When the cold nights struck in December and January, it always pleased Bert Gifford immensely to hear that someone’s inside bathroom had frozen pipes and was unusable.
“Good enough for ’em,” he would tell his family. “People got no business shittin’ in their house.”
There were no doors in the Gifford house, no privacy to be found among so many occupants, half of whom were old enough to be arguing, the other half young enough to be squalling. Many times Chester Lee retreated to the Gifford outhouse even when his body had no need for it. He looked upon it as a kind of office, a haven where he could go and think out some of his most pressing problems while thumbing through the catalog pages of women in bras and cotton panties.
He slid his legs over the side of the bed and let his head adjust to the new vertical position. Downstairs, his mother Ruth was scrambling a package of powdered eggs that were part of the relief supplies the Giffords were entitled to: two packages per person in the family per month.
Because the Gifford daughters Debra, Rita, and Lorraine were still under Bert’s roof with their four illegitimate children, the family consisted of ten people, the current boyfriends of the daughters not being eligible even though they were frequently there. This brought the relief count to twenty packages of scrambled eggs, three pounds of lard, five pounds of margarine, two boxes of cheese, one large bag of flour, ten cans of potted meat, five bags of rice, five bags of beans, two sacks of cornmeal, two sacks of sugar, and five sacks of powdered milk. This was enough to sustain the Gifford brood for a month. Ruth added extras with the ADC check and town support, but any cash in the house was rare and usually went to the purchase of beer and hard liquor. As most of the family had grown to detest the bland taste of the powdered eggs, the burden of eating them fell upon the four children and two dogs, which accounted for the rib work that showed through the animal’s hides and the whiny dispositions of the children.
Ruth had biscuits made. Chester Lee grabbed a handful from the baking sheet, not stopping for margarine or any extras, and headed for the back door.
“Anyone in the toilet?” he asked. He kicked open the screen door, letting in some noisy flies that had had their way with the outhouse and were anxious for the biscuits. Chester Lee ate a biscuit as he staggered toward his office, still feeling the dizziness of drink. Behind him Ruth’s shrill voice peaked as she shouted a warning to a child, then a brisk sound of hand against skin and a second of silence until a child’s uncontrollable sobs dominated the other house noises. A radio was playing in one of the bedrooms upstairs, the one that Debbie slept in with her little boy. In the yard outside, Chester spotted Boyd Henderson’s shiny new pickup parked brazenly close to the back step. The two dogs were engrossed in sniffing the urine they had newly deposited upon the tires. Boyd was Debbie’s latest boyfriend and that explained the music coming from her bedroom.
Chester Lee felt that wild thump in his gut that arose whenever he saw a new automobile. Or even a slightly used one. He felt an intense jealousy of Boyd. It didn’t matter that the bank was in the process of chasing Boyd down to reclaim it; it was in his possession now. And there was nothing that Chester Gifford wanted more than a car. A Plymouth with fins had been his dream, but even a pickup could make his heart race. Each time he sat inside an automobile and closed his eyes, he could smell the thick odor of vinyl and the intoxicating aroma of gasoline and grease. As he caressed the metal coolness of the keys, nothing, not even a beautiful woman in cotton panties, could equal the stirring sensations in his groin.
Chester ate one of the biscuits as he studied the shape of the pickup, the curve of the hood, the sleekness of the paint job. Then he went off to the outhouse. Inside he turned the piece of wood that had been nailed to the wall from twelve o’clock around to three o’clock so that half of it protruded a few inches onto the door. Since the door opened inward, the wood served as a convenient brace, affording privacy and costing only the price of a nail.
Chester Lee placed his biscuits on the floor, dropped his pants, and situated his buttocks over one hole until he was comfortable. Turning to the ladies’ lingerie section of the catalog, he found the brunette who had captured his attention from the day the new catalog arrived, her rear snug in tight panties and just a shadow of breast above the bra’s extra support cups.
But no amount of concentration could bring the usual wave of sexual excitement. No amount of self-stimulation could carry him off into the page where he could firmly glue his lips to one of the brunette’s breasts. Reaching for a biscuit on the outhouse floor, Chester Lee admitted out loud what he knew silently. His words pushed around the mouthful of biscuit and he let one fist fall against the knotty boards to reinforce the urgency.
“I got to get me some wheels!”
BEYOND COURTLY LOVE: A SLOW PIROGUE TO CHINA
“Do you wanna know why the McKinnons think they’re the crust on the loaf of the bread? It seems this prince named Charlie went up to Scotland a couple hundred years ago to get back his ancestors’ home. But no way in hell did he finagle that. There was a McKinnon with him—McKinnons always turn up for a throne-grabbin’—and anyway, Prince Charlie gives this particular McKinnon a secret recipe he had for a hell-raisin’ little quaff. And that secret recipe has stayed with the McKinnon family ever since. If you ask me, Charlie should’ve given away his recipe before the battle. It might’ve made all the difference, ’cause when men get to drinkin’ in battle, and considerin’ the little skirts they wore, well, I imagine they were trippin’ all over the place. But if you care to gaze upon the McKinnon coat of arms, go down to the Watertown Liquor Store and turn over a Drambuie bottle. The McKinnon coat of arms ain’t on display in Mattagash, it being a dry town.”
