“I aint scared,” Donny declared, and he ran out of the store and down into the road, and began talking to him.
From inside the store Latha could not hear what they were saying to each other, but her left ear was burning and that was a sure sign that somebody was talking about you.
He gave Donny a sheet of the papers he was carrying, and said something more to him, and then Donny turned and came back into the store.
“Here,” he said, and gave the sheet of paper to Latha. “He wants to know if you would mind puttin this up on the store.”
Latha looked at it. It had a printed photograph of him, like on the Wanted posters that the Post Office Department sent out, but underneath the photograph it said:
BROTHER EVERY BANNING DILL
EVANGELIST
Revival Meeting at Stay More, Ark. Week of July 26–Aug. 2
EVERYBODY WELCOME!
“Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with, all confidence, no man forbidding him.”
—Acts 28:31
Latha broke down and had a long fit of laughter. She couldn’t hold it back, and the sound of it reached him out there in the road, and he turned his face away. Woodrow Kimber came in off the porch and asked her, “Who’s that feller out there? I seen him somewheres before.” Latha handed him the poster. He read it, and it took a long time for the name to register. Then he said, “Well, strike me blind! If that aint the—! Can you feature that!” Then he began hobbling quickly toward the rear door, saying, “I got to tell Bertha. She won’t believe it.”
Donny said, “He wants you to sell him a box of tacks so he can nail these up on trees and places, all around.”
Latha, still laughing, said, “Well, if he wants to buy something he can darn well come in here and get it!”
Donny returned to the man to tell him this. The man seemed to fidget, and he said something to Donny, and Donny came back into the store and said, “He doesn’t know if you want to see him or not. He says he don’t want to cause you no embarrassment. Latha, he’s a awful nice man.”
“The only embarrassment he’s causing me is standing out there in the road like a fool,” she said, and then she took a deep breath and walked out onto the porch and stood on the edge of the porch and stared at him. He stared back at her for a brief moment, then he looked down at his shoes and began to kick at the dust in the road. He looked like he was about to wet his britches.
“Howdy, Preacher,” she said, still laughing, but with gentle mirth, not malice.
He looked up. He started to say something, but choked. He coughed and then he said, “Howdy, Postmistress.”
“Come in out of the boiling sun,” she said, “before you get stroke.”
“Thank you,” he said and began walking toward her.
I must hold my hands at my sides, she warned herself. I must keep them tightly against me. I must will them to stay put. I must not allow them to reach out.
He came up into the shade of the porch, and faced her. For a moment there his hands seemed about ready to spring out and grab her, but he stuck one of them into his pocket and the other one, the one holding the posters, behind his back.
“Have a chair,” she offered. She deliberately pronounced it “cheer.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but I caint stay but a minute. I’ve got to get these here posters tacked up all around, if you’d kindly sell me a box of tacks.”
“Sure,” she said. She pronounced it “shore.” She went inside and got a box of tacks and brought it out to him.
“How much?” he asked, fishing in his pocket.
“A nickel.”
He gave her a nickel, then he said, “I hope you’ll come to the meetin too.” Politely, a little formally, but still with some warmth in it.
“I haven’t been to a church meeting in twenty years,” she said, and he frowned, and she added, “but I’d like to hear you. Where’s it going to be at?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know…yet,” he said. “I was wonderin who’s the head deacon in charge of the meetin house, and I’ll ask him for permission.”
“That would be Oren Duckworth,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Well.”
“But ask him anyway. He might let you.”
“Well,” he said.
She noticed for the first time Sonora sitting there on the porch, watching and listening, and she said, “Sonora, this is Every Dill. Every, this is my niece Sonora.”
“Howdy,” he said. “Barb’s girl?”
“No, she’s out in California and none of us have heard from her in a coon’s age.”
“Then…” he said, “is she Mandy’s?”
“Yes.”
“Mandy?” he said, and stared at the girl. “Don’t favor her too much.”
“Favors her dad,” Latha said, and looked at him.
