WHERE TROUBLE SLEEPS

by Clyde Edgerton

  Dorothea was Mr. Clark's second wife. She had lived with her older sisters, Bea and Mae, under the store for all those years—her whole life before Mr. Clark's first wife, Luanda, died of a heart attack and he asked Dorothea to marry him fourteen months later, twelve years ago, when she was fifty-eight.

  How in the world she could go from fifty-eight to seventy in that short a time was what she wanted to know. There it was, just sitting there, twelve years gone. She'd been willing to marry Claude T. in large part—well, in part—because he was willing to welcome her sisters over to his house whenever a thunderstorm came up, and also, her sisters had honestly been getting a little bit hard to live with—always snapping at each other it seemed like, not willing to go anywhere unless a storm came up, going on and on about which road did who live on, about who was the cousin of somebody's half-brother. Fussing, and then worried to death about what the other one was thinking, never wanting to be apart but needing to be for some fresh air, it seemed like to Dorothea.

  Bea and Mae had always been so nervous about thunderstorms, Mae mostly, and she, Dorothea, always been the one to calm them down, drive them to one of their cousins'. Now Bea and Mae could just come on over to her and Claude T.'s house. Claude T. didn't mind at all.

  Claude T. had done other things right during their courtship—sending her carnations, picking up her medicines at the drugstore, taking her out once a month to Harlan's Steak House even though they served beer and wine. He insisted because of the fine steaks, and she'd gone along with it. He was a good man in his own way. He had his weaknesses, as she reckoned everybody did. His being Cadillacs and a diamond ring were just a little more obvious than normal, but in many ways because these weaknesses didn't directly involve humankind meanness, they weren't the worst kind of weaknesses to have. He didn't drink liquor and make life miserable for everybody around him, like Raleigh Caldwell or Johnny Daniels, but he wadn't afraid of taking medicine either, when he needed it. And he performed in the most ridiculous and funny and awful ways in bed. She'd had to slap his hand, slap, slap, slap, slap, and he'd finally got straight what she wouldn't allow. That Lucinda must have been a regular woman of the night. He'd finally cut all that out and was now a lot more settled down, especially with a little more age on him. And she'd learned one or two things that he had to have learned from some book.

  It had not been easy leaving her sisters. But she'd always been a little more adventurous than either one of them, had taken trips while they'd got more and more fastened to that store and to each other.

  They would never know the mountains and valleys of married life. They would always, in an odd sort of way, be married to each other.

  One night, twelve years ago, she'd walked into the store and Bea had been sitting in her chair shelling peanuts and Mae had been sitting in hers, knitting. Dorothea was standing there with a smile on her face, thinking that a statement concerning her prospects of marriage might just gently break through whatever it was that had kept her there with them in that store for thirty-two years after their daddy had died, twenty-eight years after their mama had died never knowing her husband was already dead, thinking all the while that he was sitting up there outside by the door, dipping snuff, spitting into that same black spot on the ground next to the foundation, believing he was sitting up there talking to anybody who'd come by as if they were the last person on earth, sitting up there still owning the store but retired, happily accepting the work of his three daughters as owed to him for his being their papa, happily accepting their keeping him fed, the store run, and then keeping their mama alive and fed and talked to every day for those four years after he was dead and gone while she believed he was still up there doing all of that. They got to where they would say, "Mama, he was down here a while ago. Remember?" and she'd say, "Oh, yes, yes, now I do. Did he bring me those grapes over there?" and they'd say, "Yes ma'am." It got to be real easy not to tell her he'd died, because that would have put her under for sure, given the weak state she was in. Why not just let her live out her years in a world she believed was there even if it won't.

  Dorothea, standing in the dim light that night, thought, had thought for a long time, that the three of them had been holding on to their mama and papa after they were dead in a way that wasn't all good, but was easy—and she was a little afraid of what an announcement of an impending marriage might do. It might gently disturb that whole business of living with what was not there. And when she, fifty-eight years old, said, "What would y'all say if I said I was going to get married?" Bea looked up and said, "I'd say you were going against mama and papa." Mae had then looked up and said, "I think we need to stick together. Did he ask you to marry him?"

