The line was part of the Lord’s Prayer, which was carved in entirety upon the headstone for one Orton Wood. His family must have had money.
Etta looked again at the words, and then scanned the headstones surrounding her, some large, some small. Many names, people who had once lived and loved the best they knew how.
A warmth swept her, seeming for an instant to fill her heart. It quickly passed, but Etta knew she had felt it. Then quite suddenly the baby inside her kicked. Etta put a hand on her round belly. The baby kicked more.
“Thank you, Roy. You really tried to give me a child . . . and honey, you did.”
Seeing Etta remain crouched for a number of minutes, Johnny got worried and started up the hill toward her. When he reached her, she looked up at him, and he saw tears in her eyes.
“I guess I got stuck,” she said, extending her hand. “Can you help me up?”
“Sure.” He took her hand. When she was on her feet, he kept hold of her, as she seemed a little wobbly.
He saw she was crying and pretending not to, and he became nervous. He hoped she didn’t start crying really hard. She was a lot more pregnant than she had been the last time she had cried in his truck, and anything could happen.
Casting a glance at Roy Rivers’s headstone, Johnny thought with irritation that he did not appreciate the man interjecting his dead self into their day.
He kept hold of Etta’s arm as they walked back to the truck, and he helped her up into the seat. “You sure you’re okay?”
She smiled at him. “I’m sure.”
Feeling relieved, he hurried around, started the truck, and pressed the accelerator, sending the truck flying down the highway, hoping to get Etta home as soon as possible. He was afraid any moment she would turn and work herself into a state.
After several minutes, however, she blew her nose and sighed calmly. “Roy and I had two really good years before it all fell apart. And you know, I tried real hard and Roy tried real hard, too.”
She seemed to be speaking to the world at large, but Johnny felt it was up to him to answer. “I know that you must be disappointed about things,” he said, “but you know, just because somethin’ doesn’t quite turn out the way you expect, doesn’t make it not worth the attempt.”
She looked at him for a long minute. “That’s so true. And thank you for sayin’ it.”
The way she spoke and looked at him made Johnny feel ten feet tall.
“I guess, even when it may not seem like it, we are all doin’ the best we can,” she said. “And I wouldn’t wish I hadn’t married Roy, because then I’m wishin’ away the good right along with the bad.”
He didn’t quite follow exactly what she said, but he glanced over to see Etta’s blue eyes gazing at him, clear and strong. As if she was seeing him, and not thinking of Roy Rivers at all.
“How about some music?” he said, reaching over and turning the knob.
* * * *
On passing Overman’s Bright and White Grocery Store, Etta had Johnny stop. She made the request when they were still a fourth of a mile away, so as to give him plenty of warning.
"I'll only be a minute,’’ she said.
She went into the store and paid Noreen Overman the entire overdue account, all the while having the satisfaction that she behaved with more grace than Noreen would ever know in a lifetime. When she came out, Johnny stood holding the truck door open for her. He gave her a little grin, and she grinned in return. Then they headed home, Elvis singing out from the radio and the sun casting long shadows.
Johnny pulled the truck around at the back door and shut off the engine. Etta glanced at him and then looked out the windshield at the horses in the corrals. She heard Little Gus whinny from the barn. Johnny got out, and she watched him through the dusty glass. She recalled how he had kissed her that morning, a thought that had played at the edges of her mind all day.
Their gazes met when he reached her door. He opened it and helped her to the ground.
Etta dropped her gaze to his blue shirt, having the strange urge to put her hand there, on the starched cotton just above his heart.
“Are you comin’ in for supper? Latrice will want to know—if she hasn’t already started somethin’.”
“I guess the hot dog is about gone,” he said, with a bit of a grin. “Maybe I could force down a biscuit or two and a glass of ice tea. I’ll see to feeding the stock first, then I’ll be up.”
She watched him walk away, limping slightly. An emotion that she couldn’t name but which made her feel weak and warm washed over her.
Pivoting quickly, she strode into the house. She straightaway placed the money on the table in front of Latrice, who was snapping green beans. Latrice dried her hands and began to count it.
