"My purse."
"What?" Fannie shouted.
"I evacuated myself in my bag." Fairy was truly embarrassed. The children squealed. Celeste almost drove off the road.
Fairy explained herself in a high-pitched whine. "I just couldn't do it on the ground, Fannie. I just couldn't. It's so rude."
"Rude! Rude! My God, if you're going to have a bowel movement in your purse, you could at least leave it there instead of making us suffer."
Fairy receded into the seat. "It didn't seem proper to leave a bag full of—well, you know—by the side of the road."
"Fairy Thatcher, you're not right in the head. Give me that goddamned purse." Fannie lunged for the bag. Grabbing it out of Fairy's hands, she felt the contents squish beneath her touch. Disgusted, she threw it out of the car. "That's the end of that."
Humiliated, Fairy kept silent for the rest of the short journey. Fannie sat in the back muttering. Celeste, Ramelle, Julia Ellen and Ev roared all the way home.
"Takka takka yogi tonda," Juts called out as she passed Idabelle McGrail's house. Louise, on Bumblebee Hill, heard her little sister's yell and hollered back, "Takka takka." Cora and Aimes played a mean card game on the front porch called Oh Hell. Cora whistled behind her cards.
"Wheezie, Celeste took me for a ride in her car." "La de da." Louise pretended not to care. "What'd you do to your hair? Looks like the ends got singed."
"Shows what you know. Curls are all the rage." Cora smiled behind her cards. "What's the rage-looking like something that the cat drug in?"
"Mother," Louise plopped down on the worn steps. Juts sat next to her and twirled Louise's frizzed ends. "Don't."
"Let me touch it." "Julia, stop."
Aimes hummed, then stopped himself to look ova his cards at Cora. "Gonna get you this time." "You say."
Since the girls stayed out most of the day, Cora and Aimes enjoyed a little time to themselves. At night they were both so tired they could barely make love. Today was a treat. Cora adored going to bed with Aimes because he was slow, gentle and grateful. He didn't hop right on her and then roll off like Hansford When Aimes made love it was as though he was trying to tell her something with his body. Cora felt the same way toward him. There were places words couldn't go but bodies could.
Cora threw a card down. "Gotcha."
"Well, I'll be damned." Aimes sighed.
“I’m gonna set your hair on fire and see if your fingers fall off," Juts tormented Louise.
"Mother, I'm hungry." Louise ignored her sister.
"You don't need to know much to eat, but you do to cook." Cora gathered up the cards.
"It's too hot to cook." Louise sidestepped the issue.
"Go inside and put out the greens and cornbread. We'll eat a cold supper tonight. Juts, go on and help."
The sisters dragged inside.
"You think you're so smart, Julia Ellen. Orrie and I spent hours on our hair today and now I look just like Myrtilla Kidd at school."
"So?"
"Myrtilla Kidd, the Kidd of kid gloves." Louise breathed this news with a superior air.
"You lie."
"I do not." Louise's voice rose.
Cora didn't get up from her chair but reprimanded them. "Enough."
"Oil and water." Aimes smiled.
"Since the day Julia Ellen was born." Cora shuffled the cards.
"Keeps them busy. For all their feuding, one couldn't get by without the other." He leaned back in his chair. "Makes me wonder sometimes."
"What?"
"What makes people mad. Those two bicker over hair and overseas men die over not much more, I'm thinking,"
"You ever been mad enough to kill someone?" Cora held the cards in her hand. She didn't deal them.
"Sure. Haven't you?"
"Once or twice."
"But you didn't do it?" Aimes crossed his legs.
"No."
"Me neither. Something stopped me."
"You and I wouldn't make very good soldiers." Cora patted his hand.
"I wonder. If someone sticks a gun in your hand and into the hands of thousands of other fellas and tells you it's your duty to kill other men just like you who now have guns in their hands ... I wonder. Like cattle, you know? Or a body without a head,"
"Takes the weight off." Cora slid a card on the table.
