by Faye Gibbons
Mr. Calvin took pity on them and drove on to the Franklin house.
“Git the mail, girl!” Pa Franklin called out the window when Mr. Calvin slowed to take the turn-off to the Franklin house.
Halley slid off the truck in back and Mr. Calvin went on. In the mailbox she found the very first letter from Dimple. She tore it open and read it eagerly.
Dear Halley,
I miss you. I couldn’t rite til now. We didn’t have no riting tablit or envelops. I boried these from Garnetta.
Molly set with a boy at church Sunday. It was Cletus Hill, but the airs she put on youd think it was the guvner.
Miz Gravitt is havin more trouble with her secret condition. You know what Im talking about. Turns out Lollie Marchman has the same secret condition. Rekon now we know why Rabbit Burnette married her.
Next week Garnetta wants me to help her like last yr. You know what I’m talking about. Wish you could be here,
Love
Dimple
Halley wished she could be there, too.
6. Tufting Spreads
They were only able to pick cotton a few days. When Luke Calvin’s crop came in, his family stayed home to pick their own cotton. Pa Franklin could find no other ride to the Samson place, and no one within walking distance was hiring pickers.
“Now you’ve got a chance to go talk to Bernice Mitman about a weaving job at the mill,” Pa Franklin said to Kate at supper after the last day of picking.
“Yes, sir,” said Kate.
“Bernice worked at the mill for twenty years or more, ’til her health went bad,” Pa Franklin continued.
“Probably went bad from working at the mill,” Halley said.
“Had nothing to do with it,” Pa Franklin said to Halley before turning back to Kate. “The more you know going in, the more apt you are to get a regular job.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” said Kate.
Halley had her own plans. Tuesday was Mr. Bonner’s regular day to drop off stamped spreads at the Calvins. Because of cotton picking, probably only Mrs. Calvin would be at home, but that did not matter to Halley. She was eager to meet Mr. Bonner and get her first spreads.
During the night the rain started, and it was still falling the next morning. “It’s messy out there,” said Ma Franklin at breakfast.
“Ah, a little rain never hurt nobody,” said Pa Franklin.
“Except maybe for a little pneumoney fever now and then,” said Gid.
After breakfast Halley and Kate put on the raincoats from Mrs. Calvin’s sister’s hand-me-down box and waited on the front porch for a break in the rain. It didn’t look promising. Water poured off the roof in sheets, and the rain barrel overflowed into a yard that was like a lake.
Golly must have smelled them from the barn. He came running from that direction, jumped up on the porch, and shook himself. Kate and Halley ducked away from the water and the doggy smell. Not Robbie. He came from the kitchen and slipped Golly a biscuit—the one with Gid’s meat in it.
“Can I go with you to the Calvins’?” he begged.
Before Halley could answer, Gid came down the dogtrot. He winked at Halley and said, “Robbie, I’m gonna need your help reweaving the rockers. I don’t think I can spare you.”
Finally, the rain let up a bit, and Kate and Halley headed out, Kate to the Mitmans’ and Halley to the Calvins’. Both wore their worst shoes and carried better ones wrapped in oilcloth. They wore rain bonnets made out of oilcloth to keep their hair dry.
As they walked, Halley tried to talk her mother out of mill work.
“We have to pay our way,” Kate said.
“We already do,” answered Halley, “with all the money Pa Franklin took from us.
“Pa says different.”
Halley grunted with impatience. “We’ll never pay enough to satisfy him. Clarice says mill work made her mother’s cousin sick—coughing up blood and such as that. And no matter what Pa Franklin says, I’ll bet Bernice Mitman’s ailments were caused by working at the mill.”
“It’s a chance I have to take.”
Halley tried again. “What about that long walk to work and back every day? At least three miles each way. You’ll have to walk in weather like this and on days when the ground is iced over.”
“I’ll manage,” Kate said. “I have to.”
