Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  “Was that a friend of yours?” Reverend Vaughn asked.

  “No, he’s just a hood. His name’s Larry. He used to be in my class, but he flunked.”

  “Oh. Charming guy.”

  The car swerved and turned left up Church Street.

  The minister stood and walked over to the trash bin. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain,” he said, dumping a wad of sticky napkins into the metal container. “By Friday I’ll be wrapped up in another sermon and won’t have time to think about whether it’s worth it. At least this keeps me occupied. Shall we go?”

  Suddenly, the screech of skidding tires tore through the damp air. The sound rose, then fell, then rose again. Reverend Vaughn stopped and turned his head to listen. With a long, rubbery whine, the maroon Chevy shot out of Gora Street and made a skidding turn onto Walker. An approaching milk truck jolted noisily to a stop, and the Chevy slid sideways across the pavement, stopping just short of the sidewalk. The wheels dug in again, and the Chevy raced up toward the Dairy Queen.

  “What the hell’s this?” mumbled Reverend Vaughn.

  The hood named Larry was leaning out the front window on the passenger side, and a hood I didn’t recognize was halfway out a window in back. They were yelling and waving their arms. From the side, the car looked like some kind of big insect with a head full of jointed feelers. The Chevy roared up to the Dairy Queen and swept into the gravelly parking lot. The wheels on the right side missed part of the driveway and bounced off the curb.

  “Jesus Christ!” yelled the minister. He grabbed for me, wrapping a long arm around my shoulder and turning his back on the car as a shield. The Chevy braked and swerved across the parking lot, just a few feet in front of us, churning up a cloud of gravel and dust. Larry and his buddies kept screaming. I took a moment to nestle my head into the soft place on Reverend Vaughn’s chest, just beneath his shoulder. A clean, starchy smell, faintly dizzying, came off his clothes.

  The Chevy finished its turn and without stopping roared out of the driveway and on down Walker, the hoods still leaning out the windows making nonsense noises. At best, the sounds were like a recitation of vowels, screamed at full volume: “A-E-I-O-U! A-E-I-O-U!” The noise trailed off as the car rocketed down Walker.

  The girl working in the Dairy Queen rapped on the glass window, and Reverend Vaughn dropped his arm from around my shoulder. “Did you know those boys?” she asked in an excited voice.

  “Hell, no,” he said.

  The girl looked startled. She’d probably never heard a clergyman swear before.

  Reverend Vaughn dumped what was left of his cone in the trash can. He asked if I was all right, and I nodded. “Then let’s get out of here before Attila and the Huns come back,” he said.

  “Oh, you do know them,” the girl called out as we left.

  TWENTY

  In the evening, the sky cleared and the moon came out. As I lay in bed, a shaft of moonlight, so thick and silvery it seemed to have weight, poured through the slit between the curtains and pressed down on my legs. My pulse had started pounding back at the Dairy Queen, and it hadn’t slowed, beating along like something apart from me, a tiny motor racing with the much larger engine in the hoods’ car. Is it possible to have a heart attack at sixteen? To calm myself, I sat up and looked out the window. The backyard was all shades of gray and black, like a wood carving in a book, or an old, faded photograph. The Porter house was completely dark. Mr. and Mrs. Porter always went to bed dreadfully early, and, of course, Grandma Porter was usually ahead of them. Several times, from across the yard, I’d watched her tuck herself in, probably eager to start dreaming again of her escape. What was his name? Harry. Harry was coming to rescue her. It occurred to me that we all had our white knights. Grandma Porter had Harry. Bunny had Eddie. Mrs. Vernon had Jesus. And I had Reverend Vaughn.

  I lay back down on the bed. There, I told myself. That ought to prove how realistic I was being. Harry, Eddie, Jesus—and Reverend Vaughn. What an idiot I was. It was ridiculous to think he cared a whit for me—or, at least, a whit more than he cared for any of the other people in the Congo. He was a minister doing his job, that was all. He was supposed to seem interested in people and their problems. Still … what about all the time he’d spent with me and the talks we’d had? Those weren’t normal, preacherly conversations. He didn’t open up like that with everyone. And at the Dairy Queen, he’d pulled me to him at the first sign of trouble. He didn’t push me to safety, or step in the way. What he did was … well, he gave me a kind of embrace. I could still feel, on my cheek, the slippery softness of his fine white shirt. Had I closed my eyes? I shouldn’t have, but I think I did. I actually fit there, right under his arm.

