The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “And then she fainted dead away.”

  After a while, Dawny said, “Well? Then what happened?”

  “Well, after they got her revived, with smelling salts and cold compresses, one of the girls explained it all to her. Somehow that boy had found out about the dumb supper. The boys weren’t supposed to know, but somehow he had found out. And came on purpose. The other girls had thrown him out of the house, after this poor girl fainted, and told him he ought to be ashamed of himself. And maybe he was.”

  “Well,” Dawny said, “did she ever marry him?”

  “No.”

  “Did she marry the other one, the one she was wishing for?”

  “No.”

  “That other one, the one she was wishing for, his name was Raymond, wasn’t it?”

  Latha gasped in surprise. “Why, Dawny, I didn’t know you knew about that!”

  “What was the name of the one who came to the dumb supper?”

  She could not answer.

  A minute passed before Dawny begged her to please tell him, and when she wouldn’t, he suggested a couple of people it might have been, like Tearle Ingledew or Doc Swain, but she would not tell him. Not until he threatened to go away and never come back and “never love you anymore,” did she relent and confess. “All right,” she said. “His name was Dill. Every Dill. Isn’t that a queer name? It wasn’t Avery, but Every. He was William Dill’s boy, old Billy Dill who used to make wagons.”

  Dawny, his voice trembling, asked, “What…whatever…what did ever…become of him?”

  “Nobody knows, child.”

  “Maybe…” he said, pointing up the road toward the Dill place.

  “Yes, Dawny, that’s what I’ve been wondering about too.”

  Suddenly Dawny requested, “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

  She smiled at the charming thought. “Whatever for?”

  “To protect you.”

  She started to laugh but decided it might hurt his feelings. She said, “Your Aunt Rosie wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Aw, sure she would. She don’t care where I sleep.”

  “But you’d have to let her know where you are, and I bet you she wouldn’t allow you to stay with me.”

  Dawny stood up. “I’ll be right back, fast as I can.” And he took off for home, running as fast as his little legs would carry him, with the dog Gumper hot on his heels. She did not expect to see him again that night, and couldn’t imagine what he might say to his Aunt Rosie to get permission. She went out to the side of her house, where mullein were growing tall, and selected the tallest one and named it Every Dill, then bent it down to the ground. Then she went into her bedroom and prepared for bed. But she hadn’t completed her preparations when there came a knock at the bedroom door and there was Dawny.

  “I just told her a bunch of kids are having a bunking party at your store, laying out pallets all over the place and that we’re going to have a real jamboree of ghost stories, with free sody pop. She believed me, but told me to behave myself.”

  She admired his resourcefulness at the same time she regretted having consented to his plan. “Dawny, close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want to watch me undressing, do you?” She turned off the lamp.

  “But it’s pitch dark, I caint see you noway.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Okay.” She continued removing her clothes and climbed into bed.

  “Well,” she said. “Now you can open your eyes. But don’t look at me.”

  “Why caint I look at you?”

  “Because it’s so hot and we’d have to pull the covers up because I don’t have anything on.”

  “You mean you’re nekkid?” She could sense that he was looking at her.

  She pressed the side of his face to turn it away. “Don’t look.”

  “But it’s so dark I caint see nothing noway.” He climbed into the bed. The faintest breeze came through the bedroom window. “Can I sleep nekkid too?” he asked.

  “Dawny, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘nekkid.’ That makes it sound bad.”

  “Okay, can I sleep undressed too?”

  She was regretting her mistake more and more. “Dawny, you’re commencing to make me nervous. If you ever told anybody, your Aunt Rosie or anybody, that me and you slept together, let alone without our clothes, do you know that they would cover me with hot tar and feathers and ride me out of town on a rail?”

  “Aw, Latha! Do you honestly think I would ever tell anybody? I aint never gon tell anybody anything about me’n you.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “maybe I better get a quilt and fix you a pallet on the floor in the other room.”

  Dawny began to cry.

  “Oh, shush, Dawny, a big boy like you!” she cooed. “Lie still, and shush.” But he kept on crying. She reached over and grabbed him by his undershirt and tugged the undershirt over his head, and then pulled his shorts down and off his feet. “There!” she said. “Now shush.” He shushed. “Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

  “I’m not much sleepy,” he said. “Are you?”

  “Not much, I guess.”

  “Then tell me a story.”

  “All right,” she agreed, and from her store of great ghost stories she selected the most special ones, the scariest ones, even ones that he had heard before, knowing that there’s nothing wrong with hearing the same story twice if you liked it the first time, especially the stories that have the most powerful climax. In the climax of her best stories, Dawny would reach over and squeeze her hand. Because the storyteller has as much thrill as the listener, she too was transported by her stories, and likened the ascent of the climax to the ascent of a mountain in sex, although of course neither she nor Dawny went quite over the mountain.

  After a particularly intense climax, which left them both panting, Dawny said, “Latha, I love you.”

