The Reading Lessons

by Carole Lanham

  “He had a hole in his sock,” Anthone said, clearly unshamed. “That was the only thing you could see on account they put a sheet over him.”

  When you come from a family that believes in collecting regrets in a jar so they can be saved forever, you aren’t going to have the luxury of forgetting a girl like Flora Gibbs. Hadley had given up a life with Flora so that he could be near his child, otherwise Mr. Gibbs wouldn’t have slipped off that stool because Hadley would have been there to get stuff down for him. When he broke off with Flora, it didn’t feel like a choice. But it was. He tried to remind himself of why he made that choice whenever he got to daydreaming about what might have been. He tried to remember how lucky he was to be a part of his daughter’s world.

  Hadley had watched Nina take her first step, and he’d been there at her fifth birthday party and on the night of her first school dance. Whether or not Lucinda would have banned him from Nina’s life, he was sure he wouldn’t have seen the things he’d seen had he not been the gardener in Nina Worther-Holmes’s house. He was grateful for the things he’d seen. Vassie had once asked him if he was black or white, and he’d told her he was neither. The sad truth was, he didn’t appear to have too much say-so in either world. In light of this, Hadley knew better than to ask God for anything more than the mercies he’d been given.

  Outside of the dozen or so snide remarks that Lucinda had made over the years, he knew nothing of Flora’s life now, and that was on purpose. He’d tried to tune out Lucinda’s gossip, too, but she had a knack for catching him unawares, and sometimes things snuck in.

  “I hear she’s fat as a Chevy.” “I hear she’s in love with a parrot.” “I hear she caused a big fuss at the alderman meeting when they voted to take down that old merry-go-round.”

  Mostly, he made a point of shutting Flora out of his mind. Then again, there were occasions when his willpower failed him, and he would find himself drifting back. The smell of good pie could do it. Or the words of Jack London. And anytime someone mentioned that damned singer Helen Humes. Hadley didn’t think about Garlic Blues like everyone else did; he thought about a word scratched on a wooden door in a little stone house. Full minutes might be lost to thoughts of her then. Or even an entire night. Mainly, he thought about Flora when he was low. He couldn’t live properly with Nina or Lucinda, but there was a time when he could have happily lived with Flora. Very happily. And so, like a souvenir spoon that’s too shiny to throw out, Hadley had long-since found a place to keep Flora. A Whoops Jar inside his head, or something like that anyhow, and when he was in the right mood for it, he filled it with what might have been.

  He couldn’t open the lid too often, of course, enticing as it was. It was too hard to face the porch swing where they might have sat in old age, or the wall with its message under coats of blue paint. Everything he put into this special place—birdsong and chess pie and lemon-scented azaleas—all of it was as painful as his coffin nails, because they were coffin nails. But when Albert Gibbs died, Hadley ignored the pain and went home by way of Dixon Street.

  He pulled his hat down over his eyes and kept to the opposite side of the road and waited to see if the walk past her house would kill him. He didn’t know what he expected to see, but the sight of Flora’s front door made his heart thump like a flat tire. The house was shabbier than he remembered and in bad need of work. There was one light on inside, and Hadley knew that this was the room where Mr. Gibbs had bashed his skull on the stove. As he weighed the risk of getting closer, a small slender figure moved across the window.

  “Flora,” he whispered.

  ###

  The first time Nina curled her little fingers around his big finger, Hadley got overwhelmed. He forgot who he was. He forgot who Lucinda was. He asked Lucinda to run away with him. “I don’t care if she’s mine or not; I want her, and I want you.”

  Lucinda cared.

  Lucinda cared about her big new house and having a husband who could dance like George Raft. Lucinda had assured him that she loved Dickie, and Hadley had believed her when she said it because he was young and had yet to see how she deceived and acted selfishly toward her husband.

  Hadley didn’t believe it anymore, though. To be loved by someone like Lucinda would take something special. Truth be told, Dickie wasn’t that special.

