There were only a few dozen people there, church folk and a few others from town one might be magnanimous in calling friends.
A few fellows from the church and I carried the casket out to the cemetery. The rain that had spat periodically throughout the day diminished, but the ground was still spongy, and the wind was relentless and cold. The trees around the cemetery stood naked and shivering.
The preacher said a few words and a prayer, and we lowered the coffin slowly into the hole with ropes, until it settled beneath on the boards that had been laid down. One of the men handed me a shovel, and I threw a shovelful of dirt on the coffin. The sound of each cluster of clods bouncing off the casket resonated with everything that was hollow and wooden inside me. Even with the frenzy the wind created, the thud of dirt hitting wood seemed deafening, ominous, final.
Someone started singing “In the Sweet By and By,” as more men took shovels and did their part. The wind snatched the music from the mouths of those singing, carrying away a line here, muffling a word there, as though trying to maliciously orchestrate a chorus of discordance. Its stinging blast made my eyes tear, and I fought back, because I didn’t want anyone to think I was crying. I buried my mother without a snivel. Women and girls were crying, and some men wiped away stray tears with the backs of their hands, but I kept my composure and shoveled until the hole was filled and mounded. I felt so alone. Ellen Moore said that was the day she fell in love with me.
The little group remained ringed around the grave for a moment, hunched forward against the cold, noses burrowed in behind collars, hands buried in coat pockets. Finally, a few turned to leave the huddle, and the rest soon followed to the church for the funeral meal prepared by the ladies of the church. Mr. Derby started collecting the shovels and was the last to leave.
“I won’t be needing a ride home,” I told him. “Thank you, though.” He just nodded understandingly as he left, the shovels clanking together as he dragged them behind him.
I just didn’t want to endure the awkward meal, sitting alone, with everyone wondering whether they should leave me alone to grieve, or risk offering unwanted words of solace. People, however well-meaning, were not something I wanted to deal with at that moment. I spent 10 minutes standing there like a stump. Where do I go from here, I thought.
I went home. Incline and wind impeded my progress, but once I had walked myself warm, I really didn’t care if I ever got home, or if I just kept walking until I fell over dead.
As I walked, I rehearsed in my mind a thousand possibilities and variations of what I was going to do and say when Moses finally did come home. I was fuming. My potential actions ranged from a few words of anger to blowing his head off. What kind of stinking scum doesn’t even show up to his own devoted wife’s funeral? But, I was well aware there was a danger in kindling his rage. Moses was a scrapper, and had always held his own. His arms were bear-like, with hammers for fists. One time when I was seven, he’d roughed Ma up so bad I thought she’d died, knocked her out cold. I was so angry at the time, if I had been able to reach the shells, I would have tried shooting him. His abuse had been sporadic and always induced by alcohol, but that incident especially clung to my mind like the smell of stale cigarette smoke to clothing, and I refused to wash my mind of it, or the thoughts of my eventual revenge.
It took me the better part of an hour to get home, and I was happy with my timing, since the rain began to spatter again as I got close. I crested the rise on our driveway, and there, haphazardly parked in its usual spot, was our Tin Lizzie. Immediately, I could feel my palms sweat and my face flush. Anger, apprehension, and a trace of fear. All the distinct, prefabricated scenarios my mind had devised became a hodgepodge, so I couldn’t remember what I would say, how he’d respond, and how the whole thing would conclude. But what I did determine is that I wouldn’t back down. There would be no cowering, no compromise. I was right, he was wrong, and when I was done, he would know it.
I yanked the front door open as though opening a chute for a bucking bull, and walked inside, not quite stomping, but certainly treading more heavily than usual. Moses was sitting at the table, looking at the ream of legal documents I’d left lying there. He didn’t even look up. I tossed my coat on a hook and walked into the kitchen. He finally looked up at me.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, jabbing at the papers with his thick fingers. He smelled like a brewery. I pulled out a chair across from him, sat down, folded my hands on the table, and leaned toward him.
