemly.”

  “My Lord!” Ernie said and let her go.

  Then his door was jerked open and Pete said, with fury in his tone, “Ernie, get out.”

  He got out so slowly that Tammy had time to come around the car before he shut the door and faced Pete.

  “I heard you, Ernie.”

  “Say, what’s eating you? Didn’t you hear the answer I got?”

  “I heard that too.” Pete looked around. “Just go on, please, Tammy,” he said, and turned back to Ernie.

  “If it’s account of me you’re mad at Ernie, I ain’t agoing,” Tammy said. But neither of them paid her any mind.

  “What’s eating you, Pete?” Ernie had a scowl that sat oddly on his smooth brow.

  “I don’t like it, your taking Tammy off this way without a word. You knew what you were doing, even if she didn’t.”

  “Come out of it, Pete.” Ernie put his hands in his pants pockets and rocked back and forth. “This isn’t the Victorian Era—or is it? I don’t see any reason why I have to account to you for anything I do—or tell you where I’ve been. Tammy’s O.K. and you know it.”

  “I’ll tell you, Pete——” Tammy began.

  Ernie said, “He isn’t talking about you, Tammy. He just thinks he is.”

  “Certainly I am. I didn’t know where she was. I feel a responsibility and——”

  “Aw, get wise to yourself, Pete. You’ve been hearing things, and not about Tammy, either. Now suppose you listen to me. I stepped aside for you once—not that you asked me to, but—well, I just did. But I’m not doing it any more and you may as well know it. Just because you are standing still, marking time, getting all your psychological knots untied, you needn’t think the rest of us are going to twiddle our thumbs forever.”

  “I see,” Pete said. “Now I really begin to see.” He was silent for a little, then he looked up and the anger was gone from his voice. “That’s fair enough warning, Ernie. We’ve been friends a long time. We’ll keep on the same way, shall we?”

  Tammy turned away unnoticed. What they were saying had nothing to do with her. She had only set it off, like a spark to a pile of fat pine. They had been talking about something that was underneath their words—as she and Barbara had wrestled under the surface of what they were saying in the library. Goshamighty, she thought, stumbling along the gravel drive toward the front steps, living out in the world was enough to drive a body loony! There was so much under the surface, all tangled up. She was plumb wore out with it.

  13.

  AS SHE neared the front gallery, Tammy heard voices and through the darkness made out dim figures sitting there. She heard Mrs. Brent’s bright telephone voice and Barbara breaking in with light laughter. There was a strange man there, between Professor Brent and Miss Renie in her rocking chair that squeaked. The strange man’s speech was clipped and sheared and he was asking how much on an average they took in at a Pilgrimage, and what proportion of the money went to the people who opened their homes.

  But all that had nothing to do with Tammy. She sank down miserably on the bottom step, trying to keep herself from the light that streamed from the hall. When Pete got through with Ernie he’d remember to be mad with her because she had stayed out so late, long after dark. When he got through with Ernie he would come and tell her what he thought of her. It would be worse than any beating Grandpa ever gave her. That only made her bottom ache.

  All of a sudden she realized someone was speaking to her from up on the gallery. “Didn’t you hear, Tammy? Mr. Bissle is here, our roomer from New York. I want him to meet you.” Miss Renie’s tone was the bright false one she used when she was tormenting Mrs. Brent.

  “Oh.” Tammy stood. “Howdy,” she said and nodded her head toward the large dim figure beside Miss Renie.

  “And is this the daughter of the house?” Mr. Bissle asked.

  For a moment no one spoke and so Tammy answered, “No. Oh no, Mr. Bissle. I’m just staying here while Grandpa’s in jail.”

  Mrs. Brent drew in her breath as if someone had hit her. Barbara’s laugh rang out. “That’s a good one. That’s the best yet.

  Oh, Cousin Al, you ought to hear some of the——” She broke off abruptly as Pete came into the light at the foot of the steps.

  Ernie had started his car, but stopped it at the sound of Barbara’s laughter. “Hey, that you, Barb?” he called. “Want to ride back to town with me?”

  “Wait a minute, Ernie.” Barbara ran down the steps as Pete sat down, not saying anything, across their width from Tammy.

  “Why don’t you just spend the night, Barbara?” Mrs. Brent said. “Tomorrow’s Sunday and you don’t have to go to the office. And maybe your cousin will have dinner with us. Our house is inadequately staffed, Mr. Bissle, but Osia’s chicken dumplings are quite famous.”

  “Thank you, I——”

&nbs
p; Pete said, “Sure, Barb, what’s the rush? I’ll tell Ernie.” He got to his feet.

  But Barbara, calling back over her shoulder, “That will be wonderful, Mrs. Brent,” waved Pete down again. “I’ll tell Ernie myself. I want to ask him to phone home for me and say I won’t be there. It’ll save me a toll call.” Her heels crunched quickly through the gravel toward the car at the turn of the drive.

  Mr. Bissle gave a pleased little grunt. “Glad to see that at least one of the younger generation has some regard for saving.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Brent cried in her bright company voice, “we all think Barbara’s quite wonderful. She has worked up to a splendid position in the Savings and Loan—five girls under her, isn’t it, Pete?”

  “I believe so, Mother,” Pete said.

  Mrs. Brent waited a moment as if she were hoping he would say something more and when he didn’t she went on: “The brother’s family—wife and three children I think it is—have been quite a burden but I believe he has come round to taking some sort of job now, and that eases the financial burden for her. Barbara has done so much——”

  Tammy leaned forward, shutting her ears to the talk and searching the shadows beneath the first oak of the drive to see what Barbara was doing. The car was there, turned so that it hid Barbara and Ernie from those on the porch, but Tammy could see. They were standing on the other side of the car, close together, moving closer. Goshamighty, Tammy thought, that woman is a deep ditch and a narrow pit, and she don’t care who falls in! Just got to be kissing somebody all the time.

  Miss Renie spoke from the porch. “Everybody says how good Barbara has been, looking after her worthless brother and his family. But personally I think they’d have managed if Barbara had just tended her own business and left them alone. I don’t believe in sacrifice or——”

  “Now, Aunt Renie.” Mrs. Brent broke in. “You don’t understand this——”

  But Mr. Bissle said, “You’re quite right. Better to let people stand on their own feet. Trouble with the world today is that nobody wants to work. Now take me—I never had anybody helping me and I haven’t done so badly.”

  Mrs. Brent said, “Of course, Mr. Bissle. Exactly. All your cousins are so proud of you and your great success in the financial world. My son Peter has always admired your career from afar. He was connected with the advertising business before the war and doing so well.”