  I remembered that when I was little, I used to cut out paper dolls and save them in a shoebox. After a while, I had dozens of paper dolls—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters—dolls of all shapes and sizes. Day after day, I’d take them out, shuffling them constantly into new families, testing how a blue cardboard son fit with a family made of drawing paper, or how a father clipped from an illustration in the Saturday Evening Post got along with a mother in a Life photograph. Thinking back, I realized that I’d obeyed only one rule with the families—a single, constant rule that was frightening for a tall girl, but still I never broke it: The father had to be taller than the mother. How do you fight an instinct like that?

  I wished Bunny were more help in all this. She should have picked up some romantic insights over the years—though maybe that was wishful thinking, given the men she’d chosen. Anyway, I could tell she didn’t like Reverend Vaughn; at least, she didn’t like to talk about him. I’d bring him up and she’d complain or change the subject. It was funny, Grandmother had been the same way about Bunny when Bunny talked about her boyfriends. Of course, Bunny was almost obsessive about it. Something about being at Grandmother’s house made Bunny babble on about the latest man in her life. It drove Grandmother crazy. Bunny would be going on, and Grandmother’s knitting would get faster and faster, the needles clicking away like the sound of a typewriter.

  She never actually criticized Bunny, though once, at the end of dinner, after Bunny had been rambling on about Lester Vincent and about some terrific job he was about to get, Grandmother got up to clear the dishes and said in a soft voice, “A woman’s only supposed to have one man in her life.” Thinking about it later, I realized that she said it when she did so there couldn’t be any arguing. She just dropped the idea there for all of us and went into the kitchen. Of course, for her there was only one man. She was married for thirty-one years to Arthur Stoneham, a farmer. He died long before I was born—before Bunny was born, too, as a matter of fact. He and Grandmother weren’t Bunny’s real parents. Bunny’s not even sure who her mother was, probably some farm girl from around Indian Falls who got in trouble. The girl needed someone to take her baby, and Grandmother was lonely without Arthur around. Grandmother had had four children of her own—three boys and a girl—but by the time Bunny arrived, they’d grown up and moved away. We never saw them much, and they were hardly ever mentioned, by Bunny or by Grandmother.

  Bunny was devoted to Grandmother and we used to go up to the farm all the time when she was alive. Tom and I hated those trips. To us, the farm seemed terribly lonely and primitive. The animals were gone by then, except for a few old geese that dirtied up the yard and nipped at you if you got too close, and the rickety old house was usually chilly. Grandmother always wore layers of wool sweaters.

  In those days, she was too old to keep things up by herself. Grandmother was in her eighties when we knew her. She had been small to begin with, and as she grew old, her back had developed a slight curve, so she was always hunched over. She was sweet to Tom and me, but she never talked much. By then, she was warm and content there inside her sweaters and didn’t need anyone else to keep her company.

  Bunny took it hard when Grandmother died. It happened in the winter, when I was eleven. The Indian Falls sheriff called on a Saturday afternoon. Grandmoth
er had been found in her bed, she’d been dead for several days. The heat in the farmhouse had gone off, and she was frozen solid, though people said she’d probably died of natural causes and only froze later.

  We drove up to her funeral on Tuesday. Tom and I had to miss school. She was laid out in a metal coffin on the table in the dining room of the farmhouse. The coffin was lined with puffy, silver satin, and Grandmother was so light that she floated on top of the material, barely denting it, the way a water bug rides on water. Grandmother’s four other children were there, along with lots of people from the town.