Jut short of the Mitman cutoff, the steady drizzle became a downpour once more. “The church!” said Kate, breaking into a run. “We’ll stop here and wait for the rain to slack.”
Then they were inside the dimness of Hopewell Church, dripping puddles of water onto the rough floors. The building was damp and musty. The songbooks were stacked on a table near the door, and the smell of them was heavy in the air.
Halley drew her mother to a window. “See that grave right over there? The one next to the cedar tree? A marker like that is what I mean to get for Daddy.”
Kate shook her head. “Don’t count on it. I mentioned to Pa that you want to get up money to put a marker on Jim’s grave. He thinks it’s foolish.”
“He put markers on his babies’ graves.”
“Before the Depression. Times are harder now.”
“You wanted to get a marker right after Daddy died. And even a few days ago, you didn’t act like it would be a bad thing to do.”
Kate shrugged. “’Honor thy father and Mother.’ That’s what the Bible says. I have to mind Pa.”
“Well, he’s not my father, and I think I need to honor my father with a marker on his grave.”
Kate frowned. “You’re going to have to come down a few notches, young lady.” She spoke in her father’s tone of voice. “These are hard times, and they’re likely to get harder. Even in good times a woman can’t have everything she wants. She’s lucky if she gets anything she wants. Getting big ideas just makes things worse.”
“But Daddy always said . . .”
“Oh, Jim said plenty.” Kate’s voice was mocking. “‘Take care of your neighbors, and they’ll take care of you, get learning, and the world can be yours.’ Well, he had twice as much education as me, and little good it did him. As for neighbors, I didn’t see none coming to our rescue when he died.”
“Don’t run Daddy down,” Halley cried. “Daddy was good. He was good to us.”
“But like Pa says, if he’d made people pay in cash for work, if he hadn’t always been handing money out to people . . .”
“That’s not fair,” said Halley. “You handed out as much as Daddy, only you gave it to preachers. And you’re not fair to me and Robbie either. You don’t give any notice to us. All you study is obeying Pa Franklin. If there is a God, he would want you to take care of your young’uns.”
Kate drew back her hand and struck Halley’s face with a resounding slap.
Halley staggered back, gasping. Her mother had never hit her before. Dodging around Kate, Halley ran to the door and out into the rain. She heard her mother call after her, but she did not reply, nor did she stop. She had left her rain bonnet, but she wasn’t about to go back after it. Soon, Kate’s voice faded into nothing.
A car was parked in front of the Calvin house. It was so loaded with sheets of unbleached muslin, yarn and other goods that there was no doubt whose it was. The Calvin dogs came around the house, and the puppies soon had Halley surrounded. Halley grabbed up a stick to use as a mud scraper, and she tried to clean her shoes, but it was hopeless. Finally, she pulled them off and was looking for a place high enough to safeguard them from the dogs when Mrs. Calvin appeared at the door.
“Scrape them on the edge of the porch and hang them on the nails next to the porch swing.” she said, “Your raincoat, too.”
Halley slicked the water out of her hair as best she could, and then took out her dry shoes and pulled them on before going into the house.
All the Calvin girls called gre
etings as she passed the door into the parlor, but Mrs. Calvin kept Halley moving.
“Halley’ll be back when she gets into dry clothes,” she said to her daughters. She led Halley to the girls’ bedroom and found some clothes. “These will do until yours dry,” she said, handing her a petticoat and dress. “My goodness whatever happened to your face?”
Halley covered her cheek with her hand. “Uh, I ran into a tree limb.”
Mrs. Calvin kept looking at her for a moment and then handed her a towel and a comb. “For your hair. Come to the parlor when you get dressed.”
Halley scrubbed the worst of the wetness out of her hair and then combed it. She looked like a drowned rat. A drowned rat with a red hand print on one cheek.
When Halley went into the parlor, a dark-haired man was checking the spreads the Calvin girls had tufted. A much younger man stood beside him. Both looked up as Halley entered.