  Dickie was, however, a decent man. For the most part, Lady Luck had shined on him in every way, and this didn’t seem fair to Hadley. But luck was like that. When everyone in the country was loosing their shirt, the New Deal came along and started the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, making it possible for people to get thirty year loans so they could buy Worther-Holmes Homes. Daddy Dick took a big hit in the market and had to get shocked by electricity a full three times in a loony bin in order to get happy again, but not Dickie. Daddy Dick had called Dickie a horse’s ass for staying out of the market, but Dickie had no interest in stocks and had always found banking a bother. He preferred to keep large amounts of cash at home. As a result, while other men suffered mightily to keep their families fed, Lucky Dickie hung onto his job, his money, and about fifty percent of his unnaturally luxurious hair. He got to be Nina’s daddy, too, and this made him the luckiest man alive. It wasn’t right that one fellow should have so much, but still, he didn’t deserve what Hadley and Lucinda had been doing to him all these years. Even so, Hadley would have taken Lucinda from him if he could have. Nina, too.

  “Don’t fool yourself, Hadley,” Lucinda said when he asked her to run away with him. “The only reason I like you is because you aren’t my husband.”

  He knew this was the truth. He was handyman Hadley, and that was all.

  A week after the A boys walked him home, Lucinda snuck into his house again and crawled into his bed. Hadley was enjoying himself with Vassie, so it was easy to push her away.

  “I can’t be with you, Lucinda,” he said.

  It was more than Vassie, really. It was seeing that swing on Flora’s front porch hanging there on a rusted chain. It was Nina and the A boys and Dickie’s promise to keep an eye on him. It was something else, too . . .

  “Don’t you miss me, Hadley?”

  Hadley thought about this. “No. I don’t.”

  Lucinda was next to him under the covers, but she bolted upright like a shot. With a sad and terrible screech, she clawed his face.

  Hadley grabbed her wrist to stop her doing it again, but she fought. They growled at each other as she struggled to get free, and he struggled to keep her from getting his face. It was the Hadley/Lucinda Tango all over again and, somehow, before he knew it, he had her arms pinned behind her head, and he was kissing her, and even the kiss was a fight. She tried to bite his lips, and he avoided her teeth by kissing her harder.

  Finally, he shoved her away. “Shit.”

  “Don’t stop.”

  He looked at her swollen lips and shook his head. “What’s wrong with us, Lucinda?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  But Hadley knew there was.

  ###

  The next day was Sunday, and Hadley had promised to watch Armstrong’s baseball team, The Whips, take on the undefeated Mud Hens in the baseball park, but when he looked in the mirror, he strongly considered missing the game. Going would mean lying to Vassie about the red scratches on his face. Not going would mean disappointing Armstrong, and Hadley couldn’t stand to be the cause of that. Anyway, today was the day that someone was going to win the Bloody Lime, or so the boys had vowed. “Atticus dreamt it,” Anthone told Hadley. “And when Atticus dreams something, it either comes true on its own or Atticus makes it come true.”

  So Hadley went. And Hadley lied. “I was playing with the neighbor’s new dog, and it scratched me,” he told them.

  The game was fun even though The Whips lost. The A boys liked Hadley, or at least they liked having someone new to pick on. As Hadley cheered for The Whips, he thought of all the dance recitals he’d missed over the years. There just never seemed a good way to show up without it
looking strange. He cheered extra hard for Armie. For Nina.

  Afterward they all had ice cream in the park, and the boys asked Hadley a million questions about his face. “What kind of dog was it?” “Did you cry?” “Do you have rabies?”

  When they exhausted of that, they started hitting each other with sticks, and this left Hadley alone with Vassie for the first time all afternoon.

  She ran her fingers down his damaged face. “Poor dear,” she said, which instantly made him feel worse than worse.

  “It wasn’t a dog,” he said.

  “I know that, Hadley.”

  He touched the delicate yellow net she wore over her hair. There wasn’t a damned thing he could say for himself that would make any sense at all.

  “How long have you been with this woman, Hadley?”

  “All my life.” He pressed his lips against her forehead, but Vassie stepped away.

  “Would you like to know the secret of Darratu?”

  Hadley was too caught off guard to answer.

  “It’s water. That’s all it is, just plain old water. Don’t be thinking I’m cheating my customers though because water will work if you believe it’ll work. It’s all about what’s going on in here.” She tapped on her temple. “Ain’t nothing more powerful than what’s in a person’s head.”

