Shiloh and Other Stories

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “Well, what do you think?” Leroy says, when Norma Jean pauses to search through her music.

  “What do I think about what?”

  His mind has gone blank. Then he says, “I’ll sell my rig and build us a house.” That wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to know what she thought—what she really thought—about them.

  “Don’t start in on that again,” says Norma Jean. She begins playing “Who’ll Be the Next in Line?”

  Leroy used to tell hitchhikers his whole life story—about his travels, his hometown, the baby. He would end with a question: “Well, what do you think?” It was just a rhetorical question. In time, he had the feeling that he’d been telling the same story over and over to the same hitchhikers. He quit talking to hitchhikers when he realized how his voice sounded—whining and self-pitying, like some teenage-tragedy song. Now Leroy has the sudden impulse to tell Norma Jean about himself, as if he had just met her. They have known each other so long they have forgotten a lot about each other. They could become reacquainted. But when the oven timer goes off and she runs to the kitchen, he forgets why he wants to do this.

  —

  The next day, Mabel drops by. It is Saturday and Norma Jean is cleaning. Leroy is studying the plans of his log house, which have finally come in the mail. He has them spread out on the table—big sheets of stiff blue paper, with diagrams and numbers printed in white. While Norma Jean runs the vacuum, Mabel drinks coffee. She sets her coffee cup on a blueprint.

  “I’m just waiting for time to pass,” she says to Leroy, drumming her fingers on the table.

  As soon as Norma Jean switches off the vacuum, Mabel says in a loud voice, “Did you hear about the datsun dog that killed the baby?”

  Norma Jean says, “The word is ‘dachshund.’ ”

  “They put the dog on trial. It chewed the baby’s legs off. The mother was in the next room all the time.” She raises her voice. “They thought it was neglect.”

  Norma Jean is holding her ears. Leroy manages to open the refrigerator and get some Diet Pepsi to offer Mabel. Mabel still has some coffee and she waves away the Pepsi.

  “Datsuns are like that,” Mabel says. “They’re jealous dogs. They’ll tear a place to pieces if you don’t keep an eye on them.”

  “You better watch out what you’re saying, Mabel,” says Leroy.

  “Well, facts is facts.”

  Leroy looks out the window at his rig. It is like a huge piece of furniture gathering dust in the backyard. Pretty soon it will be an antique. He hears the vacuum cleaner. Norma Jean seems to be cleaning the living room rug again.

  Later, she says to Leroy, “She just said that about the baby because she caught me smoking. She’s trying to pay me back.”

  “What are you talking about?” Leroy says, nervously shuffling blueprints.

  “You know good and well,” Norma Jean says. She is sitting in a kitchen chair with her feet up and her arms wrapped around her knees. She looks small and helpless. She says, “The very idea, her bringing up a subject like that! Saying it was neglect.”

  “She didn’t mean that,” Leroy says.

  “She might not have thought she meant it. She always says things like that. You don’t know how she goes on.”

  “But she didn’t really mean it. She was just talking.”

  Leroy opens a king-sized bottle of beer and pours it into two glasses, dividing it carefully. He hands a glass to Norma Jean and she takes it from him mechanically. For a long time, they sit by the kitchen window watching the birds at the feeder.

  ——

  Something is happening. Norma Jean is going to night school. She has graduated from her six-week body-building course and now she is taking an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College. She spends her evenings outlining paragraphs.

  “First you have a topic sentence,” she explains to Leroy. “Then you divide it up. Your secondary topic has to be connected to your primary topic.”

  To Leroy, this sounds intimidating. “I never was any good in English,” he says.

  “It makes a lot of sense.”

  “What are you doing this for, anyhow?”

  She shrugs. “It’s something to do.” She stands up and lifts her dumbbells a few times.

  “Driving a rig, nobody cared about my English.”

  “I’m not criticizing your English.”