  "Yes, he did. And I said I wanted to speak to y'all first."

  "Well," said Bea, "it looks like you've spoke to us. We do need to stick together though, it seems like to me. We've stuck together this long."

  "I could still help out around here."

  "I don't know why you'd want to do that with a husband to look after."

  "It's not like I'm leaving you-all."

  "Well, I'd like to know what it is then. You sure can't marry him and bring him here."

  Dorothea had sat down in the cane-bottom chair close to the stove and stared straight ahead and had not said one word, feeling like the whole store was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking around her like stretched wet leather, drying, and so she'd just gone downstairs, crawled into her bed, and cried and cried, and both sisters refused to make one move in her direction. Neither one of the three ever mentioned it again. She went ahead and got married anyway.

  Dear Claude T. had been so sweet and gentle and led the way for her to become Mrs. Claude T. Clark and to get her job as church secretary and live a Christian life that—what with the exception of Claude T.'s Cadillacs and diamond ring—she was quite happy about. And even without anything else on earth, she'd always have Jesus. And of course even with that gulf, that little gulf—that little problem about her marrying—she'd always have her sisters.

  She smoothed her hand over the sheet. She felt the very presence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The Lord, in His house.

  The sheets were so clean and white. The room temperature was just right.

  Maybe she needed a bath, she thought. She'd go ahead with her pills. Then she probably ought to at least go wash off in the sink before she went to bed—take a little sink bath. She reached to the bookshelf, got her medicines, opened them, and put the tablets in her paper cup. Then she stood and made her way to the ladies' room, using the nice sturdy cane Mrs. Weams had brought over—four little legs at the bottom. She'd never seen one like that.

  Not far away, Linda Nicholson read the Twenty-third Psalm twice. She'd just found out on the phone from her cousin, Edna Poole, that her granddaughter, Carole, unmarried, was pregnant. She knew all her friends would know by tomorrow, and she was glad she'd been through it all before. People were more sympathetic than you'd think they'd be. / Little Eliza Teasley was laughing, and her best friend Beth Carr was looking at the chocolate from the Baby Ruth stuck between her teeth. Beth was thinking how she was going to keep her own mouth closed until she was pretty sure all her Zero bar was cleared away. / From Sybil White's bedroom: "It come out." "Don't you think I know that?" "Well, stick it back in." "I am!" / Twelve-year-old Frances Hillman was talking on the phone to her new boyfriend, Curtis. The silent pause in their conversation had just lasted one minute and twelve seconds, a record, until Curtis finally said, "Well." / Sarah Coleman, looking forward to Christmas, said to her husband, Ben, "It can be drums or a trumpet, but I believe I'd rather it be a trumpet."

  In the bathroom she locked the door, took off all her clothes, and carefully draped them on a chair. Here she was, she thought, naked in the sight of the Lord in the Lord's house, fifteen times the size of a normal house—three stories high—and ten times as quiet.

  I come to the garden alone,

  While the dew is still on the roses...

  She tu
rned on the hot water faucet, waited for the water to heat up, turned on the cold to balance it out, ran a little pool of water into the sink, wet her hands and wet herself all between her legs, and on up around under her arms, no soap, then lathered the soap in her hands and lathered herself.

  And the voice I hear,

  falling on my ear,

  The Son of God discloses.

  And He walks with me, and He talks with me...

  She let water and soap drip between her legs. She'd get that up with a paper towel.

  And He tells me I am His own;

  And the joy we share as we tarry there,

  None other has ever known.

  One of the differences between her and her sisters all her life was that she'd never liked to use a washcloth. There's no tool like your hands, somebody said. She just didn't see any sense in it and besides that, a washcloth got to smelling bad if you didn't keep it washed out, which didn't make any sense.