“Oh,” he said, and stared at her some more. Then he said, “Sure has been a lot of water flowed under the bridge. I’ll have a lot of catchin up to do. Well, I got to git these signs tacked up. Do you reckon you could loan me a hammer?”
“You sure travel kind of light,” she said, and laughed, but fetched him a hammer from the store. Then she walked as far as the road with him, out of earshot of the others, and she asked, “Do you suppose folks are going to let you get away with it?”
He wrinkled his fine forehead. “Get away with what?” he asked.
“You,” she said, “giving a revival meeting.”
His face flushed. “Well, my goodness,” he protested, “I’ve given meetings for the last eight years, in hundreds and hundreds of towns all over the—” His voice faltered, and he stopped, and he resumed in a weak voice, “Latha, could I come and talk with you?”
“Any time,” she said. “Any old time. I’ve been here nearly eight years.”
“See you later, then,” he said. “Soon,” he added, and walked away.
She tacked up his poster on the front of her store, and stood back and studied the photograph. My, he was distinguished-looking.
Sonora was looking at it over her shoulder. “I’ve heard Mother mention him,” she said, “but I didn’t know he was a preacher.”
“I didn’t either,” Latha said.
“He’s awful good-looking,” Sonora said, “even with those glasses and that hair.”
“He didn’t used to be,” Latha said.
“Is that why you never married him?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Donny asked, “Are you going to marry him now?”
Latha laughed, and she said, “Well, not this afternoon, Dawny.” Then she added, “And probably not ever.” She rumpled his hair. “I’m going to just wait until you grow up.”
At noon Donny went home for dinner, and the few others on the store porch got up and went home for dinner. Sonora offered to fix dinner—just some sandwiches and milk—so Latha sat on the porch alone while Sonora was back in the kitchen.
While she was there alone a man rode up on horseback.
She recognized him even before he got down off his horse.
She wanted to run and hide.
More than that, she wanted to go off into the woods with him and spend the whole afternoon making love, again and again.
He had said his name was Dolph Rivett and he had said he lived the other side of Spunkwater. Sometimes she had seen that name on the mail that she sorted out for Spunkwater.
She had told him her name was Sue McComb and she lived down below Demijohn.
Now he was saying, “Howdy. There aint any Sue McComb anywheres near Demijohn.”
She did not comment on that.
“But,” he said, “I figgered if I just kept lookin hard enough, I’d find you. So this is where you live, huh?”
She nodded.
“Well, Sue-or-whatever-yore-name-is, I been doin a lot of thinkin lately. Matter a fact, I aint hardly been able to think of nuthin else. And here’s what I’ve decided: I’v
e just got to have you. I don’t keer whut it takes. I will leave my wife and kids. I will sell everthing I own. I swear, they aint nuthin on this earth that I ever liked as much as that little hour me’n you spent in that cave up on Banty Creek. I swear, they aint nuthin in this world that I want to do any more, exceptin that. I know you liked it too. I swear, they’s not nuthin for me to do but have you. I mean to have you, and I aim to tear the clouds out of the sky to git you.”
I am not imagining this, she realized. He is a real man, and he is really standing there and talking to me. He is really saying what he is saying.
SUB ONE: Recently
That summer you often could have gone fishing, Bug, not because the sport of it held any particular fascination for you, nor even because the fish supplemented your larder (although you have confessed to a weakness for sunperch fried in cornmeal), but only because it could have been your one legitimate excuse for escaping occasionally from the store, from the town, and getting up close to the Nature which was what you loved most. In blackberry time and gooseberry time, you could have donned your old clothes (tight at the neck and wrist to keep out chiggers and ticks) and gone off with your pail on your arm and without an excuse for anyone, but berries don’t come in all summer long and you could have needed another reason to tell Sonora where you were going.
Because you were required to sort mail twice a day except Saturdays and Sundays, the only time you could have gone fishing would in all likelihood have been Saturday afternoons or any time on Sunday.