  Norma Jean used to say, “If I lose ten minutes’ sleep, I just drag all day.” Now she stays up late, writing compositions. She got a B on her first paper—a how-to theme on soup-based casseroles. Recently Norma Jean has been cooking unusual foods—tacos, lasagna, Bombay chicken. She doesn’t play the organ anymore, though her second paper was called “Why Music Is Important to Me.” She sits at the kitchen table, concentrating on her outlines, while Leroy plays with his log house plans, practicing with a set of Lincoln Logs. The thought of getting a truckload of notched, numbered logs scares him, and he wants to be prepared. As he and Norma Jean work together at the kitchen table, Leroy has the hopeful thought that they are sharing something, but he knows he is a fool to think this. Norma Jean is miles away. He knows he is going to lose her. Like Mabel, he is just waiting for time to pass.

  One day, Mabel is there before Norma Jean gets home from work, and Leroy finds himself confiding in her. Mabel, he realizes, must know Norma Jean better than he does.

  “I don’t know what’s got into that girl,” Mabel says. “She used to go to bed with the chickens. Now you say she’s up all hours. Plus her a-smoking. I like to died.”

  “I want to make her this beautiful home,” Leroy says, indicating the Lincoln Logs. “I don’t think she even wants it. Maybe she was happier with me gone.”

  “She don’t know what to make of you, coming home like this.”

  “Is that it?”

  Mabel takes the roof off his Lincoln Log cabin. “You couldn’t get me in a log cabin,” she says. “I was raised in one. It’s no picnic, let me tell you.”

  “They’re different now,” says Leroy.

  “I tell you what,” Mabel says, smiling oddly at Leroy.

  “What?”

  “Take her on down to Shiloh. Y’all need to get out together, stir a little. Her brain’s all balled up over them books.”

  Leroy can see traces of Norma Jean’s features in her mother’s face. Mabel’s worn face has the texture of crinkled cotton, but suddenly she looks pretty. It occurs to Leroy that Mabel has been hinting all along that she wants them to take her with them to Shiloh.

  “Let’s all go to Shiloh,” he says. “You and me and her. Come Sunday.”

  Mabel throws up her hands in protest. “Oh, no, not me. Young folks want to be by theirselves.”

  When Norma Jean comes in with groceries, Leroy says excitedly, “Your mama here’s been dying to go to Shiloh for thirty-five years. It’s about time we went, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not going to butt in on anybody’s second honeymoon,” Mabel says.

  “Who’s going on a honeymoon, for Christ’s sake?” Norma Jean says loudly.

  “I never raised no daughter of mine to talk that-a-way,” Mabel says.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” says Norma Jean. She starts putting away boxes and cans, slamming cabinet doors.

  “There’s a log cabin at Shiloh,” Mabel says. “It was there during the battle. There’s bullet holes in it.”

  “When are you going to shut up about Shiloh, Mama?” asks Norma Jean.

  “I always thought Shiloh was the prettiest place, so full of history,” Mabel goes on. “I just hoped y’all could see it once before I die, so you could tell me about it.” Later, she whispers to Leroy, “You do what I said. A little change is what she needs.”

  —

  “Your name means ‘the king,’ ” Norma Jean says to Leroy that evening. He is trying to get her to go to Shiloh, and she is reading a book about another century.

  “Well, I reckon I ought to be right proud.”

&n
bsp; “I guess so.”

  “Am I still king around here?”

  Norma Jean flexes her biceps and feels them for hardness. “I’m not fooling around with anybody, if that’s what you mean,” she says.

  “Would you tell me if you were?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does your name mean?”

  “It was Marilyn Monroe’s real name.”

  “No kidding!”

  “Norma comes from the Normans. They were invaders,” she says. She closes her book and looks hard at Leroy. “I’ll go to Shiloh with you if you’ll stop staring at me.”

