Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  “Linda, that’s not true. Portia came from Florida, where it’s much warmer than it is here. She wouldn’t leave Florida and come to the mountains for a warm place to stay.”

  “Oh, yes, she would. Priscilla Home is free room and board.”

  “How did she find out about this place?”

  “The trucker who let her off in Rockville, he told her about it.”

  Any way you looked at it, Linda’s story didn’t ring true. “Linda, the Bible says, ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. It is set on fire of hell.’”

  She laughed. “Then you better watch out, Miss E., you might set the woods on fire.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of me,” I spluttered.

  She knew she was getting under my skin, and that tickled her to death. “Oh no?” she said. “You don’t strike me as one of those goody-goody, mealy-mouthed women who can’t dish out a tongue-lashing now and then.”

  I couldn’t deny that. Right that minute it was all I could do not to light into her and give her a dressing down she’d never forget. Instead, I pointed to a hoe leaning against the dumpster. “There’s a hoe, Linda. Now get cracking in the garden.”

  “Wait, there’s one more thing.” She wouldn’t let go of the door. “Miss Ursula caught Portia smoking in our room, and you know the rule, three strikes you’re outta here. Portia’s one down, two to go.”

  I was so provoked with that girl it was a good thing I was leaving. “Let go the door,” I said and yanked it shut.

  With the door shut, the windows rolled up, and the motor running, I waited for Dora. Seeing she couldn’t bend my ear any longer, Linda lit a cigarette and moseyed out to the garden without the hoe.

  Sitting there, stewing, I told myself I shouldn’t let this be another one of those days when the sun went down on my wrath, but to tell the truth, I knew it would take more hours than a day had got to cool me down!

  It was another one of them foggy mornings, so Dora and I decided it would be better if she rode ahead of me. That way it would be easier to keep her in view, and she could set the pace.

  Driving slowly down the Old Turnpike, I had plenty of time to think about Linda. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know the Lord had allowed her to get in my face for some reason. I figured he was dealing with me about this getting mad business. Well, we’d just have to see.

  We made pretty good time, considering that horse’s gait, and arrived at Lester’s by late morning. He was sitting on the porch and looked pretty good. When I asked him how he was, he said he was tolerable, so I took him at his word. Dora led the horse beyond the house where he could graze, and I took the rice pudding into the kitchen and put it in his refrigerator. Everything was neat as a pin in there. The woodstove had the room warm, and on the stove was a pot of pintos with a hunk of fatback.

  A man like Lester you don’t lecture about eating healthy.

  I came back on the porch, and he asked me if I could use some seeds. I coulda dropped my teeth! On the bench beside him were some paper bags and a few small jars. “I saved these seeds from last year’s crop,” he told me and opened one of the sacks to show me squash seeds. “I only save seeds from the tomaters an’ such as I like best. Once they git dry, I put ’em away till it’s time to plant the next year. I got aplenty.”

  There were onion sets, beans, peas, cucumbers, and a bunch more all neatly packaged and labeled. “Lester,” I protested, “we can’t take your seeds.”

  “I got plenty more, and tomater plants a-comin’ on. Come May 20, that’s the time to set ’em out.”

  “May 20? I plant my garden on Good Friday.”

  “Up here you best wait till there’s no more chance of frost. May 20 is soon enough to plant.”

  “Well, that’s a relief to hear. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get the ground in shape, and I thought we were way past planting time. I don’t know how to thank you, Lester. Do you like fish?” He said he did, so I told him, “We’re having a fish fry tonight, and if there’s any left I’ll bring you some in the morning on our way to church.”

  “Church? They always take them Priscilla folks into town for church.”

  “Not tomorrow. We’re going to that little Valley Church down by the river.” I didn’t tell him, but we didn’t have gas enough to take the van into town for church.

  “Well, you’ll hit it just right. Valley Church has preachin’ ever’ second Sunday, and tomorrow’s second Sunday.”

