Halley

by Faye Gibbons

  Ma Franklin did not get better. Suddenly Halley was doing practically all the household work except for whatever help Kate could give after work and the little bit Robbie was willing to do. There was almost no time to tuft except at night, when she was so exhausted she often fell asleep after only a few minutes of stitching.

  September moved on into October and with it cooler weather came. Pa Franklin did not hire anyone to help with the wash, so Halley began washing on Saturday, weather permitting, when Robbie would be home and Kate had a half day off from work. One Saturday in mid October she had the wash pot boiling and was slathering lye soap on her grandfather’s work overalls.

  “Put more wood around the wash pot,” she told Robbie when he poured a sloshing bucket of water into the rinse tub. “The water needs to be boiling.”

  Robbie threw down the bucket. “I’m tired of working.”

  Halley felt like screaming at him. But she held herself back. He already got yelled at too often by Pa Franklin. “I’m tired, too, Robbie, but the washing has to be done, and until Mama gets home, there’s only you and me to do it.”

  “Washing is woman’s work,” Robbie declared. “Pa Franklin said so. Boys don’t do washing.”

  “They do when their big sisters need them,” she told him. She did need his help. She wanted to see Bootsie at the church, and she needed to go to the Calvins’ to drop off the latest spread she’d done, and pick up new ones. There would be money to pick up, too—fifty cents, unless Mr. Bonner had found a mistake. With that, she would have two dollars and fifty cents from tufting. She looked at the spread hanging over the back of her grandmother’s rocker, just waiting for her to finish the wash.

  Putting the overalls down on the big rock next to the wash pot, Halley picked up the batting stick and stirred the boiling towels. “Robbie,” she said, “I’ll let you beat the towels. You can hit harder than me.”

  Robbie grinned at the flattery. He always pretended the towels were enemy soldiers or wild animals coming at him.

  Pa Franklin came out onto the front porch. “Girl, see to your grandmother,” he said.

  Halley took a deep breath. Why couldn’t he wait on Ma Franklin, at least while Halley was doing the wash? Whether it was a drink of water or help with the chamber pot or bathing, he called Kate or Halley. He acted as if it would be a disgrace to see his wife’s nakedness, but he surely must have seen it more than a few times since they’d had seven children together.

  “Just a minute,” she called to her grandfather. She fished out several steaming towels and splatted them down on the rock. “You can beat these while I’m gone,” she said to Robbie, “but don’t get near the wash pot.”

  Her grandfather was drawing a Jesus message on one of his crosses at the kitchen table when she walked in. His back was to the bed where his wife lay. After Ma Franklin had taken sick, she decided she wanted their bed moved into the kitchen where it was warmer. Two sheets hung on a wire strung from wall to wall provided a little privacy when needed.

  For some reason, Pa Franklin had been reluctant to leave their bedroom, but he finally gave in. He still went to the bedroom at least once a day and usually stayed there a long time. Praying, Halley figured, but she didn’t worry about it. The longer he stayed in there, the less she had to put up with him.

  The smell of baking sweet potatoes and simmering beans filled the kitchen. Halley had put these on to cook right after breakfast. Her stomach growled. She was already hungry.

  “I need my chamber pot,” Ma Franklin said, raising up with a groan. The corn shucks in the mattress crackled under her shifting weight.

  Halley pulled the chamber pot from under the bed and helped her grandmother slowly out of bed. The old lady’s bones popped as she lowered herself to the pot.

  Halley averted her eyes from her grandmother’s exposed rear end. Surely she herself would never be this wrinkled and helpless. She would rather be dead.

  “I’ll change gowns so you can wash this un,” Ma Franklin said.

  Halley groaned inwardly. She had plainly asked her grandmother to change after breakfast, and she’d refused.

  “My pillowcase, too. It’s sour smelling.”

  “I changed it yesterday.”

  “It’s sour again.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Halley answered politely, though she was irritated. She hurried to the chest at the foot of the bed. By the time she had the pillowcase changed, her grandmother was ready to be cleaned up and changed into her clean gown. The old lady had to be put back to bed, and then the chamber pot had to be emptied and washed.

