The Midnight Cool

by Lydia Peelle

  He looks up. Maura is standing in the doorway, watching him. She snatches the scrapbook away and takes it into the kitchen and opens the stove and throws it in.

  Don’t ever say the word California again.

  He rushes in after her. The potatoes in the pan are black, smoking. For a moment he thinks only of the fat, the thirty cents he spent on it, and he reaches out to save the food before it is ruined and burns his hand on the handle of the frying pan. With the heat flaring in his palm he grabs her, too rough.

  Out on the street a woman is yelling. Billy coughs. It all closes in on him, the burned oil, the smoke of the scrapbook issuing out of the poorly drawing stove, the smell of the boy’s flesh stuck in his nose. Maura pulls away, flies into the other room, slams the door. He pounds out the front, down the stairs, to the street. Takes in great gulping breaths of the bad Second High air.

  That night he drinks at the saloon by the Crimson Shawl until it closes, pinching at his nostrils. He cannot bring himself to go back to the smoke-filled house. When he finally lurches out a girl tries to talk him into the whorehouse. She is small, walleyed, a bag of bones. He feels so low he considers it, then cusses at her, keeps walking.

  The Midnight Cool

  Charles knew where he could find Catherine. Up at the depot, working at the Red Cross canteen.

  She saw him through the window and came outside. She was wearing her Red Cross uniform and the hat that made her look like a nun. A fleeting wish that she was wearing something prettier made him feel unpatriotic. It was dusk, still hot. The brimstone smell of the trains made it feel even hotter. They walked past the freight yard, then past the icehouse. In the lot where they used to meet, construction had begun on a new warehouse.

  It had been two days since Hatcher’s accident. There had been a small piece in the paper about it. Faulty brakes.

  Are you alright? he said.

  I’ve made my decision, she said. I’m sticking to it.

  She was leaving for Nashville in two days. Her father was resting and Wad Taylor was taking care of things at the factory. She had convinced him, at least, to rest.

  But nothing’s going to change, she said, touching her hat, straightening it. Nothing. In a week he’ll be back up and going about things as if it never happened.

  That woman up on Freedman’s Hill, Charles said. It’s no good, what she’s doing to him. It ain’t right.

  Catherine shook her head and slowed her stride.

  If what you told me is true, she said, that he goes up there and asks my mother for forgiveness. I have thought about that, these days. If that is true, then it helps me understand. The cage he is in. The trap.

  She stopped, reached up and touched her temple.

  It’s a dark place, Charles. He’s all alone in there. I can see it now. And I don’t think he’s ever going to get out of it.

  They kept walking. They passed the Citizens’ Club laundry, shuttered. Ernestine’s son gone off to the army. The sign left in the window: we will dye for you.

  A firefly flashed in front of them. Charles reached out, grabbed it, let it go.

  What about your brother?

  Catherine sighed, following the flashing track of the firefly with her eyes. Still not one dependable piece of news. I am trying to keep my hopes up. And now this, with Father. She sighed. But I’ve got to go. And I won’t be far, when he does finally come home. Nashville isn’t far.

  You’re doing what’s right, Cat. I’m sure of it.

  Right? She looked at him. Oh, Charles, I don’t know what’s right. How can anyone do one right thing in a world that is so crazy and wrong? Sometimes it seems like the only way to end it would be if we all just threw up our hands and yelled ‘Stop.’ There’d be no war if every man, woman, and child on earth did that. But we would have to do it all at once. Every single one of us would have to yell ‘Stop’ at the exact same time. And that will never happen. She bit her lip. So what is left to do? I have to go.

  They walked past a line of warehouses, farther than they usually went. Cicadas droned. Fireflies all around. A bead of sweat ran down Charles’s forehead.

  Catherine looked over her shoulder towards the depot, her face framed in her white wimple.

  I ought to get back soon, she said. They call on the phone when the trains are due and tell us in code. It’s top secret. Classified information. We never know when they’re coming.

  Charles rubbed his forehead with his cuff. The tree ahead of them was full of fireflies, blinking almost in unison. The distant hollow sound of a screen door slamming. They turned and walked back the way they came. For a while they walked in silence. Finally he told her that he was going too. He explained the position in Columbia. Twenty men under me, he said. Imagine that.

  She bit her lip again, nodding.

  Well I suppose I’ll miss you, she said.

  There was a broken branch in her path. He stopped her and picked it up and hefted it out of her way. Then he looked at her.

  Cat. Sometimes I think, if not for the war—sometimes I think we never even really got started.

  He tried to kiss her. She kissed him back for only a second and then touched her hair under her hat and looked around. They were right beside the tracks, under a sprawling elm tree at the edge of a vacant lot. In the sky, millions of stars. The kiss had been awkward, a knocking of teeth. They stood there looking at each other, suddenly shy.

  My, she said, it is warm.

  Another little while and it will cool down, he said. Nights sure have been cool.

  Yes. There always is some relief, isn’t there. Even in August. It does finally cool, around midnight. Only we’re all asleep, not even out to enjoy it.

  She paused, looking up into the leaves of the elm.

  That was her name, you know.

  Whose name?

