Enduring

by Donald Harington

  That summer she again named mullein stalks for Raymond and for Every, but she lost interest in the project, or forgot about it, and did not regularly check the two stalks to see if either of them had straightened up. Her dear grandmother, Granny Bourne, died. There was more work for Latha to do around the house, to make up for it. She was tempted to quit her job at the bank, but her mother argued that they needed the money. Her mother also wondered if none of the bank’s customers were eligible bachelors who might like to step out with Latha. Latha was in fact more beautiful than ever, having lost all of her childhood appearance, and she always spent extra time with her jet-black hair, putting it up into a chignon, which was the fashion of those times. But all of the eligible bachelors of Stay More assumed she would wait forever for Raymond. Whenever a tourist or a stranger came into the bank and tried to flirt with her, John Ingledew put a quick stop to it. She had great difficulty managing her sexual longing. Fantasy was not enough.

  One morning as she was walking to work, it occurred to her to take a look at her mullein stalks. There was some talk among her unmarried girlfriends that some of them had used, in addition to cucumbers, okra, squash and other phallic vegetables, the flowery spike of the mullein. It was said to be sticky, which had a positive effect, depending on your point of view. But one friend of Latha’s had made love to a mullein without noticing that there was a bee in it, and she was internally infernally stung. Latha herself didn’t want to mess with a plant that had such clear magic properties as locating people who are lost.

  But here on this summer morning she couldn’t help noticing that her mullein stalks were different. The one she’d named for Raymond was still flat on the ground and infested with ants. The one she’d named for Every had straightened up. Almost angrily, she grabbed it and bent it down again, but it sprang right back up! This spooked her and she looked all around, as if she might find Every lurking anywhere. She knew that if he were in fact back in town, one of the Ingledews would have spotted him and spread the word, and there would be a lynching party waiting for him. Although she was not kindly disposed toward Every and his stubborn intentions toward her, she didn’t want to see him lynched. The day passed without any sign of him. If any man came into the bank, her heart jumped a beat, but none of the men was Every.

  Chapter fifteen

  It was not until the approach of twilight, after she’d gone home and had supper and done her evening chores, including the slopping of the hogs, that he came out of the woods while she was pouring slop into the hogs’ trough. She dropped the bucket, and watched it roll away down the hill.

  “No, now,” she said, as if to the bucket. “Go away. You will be killed.”

  “He hasn’t come back, has he?” he said. “I told you he wasn’t coming back. He won’t ever come back.”

  “How did you get out?” she asked. “They told me you were locked up in that Army prison.”

  “I broke out. I had to talk to you, Latha. I had to tell you that I could stand being locked in there for two more years if you would just tell me that you will wait for me.”

  “I won’t tell you that.”

  “Who are you going to marry, then? Has somebody spoken for you?”

  “No.”

  “Raymond’s never coming back, I told you, I know. Believe me, he’s dead.”

  She knew that. She didn’t want to tell Every that the mullein stalk she had bent down for Raymond long ago had never straightened up again. “All right,” she said, “but I can’t marry you, Every.”

  “Why not, Latha? What’s wrong with me?”

  “They wouldn’t let me marry you. Not just the Ingledews. There’s nobody in this town who would let me marry you.”

  “We could run away.”

  “I don’t want to run away. Stay More’s my home.”

  They continued arguing for some time, but it was no use. Finally Every pounded his fist upon the rail of the hog pen and said “All right, goddammit! Looks like there’s nothing I can do, is there?”

  “No.”

  “All right, Latha. Goodbye, then, I’m going. Tell Mom and Dad I said hello. Tell ’em I’m all right. Tell ’em I’ll be back one day. Tell ’em to keep their chins up.”

  “Your dad’s dead, Every. He died last winter.”

  “Naw!” he said. “Please don’t say that’s true! What’d he die of?”

  “Stroke, I guess,” she said. “I’ll tell you one thing I did, Every. I went to his funeral. I don’t know why, but I went. Nobody else did. Just me and your mother.”

  This news enraged him. He pounded the fence rail with his fist so hard he broke the rail. All she could do was wait and see if his fury would burn itself out. In time, he just hung his head, and for a moment, she wanted to reach out and touch him. More than that, she wanted to make love to him once more, but even if she could have allowed herself to do that, it was not the right time of the month for her, and she knew it, and even if despite this danger she could persuade herself to do it, it would make it all the harder for him to leave, and for her to let him go. So she could not touch him. She could not allow him to touch her. A touch would have ruined it all.

  He raised his head and looked at her through damp eyes. “Well, so long, Latha. Be seeing you some day, I reckon. I’m bound to, I reckon.” She told herself, Then some day I’ll touch him, but not now. I must not touch him now. “Do you suppose you could give me a goodbye kiss? I aint never even kissed you for nearly five years.”

  She knew if she kissed him, she’d be lost. She knew if any part of them touched, she’d be gone. “No,” she said. “Don’t you touch me.”

  He started to reach for her, but she pulled back. “Just a kiss,” he said. “I aint even had a kiss since that time I walked ye home after the play-party. I bought a woman, once, over in France, but I never kissed her.”