  Halley was sliding the pot back under the bed when Ma Franklin said, “I’m sorry, child. I’m working you to death, and I’m not good for a thing in the world.”

  Shamed by her grandmother’s meekness, Halley said, “You’re good for some mighty fine stories.” On Ma Franklin’s good days she had told Halley stories of her young days.

  Suddenly, Robbie screamed.

  “What in tarnation!” Pa Franklin said.

  Halley dashed across the room and through the dogtrot. Robbie was dancing around the yard, holding his right arm. “I was trying to get another towel,” he said.

  Halley rushed him to the tub of cold rinse water and plunged his arm in. She went weak with relief when she examined it a few minutes later. It wasn’t blistered, only reddened. She dipped the arm again, fussing on him all the while.

  “You ain’t supposed to put a burn in cold water,” Pa Franklin advised from the porch. “Warm water’d be better, they say. Then you rub butter or kerosene on it. Worse it hurts, the better for healing.”

  When Pa Franklin went back inside Halley said, “Robbie, why don’t you go see if we have any mail.” They had been getting frequent letters from Gid. He was over his homesickness now. He loved taking classes and playing games with fellow CCC boys. They had good food and plenty of it. On Saturdays, he could go to movies and sometimes to dances. It sounded like a good life.

  When Robbie returned with letters, she didn’t stop. She wanted everything washed, starched, and hung out to dry when she put dinner on the table.

  She met her goal. When she emptied the washpot and tubs over the ashes of the fire, it was just a little past noon. After feeding her grandmother and helping her with the chamber pot once again, she sat down at last to the table with her grandfather and Robbie. Her legs were trembly.

  Pa Franklin asked the blessing and slapped a letter down on the table backed in Gid’s scrawled handwriting. “The usual partying and foolishness going on. If he lives to get out, Gid’ll be ruint forever.”

  “Bet he’s learning a lot,” said Halley.

  “Oh yeah,” said Pa Franklin. “He’s learning how to eat, drink, and make merry. Just like the Prodigal Son in the Bible when he went off to a far country.”

  “The Calvins say CCC’s good training for a young man.”

  “The Calvins can afford to say all kinds of good things about CCC—they ain’t got a boy in it.”

  Halley fell silent. She could hear Goliath thumping about on the porch and then the dogtrot and then the porch again. He was growling. Probably had caught a squirrel and was carrying it around like a prize, as he always did when he made a kill.

  Pa Franklin pulled another letter from his shirt pocket and squinted at it. “From what the Woodall girl says, Alpha Springs has as many willful children as we have around here.”

  “Dimple?” Halley asked, looking at the letter in her grandfather’s hand. It was Halley’s letter and he had opened it! She wanted to rip it from his hands and run with it. He had no right to open her mail. No right to read what Dimple had written and talk about it as if it was his letter.

  “Says some folks are saying Orrie Gravitt died of a broke heart. That boy-crazy daughter of hers, Lula May, told her she was getting married, and after that Miz Gravitt just give up.”

&nbs
p; Halley clenched her fists in her lap. Anger burned hot in her chest. Pinpricks of light seemed to explode in her brain. “I don’t blame Lula May one bit,” she said. “If she let them make a slave out of her, she’d never get a chance to have a life of her own.”

  “Sounds to me like you got a boyfriend in mind for yourself.”

  Halley blushed. Had Dimple teased her about a boyfriend in the letter? Surely not.

  Pa Franklin slid the letter across the table, and Halley snatched it and wadded it into a small ball right in front of her grandfather’s eyes. She had no interest in reading it now that he had ruined it. In this house Halley couldn’t even have a letter to call her own. She was going to write Dimple that very night and tell her not to send any more letters to Pa Franklin’s box. From now on her letters would go to Clarice.

  Halley was no longer hungry, but she forced herself to finish the sweet potato on her plate.

  Kate arrived as Halley was clearing the table. “What’s Goliath dragging around the yard out there?” she asked.