  “I reckon that’s true.”

  “And she’s still in there, am I right?”

  Hadley nodded.

  “Do you think that’s fair to me?”

  “No.”

  “I want to help you, honey. I just don’t think I can.”

  It felt like losing Flora all over again, and he grabbed her hand and kissed it, fully intending to beg for a second chance.

  But Vassie was a battle-wearied woman long before Hadley came into her life. She cupped her hand over his mouth. “Don’t, Hadley. Don’t talk me into something that neither of us will know how to make work. I’ve had a good time with you. Why don’t we leave it at that?” She started gathering up her herd. “Tell Mr. Crump thank you for the ice cream,” she said. The A boys thanked Hadley by sailing sticks past his head.

  Hadley had known it would come to this the night she showed him that scar behind her knee. Vaseline Jenkins had enough frustrated men in her life without adding Hadley in there, too. She deserved to find someone who didn’t mix love with something that was her worst nightmare. Much as it hurt to let her go, he wasn’t the right man to replace a beast like Peach Jenkins.

  “Hey Armie,” he called to the youngest of the As. Hadley lobbed the Bloody Lime at the boy, and Armstrong, who could catch like Spud Davis, caught it in his fist.

  The boy left in a hail of blows, but he was smiling ear to ear. Vassie left with a wave.

  Hadley left alone.

  As further punishment, he took a trip down Dixon on his way home from the park. This time it was broad daylight and his hat felt too small to conceal him. He wanted to see Flora. Then again, he didn’t. What he saw instead was a panel delivery vehicle parked in the drive. The letters printed on the side of the truck hit him like a kick in the stomach.

  A moving van would have been bad enough. Hadley liked knowing his daydream was alive and well on the other side of Beatties Bluff. But Flora hadn’t hired a mover. She’d hired the Fast & Cheap Rafferty Brothers ~ Home-Painters Extraordinaire. While he stood there hiding under his hat, the Rafferty brothers went into the house with a ladder and several gallons of white paint.

  ###

  Finding a woman was just about the worst idea Hadley had ever come up with. Nina was no less ardent in her pursuit of him and he hadn’t managed to free himself from Lucinda in any real way. Vassie was merely a painful reminder of why he’d never bothered to seek out anything more than a weekly tumble on The Reading Room floor.

  And then there was Dickie. “You want to tell me what happened to your face?” he asked.

  It was breakfast time and Dickie’s head was behind the newspaper, but Hadley could read the man’s knuckles clear as a bell. They looked mean and taut, like they could smash a hole through a man’s head.

  There was irony to be found in the fact that, in spite of his deceitful existence, Hadley could never come up with a convincing lie when he needed one. The words that came out of his mouth surprised him. “It was the Gilbert’s new puppy, Jeb,” he lied. “Jeb’s a little scratcher.”

  Holy cow, Hadley thought. I’m a USDA Certified Liar!

  Dickie’s blood-shot eyes peeked over the paper, drawing Hadley to the headline of the day: MERIDIAN MAN FOUND DANGLING FROM A TELEPHONE POLE AFTER WHISTLING AT A WHITE WOMAN.

  Dickie snapped the pages and said, “If you have any sense at all, boy, you’ll keep away from that little scratcher in the future.” His eyes retreated behind the dangling man headline. “I’d like you to see to that loose shutter today. My wife can’t seem to sleep a wink for all the banging going on.”

  Hadley couldn’t stop staring at the word dangling no matter how hard he tried. “I’ll take care of it first thing tomorrow.”

  “Today, Crump. Put an end to it today or I’ll fix it myself.” He folded the newspaper and tossed it at Hadley, which seemed to Hadley an eerie coincidence.

  Of course, Mama would have said that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Hadley didn’t normally read newspapers, so this was the suspicious part. He tried to leave it alone, but that headline about the hanging was like a big glass of milk that you know has turned sour, but you have to taste anyway, simply because it’s yours for the taking. He picked up the paper and started to read.