“Mr. Bonner and his son, Richard,” said Mrs. Calvin. “And this is Halley Owenby, the new neighbor we told you about. She moved here a few weeks ago from Alpha Springs in Bartow County.”
“Oh yes,” the older man said and bent over the spread again. “I know the Alpha Springs area. I’ve just started putting out work over there. You know the Nixons? Their oldest girl got married a few days ago.”
“Mr. Bonner brings us news from all over,” said Clarice.
The man handed Halley the spread he’d just been checking. “This is how your work should look.”
“Father says Clarice Calvin is one of his best tufters,” Richard said.
Clarice beamed.
Mr. Bonner picked up a new spread and shook out its folds. “Let’s see, Alpha Springs. One of the Woodall mules died.”
“Oh no,” said Halley. Mules were expensive. How could the Woodalls afford a replacement?
“And Mrs. Gravitt died.”
“No!” Halley was stunned. Of course Dimple had said the woman was ailing, and Halley knew women sometimes died during childbirth. But Mrs. Gravitt?
“There was a new baby born in the family before she died,” Richard Bonner said.
Mr. Bonner frowned at his son for mentioning a delicate subject like childbirth in front of the young women. Then he added, “A healthy boy, they say.”
Halley had never liked Mrs. Gravitt much, but the sorrow of losing her own father came back fresh when she thought of Annabel and the rest of the Gravitt children.
Mr. Bonner counted out the money due the Calvin girls and gave them all new muslin sheets with designs stamped in blue. “So you will learn to tuft with these pretty girls?” he said to Halley.
Halley nodded. “They’re going to help me start today.”
“You couldn’t find better teachers,” said Richard Bonner.
“I will give you only two spreads,” said Mr. Bonner. “While you are learning. Later, maybe three or four.”
Richard winked at her, and Halley blushed and dropped her eyes.
Mr. Bonner left with his son and the girls went to work. There wasn’t much that they had not already shown her, and by dinnertime Halley was moving along almost as fast as Clarice. Her thoughts were moving, too. While the Calvin girls chattered and laughed, Halley was thinking about how like Pa Franklin her mother was becoming. She thought of escape, too, but the only place she could think of going was to Garnetta. Garnetta, she knew would not keep her without Kate’s consent. But, even if Garnetta would take her, how could she go off and leave Robbie?
“You’re awful quiet today, Halley,” said Clarice at last.
“Bet she’s studying on that flirty Richard Bonner,” said Eva. “He’s the kind to try and charm every girl he meets.”
Halley’s face went hot. “I was thinking about Mrs. Gravitt,” she said, “and Robbie. I mean, him going to school by himself because I’ll be going to school in Belton.”
Eva dismissed that worry with a wave of the hand. “Steve and Dooley will take care of him. Nobody’s going to pick on him long as they’re around.”
Halley was suddenly aware of the smell of food coming from the kitchen. She stood. “While the rain is stopped, I better change into my own clothes and head home,” she said.
“Stay and eat,” Clarice urged, and the other girls joined in. Mrs. Calvin heard the discussion and came to add her invitation.
But Halley insisted, so Mrs. Calvin brought her clothes, which she had dried next to the kitchen stove. When Halley had changed, Clarice handed her a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. “I wrapped your spreads and yarn, in case it commences raining again. You can return the oilcloth next week.”
Mrs. Calvin handed her a paper bag, too. “A little food in case you get hungry on the way home,” she said.
Their kindness almost brought Halley to tears. “Thank you,” she managed to say before hurrying to the porch to change shoes. “I’ll see you next week,” she called as she left.
Though the rain had stopped, at least temporarily, the road was far worse than in the morning. The mud had been churned to a quagmire by the traffic of the day, and the ditches on either side were filled to overflowing. In some places, she could not go around the puddles or cross the flooded ditches to get up on the bank. In those places she had to pull off her shoes and wade. The bridge over Sipsy Creek was barely above the rushing water. The cotton fields on the downhill side of the road were partially flooded. Halley plodded on.