  “Oh no,” Halley moaned. Surely Goliath hadn’t pulled laundry off the line. That was puppy stuff. When Halley got to the porch, she screamed in anger and disbelief.

  “My spread!” she yelled. Goliath had pulled her bedspread off the rocker and was dragging it through the dirt. She could see two big holes in it.

  Furious, Halley took out after him, screaming to the top of her lungs. She scooped up rocks and pelted him. Goliath dropped the spread and headed for the woods.

  Halley stayed right behind him, throwing everything she could get her hands on. “You sorry dog. I hate you.”

  Somewhere back behind her, she heard her mother and Pa Franklin call, but she paid no attention. Her only thought was revenge. Finally her foot caught in a vine and she pitched headlong into a briar patch. Halley didn’t even try to get up. She simply curled up and cried about everything that had gone wrong in the last three months.

  “You all right?” Kate asked when she arrived. She pulled Halley to her feet.

  “No! I hate this place. I hate Pa Franklin, and I hate that dog. I’ll have to pay for that spread out of money I saved for Daddy’s gravestone. I worked so hard, and all for nothing.”

  “You left it where Goliath could get it.”

  “The wash is where he can get it, and he never bothers it. Grandma has left her shawl on that rocker lots of times and he doesn’t get that.”

  Kate nodded. “There must’ve been some smell on that spread that got his attention.”

  “Yeah. My smell. He hates me.”

  “Maybe it’s not a complete loss. If we can mend the holes, we’ll use it on our bed.”

  “No! I never want to see it again.”

  Back at the house Goliath was on the porch hugged up against Pa Franklin’s rocker. “Just blame yourself,” the old man said. “You left temptation in the dog’s path. Course you can blame your brother, too. He’s been playing keep-away with Golly—training the dog to chew on stuff.”

  “I’m going to the church to clean,” Halley said.

  “Girl!” Ma Franklin called when Halley passed the door into the kitchen. “Come read the Bible to me.” Halley had been doing that a lot lately. When she tired of reading, she could always ask the old lady for a story about her youth.

  Halley opened the kitchen door. “No time to read now, Grandma,” she called. “Got to go clean the church.”

  On the way to the church Halley took Dimple’s letter from her pocket. Smoothing it out, she read it and then tore it into tiny pieces. Her anger swelled afresh as she sprinkled them in the ditch.

  Bootsie was in the church when Halley arrived. She must’ve come straight from the mill. Lint still clung to her red hair. She’d already begun sweeping the floor, but she stopped when she saw Halley’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, setting her broom aside.

  Halley told her everything.

  Bootsie hugged Halley tight. “I’m so sorry,” she said, sitting down on a bench and pulling Halley down beside her. “I wish I could help.”

  “How is everything with you?” Halley finally asked.

  “Good as I can expect, I guess. Old Miz Duncan offered me money to keep quiet about ever’thing, and not to go to court. Said she’d see I keep my job till I start showing.”

  Halley was embarrassed for her. It was almost like getting paid for doing things with Stan. “Are you going to take the money?”

  “I told her I’d think about it. But what else can I do? I can’t make Stan do the right thing, or be the man I thought he was. And if he don’t want me, he wouldn’t give me anything but misery if he did marry me. Funny thing, Halley, Gid told me months ago he loved me and would marry me in a minute, but I was so stupid, I wouldn’t give him the time of day. Now I can see Gid is worth a thousand of Stan, even if Gid is a skinny little runt without two dimes to rub together.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Course, Gid wouldn’t have me now.”

  “He’s gone off to the CCC Camp,” Halley said.

  Bootsie nodded. “I heard your mama telling somebody at the mill right after he left, and then I started getting letters from him. I been trying to decide if I ought to write back. I wish I could tell him how I’d feel about him now, if I could go back and do things over, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Halley squirmed just to think about writing such a letter to a man. Bootsie’s problems made her own seem small. Even the torn up bedspread and the opened letter seemed nothing in comparison.

  “What are you going to do?” Halley asked.