  Tom and Bunny and I were standing apart when one old man came over. Thick puffs of gray hair like cotton balls sprouted from his ears, and more gray hairs were sticking out of each nostril. He ignored Bunny and me and talked to Tom. “I asked her to marry me, but she turned me down for Arthur Stoneham, heh, heh.” He had a faint, raspy laugh. Tom scowled at him, and the old man looked confused.

  “I bet you were a pretty good catch yourself,” said Bunny.

  He brightened again. “Up until fourteen years ago, you could have asked my wife that, but she’s dead now.” He again turned to Tom for encouragement, but Tom was still scowling, so the old man shuffled away.

  “That was Tim Butterick,” said Bunny. “Grandmother said she turned him down ’cause he was sickly. Now, he’s outlived them all. You just can’t ever tell.”

  The coffin was closed, and we drove it down the road to a little cemetery that had been carved out of a pine woods. The frozen needles crunched under our feet as we marched to the burial site. The night before, a bonfire had been built so the ground would thaw and a grave could be dug. Grandmother’s sons lowered the coffin into the hole with ropes, and the minister read a prayer. It was a sparkling bright day, but very cold, and his breath floated in beautiful, pure-white clouds, framed against the dark green of the pines. When he finished, everyone walked by and threw dirt on the coffin, using a small, black spade. Afterward, we left quickly, and Bunny hardly said a word to her stepbrothers and stepsister.

  Later that winter, the farmhouse burned down. It had been empty since Grandmother died and vandals finally got to it. Bunny only learned of the fire several weeks after it had happened, but she insisted that we drive up for one last look. All that was left was the stone foundation, covered with soot and charred wood. I was shocked. I had known a huge, creaky, slightly frightening house. The flat, square foundation that remained looked terribly small, like a child’s thing, hardly larger than a hopscotch game we’d draw on the sidewalk with chalk. Lying now in Sissy’s bed, I remembered standing on the damp, cold lawn on a miserable March day and staring at the black scar in the top of the hill. “There goes home,” Bunny had said.

  The midnight whistle blew at the KTD. Several people walked down Oak Street, their heels clicking in the quiet air. After a while, a vehicle drove by, then stopped just down the street. The engine shut off, but the tinny sound of a car radio trailed on in the night. Someone was sitting there, listening, with the windows open. The sound kept up for about twenty minutes, the tinkling, distant lilt of the songs alternating with the staccato jabber of the disc jockey. The tunes, the words were unrecognizable, but familiar. When the radio was finally turned off, the night seemed empty.

  Five minutes later, there was a very light bump on the side of the house below Sissy’s window. I crawled down the bed and pulled back the curtain. Elro Judy was outside, standing on a ladder. His head was just below the windowsill.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed through the screen.

  “Visitin’.” He was holding a bottle of beer.

  “Go away!”

  “Come on, just a little,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” He took another step up the ladder, which ground against the side of the house.

  “Are you crazy? They’re going to hear you.”

  “So what?” In his drunkenness, he forgot to lower his voice. The loudness of his words amused him, and he laughed.

  “Please, Elro, go away,” I begged. “I’m already in too much trouble.”

  “You come out then,” he said, talking in a whisper again. He thought for a moment. In his condition, it appeared to take some effort. “We’ll go to the fair.”

  “It’s not open yet.”

  “This is the best time—before it opens. They stay up all night partyin.’ My brother’s workin’ there, and he says they got great stuff this year. They got a wrestlin’ bear, and, oh, a two-headed baby in a glass jar. The heads come out of its shoulders like a V-8 engine.” He waved his bottle, took a drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another step up the ladder. Putting his lips close to the screen, he whispered, “You know you want to come. You know you do.”

  “Shhh!” Someone was at the bedroom door. I pulled the curtains shut and scrambled down the bed and under the sheet. The doorknob rattled and the door opened a crack.

  “Martha?” Mrs. Vernon called out softly. “Martha, are you all right?” She stepped into the room, her slippers sliding over the wood floor.

  “Who’s there?” I tried to sound half asleep.