“I stopped and paid the Overmans.”
Latrice’s eyebrows rose. “You might should have postponed that. We’re gonna need the cash.”
“I know . . . but I couldn’t. We’ll just have to go on trusting to be provided for.” Etta lifted the hair from the back of her damp neck. “I’m gonna go wash up. I’ll be back down to help with supper. Johnny said he’d come, too. He’s feedin’ the horses first.”
Her hand on the swinging door, she stopped, looked around. Then she rushed over to Latrice and hugged her. “I love you, Latrice. I’m so glad I’ve always had you.”
Latrice jumped and stared at her. “Well, I’m grateful to be here,” Latrice said, looking a little confounded.
Etta went on through the swinging door. Passing through the living room, she paused to touch the stained glass lamp with the cat-statue base that sat on the table with the telephone. She had seen a similarly ugly lamp at the fine used furniture shop. Opening her purse, she brought out the card the man there had given her. Thoughtfully she slipped the card beneath the edge of the telephone and then proceeded on upstairs.
In the bathroom she stripped off her clothes, took a sponge bath, and got into her robe. She considered what to put on to go downstairs. She thought she would wear the blue dress. Johnny seemed to like blue.
Passing hers and Roy’s bedroom, she stopped. The door was ajar. She pushed it open and looked inside. Golden beams from the setting sun slanted through one window and made a pattern on the flowered wallpaper. Faintly, Roy’s scent came to her.
She walked over to the bed and ran her hand along one of the dark, smoothly turned posts. She wondered how much money she could get in selling it.
She had bought the bed on a trip to Dallas, during the first weeks of their marriage. She had seen it on a shopping expedition and had returned to the hotel all excited and wanting Roy to see it—wanting his approval, his interest at the very least, but he had only kissed her and said, “You buy anything you like, honey. I don’t need to see it.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she grew very still. The child inside her fluttered, and she caressed her belly.
“Roy . . . I sold a bunch of your things, and your family’s things today. You surely don’t need them, and I need the money. I have to try to save this place for me and the baby and Latrice.”
It came to her that if anyone could appreciate her financial position, Roy certainly would. He had willingly given her all he could while he was alive; she didn’t think his being dead would change his sentiment.
“I did pretty good,” she told him. “You know your gold cuff links—the ones I gave you on our second anniversary? I got ten dollars more than I paid for them.”
After a moment, she added, “I hope your mother isn’t too upset that I sold the silver tea set. I did not sell her clock. Alice took it.”
For another few minutes she sat there. Then, hardly realizing, she lay over on the pillow, closed her eyes, and slipped off into a deep sleep in which she dreamed vibrant dreams all night long, awakening only when Latrice came and nudged her.
“Wake up. Are you all right?”
Etta opened her eyes to see Latrice’s face very close. “Yes . . . of course.” She was having some
confusion with where she was and why Latrice would ask her such a strange question.
“Are you ready to take up residence in this room again?” Latrice asked as she began to raise windows.
“No,” Etta said, throwing back the cotton spread with which Latrice had covered her in the night. “I’m gonna see if we can sell this bedroom set. Roy told me in a dream to ask two thousand dollars for it.”
* * *
Chapter 14
Etta telephoned Robert Lamb, the estate appraiser and auctioneer, who had given her his card. A slight man who wore a black bow tie, he arrived just after noon in a van with a burly driver, saying he came prepared to buy. He had also come with cash, which so favorably impressed Latrice that she served him coffee and pound cake on the good china.
“What would you think this china is worth?” she asked him.
Going through the house with Mr. Lamb, Etta managed to get past an attack of uncertainty and began to bargain over pieces with a fervor. Latrice followed, pointing out any items or particulars she felt went overlooked.
Mr. Lamb bought on the spot the stained glass lamp with the cat-statue base. He called it Art Deco and said it dated from the twenties and was still in demand in the right circles. He also bought the cherrywood Texas settee from the entry hall, the cane-bottom chair from the upstairs hall (which he estimated was a hundred years old), the marbletopped dresser from the small dressing room off the bathroom, and the set of ruby glasses he spied atop the china cabinet.