  —

  On Sunday, Norma Jean packs a picnic and they go to Shiloh. To Leroy’s relief, Mabel says she does not want to come with them. Norma Jean drives, and Leroy, sitting beside her, feels like some boring hitchhiker she has picked up. He tries some conversation, but she answers him in monosyllables. At Shiloh, she drives aimlessly through the park, past bluffs and trails and steep ravines. Shiloh is an immense place, and Leroy cannot see it as a battleground. It is not what he expected. He thought it would look like a golf course. Monuments are everywhere, showing through the thick clusters of trees. Norma Jean passes the log cabin Mabel mentioned. It is surrounded by tourists looking for bullet holes.

  “That’s not the kind of log house I’ve got in mind,” says Leroy apologetically.

  “I know that.”

  “This is a pretty place. Your mama was right.”

  “It’s O.K.,” says Norma Jean. “Well, we’ve seen it. I hope she’s satisfied.”

  They burst out laughing together.

  At the park museum, a movie on Shiloh is shown every half hour, but they decide that they don’t want to see it. They buy a souvenir Confederate flag for Mabel, and then they find a picnic spot near the cemetery. Norma Jean has brought a picnic cooler, with pimiento sandwiches, soft drinks, and Yodels. Leroy eats a sandwich and then smokes a joint, hiding it behind the picnic cooler. Norma Jean has quit smoking altogether. She is picking cake crumbs from the cellophane wrapper, like a fussy bird.

  Leroy says, “So the boys in gray ended up in Corinth. The Union soldiers zapped ’em finally. April 7, 1862.”

  They both know that he doesn’t know any history. He is just talking about some of the historical plaques they have read. He feels awkward, like a boy on a date with an older girl. They are still just making conversation.

  “Corinth is where Mama eloped to,” says Norma Jean.

  They sit in silence and stare at the cemetery for the Union dead and, beyond, at a tall cluster of trees. Campers are parked nearby, bumper to bumper, and small children in bright clothing are cavorting and squealing. Norma Jean wads up the cake wrapper and squeezes it tightly in her hand. Without looking at Leroy, she says, “I want to leave you.”

  Leroy takes a bottle of Coke out of the cooler and flips off the cap. He holds the bottle poised near his mouth but cannot remember to take a drink. Finally he says, “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Don’t do me that way.”

  Leroy knows Norma Jean will have her own way. “Didn’t I promise to be home from now on?” he says.

  “In some ways, a woman prefers a man who wanders,” says Norma Jean. “That sounds crazy, I know.”

  “You’re not crazy.”

  Leroy remembers to drink from his Coke. Then he says, “Yes, you are crazy. You and me could start all over again. Right back at the beginning.”

  “We have started all over again,” says Norma Jean. “And this is how it turned out.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is this one of those women’s lib things?” Leroy asks.

  “Don’t be funny.”

  The cemetery, a green slope dotted with white markers, looks like a subdivision site. Leroy is trying to comprehend that his marriage is breaking up, but for some reason he is wondering about white slabs in a graveyard.

  “Everything was fine till Mama caught me smoking,” says Norma Jean, standing up. “That set something off.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She won’t leave me alone—you won’t leave me alone.” Norma Jean seems to be crying, but she is looking away from him. “I feel eighteen again. I can’t face that all over again.” She starts walking away. “No, it wasn’t fine. I don’t know what I’m saying. Forget it.”

  Leroy takes a lungful of smoke and closes his eyes as Norma Jean’s words sink in. He tries to focus on the fact that thirty-five hundred soldiers died on the grounds around him. He can only think of that war as a board game with plastic soldiers. Leroy almost smiles, as he compares the Confederates’ daring attack on the Union camps and Virgil Mathis’s raid on the bowling alley. General Grant, drunk and furious, shoved the Southerners back to Corinth, where Mabel and Jet Beasley were married years later, when Mabel was still thin and good-looking. The next day, Mabel and Jet visited the battleground, and then Norma Jean was born, and then she married Leroy and they had a baby, which they lost, and now Leroy and Norma Jean are here at the same battleground. Leroy knows he is leaving out a lot. He is leaving out the insides of history. History was always just names and dates to him. It occurs to him that building a house out of logs is similarly empty—too simple. And the real inner workings of a marriage, like most of history, have escaped him. Now he sees that building a log house is the dumbest idea he could have had. It was clumsy of him to think Norma Jean would want a log house. It was a crazy idea. He’ll have to think of something else, quickly. He will wad the blueprints into tight balls and fling them into the lake. Then he’ll get moving again. He opens his eyes. Norma Jean has moved away and is walking through the cemetery, following a serpentine brick path.

