When she finally paused and asked if I had three or four minutes to answer a few questions for a survey, I replied, “No, I do not, Doris, and in the future, you would do well to polish your speaking skills before imposing upon the time of busy people. Take your paragraph home tonight and practice it. Get your dictionary out and look up the pronunciation of each word. Record your voice on an audiotape and critique it. When you have perfected your script, you may call me back and perhaps then I will participate in your survey, though this is not a commitment. You might also suggest to your superiors that they simplify the script for the sake of reaching the general public.” I believe in speaking the truth and find myself to be especially frank and sometimes garrulous with telephone solicitors.
I tried again to return to my writing, but within five minutes I was interrupted once more by a telephone call, this one from Thelma Purdue, who occupies the other side of our duplex. She was calling to inform me that the Jansens’ dog was in our front yard. “He’s done relieved hisself again right by our mailboxes,” she said.
As soon as I hung up, the oven timer sounded. I transferred the cake to a cooling rack, then set the chicken in the oven to bake before I went outside with the intention of driving the Jansens’ dog across the street to his own yard, at which time I found that he was already being dragged home by Mrs. Jansen, who was scolding him like a termagant. “You get outta our yard one more time, Pedro, and it’s curtains! I mean it! Curtains! The end! Last chapter—all she wrote! I’m sick and tired of chasing all over creation for you! I never wanted to get you in the first place.” I quickly surmised that her harangue was for my benefit, for she undoubtedly knew that I was within earshot. Phyllis Jansen and I had exchanged words on more than one occasion concerning the perambulations of Pedro.
As I was already outdoors, I checked the mailbox and found a telephone bill, an envelope bearing the notation Open Immediately! You Could Already Be a Millionaire! (which would be deposited into the trash can unopened), and a mail order catalogue from a company called Just What You’ve Always Wanted. I flipped through it and saw nothing whatsoever that I wanted.
There was also a new issue of Field and Stream, to which Thomas subscribes. One of the lead articles was “Seeking Out the Sweet Spots for Summer Smallmouth.” I paused for a moment to wonder about the writer of such an article. Who was this man? His name was printed below the title: Dallas Kincaid. Were articles such as this one the sole source of his income? Did he have a family to support?
Immediately following these thoughts, I was again struck by my burgeoning interest in the lives of others—of an obscure writer of an article about smallmouth bass, for instance. I know not to what cause to lay this development except to Birdie Freeman’s unrelenting nearness, both physical and otherwise.
Clutching the mail in one hand, I stooped to pull several tall blades of grass from around the mailbox post and then turned back to the house. Thelma Purdue accosted me as I mounted the three steps to our front door. I would have groaned aloud had it been of any use. Thelma Purdue is a person whose company I find it difficult to endure. As Thomas says, “That woman can talk the horns off a billy goat.” She opened her door, which is only five or six feet from our own, and hissed at me. Yes, she hissed.
Thelma Purdue never initiates a conversation in a polite, conventional manner. Her customary greeting is a series of sharp, sibilant whistles: “Sss! Sss! Sss!” This is the closest approximation of the sound she makes, although at times she provides variety with “Shh! Shh! Shh!” or “Psst! Psst! Psst!” It is a vile sound and never fails to bring to my mind the sinister character of Gollum in J. R. R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, which, though fantasy has never been my first love in fiction, I read with relish a few weeks after my arrival in Filbert in 1973. Tolkien had died in England only weeks earlier, and as I had never read any of his works, I paid posthumous tribute to him in this way.
I stopped and looked at Thelma, refusing to speak until she did.
“I done told Phyllis that that dog can unlatch the gate hisself. I watched him lots of times just go over and jump up and bat at it with his paws till it flips up. Pokes at it with his snout, too. She don’t believe me, I don’t guess, or else they’d fix it up with something stronger. Tie it with a rope or something.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I replied.
“You having yourself a nice summer now school’s out?” she asked. “I don’t see much of you like I do other summers. You not doing a garden this time?”
“Thomas may plant some late limas and corn,” I said. I glanced down at the pieces of mail in my hand as if to suggest that I had business to which I must attend.
“Mmm…I wisht I could get Nick to do that,” Thelma said. “I sure like limas. Corn, too, if it’s sweet.” She paused and breathed heavily, each exhalation a soft hiss. Like Gollum, Thelma has “pale, lamplike eyes,” though hers are magnified by the thick lenses of her eyeglasses. I took two steps toward my front door.
“My sister’s coming next week from Sumter to see me,” she continued. “You met her once when she come after Nick had that ’pendicitis attack that time, you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Name’s Arlene. She lives in Sumter. Be here next week.”
“Yes.” I reached forward and opened my screen door.
“You ever put limas and corn both together and make succotash?” Thelma asked, speaking louder and leaning out a bit farther. She was wearing a red-striped housecoat with dark stains down the front.
“Rarely,” I said.
“Mmm. Phyllis sure ought to get that gate fixed, else that dog’s gonna keep poppin’ it open. Chain or wire or something. Maybe a rope.”