  The black horse, Catherine said. My father’s horse. Her name was The Midnight Cool.

  Charles followed her gaze up into the leaves of the tree. He thought of all the names they had called Hatcher’s mare. He could still hear Billy warbling to her, blowing her a kiss. Just you wait, My Devil, My Maniac, My Own True Love. You and I, Turtledove, we’ll be thick as thieves yet. Back when he thought she was nothing but potential. When she was curable, when she was going to turn out to be an incredible horse, the find of a lifetime. Before he knew she was ruined, and that Hatcher had ruined her. He thought about the day he took her to the slaughterhouse. Doped up, she had reached out and nuzzled his arm. Touched it ever so gently with her velvet nose. She was so beautiful.

  My mother named her, Catherine said quietly. A few days after she was born.

  She could have been a real fine horse, Charles said.

  There was a long silence, after that. Both of them with their eyes on the tree. Finally Catherine looked into his face. There had been a new gleam to her eyes since the day in the theater lobby she told him she was leaving. The fierceness had been replaced by something gentler, yet somehow more powerful. An understanding. He saw it now, in the moonlight. Envied it.

  All day long my father tells people what to do. Then he goes up there to Freedman’s Hill and, instead of telling anyone anything, why, he asks for something. He asks for forgiveness. Even if it’s all a big hoax, even if it’s no way to get it, he wants it. And that’s a fair thing to ask for, isn’t it, forgiveness? No matter how terrible it is, what you’ve done. I look at him differently now that I understand that.

  He wants me to speak at this month’s Red Cross meeting. He invited me the day of the accident.

  Well you’ve been working for the war longer than anybody in this town, Charles. You ought to do it. It’s an honor.

  Charles shook his head. It was funny. There had been a time not long ago that Leland Hatcher’s approval felt like the only thing that stood between him and the rest of his life. And now it meant nothing to him.

  You know, I really thought your father had it all figured out.

  Well. Plenty of people do, she said. Then she p
ut her hand on his arm.

  Do you feel it? Here comes another troop train.

  There it was in his feet, the vibration, and in the next moment he heard it. And soon enough he saw it, a flash of light up ahead on the track. They stood and watched the engine thunder towards them, the burn of its headlight splitting the dark, catching them in its blinding glare for a moment before it passed screaming and moaning towards the depot.

  Gone

  Bristol

  When Billy gets back to Second High in the morning, hungover, half dead with cold, Maura is gone. The house is empty like an empty walnut shell, a shed cicada case or snakeskin. Empty in a lifeless, final, used-up way.

  He runs all over town, looking for her. On Solar Hill he sees Missus King, stepping into her carriage.

  Your maid, he says. Maura. His lungs are seared from the cold and it hurts to speak. His gloveless hands have lost feeling. The burn on his palm is red, blistered. The charred smell of death high in nostrils.

  She looks down at him, then through him.

  Didn’t show up this morning and frankly I’m not surprised.

  Finally he thinks to go to the depot.

  Two of the boys from Harkleroad’s are there.

  Sure we seen her. An hour or so ago.

  Billy looks up at the board. In the past hour four trains have come through.

  Well which damn train did she get on? Even as they speak, another train is coming in.

  One boy is certain she was headed west.

  East, the other says. I’m sure of it. Cross my heart, Mister Monday. She was going east.

  Well Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, boys. Billy looks between them, wanting to shake them. Which goddamn way?

  East.

  West.

  No, one suddenly says. North, Mister Monday. She was heading north.

  Billy walks around Bristol for two days, believing she might come back. On the third day something in his heart closes up. He goes to Harkleroad and, with the last of his money, buys a horse and a saddle. And bent into a cold wind that shears down from Holston Mountain, he goes.

  So Long, Richfield

  Two weeks after Catherine’s departure, the night of the Red Cross meeting, Charles gave his speech. He had worked on it for days, but when he stood up at the podium in his rented dinner jacket, what he had written, all about George Washington and the American mule and duty and honor and sacrifice, felt empty, a masquerade.

  He cleared his throat. Hundreds of faces looked up at him, waiting.

  Citizens of Richfield, he began. His voice quavered, sounded strange in his own skull. I know that all of you are doing your bit. Well for a long time now, our mules have been chewing their bit.

  Laughter. He looked out at the people. He wondered if he was the only one who felt that with every passing day he understood not more and more but less and less. Not just about the war but about life and himself and what a man was meant to do to be right in the world.

  I love this country, he said slowly, and I’m proud of it too. And I’m proud our mules are in the fight. They don’t know why we’re in it, or what we’re fighting for.

  He hesitated.

  To tell you the truth, sometimes I don’t know either. But these mules, they put their whole hearts into it. I do know that. They put their whole hearts in it for us, and then some.

  Afterwards in the opera house lobby a crowd of men had come up to shake his hand. Wad Taylor came up on his cane and congratulated him, a genuine smile on his broad face. And Charles saw that he had been a fool, all the times he had been jealous of him. All along he’d had what Wad wanted. Catherine. But he had acted as if it was the other way around.