She came to Hopewell Church and remembered her rain bonnet. She was tempted to leave it, but then she might need it again before Sunday. Besides, now that she looked, the door of the church was ajar. There was no wagon or car in the yard—no tire or wagon tracks. Maybe Kate had left it open. Or perhaps the latch did not fully catch, and it blew open on its own.
She reached the edge of the yard and heard something from inside. Crying? She paused for a moment and then moved forward on tiptoe. Going up the steps, she peeked inside. In the dimness she saw a young woman kneeling at the altar.
“Oh Lord,” she was crying, “help me! I know I ain’t deserving, but please help me.”
Something about the figure looked familiar. Then the girl shifted and the light from the window fell on her hair.
“Bootsie?” Halley said, stepping inside and dropping her burdens on a pew.
Bootsie turned, scrambled to her feet, and met Halley with outstretched arms. “Oh, Halley, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she cried. Her eyes were puffy and her face red. “Stan broke up with me. He said he don’t want to ever see me no more.”
Halley didn’t know what to say. She could not be truly sorry that Bootsie was not going to marry such a lazy, selfish mama’s boy. “You’ll find someone else,” she finally said.
Bootsie shook her head. “Nobody else will want me.”
“Every young man in two counties wants you already.”
“Not now.” Bootsie looked back to the altar. “God don’t even want me. I talked to the preacher at Mitt’s Tabernacle last night. He said he didn’t think I was ready to join the church.”
“How would he know?” Halley burst out. “That’s between you and the Lord.”
Bootsie shook her head again. “The preacher said come back in six months to a year, and they’d see what kind of life I was living then.”
“That’s terrible!” Halley said.
“Do you think your grandfather would let me join this church?” Bootsie asked.
Reluctantly, Halley shook her head. He’d used Bootsie too many times as an example of the kind of sorry girl Gid ran after. And he’d even criticized one Belton church for allowing her to sing at the opening of revival.
Bootsie dropped down on a bench. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. When not even the Lord wants me, I know for sure nobody here on earth is going to have a thing to do with me.”
“I’m your friend,” Halley said, “and it sure won’t make me thi
nk less of you because Stan Duncan broke up with you. He’s not good enough for you.”
“You won’t say that when you know.” Bootsie looked up with despairing eyes. “Halley, I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh Bootsie!” Halley sank down on the bench beside her. This was worse than she had imagined. “Are you sure?”
Bootsie nodded. “I didn’t come around this month, and I never miss. I’m never even late. And when I told him, Stan said . . .” She broke into sobs. “He said the baby wasn’t his. Said he used protection. Said his mama told him if I let him, I let other men, too. Stan knows that ain’t so. He knows he was the first one—the only one. And he knows it was only after he was talking getting married that I give in.”
“When I went to see old Miz Duncan this morning, I told her I’d go to court. I reckon she’ll see to it I lose my job now. But I’m glad I told her. At least I got her worried. Kept saying going to court would ruin their good name and mine, too. I looked her right in the eye and I said, ’My name is already going to be mud. I ain’t got a thing to lose, but you have.’”
“What are you going to do?” Halley asked.
“Keep on working, long as I have a job. Save all I can, I guess. Just wait as long as I can to tell anybody. You’re the only one I’ve told besides Stan and his mama.”
“I won’t say anything,” Halley promised.
“I never thought you would.”
Halley reached for the paper bag Mrs. Calvin had given her. She pulled out a biscuit with a thick piece of ham in it and gave it to Bootsie and then took the second one for herself. “I never thought Stan was good enough for you. Now he’s proved it.”
Bootsie looked at her mournfully. “How come you could see him for what he was, and I couldn’t?”
Halley shrugged. “I guess you just trust people more than I do.” Two fried apple pies remained in the bag. “Here,” Halley said, “you eat these. Pa Franklin will be out looking for me if I don’t get home.” Halley picked up her tufting bundle and retrieved her rain bonnet from the corner of the pew.