  Leroy gets up to follow his wife, but his good leg is asleep and his bad leg still hurts him. Norma Jean is far away, walking rapidly toward the bluff by the river, and he tries to hobble toward her. Some children run past him, screaming noisily. Norma Jean has reached the bluff, and she is looking out over the Tennessee River. Now she turns toward Leroy and waves her arms. Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles. The sky is unusually pale—the color of the dust ruffle Mabel made for their bed.

  THE ROOKERS

  Mary Lou Skaggs runs errands for her husband. She hauls lumber, delivers bookshelves, even makes a special trip to town just to exchange flathead screws. Mack will occasionally go out to measure people’s kitchens for the cabinets and countertops he makes, but he gets uncomfortable if he has to be away long. And the highway makes him nervous. Increasingly, he stays at home, working in his shop in the basement. They live on a main road between two small Kentucky towns, and the shop sign has been torn down by teenagers so many times that Mack has given up trying to keep it repaired. Mary Lou feels that Mack never charges enough for his work, but she has always helped out—keeping the books, canning and sewing, as well as periodically working for H&R Block—and they have managed to send their youngest child to college. The two older daughters are married, with homes nearby, but Judy is a freshman at Murray State. After she left, Mack became so involved with some experimental woodworking projects that Mary Lou thought he had almost failed to notice that the children had all gone.

  For some neighbors, Mack made a dinette booth out of a church pew salvaged from an abandoned country church. The sanding took days. “I’m sanding off layers of hypocrisy,” Mack said.

  “You sound like that guy that used to stand out on the corner and yell when church let out on Sunday,” said Mary Lou. “ ‘Here come the hyps,’ he’d say.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Oh, just some guy in town. That was years ago. He led a crusade against fluoride too.”

  “Fluoride’s O.K. It hardens the teeth.”

  For their twenty-fifth anniversary, Mack made Mary Lou a round card table from scrap pine, with an
old sprocket from a bulldozer as a base. It was connected to the table with a length of lead pipe. “It didn’t cost a thing,” Mack said. “Just imagination.”

  The tabletop, a mosaic of wood scraps, was like a crazy quilt, Mary Lou thought. It was heavily varnished with polyurethane, making a slick surface. Mack had spray-painted the sprocket black.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “No, you don’t. I can tell you don’t.”

  “It’s real pretty.”

  “It’s not something you would buy in a store,” Mack said apologetically.

  Mary Lou had never seen a table like it. Automatically, she counted the oddly shaped pieces Mack had fit together for the top. Twenty-one. It seemed that Mack was trying to put together the years of their marriage into a convincing whole and this was as far as he got. Mary Lou is concerned about Mack. He seems embarrassed that they are alone in the house now for the first time in years. When Judy fails to come home on weekends, he paces around restlessly. He has even started reading books and magazines, as if he can somehow keep up with Judy and her studies. Lately he has become obsessed with the weather. He likes to compare the weather with the predictions in the Old Farmer’s Almanac. He likes it when the Almanac is wrong. Anyone else would be rooting for the Almanac to be right.

  When the women Mary Lou plays Rook with come over, Mack stays in the den watching TV, hardly emerging to say hello. Thelma Crandall, Clausie Dowdy, and Edda Griffin—the Rookers, Mary Lou calls them—are all much older than Mary Lou, and they are all widows. Mack and Mary Lou married young, and even though they have three grown daughters, they are only in their late forties. Mack says it is unhealthy for her to socialize with senior citizens, but Mary Lou doesn’t believe him. It does her good to have some friends.

  Mary Lou shows off the new card table when the women arrive one evening. They all come in separate cars, not trusting each other’s driving.