  Leland Hatcher congratulated him too. Catherine’s prediction was right. After a week’s rest he had been back at it as if nothing had ever happened. Giving speeches, writing columns, crowing at everyone for four minutes before the shows at the Paradise. Tonight he was flashing around the smile that did not go up to his eyes. Shaking hands. Clapping shoulders. Working the room.

  Kuntz came up and pumped Charles’s hand. It was rumored that he had been the Red Cross’s single biggest donor that month. Charles told him about the Ford he had just bought, in order to cover more ground when he was out buying mules. Under his mustache Kuntz grinned as big as the picture of Teddy Roosevelt Charles had pinned up in the shack.

  That’s a boy, McLaughlin. Wise investment. Me, I’m going to tell them to bury me with my Ford. Because there’s never been a hole she couldn’t get me out of.

  Charles was still learning to drive the car, always cursing it and telling it to whoa. All alone out on the country roads. Billy didn’t come out anymore.

  I believe I’m getting out of the war mule business, he had said the day after they went to the high school for the examinations. I can’t send another mule over there. They suffer our foolishness enough in peacetime to ask them to get into the middle of that madness.

  Charles kept shaking hands and smiling, but without Catherine there, it was all emptiness. He had felt it since she left, and the harder he worked, the more fully he tried to dedicate himself to the cause of the war, the more he thought about her and missed her. The more he missed her, the harder he worked, driving far into the county in the Ford, following every lead.

  He shook another hand.

  Yessir, he said. Thank you, sir. We’ve all got to do our all, yessir.

  Early that morning he had driven out to the Tisdale addition, thinking, Shit, the garden. The greens lay in withered black lumps. The corn stalks were bent. Even the weeds that had grown up around everything looked dead. He got out of the car and walked over and stood in the middle of it. Touched the brittle arm of a parched tomato plant and it snapped off and floated to the ground.

  He had met a young man in his travels, a redheaded boy who quoted scripture and carried a Bible under his arm. He had been drafted and he was torn up about what to do.

  On the one hand, he told Charles, I got God saying, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ On the other I got Uncle Sam saying, ‘I want you to go over there and kill the Hun quick as you can.’

  The redheaded boy had held his Bible to his chest.

  What’s a man to do?

  Charles thought of him now, trying to set his course by two stars.

  Thou shalt not kill. I need you to fight.

  The meek shall inherit the earth. This country was not built by the meek.

  Conserve. Spend.

  Invest. Divest.

  Fight or Go.

  It is our job to identify the difference between honest opinion and un-American motives.

  Work will win the war. Food will win the war. Mules will win the war.

  Sometimes these days Charles wished he could do as Billy had done. Just, quit.

  He slipped out of the opera house by the back door. He thought of Kuntz smiling at him, big as Roosevelt, all those men smiling at him, wanting to meet him and shake his hand. My crowded hour, he thought. He could not understand why he felt so low.

  Catherine was coming up through the alley, hurrying. Catherine. She was a vision, a dream, a wish. His heart lifted at the sight of her, and he ran to meet her, stumbling, nearly falling, over a broken brick in his path. She was flushed and beautiful and smelled of rosewater. A lock of hair had fallen onto her forehead. When he went to put his arms around her she put up her hand.

  I’ve got to talk to you, she said.

  Were you in there, Catherine? His toe was throbbing from the brick but he could hardly feel it.

  She shook her head. She would not look him in the eye.

  Oh, Cat. I wish you had been in there. I gave a speech. A damn good speech. And they stood when they applauded me, but I got to tell you, it just didn’t feel right. I think it’s because you weren’t there. If you had been there it would have been different. I’m sure of it.

  His hands trembled. She was wearing a yellow dress with a high collar. He wanted to put his hands behind her neck and close his eyes and put his face i
n the space between the collar and her ear and just listen to the beating of her heart.

  Charles, she said. The day of the parade. In the springhouse.

  Jesus. I miss you. Cat. I could come visit you in Nashville. I’ll take you out walking.

  He was so happy to see her. He still did not understand what she was saying. He reached out and took her hands. Her mouth was screwed up. Now she looked as if she had been stung by a wasp.

  Charles, she said. I’m pregnant.

  Duty

  When he went in to Suddarth’s the next morning to return his dinner jacket a sign in the window stopped Charles in his tracks.

  attention all young men!!

  important notice!!!!!

  now is the time to buy your fall hat

  it is your duty to your country

  to look your best

  It made his heart pound with alarm. They ought not put up a sign like that. It wasn’t fair, making men’s hearts pound like that. Especially when they hadn’t slept all damn night.

  He returned the jacket and had his shoes shined, hardly speaking to the men in the store. Then he walked out to Hatcher Boot and Shoe to ask Leland Hatcher for permission to marry his daughter.

  He was going to take care of her. He had decided right there in the alley behind the opera house as soon as she told him. Forget everything else. Forget even the war. He loved her and he was a good man and he was going to take care of her. He would go door-to-door with an old hen under his arm the way his mother had, if it came down to that. He knew now how Maura could have stooped so low. How she could have knocked at the Crimson Shawl looking for work when she could find none elsewhere. Offer herself to those despicable men for a few coins. He would do anything, now, for Catherine.