  Dora was ready to go, so I thanked Lester again and said I’d see to it he got some fish if any was left after supper. He thanked me, and I got back in the car. We turned around, and I waved to him as we headed out to the Old Turnpike.

  Well, it looked like the Lord meant for us to have a garden. Who’d of ever thought all the seeds and stuff we needed to plant would be dropped in our lap free and postpaid!

  9

  When we got back to the house, there were visitors. Turned out it was the man who had called about the piano, and he brought his wife. As I came into the parlor the woman was running her fingers over the keyboard, saying, “It’s not fit to play.”

  He said, “I know a feller in town can fix it.”

  “Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. Either way it’ll cost us an arm and a leg.”

  “Lookee here at this wood, Isabel. It looks like mahogany. And lookit this here plaque.” He was rubbing his thumb over it. “Bronze—solid bronze.” He squinted to read the writing. “It says this here piano was give by a woman in Charlotte.”

  “Like as not she give it away because nobody would buy it.”

  “She was probably rich, Isabel, and had no need of it. Buy it and you’ll be the only woman in Rockville with a baby grand.”

  “We don’t have room for it.”

  “We’ll make room,” he said. “We’ll take out that old couch—”

  “We’ll do no such a thing. That was my granny’s couch.”

  “It was wore out afore she died.”

  “It’s a priceless antique,” she told him, and turning to me, “Men don’t know value when they see it, do they?”

  I didn’t have to comment, because she kept running her fingers over the keyboard and shaking her head.

  Making the sale seemed out of the question, but I thought it might help if we lowered the price. At least it was worth a try.

  Ursula must have been thinking the same thing because she said, “If the price is—”

  “I wouldn’t have it if you give it to me,” the woman snapped.

  The man threw up his hands. “Well, there you have it. Come on, Isabel.”

  After they left, I followed Ursula into the office. We sat down, but she was too discouraged to talk. And I couldn’t think of one thing that would cheer her up. Getting seeds to plant wouldn’t mean anything to her. Finally, I said, “We have the trout for supper,” as if that would do the trick.

  “What about tomorrow?” she asked. “Do we have anything for Sunday dinner?”

  “Oh, I can scrape something together,” I said, knowing full well the cupboard was bare.

  “On top of everything else,” she said glumly, “we have a new resident coming today. One more mouth to feed.”

  Ursula was feeling so low, she’d have to stand on a soapbox to reach bottom. “Well, Ursula, we won’t go hungry,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

  She put her head in her hands and grumbled, “Still presuming on the veracity of God—”

  “Run that by me one more time.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Shouldn’t you go check on the ladies?”

  Before going to the garden, I went in the kitchen to see if I could find anything there to make a meal for the next day. There were a few donuts, some of the staples, and oatmeal, but little else. I ate a stale donut and went on out to the garden.

  The girls were chopping and hoeing, shaking clumps of grass and tossing them onto a pile. Only Linda was goofing off, sitting under a tree, filling her lungs with death-dealing nicotine. Tobacco co
mpanies will never go out of business so long as there’s the likes of Linda still living. Seeing I was coming her way, she hollered, “I got no tool, Miss E.!”

  At the garden I reached down and took a handful of dirt. It had the smell of good soil, and the feel of it, soft and crumbly in my hand. It had the makings of a good crop if the Lord sent enough rain and sunshine. “Come on, Linda, we need to make a scarecrow.”

  She sucked in a long draw on the cigarette and let it out slow. “A scarecrow? What for?”

  “To scare crows, what else?”

  The girls heard that and laughed.

  “Oh yeah? Then Portia’s gotta help me.”

  “No, I’m going to help you. See if you can find an outfit for him in the clothing room. We’ll need a hat and coat and pants.”

  She ground out the stub of cigarette and moseyed back toward the house, muttering who knows what under her breath. I had had about as much as I could take from that girl. Splurgeon said, “Idle people are dead people that you can’t bury,” and Linda fit that bill to a tee.

