Enduring

by Donald Harington

  So Every knelt in the dust. “O Heavenly Father,” he said in a loud voice, as if God were hearing-impaired, “Thou knowest that when I killed those three fellers in that barroom up in Springfield, Missoura, I done it in self-defense. Thou knowest, too, Lord, that when I splattered Carl Rawley’s brains all over his corn patch that it was forced upon me. And it was sure self-defense when I had to strangle those two Germans in that trench in the Argonne forest. So now, Lord, Thou hast heard this pore wretch threaten to kill me, and when I put him in his grave I ask Thee to have mercy on his soul. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” He stood and presented his fists to Dolph. Dolph’s adam’s apple bobbed a few times and he nervously exclaimed that Every must’ve been trying to get him scared but it wasn’t going to work. And then he swiftly lashed out a fist and caught Every a blow that sent him sprawling backward into the dust. Every scrambled to his feet but couldn’t get his hands up in time. Dolph pummeled both sides of his head with several hard blows, the last of which sent him into the dirt again. Latha yelled at Dolph to quit and Dolph asked Every if he’d had enough but Every said they hadn’t truly started yet; that Every was just testing Dolph’s punches out, to see how hard they were. Then Every was back on his feet before Latha knew it, drubbing Dolph with smashes of both fists until he was almost flattened, but Dolph managed to charge into Every’s stomach and flatten him instead, and pounded Every’s face with short blows. Every got to his feet again and missed his first swing but connected with his second, then hit him with two tremendous punches to the jaw, the second one actually lifting him off his feet and laying him flat out. Dolph could hardly move but he managed to climb slowly to his feet and say, “If yo’re going to kill me, preacher, then kill me, cause I don’t keer to live without Latha!” Every wrapped Dolph’s neck into his arm and dragged him to a seat on the porch, and asked Latha for some liniment, which she fetched from the medical shelf of her store and which Every applied with an almost loving touch to Dolph’s battered face, saving some for his own. Every questioned him about just what was going on between him and Latha, and to her embarrassment Dolph reported the incident of lovemaking in the cavern on Banty Creek. She was angry at Dolph for telling on her, and she told him in no uncertain terms that she would be just as happy if she never saw him again. He got on his horse and rode away.

  She remembered Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. She had sung in the early morning in her garden, but she had not cried since she had wept for poor Mrs. Cardwell, slain in Tennessee. She wondered when she would have to cry today. Supper was still a while away.

  There was one more visitor late that afternoon. Tearle Ingledew came staggering down the road, climbed the store steps, tripped but caught himself and plunked into a chair. “Good mornin, m’love,” he said to her. “Real fine and fragrant morning, aint it?” He said he was out of “aspreens” and his old head felt like “two dozen dogs fighting over a rutty gyp.” It took him a long moment to recognize Every. Tearle said cooly, “Howdy, stranger.”

  Every said, “Why, I do believe it’s ole Tull!” Tull only scowled at him. “Latha, is this really ole Tull?” She nodded. She got a dipper of well water and a package of aspirin for him. He appreciated the cool water from her well and said it was the best drink on earth and he wished he could stick with it. She wished he could too, but then realized that, no, she used to wish that but now she knew he had only one liberation. There were three, she reflected: drink, madness, and religion. Tearle had chosen wisely. Without the whiskey he had been the most handsome of all the Ingledews, and he wasn’t a man who had any use for being handsome. He had told her once that he was just as woman-shy as all the other Ingledews but the reason he could talk to her was because she was so kind to him. This reminded her of the reason she wasn’t able to talk to people when she was in the state hospital: that they were unkind to her.