  She turned and became aware that the moon had shifted from behind a tree and its light was pouring into the room, and Dawny was staring at her breasts. She reached out and rumpled his hair and said to him, “I love you too, and if you were a growed-up man I would marry you right this minute.” She pulled him to her and gave him a hug and then put him back where he was. “Now let’s try to get some sleep.”

  They tried to get some sleep, but they were both listening. They listened for a knock or for footsteps on the porch. The night passed on. The symphony of the bugs and frogs never stopped. The night cooled. Footsteps! A voice! But it was a girl’s, it was Sonora, coming home. Her screen door opened with its noisy twang and then it was silent again, and stayed silent for a long time.

  By and by, Dawny whispered into her ear, “Do you think that it might really be him up there? Do you think it’s really Every Dill?”

  “Oh, I know it,” she said, because she had given this much thought, and the thought did not scare her nor worry her but filled her with the loveliest anticipation. “I know it is.”

  They both slept.

  The following day dawned bright and fair. She woke much earlier than Dawny, dressed, and stood for a while contemplating his small body. In the heat of the night he had kicked off the sheet and was naked and cute, his tiny dinger cutest of all. She was tempted to give it a kiss, but instead kissed him on the brow, at the same time reproaching herself for having allowed him to spend the night with her. Then she went to the kitchen and took a platter of day-old pork-flavored biscuits and carried them out onto the back porch and threw them one by one to her cats, saving the last one for herself. She munched it slowly and lingered to watch the cats fighting over the biscuits. She stayed even longer to watch the cats loll in the early morning sun and lick themselves and each other, then she returned to the kitchen and got her milk pail and filled it a quarter ways with water dipped from the water pail. She carried this up the hill to the cow lot, pausing only briefly at her out-house. She squatted by the Jersey’s flank, not needing a stool, and after washing each of the teats carefully with the water
in the pail, she swirled the rest of the water out of the pail and began to milk.

  The milk was good; Mathilda had been grazing lately on the orchard grass, free of the lower pasture’s bitter weeds that gave the milk a pungent taste. The pesky flies of July bothered Mathilda, and she fidgeted restlessly while she was milked. “Saw, Jerse,” Latha would croon at her, “saw.” Latha closed her eyes while she milked and enjoyed the feel of the long cool dugs. She filled the pail and carried it down to the springhouse to crock it and leave it to cool.

  By this time her free-ranging chickens had assembled in a packed flock around the back steps of the house. She walked through them to the back porch and scooped into the feedbag and flung several handfuls into the yard. The chickens made a racket.

  Then she took down the slop bucket hanging from the porch ceiling and carried it to the sty, for her four Chester Whites. Pigs were her favorite animal, not alone for the ebullient gratitude they showed for the garbagey swill she showered upon them, but for the noises they made, which seemed to her an expression of basic life forces.

  Now for a moment she spoke with these hogs in their own language of intricate reiterated snorty grunts. Then she chanced to look up and catch sight of a redbird in a tree. Quickly she made a wish, and waited. Soon the redbird flew down to a lower limb. If it had flown upward, her wish would have come true. But I really didn’t mean that wish, she decided, I don’t honestly want for that to happen. The animals all taken care of, it was time for the vegetables. She returned to the house and consulted her calendar and discovered it was turnip-planting day. Personally she hated turnips, but you always plant turnips on turnip-planting day. She entered her store and took a package of seeds from the rack. Then she gathered up her hoe and her rake and headed for the garden across the road, on the land which Doc Plowright had given her to pay his grocery bill.

  Crossing the road she saw Penelope sitting in the road. Penelope was one of her cats, an all-white. To see a white cat sitting in the road is good luck. So there, that takes care of that down-flying redbird.

  She planted the turnips, reluctantly. Sonora likes turnips but she’ll be gone back to Little Rock before they’re ready. Well, I will make a turnip pie for Tull Ingledew. Or will Sonora be going back? I wonder if Every likes turnips. After the turnip seeds were in the ground she took her hoe and chopped weeds out of the lettuce and cabbage and beans, chopping hard, working up a sweat, a real lathering sweat.

  She began to sing:

  Well met, well met, my own true love

  Long time I have not seen thee

  Well met on such a shining day

  but stopped, shocked at herself, stopped hoeing too, stood still and remembered: Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. It means I will be crying before this day is out because I haven’t had my breakfast yet. Well, it’s likely I will. Serves me right. It’s like as not I’ll have more than enough reason for crying before suppertime.

  She resumed chopping weeds, with a vengeance. Accidentally she decapitated a cabbage. Still she kept chopping, until her shirt was soaked through with sweat. She grabbed up the cabbage head and ran back to the house. She went to her room and got a towel and a dress. The boy had rolled over, embracing the place she had left, but was still sound asleep. She left the house once more, crossed the road once more, entered the garden once more. At the end of the vegetable rows, beyond her tall corn, was a dense line of trees, bordering Swains Creek. She went into these trees. She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out. Oh, great gracious sakes! she sighed. Isn’t this just dandy? Anybody knows that if you accidentally put something on wrongside out, the only way you can keep from having bad luck all day is to keep wearing it wrongside out until bedtime. But this shirt was all dirty and sweaty, even if it was fit to wear for company coming.

