Raney

by Clyde Edgerton

  Charles was getting fidgety, so I tried to remind Bobby what I was talking about. “But what if you don’t like to shoot things that are alive? Charles don’t like to shoot things that are alive and I don’t think I would either, even though my daddy does it.”

  “Well, have you ever shot a quail on the wing?” Bobby says to me.

  “I never shot one anywhere.”

  “No, I mean flying.”

  “No, I never even shot a rifle.”

  “You don’t shoot a quail with a rifle. You use a shotgun.”

  “Oh, no, I never have and I don’t think I’d want to. I feel like Charles in that respect. We’ve talked about it before.”

  “Well. Whatever. But there’s a great deal of sportsmanship and marksmanship involved. I mean you have to have very good reflexes, and good eyesight, and be very quick.”

  “You’re probably in the NRA,” says Charles.

  “That’s right,” says Bobby.

  “What’s the difference between having good reflexes and being quick?” I said. I didn’t know what the “NRA” had to do with it.

  “Well, with reflexes you’re speaking about accuracy, and with quickness you’re talking about speed. But I mean, really, each to his own. I guess I just see it as a sport and darn exciting at times and a way to put meat on the table, unless of course you’re some weirdo vegetarian or something.”

  I looked at Charles, wondering if he’d say it. Charles looked at me. “Charles’s mother is a vegetarian,” I said. “But she ain’t weirdo.”

  I must say I felt right good about that. Bobby shrugged his shoulders and looked like he was looking with his eyes for something to say. I just hadn’t ever talked to Bobby and I hadn’t realized he’d be so insistent. Sandra came in on our side—at least more on our side than on Bobby’s:

  “What I can’t stand,” she said, “is cleaning quail. Bobby expects me to clean them. He’ll come in and—”

  “You don’t clean your own game?” says Charles.

  “Well, I clean them sometimes.”

  “When did you ever clean the first bird?” says Sandra. She was looking at Bobby like she didn’t like him.

  Bobby was getting a little fidgety now. “I’ve cleaned them before.” He looked at Sandra like he could shoot her. I noticed that that was the first time he’d looked at her at all.

  “Well, I can’t remember when,” says Sandra.

  “Your daddy is a big hunter,” I said to Sandra. She certainly deserved a right to be included.

  “Oh, yes. He’s been hunting with your daddy before, and he goes with Sneeds Perry right much—the one who works out at your daddy’s store.”

  “Do you know if Sneeds is engaged?” I said.

  “No. I hadn’t heard. Why?”

  “I just wondered. I guess I ought to ask him. I’m working part time out at the store now and I was just wondering. Somebody said something about it.”

  “How do you like working out there?”

  I went on to talk about the store for a while. They didn’t stay a whole lot longer and I must admit I understood a little more about how Charles could feel about Bobby.

  When they left me and Charles laughed about how Bobby’s face looked when I said Charles’s mother was a vegetarian. And I felt a little bit sorry for Sandra—for how she’s bound to feel left out sometimes. I asked Charles if he noticed and he said he did.

  I forgot to bring up about the feed room until we were going to bed, but then I decided not to—in case it developed into a long conversation with Charles going on and on about his views on all this sex and so forth.

  VI

  Well, here’s how this feed room business turned out. My soul is still reeling about the whole thing. I’ve prayed about it, with some success, I suppose.

  Two nights ago, Thursday, me and Charles were driving back from supper at the Ramada Inn and I had to get a half gallon of milk. It was about eight and the store was closed.

  Something I must explain first is this: Charles has got me to sip his white wine at the Ramada a few times—to show me how much better it makes the food taste. One night I tried a whole glass. Just to make the food taste better because it can make the food taste some better, depending on what you’re eating. Thursday night when we stopped by the store I’d had two glasses. For the first time. I don’t think I’ll ever do it again, and I shouldn’t have then. I can’t decide what I think about it exactly. It does make the food taste some better.

  Charles followed me into the store and I got the milk and while I was leaving a IOU note by the cash register I told Charles about seeing Sneeds and Thomasina in the feed room. Being there in the store helped me tell about it.

  Charles walks on back to the feed room and turns on the light and starts looking around. I followed him.

  Well, I don’t know how to explain what happened. What happened to me inside. It was like something was melting to a gold-yellow color—and I just don’t know how to explain this, but I wanted to sit on a feed bag in my underwear. I don’t know where it all came from, unless from the very Devil himself, but I thought to myself: Charles and me are married.

  There’s nothing in the Bible about what married people can’t do together. It’s a free country.

  But I don’t know how to explain this feeling inside me. It seemed like such a cozy room. It was warm and those feed bags had this smell which was kind of musky, and they had this rough texture, and Charles found the magazine and I felt as awful as I’ve ever felt in my life but at the same time just as good. Honest. Both together.

  I decided to go with the good. I didn’t say a word.

  “Here’s the magazine,” Charles said, “and the booze—Southern Comfort.”

  I didn’t say a word. I walked over to Charles and he looked at me and he must have seen what was happening inside me because he just simply gave me this little kiss on the lips and let it linger for a while longer than it should have and I wasn’t thinking about what was going on in his head, but what was happening inside me and it was like I had to give over my insides to the Devil but I couldn’t fight it and for heaven’s sake we are married I said to myself.