“I think the question that’s needing to be asked,” I said, my voice vibrating slightly, but threateningly, like a knife held in a shaky hand, “is where the hell were you today at Ma’s burying?”
He got a look in his eye like he’d been shot and hadn’t seen it coming. He was silent. Even in his inebriated state, he still had enough human decency to know he was deservedly slime in my eyes. I felt like our roles had reversed, and he was the boy about to get a whipping. He had no excuse, so he returned to the question of Ma’s will and land titles.
“This ain’t right,” he said, nodding at the papers before him. “This place is mine, and you’re gonna hafta sign it over to me, boy.”
“I don’t have to sign over shit!” I told him. Now I was almost challenging him, daring him. He stared at me dumbly like a cow.
“Your wife just died, and all you’re concerned about is who gets the goldamn farm?” I shouted, half standing out of my chair and thrusting my finger in his face to punctuate my sentence. Had Ma still been lying in the bedroom she would have risen from the dead and boxed my ears for such language.
“You watch your tongue, boy,” was all Moses could come up with. I was shocked with how calm he was staying. I’d have expected he’d be rolling up his sleeves at this point, but he just sat there stupidly, without defense.
“I’ll be gettin’ some sleep,” he said, pushing away from the table and pulling himself to his feet. I stared, dumbfounded. I hadn’t been able to provoke him. His unconscionable apathy infuriated me.
“Hey!” I yelled, as he turned toward the bedroom. “If you’re going to be sleeping, it won’t be in my house!” I told him, and stood to my feet. I couldn’t help noticing that we were looking eye to eye.
“What?” He was stupefied.
“Get the hell off my property. Now!” Had I not been so angry it would have felt strange to be shouting curse-laden commands at my father.
Finally, I had done it. It was like poking a stick in the eye of a buffalo.
“This is my house, and my farm, and no whippersnapper in short pants is gonna tell me to leave my property, ya snot-nosed son of a bitch!” he bellowed, and he might as well have had horns, because he was charging. He crashed into me, and I ducked as his right arm swung like an oak beam, grazing the top of my head. My face was buried in his trunk of a chest, and I could smell his sourness as I thrust him off me with both hands like I was bench pressing his body. He was caught off guard, and stumbled backwards for a few steps before finding his footing. He’d barely righted himself when I was on him, dazing him in a pummel of blows. He attempted a few jabs at me, but found himself resigned to defend rather than fight. I was high on adrenaline, and his retreat made me almost giddy, prompting me to rain another fisted flurry on him. Finally, when his hands hung loosely at his sides, I put my hand on his throat and slammed him into the wall a few steps behind him, so hard a pot fell off its nail on the adjoining wall. He was wheezing hard, and his face was scratched, his eyes ringed with bruises, and he had blood smeared up his right cheek. A globule of blood hung from a cut on his ear lobe, like a glistening, crimson earring.
“You leave my house,” I snarled, inches from his face, “and I don’t want to see your ass come back unless it’s on—bloody—knees!” My voice rose to a hoarse scream by the end of my sentence. I pushed him toward the entrance, and as he staggered through the kitchen door, he looked back. His face was contorted with a look of pain and humiliation. He fumbled for the outside door handl
e, roughly wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve, and walked out, leaving the door unlatched.
I heard his car fire, backfire, and I stood silently as the putt putt putt grew quieter and quieter, until all I heard was the hushed, horrified whisper of the wind. I went over and gingerly pulled the door shut, sat down at the table, and trembled. I was almost fearfully in awe of myself. I felt powerful. Vindicated. Justified. And strangely satisfied. Moses never came back.
Table of Contents
THREE
ELLEN
The next four years of my life seemed void and meaningless, yet sometimes, I think they may have shaped me more than many others. Solitude defined me. Aside from occasional visits to town, and attending just a few more church services than I missed, I spent my time on the farm with Charlie. The social vacuum I lived in conformed me to myself. My perception of myself became who I was. I became proud of my self-sufficiency. No one had my back, and I preferred it that way.