“Yes, she should. Good day, Thelma.” I pushed the front door open and stepped into my living room. I must be kinder to Thelma. I have asked myself more than once, “How would Birdie treat her?” When weighed in such a balance, I am found wanting.
As I stepped inside, the smell of baking met me, a mingling of confection and meat, not unpleasant but curious. I set the mail on the small table beside the door, then moved to my rocker and closed my notebook, transferring the paper clip to mark the page where I had stopped writing. I then returned to the kitchen, for Thomas would be home from the hardware store within the next hour. As I continued with supper preparations, my thoughts turned once again to my story, and sentences began to shape themselves in my mind. I have found that it is possible to write without pencil or paper. My memory is such that I can reposit within it a considerable quantity of text to be retrieved and committed to paper at a later time.
Much of my composing in the kitchen that day, two days ago now, was simply recalling and storing the dialogue that had passed between Birdie and myself concerning her fraternization with the children, though I was also providing transitions between our spoken words. Thus engaged, I continued my kitchen work and was cutting out the last of the biscuits as the words “a fleck of amber, like a tiny shard of bottle glass embedded into her iris” were linking themselves together in my mind. At that moment the back door opened, and Thomas entered the kitchen.
I had not heard his truck in the driveway and was therefore startled, though I maintained my composure. I did not look up but continued lifting biscuits from the floured cloth and placing them onto the baking sheet. In my peripheral vision I could see that Thomas was carrying something, and when he set it down at the end of the counter to the right of where I was standing, I said, “Not there. I will be using this space.” Still I did not look up.
Thomas picked up the object again—which appeared to be a box, quite large—and took it into the living room. I heard him exit through the front door and come back in, then repeat the process two more times. As the biscuits baked, I quickly frosted the cake, covered it, and set it on the lower shelf of the utility cart beside the stove. I heard Thomas in the living room, moving things about with a great deal of audible exertion. He was clearly “up to something,” as the idiom goes, but I chose no
t to investigate.
I will not belabor the following events more than is necessary. We ate our supper a few minutes later, during which Thomas talked of the day’s work. That day he had repaired an old Filter Queen vacuum cleaner that had been kept in immaculate condition. “Lady’s had it since she married,” he said, “and she’s got to be eighty if she’s a day. Told her I didn’t see many like hers. Called it a one-owner classic, and she got a real kick out of that.” He went on talking of various customers throughout the entire meal, with only occasional lapses, and I listened with only minimal comment.
After the meal Thomas cleared the table while I wrapped the leftover biscuits in foil, emptied the remaining peas and carrots into a freezer container—I save all leftover vegetables to be used in vegetable soup, which I make at the end of each month—and disposed of the chicken bones. I then began running hot, soapy water into one side of the sink in preparation for washing the dishes. We have no dishwasher, as I have never wanted one. By this time Thomas had left the kitchen, but he suddenly reappeared in the doorway between the kitchen and small hallway.
“John-Brown-it, Rosie, don’t you ever wonder ’bout nothin’?” he asked.
I turned my head to look at him. “I wonder about a great many things, Thomas Tuttle,” I replied.
“Well…if you just…why don’t you …” He did not seem to know what it was that he wanted to say, but I saw him look over his left shoulder into the living room.
Placing the stopper in the other side of the sink, I began filling it with hot water for rinsing. Thomas remained in the doorway. He rested one of his hands against the doorjamb, and I could sense that he was studying me. I set the silverware in the sudsy water and then reached for the plates and glasses.
“Come out here, Margaret,” Thomas said abruptly, straightening and again looking back over his left shoulder. “Quit your washing a minute and just come on in here.” It was not a request.
My face must have registered instant opposition, for he said quickly, “Now, don’t go gettin’ that way on me. I brought somethin’ home, Rosie, and I want you to come on and see it before I get so agitated I bust a gut.”
Not wanting to seem too compliant, I finished arranging all the soiled dishes in the sink so that they could soak, then slowly dried my hands. He watched my every movement as if fearful that I might break for the back door. When he saw that I meant to follow him into the living room, he extended one hand in the manner of a parent to a reluctant child, and I took it. Thomas and I have held hands three times: once during our marriage ceremony at the direction of the justice of the peace; another time a few years ago when I lost my footing as I stepped onto the escalator at the JCPenney store and reached out toward him to stabilize myself, at which time he came to my aid most readily and tenderly; and this time, two days ago, as he led me from the kitchen into the living room.
Following Thomas into the living room, I saw a portable metal carrel sitting beside my rocker, and upon it was what appeared to be a computer. I took it all in before I spoke. The carrel had two shelves: a lower one at lap height on which rested the computer, and a higher shelf on which sat a piece of equipment that I knew to be a printer. For several years I have firmly declined Mr. Solomon’s offer to furnish my office cubicle at Emma Weldy with a computer, though I have seen the machines crop up throughout the school—in the main office, the library, even the classrooms. Perhaps this fall I shall tell Mr. Solomon that I have reconsidered the matter.
“Did you buy this for yourself?” I asked, though I knew he had not.