  Tull said to Every, “What have ye come back fer? You’ve fergot what you was tole when we ran ye off. You was tole you’d be shot on sight if ever you come back.” Every said he had come back for his third chance, that everything comes in threes, that he’d been run out of town twice and wanted to see if anybody would try to run him out a third time. Latha excused herself from their bickering on the grounds she had to start supper, and she left the porch. After rolling out the dough for a wild cherry pie, she returned to the store to peer out the window at the two men and see if they had killed each other yet. But Every was telling some kind of anecdote to Tearle, and Tearle was laughing fit to bust a gut. After she had all of supper on the stove or in the oven she rejoined the men in time to hear Every telling another anecdote which made Tearle pound his knees with laughter. She invited both of them to supper, but Tearle, surprised, said he hadn’t even had his dinner yet, and anyhow he’d told his sister Lola he’d eat with her. The two men actually shook hands before Tearle disappeared. Every exclaimed over the change in Tearle, who used to be the only Ingledew he was afraid of. He asked Latha when had Tearle started drinking so hard. Latha said, “Right after he lost most of his money when the bank was robbed.” Every said nothing to that.

  After a while he cleared his throat and said he wanted to ask her something. Could she tell him who Sonora’s father was? Is this what I’m supposed to cry about? She wondered. But she insisted that Vaughn Twichell was Sonora’s father. Every asked if she were not aware that Vaughn Twichell’s first wife had left him because he was sterile. She said she hadn’t known that. He said he had a suspicion that the girl was Latha’s. “I swear she’s not!” Latha said, but realized, Oh no, it’s coming. Every said he suspected that maybe he was Sonora’s father. “You’re mistaken!” Latha said. “I swear she’s Vaughn’s and Mandy’s!” She felt the first hot tear drop down her cheeks. “I swear it! I swear it!” She broke down in sobs. “I swore to them I’d always swear it!”

  Every held her tenderly until she had herself under control. She knew she was back in control when she was able to tell Every the story of her time in Little Rock at Mandy’s leading up to the birth of the baby and their later trick of getting Latha committed to the lunatic asylum in order to steal Sonora. Every grew angry, saying it was the godawfullest story he’d ever heard. The cherry pie nearly burnt in the oven.

  Sonora came home from wherever she had been, and Latha invited Every to eat with them. Every said grace in an eloquent, polished manner that left no room for doubt that he was an experienced preacher. He asked blessings for Latha, for Sonora, and for himself. In Jesus’ name, amen.

  Sonora commented on Every’s black eye and on Latha’s red eyes, and wondered if there was any connection. Every made up some fibs to explain the black eye and the bruises, and Latha made up some fibs to explain her red eyes, but Sonora wasn’t satisfied.

  After supper Latha went out back to her evening chores, leaving Every and Sonora to get better acquainted with each other. She wasn’t worried that Every would give away the secret; she was worried that Sonora might back him into a corner and get him to confess what she’d already guessed on her own.

  Later, as lightning bug time came on, the three of them sat on the porch to watch the evening gathering and the tussling of the W.P.A. boys with the local boys. But the fighting got vicious, and Every broke it up, suggesting they ought to settle their differences by arm wrestling, which they hadn’t heard of, so Every demonstrated by arm wrestling with, and losing to, Junior Duckworth. There began a round of eliminations, in which the winner took on somebody else, and Hank Ingledew defeated several of them and Every declared him the winner, but Hank insisted on challenging Every, despite Every’s protestation that he had been eliminated in the first round, which Hank said was “rigged” on purpose. So Every took him on in a long bout that ended in Every’s defeat, but Hank accused him of not even trying, and said “Come on, goddamn ye, and try!” Every said it was permissible to cuss all he wanted, but never to take the Lord’s name in vain, then he matched up with Hank again and defeated him quickly. Hank insisted that they were even and would have to hav
e a third match to get the best two out of three. The third match was so interminable that Latha had to turn her eyes away. Hank was cheered on by his fellow Stay Morons; the W.P.A. boys took sides with Every and urged him to break Hank’s arm. But the two hands clenched together would not budge one inch one way or the other.

  Latha found herself wondering where Dawny was. It wasn’t like him ever to miss a night. She looked around for him, but all the boys were big boys. She returned her eyes to the contest in time to see that Every had Hank’s arm tilted at a downward slant, and then with a crash it was all over. Hank complained that Every wasn’t human, and asked him his name, and when Every gave it, Hank said that if he’d known that he would have tried harder and beaten him. Every offered to go another round, but Hank declined, saying his arm felt like it was pulled loose from his shoulder.