  The body of thirty-seven year old, Loomis Sackett, was discovered early Sunday morning suspended from a utility pole near the Central Street hooverville where he was believed to reside. Bystanders had observed the Negro late Saturday evening “lurking about” and whistling at hostess Ella Mae Clark as she was attempting to lock up after her shift at Brassy’s Barbeque. Concerned patrons asked the nigger to move along and that was the last anyone saw of Sackett alive. “This death serves as a warning,” Officer Luther Gates of the Meridian Police Department told the Dispatch. “Meridians will not stand for this kind of trouble in their town.”

  Hadley imagined Loomis hanging in the kitchen before him, only instead of seeing a grown man, he saw the frozen stare of a young boy circling round and round as his limp body twirled on the rope. He thought about that bad luck backscratcher with the grasshopper painted on the handle. That scratcher had always scared Hadley.

  “What if you get an itch someday that’s so big, you forget yourself and scratch it by mistake?” he’d asked Loomis once when Loomis was still Lucky Loomis and working as a hoeboy for a man who couldn’t fire him.

  “The day I scratch is the day you’re doomed,” Loomis said. “I resist temptation better than you.”

  Loomis Sackett hung from the ceiling all day long in every room Hadley entered, that old backscratcher tightly clenched in his cold dead hand.

  ###

  Hadley opened the back of the commode and started wiggling things around. “LOOKS LIKE THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO FIND YOURSELF A NEW BALL,” he said loud as he could, just in case anyone was listening. THE OLD ONE IS JUST ABOUT SHOT.

  Lucinda stood in the bathroom door sawing on a fingernail with a metal file. “Very funny, Hadley. What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a ghost.”

  He flushed the flusher and waited to speak until the sucking sound of water all but covered up his words. “He knows about us, Lucinda. He practically said as much today, only instead of shooting me outright, he’s got it in his head to scare the piss out of me first.”

  Hadley wished he had a dime for every whispered conversation he’d had over a toilet plunger. Contrary to popular belief, his best skill was not his ability to plumb but rather his ability to make it seem like he was plumbing when really he was talking about lust or murder.

  “You worry too much.” Lucinda scoffed. “I’ve been married to the man for nineteen years, and Dickie is dumber than
horse doot. If he does know, he’s always known, so why should he do anything about it now?”

  “THE BACKFLOW PREVENTER IS GIVING OUT,” Hadley announced to anyone who cared.

  Lucinda rolled her eyes.

  He spoke in a low whisper. “You’ve been coming to my house in the middle of the night, Lucinda. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m still alive. Have you noticed how much he’s been drinking lately? Tilly can’t hardly keep the liquor stocked.”

  “Oh phoo. Dickie just hates the house-building business, that’s all. If he didn’t belt back a few every night, he’d have to blow his brains out.”

  “That’s precisely my point, Lucinda. He’s wound up pretty tight these days. IN ANY CASE, YOU’RE ASKING FOR TROUBLE IF YOU DON’T MAKE A CHANGE REAL SOON.”

  “I’ll handle my husband, Hadley. With that divorcee out of the picture, you need me more than ever, I think.” She shut the door and slid the plunger from his fingers. “I’LL NEED TO SEE THE PIPES BEFORE I MAKE UP MY MIND.” She opened the top of his pants.

  “Do you think this is some sort of joke?”

  Using the tip of her filed fingernail, she followed the whorls of her initial on his skin. “It’s a riot, dear. You always have to be Mr. Fix-It, don’t you? Well some things can’t be fixed. Some things are forever. No one can stop them.”

  “I’ve never seen him like this before. What if he asks you about me, Lucinda? What will you say?”

  “I’ll deny you to the bitter end, Hadley. I’d kill you myself before I admitted what you are to me.”

  “What am I to you? Do you even know?”

  Her nail stopped short of finishing its journey. “You’re my dirty little secret, Hadley. And it’s gonna stay that way. Now are you actually gonna do some plunging, or are we through?”

  Hadley closed his pants. “I got a shutter to fix.”

  Hadley was tightening the shutter when Nina appeared at the foot of his ladder. “Guess what. I’ve managed to wheedle two seats for the Plantation Festival this Saturday afternoon, and I’d like you to be my date. Wheedle is one of my Words of the Week, in case you’re wondering. It means to obtain through flattery.”