He made an impatient, dismissive gesture and emitted what can only be described as a growl from deep in his throat. Then, “Naw, this ain’t for me. What in tarnation would I do with such a contraption?”
“And what do you propose that I do with it?” I asked. I folded my arms and glared at the small Apple logogram, horizontally striped in the colors of the spectrum, below the screen of the computer.
He answered at once. “Whatever it is you’re writin’ in them books of yours can be put in here lots faster. Norm’s got one in the store office now, just like this. He’s showed me how to work it, and it’s easy as eatin’ pie.”
“These cost a great deal of money,” I said. I knew that Thomas would never buy anything on credit; therefore, he must have purchased the equipment with cash. The truth is that we seldom discuss finances. We have separate checking accounts. With my salary I pay for our groceries. With his social security check and the modest income from his repair business, Thomas sees to all other expenses.
“Naah. Maybe I got a bargain anyways. Far as that goes, maybe I found it settin’ ’longside the curb somewhere for the trash man to pick up.” He kicked a cardboard box aside and bent down to straighten a cord.
“That is not humorous,” I said. He did not respond but leaned forward and turned the computer on. “I do not need this,” I stated, raising my voice.
“Maybe not, but you sure as shootin’ got it,” he said.
“I will not permit you to spend your money on something nonessential and extravagant,” I said. “I do not want this machine, Thomas.”
The screen was now a bright rectangle of light, a small square with a question mark flashing in the center. Thomas manipulated a small control with his right hand and began typing with two fingers: Rosie has got a cumputor. It is real nice. Rosie will like it.
“You misspelled computer,” I said.
He grinned at me and said, “Yep, well, so I did. Okay, now, watch this.” I knew by his response that he had misspelled the word purposely, and I had played into his hand. He again moved the control, clicked it once, and changed the first u to an o. “See?” he said. “What’d I say? Easy as eatin’ pie. There you go, it’s all fixed now.”
“No, it is not,” I said. “The word ends with er, not or.”
He narrowed his eyes and glared at the screen. “That so?” he said. “Well, I’d sure never argue with you when it comes to spellin’,” and he quickly corrected the remaining spelling error. “Norm showed me lots of things,” he said, “like how to take a whole paragraph outta one spot on a page and stick it somewhere else”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that!”
“It defies belief,” I said dryly.
I stood behind him and watched as he slowly pecked several more sentences. The computer can go fast. Rosie will write on it. She will not have to sharpen her pencil. Then he moved the control again, clicked it, and slid it across the pad. The three sentences that he had just typed were set off within a dark block. In only seconds he had transferred the three sentences so that they now came between the first two sentences that he had typed: Rosie has got a computer and It is real nice.
Though I took care to keep my countenance unyielding, I began to consider what the ownership of a machine with such capabilities could mean. I was not a writer whose handwritten manuscripts were marred by corrections, erasures, deletions, and cramped insertions, for I take care to fashion my thoughts before committing them to paper, yet I quickly recognized the advantage of a computer in the project that I had undertaken. Already I had begun to realize that though I knew my story from beginning to end, the physical act of setting it down in words was to consume an inordinate number of hours. It had taken me four weeks to write six chapters, and although I had begun to gain speed more recently, I was not deluded into believing that I could finish the manuscript to my satisfaction in the remaining eight weeks of summer.
I had studied typewriting during my sophomore year at Latham County High School some thirty-five years earlier and had quickly developed into a remarkably fast, accurate typist. “You have keyboard fingers,” the teacher had said. Her name was Mrs. Cowger, and these are the only words that I recall her speaking to me individually. Her teaching tools were a series of wall charts and a long, slim pointer with a black rubber tip. We did a great deal of chanting as we typed through the alphabet, and she wrote our daily assignments on the chalkboard in a frail script with a backward sl
ant.
Having been employed a number of times as a typist after fleeing my grandfather’s house, I had maintained my speed and level of skill over the years. Even now I can type all the numerals on my forms at Emma Weldy without having to look at the keys. Thomas and I have never had a typewriter in our home, however, as we have seldom needed one. At the outset of my project this summer, I assumed that to write a book one must first work with paper and pencil, after which at some point one might type the entire manuscript if one wished.
Studying the computer, however, a question presented itself to me. Why could I not write my story directly into the machine? I had no doubt that I could learn to use it quickly, and if it were as efficient as Thomas testified, perhaps I could finish my project before school took up again.
Thus I relented in the matter of the computer and am now using electronic technology to record my memories. I have written this chapter in only three hours and twelve minutes, which includes another telephone call, this one requesting donations for the Lung Disease Research Foundation. I declined after recommending to the solicitor that she contact the tobacco industrialists for contributions.
Before I conclude this chapter, I will again regress in time some ten months and reconnect the reader with my narrative of Birdie. The following event took place on the same afternoon that the new shoes appeared upon the feet of Jasmine Finney. The words of Mrs. Cowger, my typewriting teacher in Marshland, New York, provide a solid and timely bridge, for they were very similar to the words that Birdie uttered that day, which eventually led me to a new venture in the period that I have heretofore termed “one of the strangest interludes in my life.”
Some Wildflower In My Heart Page 9