It could have been a Sunday morning in late June or early July, when most God-fearing people were at church and you, Bug, could not have feared God if he had appeared in a burning bush before you and called you dirty names. It could have been that you rose just before dawn and quickly tended your chores then dug a bucket of redworms out of the compost pile and pulled your cane pole out from under the porch and took off, up the creek. It could have been Banty Creek that you chose, because there were a couple of deep holes in deep-forested timber up below the south side of Dinsmore Mountain.
You could have taken your time getting there, because you liked to stop and identify the wildflowers. You could have known them all by name: Beebalm, Mallow, Lady Slipper, Bouncing Bet, Fleabane, Loose Strife, Bluecurls, Lobelia, Dayflower, Mullein, Saxifrage, Bedstraw—you might have known a hundred other names. You could never have picked one.
It might have neared seven o’clock before you finally reached that one cove of stream known as Ole Bottomless. Previously some time ago you could have touched bottom yourself to give the name the lie—it was from five to six feet deep almost everywhere except for one small drop-off that went down to about twelve feet. You could have unwound your line and baited your hook and thrown—
No, probably first if the morning was warm and you felt like it you could have taken off your shirt and jeans and plunged into the—But if you had done that it might have scared the fish off and besides if all you wanted to do was swim you could have done it in the privacy of Swains Greek right behind your own garden.
So you could have begun fishing right away, and because of the time of the day the fish would have been hungry and you could have caught, say, five sunperch, three crappie, two catfish and a trout within the space of an hour, as well as several redtails and hogsuckers which you threw back in.
For a stringer, you could have taken your jackknife and stripped a thin branch from a sapling and sliced the bark off of it. While you were doing this you could have leaned your back against the sapling and have been a little amazed to notice how the sapling quivered with your body, and it could have made you feel very much like a live, live thing. You could have strung the fish on that branch and kept them cool and alive in the water.
Sometime around eight o’clock the man could have come downstream, carrying his fine store-bought rod and reel and his tackle box. A dog could have followed him, a mongrel whelp, black and tan.
“Why, howdy do, ma’am,” he could have said, surprised to find you there fishing, because it is a very rare thing for a grown woman to be found fishing in these hills, let alone a grown woman all alone. Fishing is the preserve primarily of young boys and an occasional grown man. You, Bug, would have been the first grown woman fishing he had ever come across.
And you could have returned his greeting, saying, “Howdy do, sir,” but more likely you would not have. More likely you could have simply smiled and kept on fishing. Voices scare the fish away. Fish in silence, get plenty; fish talking, don’t get any.
Then he could have stepped to the edge of the bank and pulled up your sapling branch and taken a look at your string and exclaimed, “My, my, what a purty mess of fish! What you usin for bait?”
“Worms,” you could have replied.
“Well now, that shore is one of the purtiest mess of fish I ever seen,” he could have continued, lowering the string back into the water. “All I got is spinners and flies, no live bait, but we’ll just see if them fishes is in the mood for teasin. I do hope you don’t keer, ma’am, if I just throw my line in there too.”
You could have shaken your head to signify that you did not mind his sharing the pool with you. Your feeling might have been that you had caught enough fish already and perhaps had even been on the verge of leaving when this man showed up. You might still have been planning to get up and go at any moment, but something could have been holding you back.
The man could have lashed his rod and cast his lure way out to the far edge of the pool and have slowly begun retrieving it, while you could have been slyly scrutinizing him. He could have appeared to you to be tall, sturdy, obviously a hard-working farmer, with skin browned and wrinkled by the sun, and a sun-bleached shock of light hair, and small eyes the color of mockingbird’s eggs. He might have been about your own age, which could have been 38; possibly he might have been a year or two younger.
He could not have had much luck; you could have had told him that, that these Banty Creek fish in Ole Bottomless did not seem to care for any bait but worms or grasshoppers or crawdad tails. After he had failed to get a strike during his first ten minutes of fishing, you could have given him a worm. He could have at first rejected it, but then have accepted it.