  “Well, I ain’t going to kill my baby, which was Miz Duncan’s main idea. She knows somebody in Dalton who can ‘get rid of it,’ she says. I told her, ‘None of this is the baby’s fault.’ And then I told her, ‘This might be the only grandbaby you’ll have. You ever think about that?’ Might be the only baby I ever have, and I ain’t killing it.”

  Bootsie fell silent for a while and then she said, “I reckon I’ll take whatever money Miz Duncan offers. I’m saving all I make at the mill, ever’ penny except what I give my sister for board. I don’t have to do nothing for now. If I’m lucky, it’ll be maybe three months before I’ll really be showing.”

  “How can you be so calm about it?” Halley asked. “You’re not all torn up the way you were.”

  Bootsie smiled. “That’s the best part, Halley. God saved me. And He told me He was going to take care of me. He told me that somehow everything is going to be all right. Ever since then I ain’t had nothing to be anxious about.”

  Bootsie picked up her broom and began sweeping. The girl’s face was more serene and happy than Halley had ever seen it. With all her heart, Halley hoped that everything was going to be all right.

  9. Garnetta Pays a Visit

  Cold weather brought more trouble. Lottie, the main milk cow, fell into a ravine and got killed. Buying a replacement took all of the first CCC check and more. “I talked Hewitt down on his price,” Pa Franklin bragged when he led the new cow home. “Sukie’s dropped two sets of twin calves already. She’ll end up paying for herself.”

  They soon found out why Hewitt was willing to be talked down. Sukie was particular not only about which side she was milked on, but also about who could handle her. She favored men. She would kick and swing her horns every time Kate or Halley got near. To Halley’s delight, Pa Franklin had to begin doing the milking night and morning, and it was about to kill him. “Milking is woman’s work,” he kept grumbling.

  He grumbled louder when Sukie took to hiding at evening milking time. The other cow, Bessie, would come running just like Lottie always had, at the first rattle of the feed pail, but Sukie would lie down in tall grass or behind a clump of blackberry vines and be real still to keep her bell from ringing. The colder it got, the more often she hid.

  Finally, Sukie started escaping from the pasture altogethe
r and heading to Belton. One time the sheriff penned her up and charged Pa Franklin two dollars bail. Word got out, and neighbors began to talk and laugh about the Prodigal Cow. “Seen your cow yesterday, preacher,” someone would say. “She was heading to town. Reckon she’ll end up in jail again?”

  Pa Franklin didn’t take such teasing too well. Worse, he had to leave off painting his Jesus messages to repair fencing. That was what he was doing on the last Saturday in October when Garnetta Miller came to visit at last, bringing Frank Earl and Dimple and lots of good food.

  Robbie was overjoyed to see his friend. “Now you can go see my dog ride through on the two o’clock train,” he said when he met Garnetta at her car. “Buck’s a train dog now.”

  Halley felt shy. Both Dimple and Frank Earl had grown and changed in the two months since she’d last seen them. Dimple was growing a real bosom at last, and Frank Earl was showing a few sprigs of beard. Most important, they seemed interested in each other.

  “I’ll certainly have to go see that wonder dog,” Garnetta said, handing a food basket to Robbie and a bigger one to Frank Earl. “Let’s warm ourselves in the house before Frank Earl goes out to split wood.”

  Pa Franklin arrived as they all headed through the dogtrot to the kitchen.

  “What you doing out there in the pasture, Webb?” Garnetta asked after they’d exchanged greetings. She suppressed a smile. “Looking for your cow again?”

  Pa Franklin heaved a big sigh. “I take it you stopped at Shropshire’s Store. I’m surprised they could take time off from deciding whether Roosevelt could win the election next month to catch you up on local gossip. Well, if’en the Old Woman can get well, I’ll have the last laugh yet. Ada will break that cow from hiding and running around, and she’ll milk it, too, or know the reason why. They ain’t never been no cow that could conquer the Old Woman.”

  “Ma Franklin took to her bed a few weeks ago,” Halley explained.

  “I heard that, too,” said Garnetta. She turned to Pa Franklin. “And they tell me you didn’t send for a doctor yet?”