  When the gathering had broken up, and the boys had gone away, Sonora hand in hand with Hank, Latha offered to mend Every’s trousers. She led him into her bedroom where she kept her sewing supplies. She wondered again where Dawny was. She lifted Every’s coat-tail and inspected his trousers, which had a bad rip in the seat. She asked him to take his pants off. He wouldn’t. She said she didn’t think she could mend them while he still had them on. Finally he took them off but whipped the coverlet off the bed to wrap around himself. She sat at her sewing table and began mending the tear. She asked him why he had never married. He said she wouldn’t believe him if he told her. Try me, she said. He told her that the Lord had once told him that if he was patient enough, and good enough, the Lord would allow Every to find Latha again. And now He had. Latha was so moved by this that she embraced him and kissed him, pushing him down on the bed and giving him the best kiss of her life or his, but he turned his face away. “Don’t you like to kiss?” she asked.

  “Not in this position,” he said.

  “You want to get on top?” she said.

  No, he said they couldn’t allow themselves to get carried away because in the sight of God they had no sanction. They would have to wait until holy matrimony had been performed. She wanted to know when he was going to propose to her, but he said he wasn’t sure of her answer. She said she would say yes, but only on one condition, that he come down off his religious high horse long enough to make love to her.

  “Why is that so important to you, Latha? Eighteen years ago I had to take it from you; now you’re practically begging me for it. Are you trying to get me to prove that I can still do it?”

  “Maybe I am,” she said.

  “Well, then, I give you my word I can. Just as soon as I get that ring on your finger I’ll prove it to you.”

  “How do you know you can? If you haven’t done it in eighteen years.”

  “Not eighteen,” he said. “Fourteen.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Who was that?”

  “You,” he said.

  Chapter thirty-six

  He told her the whole story, or as much of it as he could remember, sitting there on her porch with a slab of beef she had draped over his black eye, which was almost comical in contrast to the heroism of the story, beginning with his breaking out of Fort Leavenworth military prison, stealing a car, driving it to Little Rock and locating the lunatic asylum, where he attempted to find out which of the seven austere brick blocks, each five floors in height and some of them with barred windows, contained Latha Bourne. At the reception desk for visitors he was turned away on the grounds that he was not a close relative, and that Latha Bourne was in E Ward where there would likely not be any communication even if he were allowed to see her, which he was not, and when he inquired how long she’d have to be there he was told that if he were a member of the immediate family he could make an appointment to discuss the case with one of the doctors, but he was not. He wandered around the stark buildings, trying to determine which one was E Ward. It was March twenty-third, almost Sonora’s fourth birthday, but he did not know that, as he did not know he had fathered a child by Latha. The spring day was warm and the windows of E Ward were open even if they were barred. From some of the windows women looked down at him and called down to him, either pleas for help or the most profane obscenities. He came to one window where the occupant was not speaking to him but was completely silent, an albino with white hair and pink eyes. He called up to her, asking if she knew Latha Bourne, but she just stuck her tongue out at him.

  Up until this point he had only wanted to see Latha, hoping to find that she was alive and well, well enough perhaps to smile at him, sane enough to hear him tell her that he was going to wait for her to get well, however long it took. But now his bitter disappointment over not being able to see her at all gave him the sudden determination to get her out of there. He did not even consider that there was anything wrong with abducting her away from those foul hags who inhabited the place. But even given his talent for having broken out of a prison, he was at a loss for a means of freeing her. There’s a big difference between breaking out of a place and breaking into a place to free somebody else.

  He drove to a hardware store and spent fifteen of his sixty-five dollars on some tools and rope, which he stashed in the trunk of his car. He parked on the edge of Fair Park, which contained not only the asylum but also an amusement park, where he whiled away the night, especially on the Ferris Wheel, from the top of which he could look out over the treetops and study the roof of E Ward.