I did well for myself, despite the ruthless punishment of the Depression. Pinching pennies here, and cutting back a little there, I managed to save up enough for a fairly respectable 1930 Buick Marquette, and had a cozy little nest egg to spare.
Yet, I was restless and malcontent. Part of me loved the hills and fields, working under kiss and curse of the elements, seeing the sustaining fruit of my labor. The dull ache in my muscles when I lay in bed after a long day of toil made my sleep sweet. But I couldn’t let go of my little dream, to someday do something bigger, get out of rural Kentucky, be a reporter. I thought about it continually, but couldn’t quite picture how I could possibly make it a reality. I had no training, no nearby center for education or possible apprenticeship, so I resigned myself to studying whatever dated journalistic writings I could acquire through whatever means I could. The thought of selling the farm to pursue an uncertain future was unnerving, and I never could quite persuade myself to follow through on it, so the itch to follow after the unknown persisted.
So I continued as I was, cherishing my independence, yet sometimes I felt the pangs of loneliness. Sometimes the companionship of a hound seemed inadequate.
~~~
In 1939, I had the farm in better shape than it had ever been in, had painted the house, and done some minor fix-up to the place.
I was farming alone successfully at a time when even veteran farmers were struggling to keep profitable. Though folks seldom came out straight and said it, I sensed from the way neighbors and townsfolk treated me that I had earned their respect. I found myself to be a frequent Sunday dinner guest at the homes of several local families. After a time, I caught on to a predictable pattern; the families with the warmest, most numerous invitations invariably seemed to have an eligible daughter near my age, and I was seated beside said daughter with odds-defying predictability. I took that as an endorsement of my desirability as a prospective suitor. Unfortunately, the part about being invited for dinner that excited me most was just that—dinner. Every local girl seemed to have some unredeemable flaw that disqualified her as a possible mate. Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too talkative, too shy, and the list went on and on. One or two were unobjectionable, but as young as I was, I didn’t think simply not being disagreeable was a worthy excuse to make a lifetime commitment to a girl. So, I continued accepting every invitation for dinner, happy to gorge on a hot, home-cooked meal that I didn’t have to prepare for myself
After a time, though, I began to become tempted to settle for Mildred Church or Lucille McDougall. I was weary of working all day, and then having to scrounge for my own meals and do my own laundry. Still, while the temptation to wed foolishly occasionally arose, my better sense prevailed, and alone I remained, bleakly holding my romantic fishing pole over a seemingly stagnant pool of prospects, with my line slack. That would all change the summer I turned 20.
~~~
One frightfully hot Sunday morning, I got to church earlier than I should have, considering the muggy, sweltering weather.
I was hunched forward in a pew, alone, halfway from the front. The windows were open, but there was no assuaging breeze, and I could feel my shirt sticking to my slick, sweaty back. I adjusted my pants as inconspicuously as possible, trying to get rid of the disgustingly sticky feeling.
Acknowledging the smiles and greetings as they came, I continued to melt away, thinking maybe I had made the wrong decision in coming to church. The thought of spending the day alternately swimming in the creek and lying on a blanket under the shade of an adjoining tree had me considering quietly exiting the church and doing just that.
An unexpected breath of wind stirred from my right, feeling much colder on my perspiration-beaded forehead than it normally would have. It felt so good, and for whatever reason, I turned to look to my right, toward the open window, as if I would be able to see the wind entering the building. My eyes never made it that far. Across the aisle from me, a row ahead, was a woman I didn’t recognize. Her face was turned slightly away, so it was mostly covered with a cascade of wavy blonde hair that disappeared where her back met the pew. Tresses, I thought to myself. I’d never used that word before, out loud or in my mind, about a woman’s hair, and felt a little sheepish and silly about romanticizing this particularly fine head of it.
Turn your head, I thought, willing her to look my way so I could ascertain whether her fetching head of hair was falsely advertising for a disappointing rest of her or not. She looked over her shoulder to take a quick inventory of who had come to congregate, and as her head swiveled back to the front, her eyes lingered a moment in my direction and her lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners, as though measuring out a prim little, “How do you do?” to me. I felt myself become even warmer, and I wiped my flushed brow with the sleeve of my shirt. Certainly she must have seen me staring. I didn’t recognize the woman, but I did recognize the girl she’d been.