  He came closer, raising his hands toward her arms, but she continued backing away. This didn’t stop him, so she had to say something. “If you touch me,” she said, “I’ll holler, and Paw’ll come up here and shoot you himself.”

  Her threat changed him, angered him. “He will, huh?” he said. “Well, we’ll just see about that.” He clamped his hand over her mouth and with his other hand forced her up against a tree and pressed her against it with his body. He whipped off his belt and used it to tie her hands together behind the tree. He whipped out a handkerchief and gagged her mouth with it. Now she could not holler, she could not even speak, she could not even tell him that she was in the wrong time of her month.

  He yanked up the hem of her dress and stuffed it into her collar. He tore away her panties with one strong pull and flung them aside. She squirmed and tried to bite through her gag. She could not holler but she could squeal. She squealed as loud as she could. The hogs watched her curiously.

  He unbuttoned his fly. Then he bent at the knee and straightened up, and when he straightened she felt herself entered, and all her squirming could not dislodge him. She felt the bark of the tree biting into her back as he thrust and thrust violently against her. She prayed that he would get over the mountain, and leave her, but he was holding himself back. Then she was praying that he would not get over the mountain.

  She heard a whippoorwill warbling shrilly, but realized it was her own bird within her.

  She was still squirming, but in a rhythm to match his own.

  She knew he must have gone over the mountain but he didn’t stop. She was glad, and hoped he would go on, but just as she approached the top of the mountain he came out of her, he left her and flung himself back from her. She wanted to cry out, Oh, stay, Every, stay, stay more forever and have me forever but he turned and began running into the woods, and she realized if she watched him go all of the way out of sight he would die, and she must not do that, and here she was at the mountaintop.

  She closed her eyes to keep from watching him disappear all the way out of sight. And she fell off the edge of the mountaintop with a terrific quivering.

  It was fu
ll dark when she came to, and at first she did not know whether it was the blackness of the night or of her passing out. Her next thought was, I have swooned. And she wondered, Did I swoon so’s not to watch him go, or because he made me come?

  She managed to wiggle her hands out of the belt that had tied her to the tree, but she rolled the belt up and kept it. She returned to the house and built a fire in the kitchen stove to heat water.

  Her mother came and said, “Law, whar you been, gal?”

  “Walkin,” she said.

  “What you fixin to do?” her mother asked, pointing at the kettles of water on the stove.

  “Take a bath,” she said.

  “A hot bath this time a year?” her mother said, but it was not really a question, and required no answer. Her mother went away.

  It was a hot bath she took, a scalding hot bath in which she sat and soaked for a long time, thinking But it’s too late, this isn’t doing any good. Among the girls and women of her acquaintance, there were just a few things you could do to prevent an unwanted pregnancy at the wrong time of the month: you could drink a lot of tea made from tansy leaves, or you could jump up and down vigorously for quite a spell in hopes of dislodging the sperm from your womb, or you could soak your bottom in very hot water in hopes of killing the sperm. Latha chose the latter but she was not at all confident that it worked.

  The next day at noon, when Mr. Ingledew said his traditional “Watch out for robbers,” she wanted to say, “Don’t leave me,” but she could not.

  So she was not surprised when she heard the approach of horse’s hooves. She started to think, He is sure enough fixing to do it but she did not think this just yet. She didn’t think it until he actually came through the door, carrying the empty tow-sack in one hand and a revolver in the other. He was fully disguised: strange, old-fashioned clothes, a queer hat, beneath the hat a pillowcase covering his head with two slits for the eyes. He did not even walk like Every, but she thought It must be him.

  He came quickly to the counter and passed her the note; she knew then; she had seen a note before, the same handwriting:

  CLEAN OUT THE SAFE IN 2 MINITS OR YOU ARE A DEAD GIRL.

  “Haven’t you done enough?” she said to him.

  He raised the gun point-blank to her nose.

  She did not move.

  He cocked the hammer. He handed her the sack.

  She took the sack to the safe and stuffed it with all the money that was there. She took the sack back to him. Then she handed him his belt, rolled in a neat coil.

  He looked at the belt but did not take it. He refused it.

  He backed out through the door, holding the gun on her until the last moment, when he turned and leaped from the porch to the back of his horse, and galloped quickly away.

  She turned aside to keep from watching him go out of sight.

  When the car full of the sheriff and his deputies arrived, she could only describe what had happened and what the man had looked like, no one she’d ever seen before. She even described the man’s horse, if that would help. They wanted to know which way he had gone, and she said, “Towards Parthenon.”

  It was estimated that all the assets of the bank, about eight thousand dollars, had been taken. Mr. Ingledew did not hold Latha to blame in any manner, but he said he would have to “let her go,” because without any money the bank would have to close. She asked Willis Ingledew if he needed any help running the general store, but he said there wasn’t that much business. She had not saved up much money because her salary had been so small there wasn’t any to save.

  For several weeks, some strangers seemed to be shadowing her, perhaps to see if she was spending any money, which might implicate her in the hold-up. She had no money to spend.

  After a while, she began throwing up, so she went to see Doc Swain and asked him if there was anything she could do to pay for a consultation, because she didn’t have any money. “Latha,” he said, “you don’t never need to pay me for nothing. Now what seems to be the problem?”