  At a quarter past one, long after the amusement park had shut down, he went back to his car to get his tools and rope, then crossed the grounds of the asylum, keeping to the shadows of the trees although there was no one in sight. He approached E Ward from the corner nearest the trees. He stood at that corner for a moment, listening, then he looped the rope over his shoulder and stuffed the pockets of his suit with his tools, and reached out and took hold of the drainpipe, a thick galvanized tin tube running up to the roof. He began to climb. At the third-floor level he paused and studied the bars on the windows. The ends of the bars were embedded in mortar; he did not have the tools to cut them or bend them. He had a file, but that would take too long. He continued climbing, past the fourth floor, past the fifth. The height did not dizzy him, but he was a little nervous about the drainpipe pulling loose from the mortar. It was an old building. He arrived at the roof and clung to its gutter; he kicked out with all his might and managed to swing one leg up and hook his heel on the rim of the gutter. Then he pulled himself up. He stood up on the sloping roof and climbed it, climbed over a gable and down to a vent on the other side of it, a louvered triangle. He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and pried around the crevices. He discovered there were three bolts in the vent—bolted on the outside, naturally, to keep anyone inside from tampering with them. He took a wrench from his pocket and removed them. Then he inserted the wedge end of his nail puller into the crack and forced the vent out. He laid it carefully on the roof, along with his coil of rope. Then feet-first he let himself down through the vent until his feet touched solid floor. From another pocket he took a candle and lighted it and discovered he was in a small attic. He crawled across the floor and located the hatch. It was latched—and probably locked—from below. But the hinges and screws were on this side. He removed them. The hatch dropped down and swung from the padlock on the underside. He slowly peered below. It was the end of a corridor; there was no ladder; it was a good twelve feet to the floor. He lowered himself to his full length, hanging on by his hands on the hatch, then he let go and dropped, flexing his knees to cushion his drop; even so the corridor rang out with the crash of his feet on the wooden floor. He waited, listening, for several minutes until he was convinced that nobody was coming to investigate the noise. He explored the corridor. Apparently all the rooms on this floor were storerooms. He went to the stairs and descended to the fourth floor. The rooms on this floor had names on them: “Hydrotherapy,” “Electroshock Therapy,” “x Ray.” He continued on down to the third floor. He was almost spotted by the night attendant, a big woman sitting at a desk. He retreated, b
ack up to the fourth floor and along its length to another stairway. He went down this stairway to the third floor again, but the door at the foot of the stairway was locked. Yet once again, however, the attachments were on the side opposite that to which patients would have access. He took his screwdriver and removed the whole lock from the door. Then he found himself in a dimly lit corridor of many rooms. Each door had a nameplate with two names on it. “Ella Mae Henderson and Mrs. Ruby Bridges.” “Mrs. Marianne Templeton and Mrs. Dorothy Grace.” “Agnes Colton and Huberta Read.” “Mrs. Velma Lucaster and Georgene Masters.” “Jessica Tolliver and Latha Bourne.”

  One more locked door, with a barred window set in it, and he had no tools for this one. His first impulse was to knock gently and see if Latha would open it from the inside, but he realized that this door would lock from the outside. And who would have the key? Why, that big woman down at the end of the corridor, of course. He moved quietly along the corridor, still firm in his resolve not to have any contact with anybody, but determined to club her over the head from behind if necessary. It was not necessary. The woman was asleep. He could hear her snores before he saw her. Her chin was embedded deeply into her chest as she sat in heavy slumber with her hands folded over her stomach. Under her right elbow he saw a ring of keys attached to her belt by a leather thong. He congratulated himself on having had the foresight to include a pair of shears in his purchase at the hardware store. He stole up to her and snipped the leather thong and grabbed the keys and stole away, without causing any irregularity in her heavy snoring. He returned to Latha’s room and tried many keys until he found the one that fit. He unlocked the door and opened it. Now, he thought. There were two cots, and that albino girl was asleep in one of them. Latha was asleep in the other. He closed the door behind him. He moved to Latha’s cot and knelt down beside it. Maybe, he said to himself, maybe I ought to just try and pick her up and carry her instead of waking her up. But he knew he would not be able to get the dead weight of her out of there. He would need some cooperation from her.