—Gert McKinnon, Historian and
Drambuie Drinker, 1937
He had arrived with holes in his shirt and a battered Bible he said belonged to his grandfather. He was only twenty-eight but already a missionary full of the zeal all of Mattagash hungered to see. He thrilled Reverend Ralph’s parlor group with his escapades in Africa, sang them African songs which he pounded out on a set of drums a chieftain had given him. Marge was twenty-three the day he rapped on the screen door and asked to see her father. He had curly dark hair and such black eyes, and a full, brooding mouth. She felt a small stirring in the pit of her stomach, almost the same as if she were going to be sick. It was autumn when she answered the door, and all around her the world was red and orange and yellow, and when he asked, “Is the Reverend Ralph McKinnon at home?” it seemed all the colors of Mattagash began to swirl about her like crayons melting in the sun. It it occurred to her that she might faint. She might faint there in the doorway, only to wake and find him gone. She didn’t want that to happen, because she knew as easily as she’d know the devil by his tail and trident, she knew this man would be her lover. She knew those hands inside those worn pockets would hold her. Those lips would press against hers. She knew this. As a woman knows. So she held on, putting one hand against the doorjamb to steady herself as she focused on his eyes and listened to his words.
“Are you all right?” he had asked.
“Yes. It’s just the weather.”
“Is the Reverend at home?”
“Come inside,” she told him and opened the door wider, stepping back so he could pass. As easily as that, she let Marcus Doyle into her life.
The Reverend was impressed with him. The town was impressed. He was by far the most interesting of the visiting missionaries, with the flair of a Hollywood actor. He motioned with swooping gestures as if to catch and hold the very words he spoke. And after each funny story he told, after each tearful one, Marge’s was the first face he looked to for approval. And she always gave it by blushing quickly or nervously fingering the handkerchief on her lap. He knew how he captivated her. He understood that just short of signing autographs and being rich he was as good as Valentino to her. To Mattagash. When he let drop th
e statement that he was looking for a church where he could preach, a community he might settle in and call home, the Reverend asked him to linger there awhile, to share the church duties with him for his room and board. It was only a matter of months, he told Marcus Doyle, before he would be embarking for China. What a perfect way to train some promising young preacher to take Reverend Ralph’s place. The congregation responded warmly, all echoing the sentiment and praising Reverend Ralph for his foresight.
Marge went to bed that night and was unable to sleep, knowing Marcus Doyle slept on a cot in the summer kitchen, directly beneath her bedroom window. In the dark she kissed the back of her palm, pretending it was Marcus’s warm lips. And all night she heard noises in the house she had not heard before, or had not cared to hear, or listened to hear, and she thought of them as the deep soft breaths coming from his mouth as he slept. Only when the sky turned gray with dawn did she finally let go of the excitement enough to sleep.
From that day on her life, which she once thought was doomed to spinsterhood, became new. She was born again in the spirit, and as she went about her daily chores of housecleaning, she told herself it was their house she was taking care of, hers and Marcus’s. The evening meal became to her an adventure in itself. She tried new recipes, most receiving her father’s disapproval as being too frivolous. But he saw what might happen between the two young people and the prospect of a spinster daughter was more untasty to him than jalapeño cornbread.
She redid the summer kitchen so Marcus would feel more at home. She brought in pieces of furniture that had been stored in the shed. She covered his cot with her best quilt and left fresh goldenrod in a glass by his bedside. If only the river roses were still blooming, she would have filled his room with their perfume.
After supper each evening, they would sit on the front steps of the sagging porch and talk about Africa, the church, about God and the words of the Bible. Knowing that Henry Taylor drove home from his job in Watertown every Saturday night, they would walk a mile down the dirt road each Saturday evening, just to stare breathlessly at his new Model T automobile and run their fingers carefully over its surface. And on the walk home their hands would touch and he would gather hers up and hold it in his, delicately, her pulse throbbing as if he held her beating heart. The road would waver beneath her as she grew giddy from his touch. And she knew then how drunkards felt staggering home after a night in the taverns. And she understood why they drank.
He began his seduction of her slowly, making her comfortable in his room by bringing her there often to show her relics and pictures from his suitcase. He did this until she came and went in his private room as though it were her own, with only a soft quick knock to let him know it was her.
He let her catch him bare-chested one day, his shirt slung over a chair. At first she was quite taken aback to see him like that. But before she could react, he quickly said, “Look, here’s a picture of my mother. I told you how much you look like her.”
As she leaned forward and said, “Silly. There’s no resemblance at all,” she noticed the fine hairs of his chest, and she smelled the aroma of his man’s scent that clung to her hair and clothes even after she’d left the room. Closing his door behind her, she leaned her back against it, that same upheaval in her stomach as the first time she saw him. She stayed with her back pressed to his bedroom door. Tears filled her eyes when she realized a woman in her wanted to open the door and run back, wanted to trace the lines of his chest and press her face against it.