Etta showed him the silverware service she had fought over with Alice, and he would have bought it, but Etta decided she was not ready to sell.
After some deliberation, Etta settled upon consigning for auction her bedroom set, which Mr. Lamb agreed not to sell for less than two thousand dollars. He expressed interest in purchasing the dining set in the future.
When Johnny came around, curious as to what a van was doing at the front door, Etta told him excitedly, “I’m making more money.”
He grinned at her and said, “Well now,” and then pitched right in to help the burly driver load furniture.
“That Mr. Lamb’s a pretty puny-lookin’ fella,” Johnny said in a whisper to Etta. “You wouldn’t want him to have a heart attack before he pays you.”
Etta also thought Mr. Lamb looked puny, but then she worried about Johnny’s leg. This caused her to hover as all three men worked to move the furniture. Thankfully, when it was time to load the heavy pieces of the bedroom set, Obie and his nephew Woody showed up to help.
Watching her bedroom set be carried from the room, piece by piece, as she had imagined the day of Roy’s funeral, she felt strange. She felt she should cry, felt she was crying inside, yet she felt oddly excited—as if embarking on a trip around the world.
Then into all this came Fred Grandy’s pink and white Plymouth, speeding up the gravel drive. The real estate broker had brought Leon and Walter Fudge. The three men got out of the car, and Leon came forward across the yard speckled by sunlight.
“What’s goin’ on here, Etta?” He surveyed the sight with knotted brows as he came up the porch steps.
Etta explained that she was selling some of her things, and Leon’s frown deepened. Then Johnny came backing across the porch with his end of the big headboard.
“I’d appreciate your movin’ out of the way,” Johnny said in a rather forceful manner.
“Who is that?” Leon asked with some annoyance, gesturing at Johnny with his hat as he followed Etta out into the yard. “Isn’t that the guy you met that day on the street?”
“Yes. That’s Johnny Bellah. He trains horses here.” She looked questioningly from one man to the other.
Leon cleared his throat and said with a nod, “Walter here has made an offer on the farm, Etta.”
“Are you still wantin’ the whole thing, Walter?” Etta asked. “I am certainly ready to sell, but I’ve decided I want to keep the house and the half-section that stretches down to include Obie Lee’s cottage and fields. Any or all of the rest, I’ll sell to you.”
She sounded more abrupt than she had intended, but she was a little unprepared and distracted.
The men looked surprised, and Leon said, “What are you talkin’ about, Etta?” He flipped back his coat and propped a hand on his thin belt.
“Well,” she pushed stray hair out of her eyes and felt the need to take something of a stance, “I’ve decided to try to keep the house and a half-section of land. I was going to call you later today to talk about this. I rather got distracted when Mr. Lamb came down. How much do you think you want to offer for the land, Walter?”
Etta felt she was on something of a roll now with bargaining and was disappointed when Walter pulled at his ear and declined to make a concrete offer.
“I’ll have to think it over now,” he drawled. “I was really wantin’ the house and barn up here for my boy. If I can’t get it, I might have to go buy a farm I’ve found over to Ninnekah.”
“I guess you’ll be the one to decide that,” Etta told him bluntly, annoyed by the way he spoke.
Walter looked about like a rooster who’d had a pan of water tossed on him. As he got into Fred Grandy’s car, Fred followed after him, apologizing profusely for the turn of events.
Leon said to Etta, “I don’t know what Edward is goin’ to say about this. Sale of the land only is not goin’ to repay the entire mortgage. It’s just not.”
“I know that. But it will pay the biggest part of the mortgage, and then I can pay the rest little by little. Besides, if I can sell the land in smaller chunks, I’ll get more money from it. Isn’t that true?”
He frowned. “It can be true, and it might not be. Etta, the mortgage is past due. The bank isn’t goin’ to wait years while you pay five dollars here and five there.” He looked anxiously at the van. “Do you know the worth of some of those pieces you’re sellin’, Etta? Do you even know what you’re doin’?” His neck and face were turning really red.