  She ran a fresh little pool of water, cupped her hands, filled them with water, and then rinsed between her legs. She looked in the mirror at her hairdo. It was holding up real good. She rinsed under her arms. She'd get Claude T. to bring her razor in.

  She wondered if she'd die before she was stuck in the county home with hair growing under her arms.

  Back in her office, she hooked the little door hook for privacy that Claude T. put up when it snowed last year. She cut off the light, sat on the white sheets and looked through the window down at the blinker light, way down there, blinking yellow and lonely. She lay down on her back on the clean sheet, her head on her pillow, feeling all clean between her legs and under her arms.

  She should have washed her feet, but it was getting hard to get down there. Her toenails were needing cutting. It was about time for her to call Alease to come and do that. Alease was so thoughtful. And sometime before long she was going to have to get her hair washed and set. She pulled the top sheet and the blanket up over her shoulders.

  The phone rang. She'd pulled it close by, and could see from the outside floodlight.

  It was Claude T.

  "Everything is just fine," she said, "except the swelling is still bad and it hurts unless I prop it up ... No. I'll be just fine. Maybe a towel or two if you think about it sometime tomorrow ... Yes ... Yes, there's all that soup in the white pot, and the two pork chops. Yes ... Yes. I'm lucky to have the house of the Lord, Claude, to rest my head in. I'm very lucky and very blessed ... Did you sell that land today? ... Well, you be good now ... Bye-bye. I love you, too."

  One time he lost that ring for a day and got downright melancholy. Found it in a coat pocket and shouted to high heaven.

  She closed her eyes and there against the black was the imprint of the window holding the light from the outside floodlight, a white shadow.

  The slightest cool breeze moved in through the window. She couldn't remember feeling so happy and at peace since she was stuck in her office during the snowstorm. Then, and now, she had her little two-eyed hot plate for tomorrow's food, the bath had freshened her, the couch was wide enough and comfortable, and now her ankle, propped up, had stopped hurting completely. She had bathed in the presence of the Lord. She sang softly,

  I come to the garden alone,

  While the dew is still on the roses...

  "Dear Lord," she prayed aloud, "thank You for this church, for this community, for our county, and state, and the United States, and our North American continent. We pray for the sick and we pray for all babies without mothers. We're also thankful for our earth, our solar system, the Milky Way, everything in the universe, and the universe itself. We pray for those in hardship like Alease Toomey with her brother. Help him see the sin of drinking. Be with Alease. Help us to love one another and for all of us in this church to come to Jesus and accept Him as our Lord and Saviour. In Jesus' name, amen."

  Next door, preacher Crenshaw sat in the parsonage study in the soft chair with flat wooden arms, reading a book by the Reverend Billy Graham about the Holy Land.

  Crenshaw's wife was having one of her spells. He figured she'd be over it before too long. This one had been going on eight days, and they didn't usually last over a week, although there was that one that lasted three weeks. She would get down in the dumps and be miserable and it would generally mess things up. She'd blame him for things he didn't do. She'd talk nonstop about the bad condition of the world. He figured if they went to the Holy Land she'd get a spell. When she did get a spell, she'd be unpredictable, sometimes going to Belk Leggett to buy a bunch of dresses they couldn't afford. He'd have to sit down with the budget book and show her, make her take them all back except for maybe one, all the while worrying that church members might find out and say something and get something started.