“Aw heck, I aint never fished this creek afore,” he could have said, as if that explained something. Then, casting the worm and letting it sink, he could have turned his glance on you and asked, “You live roundabouts?”
Now you could have been asking yourself why you had decided to lie to him. You could have shaken your head and have answered, “No, I’m from down towards Demijohn.” Now why did I tell him that? you could have wondered immediately, Why didn’t I just tell him that I’m the Stay More postmistress?
“Demijohn,” he could have responded. “Well, now, I caint say I know anybody from that part of the country, though I’ve been there a time or two. I’m from up beyond Spunkwater myself. You know whar that’s at?”
“I’ve been there a time or two,” you could have answered, truthfully.
“Dolph Rivett’s my name,” he could have offered.
“Sue McComb’s mine,” you could have returned, and could have said to yourself, There! Now I know I’m lying.
“Mighty pleased to meetcha, Miz McComb,” he could have said, and added, “It is ‘Miz,’ I reckon.”
“Miss,” you could have corrected him, and in all the trees all kinds of birds could have been singing.
“Do tell?” he could have remarked, beaming. “Why, how come such a keen-lookin gal like yoreself happened to turn out a maiden lady?”
You would not have liked that expression, “maiden lady,” although you would have preferred it to “spinster” or “lone woman” or even to “bachelor girl,” and you could have felt vaguely grateful for his tact.
“Nobody ever asked me,” you could have lied to him.
“Aw, I aint about to swaller that,” he could have objected. “Such a peachy dream as you, them fellers down to Demijohn must all be old men
or else their eyes is all on the wrong side of their heads.”
“They are just all already married,” you could have pointed out and have added, “like you.”
“Why—!” he could have exclaimed. “What gives you the idee I’m married?”
“I haven’t yet met a good-looking man who wasn’t.”
He might have blushed and have asked, “You think I’m good-looking?”
“Oh, yes indeed,” you could have affirmed, but have cautioned yourself, Easy, girl. You are supposed to let him do the courting.
He would have blushed even deeper, and coughed, and hemmed and hawed, and said, “Well, let me tell you something, honey, and I don’t keer if you believe it or not, but you are the most scrum-didliumptuous lookin creature I ever seen in all my born days.”
You could have laughed at length and have said, “Nobody ever called me that before.”
And he could have joined your laughter and have said, “Well, they just aint any words. You’re cute as a bug’s ear.”
So saying, he, Bug, would have been the first to sense your bugness.
You could have liked him from the word go. Whether he was married or not—and that could not have mattered anyway because you could have been lying to him—you could have sensed something in the simple kinship of the situation: that he and you alone could have happened to be fishing at this spot on this morning when all God-fearing people were getting ready to go to church.
There would have been an easiness about him that could have helped you feel at ease. This would have been important. For you could have begun to entertain a thought, a thought so serious that the only way to tinker with it would have been with easiness.
Your problem, Bug, your long-standing and nearly hopeless problem could have been this: that being a woman, and a woman still relatively young, you possessed a woman’s body, and a woman’s reproductive system with all its nerves in full function, a woman’s sex and a woman’s (no average woman’s, granted) desire, and capacity for passion. It had gotten you into difficulties in the past…the distant past. Now, what opportunities could there have been in Stay More? Tearle Ingledew, one night when he was so drunk that he would mercifully have forgotten it the next morning had slipped his hand up your dress and toyed briefly with your pudendum. Colvin Swain, after writing out a prescription for some anodyne to help you sleep better, one time, had questioned you in a halting and roundabout manner as to whether or not your life had enough “satisfaction” and then he had taken a heavy swallow of some nerve-giving medicine and announced, “By God, Latha, I may be gittin on in years but I swear I can still coax a respectable stand out of the ole dingbat down here, so if there ever comes a time when you feel like you just got to have it, then I’ll gladly be at your service.” But the effort of this announcement had cost him so much—he grew red as a beet all over and had a terrible coughing fit—that you never got a chance to answer him, even if you had been able to.
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