I suppose there’s a time or two in most men’s lives when they turn around and the skinny girl next door is standing there in a woman’s body, with eyes that rattle his composure and lips that make for sweaty palms. Ellen Moore was that girl for me. She’d never struck me as anything special before, but every now and again, a girl will just blossom overnight right under your nose, and you wake up, and there she is, so desirable everything in you aches to be with her. Sometimes you’re unaware she’s so close to reaching that point, and she’ll just have done a little something different with her hair, or put a little makeup on, or be wearing a dress that properly promotes her womanly highlights, and she becomes your obsession.
I don’t recall what the preacher preached that Sunday. He could have been spouting damnable heresies for all I knew. My eyes split their time equally with staring vapidly in the direction of Preacher Moore, and ogling much more intensely and interestedly at his stunning daughter. She seemed so different from the snapshot my mind had retained of her from several years before. She didn’t giggle silently into her hand or pass notes to her girlfriends, she just sat elegantly, one firm bronzed leg crossed over the other, her hands in her lap. Her only movements were her eyes blinking and her one leg swinging ever so slightly, as by habit. Her expression was pleasant, looking as though a smile was always ready to show itself, but never in excess. She didn’t look stuffy, but she looked classy and controlled. I liked that.
After the service, I stayed seated in my pew, lingering unnecessarily to chit-chat with Delmar Young, a middle-aged bachelor who’d never married, I’m guessing partly due to the fact that he didn’t appear to possess the ability to differentiate between people who cared about what he was saying, and people that were standing there, gazing into space as he talked ad nauseam. To shake him off you had to rudely walk away, and even then he usually couldn’t take the hint and would follow you, sometimes until you shut the door of your car and roared away. The only reason I gave him opportunity to chew on my ear that morning was because I wanted an excuse to remain seated until Ellen got up and walked by.
She spent a few minutes talkin
g to friends and appeared to be exchanging novels with them. Finally, she gathered her things and got up. I was watching her out of the corner of my eye, and as she vacated her pew, I turned my head.
“Miss Moore,” I greeted her, trying to look friendly.
“Mr. Mattox,” she returned. Her voice was low and soothing, with the resonance of a cello. She hesitated slightly as if she thought she might stop and chat. Her face shone a little with the warmth of the room, the tan of her face contrasting pleasingly with her sun-bleached hair. A wayward ringlet of blonde hair teased the lashes of her right eye. Her face was heart-shaped, without being pointy-chinned, not long, but not short and stubby, either. Her blue eyes were serious, but humor always played behind her full lips. She had a little lipstick on them, you could tell, but that wasn’t what made her lips so delightful, all it did was enhance the sensual softness of them. She didn’t say anything, so instead of giggling nervously like a schoolgirl, she smiled at me and turned to go. I watched her leave, noting the way her dress hugged her waist before embracing curvy hips and swaying gently like a canopy over her legs. Her calves weren’t skinny, but looked strong and muscled, and tapered down to slender ankles. After she’d sashayed out of my sight, I realized Delmar was still talking to me.
“and so I told him, ‘That horse wouldn’t make sticky glue,’ and he keeps wantin’ to trade a 20-year-old horse for a 3-year-old milk cow.” Oblivious to my distraction, Delmar had started a new story.
“Ha ha,” I feigned amusement, “I’ve got to go.” I grabbed my Bible and rose abruptly.
Undeterred by my hasty departure, Delmar continued jabbering at my disappearing back until I was out of earshot, and for all I know, was still flapping his gums in the same pew Monday morning.
~~~
After that, I wasn’t one to be missing church services or any other event Ellen might be at. All my thoughts revolved around her. I can’t even count the times I plowed a cock-eyed row, forgot to slop the pigs, or neglected some task because my mind was far from my duties. I imagined coming home to her after working all day, a hot meal on the table, with her smelling good and waiting to welcome me with her lips.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 5