  This business, this other business of his, about Cheryl Daniels, was a slight little lark that he could easily control. She wasn't but nineteen. What it was deep down was not the kind of problem he was usually up against. A delightful aspect of Cheryl's personality was that she would kid him, make fun of him. Lisa Rollins—with all her good church and community work—had been the same way a little bit, and had kind of brought it out in Cheryl, he reckoned. As long as he'd been in the pulpit, nobody had ever dared do that very much, because being a man of God was such a serious business deserving serious respect. Saving lost souls, bringing lost sheep to Jesus Christ was dead serious business. It involved eternal life in heaven or hell. But here'd been Lisa Rollins, plump and redheaded and a little older than him, and now Cheryl Daniels, a recently saved soul looking up at him like just about every other woman, young or old, looked at him —with admiration and worship—and he tried not to allow worship of himself. He was bound to deflect the worship of himself off into the direction it needed to go, toward God and Jesus, praise God. But here she had been looking up into his face and there had suddenly come into her eyes a sheer lack of fear and awe, and in place of fear and awe a hint of mockery and fun that was even more pronounced than the way Lisa Rollins was. "Preacher Crenshaw," Cheryl would say, "I bet you are a lot of fun when you want to be." How could somebody from her background be so brash and confident and yet because of that very background so fragile and uncertain of things? It was of paramount importance that she had accepted Jesus Christ as her saviour, and he and Lisa had successfully guided her in that direction, and yet there was this whole pulsing part of her that touched him, even burned him, in a way nothing else ever had. That part had to be of the Devil. What he sometimes thought about doing was shameful. What he wanted to do to her, with her, sometimes overpowered his imagination and intruded right in, no matter how hard he fought it.

  "Well, Cheryl, I get excited for the Lord," he'd say.

  But he'd done nothing to deny or subdue her obvious—mostly discreet—admiration for him. She was so young and so beautiful and the sight of those big full soft cantaloupes just ran all over him in spite of everything he could do to stop it. It just ran all over him like electricity and he thought of course about his wife, more plump than just plump, bad knees and wrists, having trouble getting around sometimes, and down in the dumps, and here this beautiful young angel-devil who had recently given her heart to Jesus was making fun of him. She saw a side of him, he reckoned. He was kind of glad that side was there, he guessed, but that side of him could not be allowed to cause the sinking, the swallowing up, of all of him and his mission for God. Why for heaven's sake, she was hardly more than a child.

  Marjorie Crenshaw, the preacher's wife, was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the big clock shaped like a cat's face, the one her sister had sent from Ohio for the children last Christmas. Marjorie was writing checks for August's bills and had just done the telephone bill. She thought about what they were paying the phone company just to hear over the phone the same things she heard everywhere on earth. From Ada Barker: "What a wonderful sermon that was. Does he ever repeat the same sermon?" From Mabel Lewis: "How in the world did you catch a man like that? It's one thing to be a good prea
cher, but to be so handsome on top of that." From that new Ben Coleman: "Where's Brother Crenshaw? Can you ask him to call me sometime tomorrow? By the way, does he hunt?" From Ruth Harris: "How in the world did you catch a man like that?" From Hannah Grangerford: "Such lovely children. They favor the preacher, don't they? It must be nice to have your husband home all week. Why are you teaching a Sunday school class? You don't need to be doing that, honey. Don't you have all you can handle with those five children? Is Mr. Crenshaw coming? Tell him what a wonderful sermon that was. Do you know what his favorite food is? I just love his loud ties, don't you? We want y'all to come for dinner. What's Mr. Crenshaw's favorite food?"

  AS Stephen drifted off to sleep, his asthma medicine doing its dreamy job, he heard parts of Aunt Margaret's Bible Stories as his mother read to him.

  ...and so Moses was hidden by his mother in the bullrushes on the river because the Egyptian king was going to kill all the little babies of Israel... He was in a basket with tar on it to keep the water out and his sister Miriam was standing watch.

  Miriam was the kindest girl in the land. She looked a lot like Cheryl and the woman who came to Stephen when he was dying on the battlefield. When the Egyptian princess found Moses, Miriam went and found Moses' mama, who became his nurse.

  ...Sometimes we see clouds take on mysterious shapes; sometimes they are dark; sometimes they are white or pink and golden. This is God's means of drawing the water up from the earth and sea and carrying it about through the air to let it fall in rain and to water the earth and all the plants and streams and ponds for the animals and for all the people.