  “Company’s a-comin’,” Wilma hollered, and the girls looked up from their work. I could hear a car or truck coming up the road. The way it was backfiring and kicking up dust, I figured it was a pickup.

  It was a pickup, and it turned in at our drive. Must be the new girl, I thought.

  It was. I beckoned to the girls to come welcome her, and we met the truck at the back door. An old man got out, worry written all over his face; he went around to the other side and opened the door for the girl. She was biting her nails; looked like she might not get out the truck. Like as not she didn’t want to come here in the first place, I thought. Well, that was nothing new. When a girl’s family or the court sent her here against her will, there was no reason she’d want to be here.

  Her granddaddy, or whoever the old man was, went to the back of the truck, threw back a tarpaulin, and lifted out her one and only suitcase. Ursula came out the door and introduced herself and me. The man said, “I’m Martha’s husband.”

  I coulda dropped my teeth! That girl was not thirty years old, and he was in his seventies if he was a day!

  “We’re from Williamsbu’g County, South Ca’olina,” he told us in that slow drawl people have got in the Low Country. “Cha’leston’s ’bout fo’ty miles from where we stay.”

  I doubted Ursula could understand him. She told him to bring in the girl’s bag, and the three of them went upstairs to check Martha in.

  The rest of us sat on the stoop or stood around taking a break. Linda came bouncing out the back door with clothes for the scarecrow. “Will these do?” she asked, holding up a nice tweed jacket and corduroy pants.

  I took a good look at them and told her, “No, somebody can wear these things. Go put ’em back.”

  She flopped down on the step and told Portia to give her a cigarette. Portia handed her a pack. Without so much as a thank you, Linda pulled out one, lit it, and put the rest of the pack in her shirt pocket. “I’ll take that stuff back after they’re done with the new girl. Where’s she from?”

  “Near Charleston,” I said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “South Carolina.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Dora was looking off beyond the trees and started talking as much to herself as to us. “She comes from flat land . . . flat land where alongside sandy roads, red oaks blaze in winter sun . . . where moonlight shadows make marble of that white sand . . . and pine trees moan in the wind. . . . It’s one place still left with trees. There’s giant live oaks a-growin’ there since after the flood, an’ there’s mysteries in them shaggy moss beards a-trailin’ down from their limbs. . . . There’s mysteries, too, in that still black water a-floatin’ them big-bottomed trees—the air so heavy a blue heron can’t hardly lift off an’ fly. There’s woods spirits in them places with stories that have not yet been told nor ever will be.”

  Linda laughed and flipped the ash from her cigarette. “Dora, you’re weird. You never been outside of Tennessee before now; how do you know all about where that girl comes from?”

  Dora kept looking off beyond the trees, and in her dreamy way of talking, told us, “You might say I been there. Papa . . . he papered the sidewalls of our cabin with ever’ purty picture he could find in magazines and calendars people give him. . . . He papered them walls to keep out the cold. Mighta kept out some cold, but mostly them pictures brought outside places inside . . . San Francisco, Paris, Rome, New York City . . . Charleston, too.

  “I loved them pictures; they give me something to study on. But mostly I hated them. They showed me why they done what they done to the trees an’ all the wild thangs a-livin’ in the woods. They done away with trees an’ livin’ creatures to make room for their big houses and paved-over parking lots.

  “There’s big houses ever’where, with steep roofs and wide green yards. You ought to know they build them big houses to hold their tables—white willer ones on the porch and inside the front room, small dark tables aside every soft chair. A low, flat, four-legged one stays put before them settees people sit upon.

  “Room after room there’s tables—long ones polished and set with candles; round ones with marble tops a-holdin’ silver pots an’ the like. The eatin’ table has got chairs all around with candles that’s never lit and false flowers, just for show. Another eatin’ table is in the cook room with colored mats an’ doodads set in the middle.

  “Go along upstairs and in the hallway there’s a drop leaf made of curly maple all covered over with lace an’ a-holdin’ a lamp. Up an’ down the hallway there’s bedrooms, an’ ever’ bed has got tables either side. It’s a sin and a shame what they have done to give shelter to more an’ more tables.