  “It’s me, dear. You must have had a nightmare. You’ve been talking in your sleep. I could hear you all the way down the hall.” She came to the bed and leaned over me. The scent of talcum powder was so strong that it was hard to breathe. She was wearing a light-colored robe that she clutched together at the front with one hand. I’d never seen her in bedclothes before.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be sorry. Should I turn on the light?”

  “No, thanks. It’s all right.”

  She was silent for a few seconds. I imagined her studying me and the room. Finally, she said, “Well, why don’t I just sit here until you fall asleep again. When Sissy was a little girl, she used to have nightmares, and I’d come and sit with her, right there in that chair.”

  “I don’t think you need to stay. I’ll be fine now.”

  “Are you sure? You sound a little jumpy.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, okay, then.” She padded toward the door. When she was a few feet from it, she stopped and turned. She stared toward the window. Even in the darkness, I could see her face changing shape, tightening, narrowing. Suddenly, she stepped back toward me, wringing the front of her bathrobe. Her eyes were diamonds in the room’s faint light. “Oh, Martha,” she wailed, “there’s so much evil in the world, so much evil.” She came quickly and knelt beside the bed. “That’s what nightmares are—evil thoughts bubbling out.” She grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her mouth. “I lied to you before. I told you that Sissy had nightmares when she was little. She had them when she was older, too. She had them a lot. The week before she died, she had them almost every night. Ugly, evil nightmares, so she’d wake up screaming, and I’d have to come and lie with her. Sissy. Sissy.”

  She covered her face with her hands and started to sob. Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed the top of my nightgown, pulling me close to her face. “It’s the serpent,” she hissed. “That’s where the evil comes from. The serpent. They tried to blame Eve, but it was the serpent. I know, I know, I know.” She buried her head in my chest, rubbing her face back and forth. “Oh, Martha,” she moaned. “I know, I know, I know.” The words had a kind of rhythm to them, almost as if she were singing.

  Reaching out slowly, I put my arm around her shoulder. It seemed strange and unnatural to be comforting her, but I stroked her back softly. After a few minutes, her sobbing slowed and then stopped. She lifted her head and used a corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes. She stood up, bracing herself on the bed. She sighed. “I hope you’re over your nightmare,” she said. Her voice was limp. “I’ll leave you alone, if you think you’ll be all right.” She backed away, toward the door.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Then, good night, dear. Sweet dreams.” She slipped into the hall and closed the door gently.

  I couldn’t hear her walk away, so I lay in
bed for a long time. Finally, I climbed out and went to the door. The hall was dark and empty. The house was quiet. I turned and faced the window. The ghostly silhouette of a man was unmistakably shadowed on the curtain. I climbed back on the bed and put my face close to the screen. “Go away,” I whispered.

  “That lady’s nuts,” said Elro. “She’s gumballs.”

  “Please, please, she’ll be back. Go away.”

  Elro climbed a few rungs down the ladder. His chin was just at the level of the sill, and, through the curtain, his head seemed to sit there by itself, like a flowerpot.

  “This is a bad place,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Please, Elro.”

  “I hate it. I’m gonna run away.”

  “Please.”

  His head disappeared below the sill. I pulled the curtain back and watched him climb down. At the bottom, he picked up the ladder and tucked it under his arm, then he ran silently across the lawn and around the corner of the house. A few seconds later, I heard his truck start up.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “What a glorious day!” trilled Mrs. Vernon the next morning when she appeared at the door, a little later than usual but with an otherwise unchanged routine. She flung back the curtains that had hidden Elro just a few hours before. Outside, past the leaves of the oak, I thought I saw a dark, gray cloud curling around the sky. “Sissy always loved these warm summer mornings,” she said. She folded her hands in her apron and asked if I’d slept well. Nothing in her face gave away anything about nightmares or serpents. I told her I’d slept just fine.

  She chattered on through breakfast, talking about her friend Mrs. Carmel, who kept getting terrible backaches until the doctors found a tumor the size of a lemon in the back of her neck. They took the tumor out and that helped for a while, but now the backaches were coming again, and Mrs. Carmel wouldn’t tell the doctors because she was afraid they would think she was only imagining the pain.