  She continued unbuttoning it. Latha dear, she said resolutely, once in your life you’ll just have to quit being so all-fired superstitious. And while she finished undressing, she reflected upon the nature of superstition, and remembered something that Dr. Kaplan of D Ward had tried to get her to believe, just before he had consigned her to E Ward: “Superstition is the harmless but invalid attempt of the individual to cope with the unknowns and intangibles and the factors in fate and environment over which he has no control. Superstitions vanish as the person becomes more civilized and develops more sense of control over his fate and environment.” Remembering this, Latha laughed, and reflected that now she was thoroughly civilized and thoroughly in control of her fate…but maybe there was more to come.

  Now in her nakedness she stepped through the thicket and slipped into Swains Creek and lay down in the shallow water and cooled. She loved her body; that was her one certainty; not the sight of it, nor even the feel of it, but the it of it, the itness of it, that it was there, that it was hers, that it could feel something like cool creek water swirling around it and washing the sweat from it, that it could sweat, that it could be cleansed, that it could tingle. I am a jar of skin, a bottle of flesh, a container. All the things I contain….

  She leaned her head back and gazed up at the sun rising above Dinsmore Mountain, and gauged it. It was about five-thirty. Stay More was waking up. She could hear, louder than roosters, Doc Swain and Doc Plowright yelling at each other from their porches on the opposite sides of the road. She could hear the chime of hammer and anvil in Lawlor Coe’s blacksmith shop. She thought she could hear it answered by the distant anvil in Dill’s wagon shop, deserted these many years except for the time Dan used its lathe to turn his porch posts.

  She lay in the slow-running green stream but a few moments more, then got up and waded out, and toweled herself dry. She put on the dress, a blue one with yellow daisies printed on it, and carried her work clothes bundled in the towel back to the house.

  Chapter thirty-four

  When the coffee was making, she noticed that the coffeepot was rattling on the stove. That was sure enough a sign that a visitor would come before nightfall. She ate her breakfast alone but left a platter of eggs and bacon and biscuits on the warming shelf for Sonora and Dawny. The former would sleep for another hour; the latter got up at eight and came to her asking to have his shoes tied, and she told him that on a hot day like this he could go barefooted, and she reminded him that he had promised not to tell anyone that he had spent the night with her. When Sonora finally woke she took a bar of soap to the creek to wash her hair. People began arriving in anticipation of the mail truck, which came this morning shortly after ten o’clock. Ted the driver brought in the mail bags and then the blocks of ice. Latha sorted the mail. There were two pieces of mail for herself, a letter from her sister Mandy and some business from the Post Office Department.

  The letter from Mandy said that she and Vaughn had been doing some thinking and some talking, and had decided that it wasn’t good for Fannie Mae to stay all summer in Stay More, it wasn’t good for her attitude or for her manners or for her speech, and if it didn’t make a whole lot of difference to Latha they would rather that Fannie Mae just came on home to Little Rock right now. The letter made Latha laugh, because she knew there was no way that Sonora could be persuaded to leave Stay More.

  Then she opened the other envelope. Usually she never even bothered to read any of the duplicated stuff the Post Office Department was always sending to her, but something in this one caught her eye. It was duplicated too, just a form letter, but there were blanks that had been filled in, directing her to close (“discontinue” was their word) the post office on August 1. They spelled “Staymore” as all one word, and enclosed a notice to be posted in a public place informing the patrons of the U.S. Post Office at “Staymore, Ark” that their post office was discontinued and they’d have to do their business with the post office in Parthenon.

  Latha swore, which she rarely did. “Goddamn those bastards!”

  Doc Swain stepped over to see what she was swearing about and she showed him the let
ter. He swore also, and read the notice aloud to the others in the store. Then there was considerable swearing and considerable talk about why the government would close the post office. Doc Swain tried to point out that the population of Stay More had simply shrunk too much, but he got into an argument with Oren Duckworth, who maintained that his industry, the canning factory, was a sign that the village was still thriving. Latha went into her bedroom to drown out the noise of the bickering going on in the store. She sat at her dresser and got out her stationery and wrote two letters, one to the post office regional controller pointing out that his letter was incorrectly addressed and mailed to “Staymore” and since there was no such place it would be disregarded. The other letter she sent to Mandy telling her that Sonora, as she preferred to be called, was having such a good time, and was so taken with her boyfriend John Henry “Hank” Ingledew, that she would never consider for a moment the idea of returning to Little Rock.

  She returned to her post office and mailed these letters but realized it was Saturday and they wouldn’t go out until Monday. She told herself that she might as well close up the store and go fishing again and she might even run into that fellow Dolph Rivett. She had managed to get through ten years without doing any mountain-climbing and had reached the point where she wasn’t all torn up with desire, but once Dolph Rivett had ended that dry spell, she couldn’t get it off her mind.