"It seems to me if I ever kill anyone I'd like it to be someone I know. Someone I hate enough to kill."
"I can't conjure you hurting anyone. I can't see you hating."
"I come close."
"At work?"
"Yes. What goes on around the munitions factory just ain't right." Aimes paused. "The men trust me some. Might get them to fight for a union yet."
"People get hurt."
"People get hurt more if they don't fight back."
"Maybe that's what Kaiser Bill tells them in Germany." Cora started shuffling again.
Aimes sat up straight, his eyes brightened. "Cora Hunsenmeir, you don't miss much. But it ain't the same, I promise you."
"Dead is dead. Does the reason matter?"
Aimes stroked his mustache. Cora made him think. She struck deeper than those college men back in Baltimore. In that city he had given speeches to factory workers. Sometimes professors and students from Johns Hopkins snuck in to listen to him. Took them longer to ask their questions than it did for Aimes to make his speech.
"Maybe the reason doesn't matter to the dead, but it matters to the living."
October 10, 1914
Brutus Rife stepped out of his dark-blue Graf und Stift to go into Runnymede Bank and Trust on the square. He was forty-two years old, a slender man with large blue eyes and an angelic face topped with blond curly hair. The light color hid the gray. A certain hardness around his small cupid's-bow lips was the only hint at his character. His three sisters, ravaged by prosperity, pulled up after him, one in a Pierce-Arrow, one in a Packard and one in a Rolls-Royce; each car driven by a chauffeur. After a half hour in the bank the three sisters emerged, followed by their brother, who saw each sister to her automobile. He was heading for his own car when he glimpsed Celeste Chalfonte walking through the square. He long ago had married her old school chum Felicia Scott. Dashed were the dreams of merging Rife with Chalfonte. What an empire that would have been, he thought to himself. Still, he longed to make love to her. The fact that she lived with Ramelle Bowman only increased his ardor.
"Miss Chalfonte, what a pleasure to see you." He gallantly removed his hat.
"Hello, Mr. Rife."
"You've heard that Antwerp fell to the Germans?"
"Yes."
“I’ve visited Washington frequently. If we do find ourselves at war we must be armed."
"By Rife Munitions, of course," She looked at him without blinking.
“I’ve seen Spottiswood quite often. He, like myself, fervently hopes we can steer clear of this European madness."
"Spotty did mention to me that you buzz around senators and congressmen."
"Are you expecting your brother to come home anytime in the near future?"
"We hope to see him for Thanksgiving, but his duties are very pressing."
"Yes, of course. Stirling expanded your business admirably. I wonder Spottiswood doesn't wish to join the company."
"Manufacturing shoes holds no appeal for my younger brother, Mr. Rife."
Brutus pinned her by conversation as long as he could just so he could look at her. "And what of Curtis?"
"Curtis buys up land in a little town called Los Angeles. His preference for California is a mystery to all of us."
"Miss Chalfonte, won't you do me the honor of dining with me soon?"
"With you?"
"Dinner... with Felicia and myself." He exhaled.
"Brutus, I am fond of Felicia, but you know what I think of you."
"I'm not my father, Celeste."
"Brutus, you're a no-good son-of-a-bitch. It makes little difference whether you or your father carried out dishonorable po
licies during the Unpleasantries Between the States. You continue them."
"You're prejudiced by the past. I'm a businessman like your brother Stirling."
"Stirling doesn't traffic with the Order of the White Camellia."
"You blame me for that? I can't control my employees. Do you realize how many men work for me? Besides, I find it rather odd that you feign dismay because a few smoked Yankees were lynched."
"The dark people have harmed no one in this torn You have your diabolical reasons for promoting this sort of disease. I can't fathom it." She moved away from him.
"Celeste." He grabbed her elbow to keep her wi4 him.
"Don't touch me, you scorpion."