  “Two hunnert years ago, the first McCutchen to come to the holler cut down a walnut tree, sawed the lumber, seasoned it, and planed a board to make the table my papa left to me. A body needs only one table. A good stout table for eatin’ is one and the same for butcherin’ a deer or making bread dough, canning beans, or writin’ a letter to the court. I got me such a table so I don’t need no big house.

  “Home is in my mountain holler with trees an’ wild thangs all aroun’ and nary a road paved. Ever’ place else is for tables an’ cars an’ the like.”

  Well, I tell you the truth, I think we all felt pretty foolish. Who in the world but Dora would think of tables being the reason for big houses, yet when you come to think of it, we have got the idea that we need a lot more tables than we ever use. And it’s also true that big healthy trees get cut down to make room for houses and such. Developers gobble up woods and farmland where critters have lived for generations and chase them out to live or die the best way they can. There oughta be a law against such as that.

  We could hear the girl’s husband coming down the stairs, so we made room on the stoop for him to pass. He was taking that worried look with him. He said to me, “I will be much obliged if you can find your way cl’ar to take ca’e of my Martha.” His eyes were misty. “She’s all I got, and all our girl-child has got.”

  I promised him I would take real good care of her.

  We all stood in the driveway watching that sad old man as he drove up to the road and turned on to the Old Turnpike. We watched until he was out of sight and then I said, “Let’s call it a day, girls.”

  I went inside and saw that Lenora and Evelyn had cleaned all those fish and was ready to start frying them. I showed them how to salt and meal them and how to get the grease hot before they put the fish in the deep fryer. Evelyn asked if she could make the cornbread, and I allowed she could since I had showed her how.

  Then I went to my room, took a long, hot bath, put on clean clothes, and worked on my hair a little. In that climate a bad hair day was the rule, not the exception. I lay back in the chair hoping to doze off, but before I fell asleep the supper bell rang.

  That supper was out of this world! There’s nothing like fresh trout cooked right. Evelyn was so proud of the w
ay the cornbread turned out, she ate more than she usually did. Ordinarily, she would just play with her food, pushing it around on her plate. We had plenty of fish, but to make sure we had some to take to Lester, I set aside my second helping.

  Ursula had the new girl, Martha, sit at her table, and I heard Ursula promise her that she’d have a roommate the next time another resident enrolled. The girl wasn’t saying nothing and just picked at her food.

  After supper, I washed my hair and rolled it up, then pressed my skirt to wear to church the next morning. With that done, I was free to relax. In my robe I sat in the chair and started reading my Sunday school lesson. That made me think about the Willing Workers back in Live Oaks—most of them would be doing the same thing. We were all brought up—well, maybe Thelma wasn’t brought up like the rest of us since she came from Chicago—to know Sunday begins Saturday night. After getting all cleaned up and our shoes polished, we’d read the lesson. And here I was reading the quarterly, even though the same Sunday school lesson was not likely to be taught in the Valley Church where we were going. In fact, it was such a small church they might not even have Sunday school.

  There wasn’t much to be said for that lesson, so I read my Bible and prayed awhile. I must have fell asleep because about 11:00 I woke up. As often happens when I doze off like that, I became wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Finally, I decided I might as well make myself a cup of tea and go downstairs and read a magazine. When I got down there, the new girl, Martha, was sitting in the day room all by herself in the dark. I turned on a lamp and asked her if she’d like to have a cup of tea.

  She shook her head.

  I sat down and set the cup on the end table. That made me think of Dora. I picked up a magazine, one of them with home-decorating pictures. I had never before noticed how many tables are in houses. Dora was right. They’re full of tables.

  I thought I better tell the new girl that lights were out on the third floor at 11:00. I did, but still she sat. In a few minutes, she lit a cigarette, and I had to tell her she couldn’t smoke inside. As she reached for the ashtray to put out the cigarette, I told her, “You can smoke outside.”