  “I’m wondering,” she said, “if I might be with child.”

  “To be that,” Doc said, “you’d have to have had congress with some feller. Have ye?”

  “Not on purpose,” she said.

  He examined her, and gave her a test, and said that she was in fact in a family way. She asked him if he could give her anything, or do anything, to stop it.

  “It’s again the law,” he told her. “I could lose my license.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

  “Tell ye what,” he said. “I’d have to think some on it. Meanwhile, you’d have to think too. You’d have to ask yourself if you’d actually want to go against nature and destroy a life that’s trying to get going inside of you. Come back tomorrow.”

  But she did not return the following day. When she threw up her breakfast, her mother caught her at it and demanded to know who had knocked her up. Latha would not identify the man, but she admitted that she was indeed expecting, confirmed by Doc Swain. Her mother fetched from the attic a pasteboard suitcase and told Latha to put into it anything she wanted to keep. And to count up her money, which came to $27.35. When the mail truck came back through town returning to Jasper, Latha was on it, with the address of her sister Mandy written on a piece of paper. She took the bus from Jasper to Little Rock, passing through towns much larger than any she could imagine. And then Little Rock itself was unbelievable, with buildings that reached to the sky.

  Mandy lived with her husband Vaughn Twichell in a small white house, a bungalow in what was known as the shotgun style, at 2120 West Nineteenth Street. Vaughn answered her knock and at first did not recognize her. “Is Mandy home?” she asked.

  “Lord love a duck if it aint ole Lathee,” Vaughn said. “Is that there yore suitcase? Come to stay a while, have ye?”

  “Is Mandy home?” she asked.

  Vaughn hollered over his shoulder, “Hey, woman! Yore sister has come to spend the night.”

  When Mandy appeared, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, she said, “Lo and behold!” She started to reach out to embrace Latha but stopped herself. She had never in her life given Latha a hug.

  Latha explained, “Maw thought it would be best if I stayed with you’uns a while.”

  “How long?” Mandy wanted to know.

  “Maybe nine months?”

  Mandy gasped. “Who was he?” she said.

  “Don’t ask me that,” Latha said. “I’m not saying.”

  Mandy asked of her husband, “Can she have that back room?”

  “Aw, hell,” Vaughn said. “that’s where I keep all my samples.”

  “She don’t need your samples. Just the bed.”

  “But the bed is all covered with my samples.”

  “Caint you just put ’em on the floor?”

  “Then I couldn’t reach ’em so easy.”

  “A little exercise aint gonna kill ye.”

  From the beginning of her nine-month stay with her sister and Vaughn Twichell, Latha felt like an intruder. Vaughn’s resentment at having to give up the one spare room where he’d been keeping his samples soon became a resentment for a different reason: there appeared to be no way that Vaughn could cajole Latha into letting him fuck her. Vaughn was a traveling salesman, at least in travel around Little Rock and its environs, and he came and went at all hours. Mandy clerked at Woolworth’s, a store which sold everything for either a dime or a nickel. Latha intended to go out and look for a job, but meanwhile she spent long hours at the house, where she attempted to pay her rent by keeping the place spic and span. Often she would be there alone when Vaughn would drop by, and invariably he would ask her if she wouldn’t like to lie down with him. She wouldn’t. He was polite and courtly about it at first, but then as she continued to say she wasn’t interested, he became less genteel.

  “You was raped, wasn’t ye?” he said. “I could just rape ye myself.”

  “That wouldn’t be much fun for you or me,” she declar
ed.

  Vaughn wasn’t a large man, but he had strength enough to pick Latha up and carry her to the bed, and climb on top of her. She kneed him in the groin and scratched his face with her fingernails until the blood flowed, and he got off her, and later explained to Mandy that a customer’s cat had attacked him.

  Despite the wounds, he never stopped trying. All that kept Latha from telling her sister was the thought that after all this was Vaughn’s house, even if he was renting it, and Latha didn’t want to upset the domestic situation. But one time when he squeezed Latha’s behind, as he usually did when he passed her, Mandy caught him at it and told him he had better keep his hands to himself if he knew what was good for him.

  Latha found a job as a bank teller, at which she had experience, and so was not around the house for Vaughn to molest. She was thus able to contribute toward the cost of her breakfasts and suppers, and she could give up spending her days cleaning the house. Thereafter the house got messy, and Vaughn complained, and then Mandy complained, not to Latha but to the room in Latha’s presence, “This place is becoming a pig-sty.”

  Although Latha enjoyed working at the bank, she didn’t like Little Rock. The houses and buildings were too close together, and there were too many of them, and the streets were filling up with vehicles that ran on gasoline motors and made a lot of noise.

  Latha could use part of her salary to get some better-looking clothes for herself, and this might have been the reason men started noticing her and asking her for dates, to the movies and such. Latha had never seen a movie, and couldn’t imagine one. But when the men came to pick her up at home, Vaughn would meet them at the door and tell them he was Latha’s husband, and would drive them away.

  “Vaughn Twichell, you are a son of a bitch,” Latha said to him.