  “Charles, let’s sit down. My knees are a little weak.”

  Charles’s cheeks were flushed. I can always tell.

  So we sat on that tight bag of feed and Lord have mercy I did want my bare fanny on it and Charles says:

  “Now Raney, you just relax. I want you to see that . . . look, there are stories in here, and advertisements and—”

  And I’m sitting there wanting to take my skirt and panties off for heaven’s sake, and I don’t care what’s in the magazine. Charles and me are married. So:

  I stood up and Charles stopped thumbing through the magazine and everything was melting inside and jumping around getting excited and I said to myself “Lord, please excuse me for a minute.” And that almost broke what was happening inside but it came right back so I figured the Lord had done so: excused me—and Charles was looking up at me like he didn’t know what to expect. So I just—very slowly, to get it right, to give it the best effect which would fit what was going on inside me—I just unbuttoned the three buttons down the side of my skirt, slowly, and let my eyes droop to about half mast, and let the skirt drop, and then popped the elastic on my panties and pulled them right off over my ankles and put my warm fanny down beside Charles on that tight, rough feed bag and said:

  “Hand me a warm-up of Southern Comfort, Charles—my fanny’s getting cold.”

  And after that it was me, Charles, and the feedbags. And I’d just had my hair done that afternoon. But I didn’t pay a bit of mind to that. I was happy and it was wonderful.

  I’ve reconciled myself to it.

  VII

  I’m pregnant. Dr. Lewis told me last Wednesday. One year after we got married. I can’t believe it. I’m going to have a little baby. My prayers have been answered. I thought I might be, so Charles got a home pregnancy test from the drug store and it came out positiv
e. Dr. Lewis confirmed it.

  We decided two or three months ago for Charles to stop using preventatives and I just had no idea from what all Madora and me talked about that it would happen so soon.

  Lord have mercy, it might have happened in the feed room.

  I think I want a little girl. I helped with Mary Faye and Norris, and Mary Faye was the easiest. And my cousins who have babies—Betty, Jake, the other Betty, Mary Beth, and Julia—have little girls who are so much cuter, and behave so much better than the little boys. The little boys seem to have something sour and hard under their skins. The little girls are so different, sweet and soft somehow, except for Mary Beth’s little girl, Bonnie. She’s been spoiled to death. To death. If she don’t get something she wants she simply starts crying and then waits for her mother to tell her three times to be quiet. Then on the fourth time, whatever it is she wants, she gets. I declare if that child wanted to ride on top of the car in the rain, you could look out your window and there she’d come—riding on top of the car in the rain.

  The thing is—it’s not her fault. It’s her mama’s and daddy’s fault. They follow her around and tell her it’s okay to go ahead and do whatever it is she wants to do. Oh, they might put up a little fuss, but by and large she gets exactly what she wants with only very slight delays once in a while. She knows the exact little pout or cry that will get her what she wants. They let her make her own decisions. I say a very small child don’t have enough brain material to make decisions, most decisions. Plus, children have to learn that they have to adjust to the world and not the world to them. And I want you to know that when that child knocked over and broke a flower vase in my living room, that child’s mother, Mary Beth, did not get up from where she was sitting, did not say she was sorry, did not say one word. Sat there munching on a chocolate chip cookie, talking about politics. But: that little girl is an exception.

  I’m just thankful I had all that experience helping out with Mary Faye and Norris.

  Charles is excited too. He’s been as sweet as can be since we found out. He’s started to cook lots more. Bless his heart. To help me out, plus I think he enjoys it. His fried okra is as good as Mama’s.

  We had some French onion soup at the mall and Charles said he knew he could do better so he bought some onions and cheese and a can of onion soup and a can of cream of onion soup and drained off the water from the straight onion soup and mixed it with the cream of onion and added chopped onions and cheese and cold toast and it was pretty good. I told him to send the idea to Campbell Soup. They have little recipes on the soup cans all the time.

  His main problem with cooking is that he leaves the stove eyes on after he’s finished, and like I said: the drain strainer out of the sink so that gobs of raw cabbage and such can get down in there and stop it up, and the faucet turned on, wasting water.

  Last Saturday, our commode got stopped up and the plumber’s friend wouldn’t do no good so we called Mr. Nelson and he came and worked and worked and finally had to take the whole commode up out of the floor. He said he wanted to get home to watch the Braves on TV (he knows Daddy—that’s why he came on Saturday) and I know the game had already started when he pulled out—from below floor level—this cabbage core. About the size of your fist.

  Now I knew I hadn’t dropped a cabbage core down the commode.

  My mama told me never to drop anything down the commode that did not come from your own body. Nothing, absolutely nothing—except toilet paper, of course.

  This is one of the rules she lives by.

  Why in the world Charles walked all the way into the bathroom with that cabbage core and dropped it into the commode is something I’ll never understand.

  So I said, “Charles, why in the world you walked all the way into the bathroom with that cabbage core and dropped it into the commode is something I’ll never understand.”