In the darkness of her bed that night she curled into the softness of the blankets and relived every second, how he looked at her, the words they shared, the warmth of her blush. But it was his smell she remembered most, and twisting her hair around a finger she could breathe it again, as if it were burned forever into her woman’s mind.
Downstairs on his cot in the summer kitchen, Marcus Doyle lay staring up at the ceiling, imagining Margie’s young body wrapped in a nightgown that would evaporate at his touch. Remembering her blush from that afternoon, how it inched its way across her face like a sunrise and made him want her all the more.
For a few days she avoided his room, but soon she found herself knocking to tell him his supper was on the table and waiting. Then she began to enter it only when he was away, telling herself it was just to tidy up. One day, coming back with a pail of water from the spring, she noticed some goldenrod waving at her from the edge of the field. She picked a few and left them by his bed in the same tall glass. Two days later, she came to his room after supper and knocked. When he said, “Come in,” she did and sat on the foot of his bed for the first time. Then she showed him the faded picture she held in her hands. “It was my mother’s father,” she said. “I didn’t know him, but I think you look like him.”
In the weeks that followed, he spoke to her often of his love, and although he never mentioned marriage to her, she was sure it was marriage he had in mind. She set about fixing up her trousseau, sewing handkerchiefs and crocheting doilies, packing each item carefully into the trunk, and thinking of the day when they would happily be unpacked. But it was not a trunk of knickknacks and linens that Marcus Doyle was anxious to open.
After two months, when he had tired of church and community life, he told Marge he would be leaving Mattagash, perhaps to go back to the dust and tents of Africa, or elsewhere in the world, blazing trails where no missionary had gone before. Because he did not mention taking her with him, she wept in her room for hours. The night sounds of the house mocked her now. The ticking clock, the attic creaks, the deep sounds of breathing were all like tongues whispering and hissing, “Spinster! Spinster!”
She slipped from her bed and reached for her robe. The floorboards were cold. From her window she looked out at the field that lay north of the house. There was a frost that night in November, and it covered the dead stubble of hay. The round, white moon shone down on the field as the frost sparkled and danced. The river was white as bone in the moonlight. A little wind was about, and she saw the bare branches of the birch trees along the bank swaying slightly. What would Christmas be without him? Could she ever bear to look out that window again, to spy upon the night beauty of the world, if he were not in the same house with her? If he were not hers? Could she stand to string one strand of popcorn, wrap one gift in soft paper, knowing he was off, lost somewhere in the world? Could she ever again bear to hear the sound of laughter, or even worse, would she ever hear her own again if Marcus was not there to hear it too?
She left her room and crept softly down the stairs. Little goose bumps spread over her arms as quietly as petals opening. It was, she told herself, the chill of the night that caused the strange tingling that engulfed her. Outside his door she could smell the wonderful smell that was Marcus Doyle, a mixture of cologne and tobacco, could hear his breath coming and going as he slept. The doorknob was alive in her hands, turning itself, a will of its own. Even if she had vowed not to turn it, even if she had changed her mind, saying, “This is wrong,” it would have turned, as it did, and opened the way for her into Marcus’s room.
There was moonlight on the bed and she sat where it shone, smoothed her hair back, wet her lips. She wanted him to wake and see her drenched in moonlight. “Marcus?” she whispered, her hand touching his bare shoulder. His skin was so warm it almost burned her. She nearly pulled her hand back expecting to see it seared, nearly ran from his room. But he had opened his eyes and smiled at her. He had taken her in his arms and kissed her.
“I knew you loved me,” he told her. And as easily as that, he pulled her down beside him and took her robe. She kept her eyes closed, tears behind the lids. She was twenty-three years old. The oldest unmarried girl in Mattagash. She could not be sure if her eternal damnation in hell would be half as bad as eternal damnation in Mattagash. At least in hell she would see the familiar faces of her neighbors. In spinsterhood, there would be just her, giving way to wrinkles and unusual habits. Maybe gathe
ring a houseful of cats or collecting buttons from the neighbors. Painting everything in the house a hideous color. A pink stove. Pink table. Pink floors. Those were the odd things that spinsters did. Anything to clutter the mind. To occupy it with things. The way one fills a trunk. Or a bookshelf.
In the days that followed, there was no mention of marriage between them. And there was less and less talk of love from Marcus, unless she asked, “Do you love me?” Then he would say, “Of course I do.” This worried her. But no longer did he mention leaving Mattagash, so she settled for that small favor.
On days when the Reverend was out among his congregation and the girls were off somewhere involved in their own lives, he would slip quietly up behind her, kissing her neck and whispering, “Tonight. Be sure now. When they’re asleep.” Or he would slide a note under her bedroom door showing only a small heart pierced by an arrow and the initials M.D. It pleased her when he did such things. No other man in Mattagash had such flair, for the notes that Marcus Doyle hastily scrawled and pushed beneath her door became sonnets to Marge. They were to be treasured and admired, to be kept locked in her mother’s jewelry box, to be kissed and lovingly reread.
The Funeral Makers Page 12