Etta swallowed. “Maybe I’m not certain about what I’m doin’, Leon, but I do know that I am doin’ something now, rather than just waitin’ to lose everything that means anythin’ to me.”
“You weren’t gonna lose the farm, Etta. You were sellin’ it.’’
“It amounts to the same thing. I don’t want to sell it. This is my home. I want to stay here.”
Leon gave a disparaging shake of his head. “Edward’s gone to Chicago for the rest of the week. We’ll discuss this with him when he comes back. Maybe . . ." He shook his head. “Etta, you think about this,” he said, pointing his hat at her for emphasis.
Then he slipped into the car, and the three men drove away. Etta gazed at the dust billowing up behind the winged rear fenders of the departing Plymouth and wrapped her arms around herself and held tight.
Then Latrice was hurrying across the yard and saying that Mr. Lamb wanted to buy the wool rug from in front of the fireplace. “I’ve already sold it to him,” she said in the next breath.
* * * *
When everyone was gone, Etta went upstairs and looked into her and Roy’s bedroom. Latrice was folding Roy’s clothes they had hastily emptied from the chiffarobe and dresser drawers and putting them into cardboard boxes; Obie was going to take them to distribute among his brothers and nephews. Etta’s things were tossed into laundry baskets.
“I want Obie to take the oak valet, too,” Etta said and slid it out into the hallway.
Then she began going through the final odds and ends of Roy’s personal belongings. She ended up dumping everything, even the lemon drop candies, into a cigar box. All the while they worked, it seemed the scent of Roy grew fainter and fainter, until Etta could hardly smell it when she took the cigar box down to the guest room and placed it, along with the photograph of herself and Roy, into the back of her lingerie drawer.
She returned and stood in the empty room, looking around. She spied a worn path on the carpet in front of the windows and realized it had been done by her pacing during Roy’s absen
ces.
Latrice came through the door and looked around. “It’ll sure get easier to clean around here, this keeps up.” She raised an eyebrow. “You gonna move the guest-room stuff down here now?”
“No,” Etta said. “I kind of like the guest-room now. I like the morning sun. Let’s move the nursery over here. It’s a big room . . . plenty of play space.”
As she spoke, Etta threw up the windows, letting in fresh spring air. After that she began to remove the draperies, which were not at all suitable for a nursery.
Latrice made her quit stretching upward. “You are gonna misshape that baby girl’s head stretchin’ like that.”
* * * *
The next afternoon, Johnny drove off and returned within an hour, followed by a hand driving Harry Flagg’s two-ton truck.
Johnny said, “I told Harry that you had some first-cuttin’ alfalfa left, and he said he’d take it all, providin’ you want to sell, Miz Etta.”
He raised an eyebrow, and she asked, “How much are we gettin’ for it?”
The men loaded the hay from the barn, and Harry Flagg’s hand paid Etta in cash. The money joined the wad stuffed into an empty five-pound Folgers can in the chest freezer. Latrice decided they did not need the freezer and tried to sell it to her cousin Freddy, but she asked as much as a new one in the store, and Freddy would not pay it.
That evening at suppertime Obie showed up with one of his many brothers, who said he was interested in purchasing the old Allis-Chalmers tractor.
Obie said, “I figure we can get by with just the Massey, seein’ as how all we’re doin’ is cuttin’ and balin’ these days . . . and if you sell off most the land, we sure won’t need two tractors.”
More money went into the Folgers can. Etta counted it and then counted it again. The entire time she ate supper and carried on conversation with Latrice, Johnny, and Obie, she thought about the money and the upcoming rodeo race.
She told herself not to even think of it, but she still did. After she had finished helping Latrice with the dishes, Etta slipped outside to find Johnny. He was over at Little Gus’s pen, and the instant she laid eyes on his back, she felt shy. It was not an easy thing to swallow one’s words. She wanted to please him but was embarrassed to have him know this. She felt excitement about the possibility of Gus racing at the rodeo, but she was embarrassed to have him know this, too.
If Wishes Were Horses Page 20