  He said he did it, and that he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. I should hope not. There’s no telling what all he’s thrown down that commode, maybe other cabbage cores. I think he’s learned his lesson now though. Mr. Nelson was mighty perturbed and told Charles straight out that dropping a cabbage core down a commode is a dumb thing to do and that he’d probably already missed a good portion of the ball game.

  The cooking Charles does will certainly help out after we have the baby. One thing about it is: he won’t take no advice on cooking at all—none at all. Sometimes he thinks he’s Julia Child.

  Like he asked this guy, Tom Rubin, from the library, and his girlfriend, Marilyn, to eat supper with us last Friday night. Charles told me he was going to cook a good Southern meal because Tom is from New York.

  So I asked what I could do to help and he says, “Nothing, Raney, absolutely nothing. I want to do it all myself.”

  Friday afternoon he gets home with squash, fresh corn, snap beans, and okra from Daddy’s garden and chicken from the Piggly Wiggly. Well, I figured I’d help out just a little bit. Not enough to count. So I put a little water in the pot for the vegetables. You need very little water in the pot for vegetables—vegetables of any kind. Unless you want them soggy. You don’t want them raw, like at restaurants, but you don’t want them absolutely soggy either.

  So, I put a little water in a pot for the corn, a little water in a pot for the snap beans, and a little water in the frying pan to start up some squash and onions.

  Charles comes in the kitchen and practically shouts, “Raney, what are you doing?”

  “I’m just helping with a couple of little things for supper.”

  “Number one,” he says, “I’m fixing dinner. You fix supper. I fix dinner. And number two: I’m doing this alone if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, of course I don’t mind,” I says. “I just know how nice it is to have a little help in the kitchen once in a while.”

  I was shaving the corn kernels off the cob because Charles said he was having stewed corn.

  “What in the world are you doing that for?” he asks.

  “You said you wanted stewed corn, didn’t you?”

  “Why are you cutting it off the ear?”

  “Because that’s the way you fix stewed corn.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  This really took the cake. I’d been watching my mother fix stewed corn for over twenty years and suddenly here’s Charles—a librarian, and a man—telling me how to fix stewed corn. “Well, how do you fix stewed corn, Mr. Chef Boy Are Dee?”

  “You boil it on the cob and then you cut it off.”

  That was like somebody telling me you cook string beans in a peach pie. Charles was getting too big for his pants.

  “No, you don’t, Charles. You cut it off first. Call Mama if you don’t believe me. Then you put it in a pot with a little water, salt, a pinch of sugar—”

  “Raney. Just let me do this.”

  Here’s Charles with a chance to learn something from me about cooking. And what does he do? He tries to do it all. Won’t listen to a word I say. I told him he had too much water for the snap beans. You don’t need more than a half cup. Then if you need more later, you add it. Charles uses water like a sieve. He runs enough water in the tub to float. I try to save water.

  Finally he really did get mad. He was going to brown these brown and serve rolls in the toaster oven. I know for a fact that they’re better if they’re browned in the stove oven. He had them sitting over by the toaster, so I said, “Are you going to brown those in there?”

  He got real mad. “Raney, somehow your brain doesn’t program the fact that I want to fix this meal by myself. If it turns out awful and I do it myself, I’ll be overjoyed. If it turns out perfect and you helped, I’ll go crazy. I am going crazy. Please don’t tell me where to brown the rolls, how much water to use, what temperature to cook the chicken with. Please.”

  I had not said one thing about what temperature to cook the chicken with.

  “Charles, I don’t think I should be shouted at while I’m pregnant.”

  I came o
n back to the living room and read the Want Ads.

  Maybe I overdid it. But I was only trying to help.

  This Tom Rubin who came over for supper was a Jew. I wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t started talking about it at the supper table. (The supper was pretty good. Too much water in the snapbeans and the chicken was dry. But I didn’t say anything. I take credit for not saying anything. Aunt Flossie has told me several times about how she finally learned not to say anything about Uncle Frank’s bird dogs.)

  Tom’s girlfriend, Marilyn, is not a Jew and we got to talking about babies and marriage. Tom mentioned how his mother and daddy felt about Marilyn. I couldn’t believe they didn’t like her simply because she was a regular American, and that they didn’t want them to get married on account of it. I can’t imagine that.

  They were both real nice—he didn’t seem like a Jew at all. I guess I haven’t really met that many. They raved about the meal. Charles had insisted we serve wine so I got a big bottle at the Winn Dixie. I bought a loaf of bread to cover it up in case I saw somebody I knew. We had some left over and I’m saving it for cooking. It’s good on fish.

  After they left, while Charles was cleaning up, he turned on the faucet and left it on, with the strainer out of the sink. I put it back in and said, “Charles, I think we ought to save as much water as we can now that the baby’s coming.”

  “I don’t want that strainer in there,” says Charles. He took the strainer back out.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t wash dishes that way.”

  “I don’t see why you don’t put water in the sink and then put soap in the water and then put the dishes in.”

  “I do it differently, Raney.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do it differently, that’s all. I don’t like to wash dishes in dirty water.”