"You'll regret insulting me." Brutus crumpled his glove in anger. Still, insulted or not, he wanted her. The sight of those broad shoulders, narrow waist and erect carriage burned him. He'd thought of forcing himself on her many times. Back in the 1890s he'd grasped both her arms and tried to kiss her. But he couldn't rape a Chalfonte; another woman, perhaps, but not a Chalfonte. Her brothers would kill him. For that matter, he thought to himself, she'd probably do it herself. Celeste was a crack shot. Damn her.
May 22, 1980
The back door opened. Louise sauntered in and tossed her white purse on the kitchen table. Juts didn't look up because she was icing a spice cake.
"Thought I'd stop in on my way home from the beauty parlor."
Juts put her knife carefully by the icing bowl and turned around. "Had it done again in Rinso Blue, I see."
"At least it's all my own."
"Once, just once, I wore a wig to see how I looked."
"Ha! You wore it to cover up your bald spot."
"Louise, I do not have a bald spot. I burned my scalp on that damn home Toni."
Juts' poodle, freshly clipped so he looked like a little black marine, scampered into the room. First he kissed Juts' hand, then he danced over to Louise and jumped in her lap.
"Henry Kissinger, oh, you pretty thing. Your Auntie Wheeze is so glad to see you. Gimme kiss. Thata boy. Henry Kissinger comes and goes and what he does nobody knows." The dog wriggled affectionately in her lap. "Where's Shakespeare?"
"Still asleep, I think."
"Laxybones."
"You mean Lazybones, don't you?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes. My dentures hurt me today. That girl sleeps so late."
Juts put the finishing touches on her cake. "She works at night. Says it's the only time she gets peace and quiet."
'Tell her to set up in the cemetery. It's quiet there." Louise laughed at her own joke.
"Did you eat breakfast?"
"Had my two cups of coffee and a BM. Why? You fixing to serve me cake?"
"Sure, if you want it." "No. What else you got?"
"Nickel's about ready to wake up. Soon time for her. I thought I'd make some poached eggs." "Toad in a hole?"
"All righty. How many can you eat?" "Two. Nice and soft, won't hurt my teeth." Louise scratched the dog's ears. "You know what I thought of, riding over here?" "Surprise me."
"Remember the time you and I had the big fight over the Baltimore singer coming to town?" "God, yes. That goes back." "You wanted to go with Orrie and me and we didn't want you."
"Didn't I sneak into Saint Lou's Church and steal communion wafers?"
"You most certainly did, and fed them to the birds. I was horrified," Louise laughed. "I thought God would throw a thunderbolt at you right then and there. When he didn't I was disappointed."
"Birds need saving, too." Juts warmed up the coffee, an impish grin on her face. "We had good times, looking back." "Remember what Momma would say? 'Take the rough with the smooth.' Somehow it's easier to remember the smooth." Juts opened the cupboard and pulled out two cups and saucers with a cherry pattern on them.
"Don't seem to have fun like that anymore." Henry Kissinger jumped off Louise's lap. "Speak for yourself," Juts said. "You have Nickel; makes all the difference in the world. Even when she's bad she's funny. She always had that knack from little on up." Louise's voice adopted the familiar oh-pity-me ring. "With Pearlie gone and Mary taken to heaven back in 1955"— she inhaled deeply—"then Maizie in '78, taking . . . I never expected to outlive my children."
"Don't start up again, Louise. You just upset yourself to no end. Here—put some cream in your coffee. Real cream, too. Taste it."
Louise made quite a show of being valiant, put the cream in her coffee, then held the cup in both hands for a pregnant moment to savor the full effect of her suffering. She drank a touch. "Cream—are you celebrating?"
"You bet." Juts whirled around the kitchen, getting the bread, the butter, the frying pan, a saucepan and big brown eggs.
"What?"
"Life!"
Another sigh. "Oh, I thought it might be something special."
"Horse's dubbers, Wheezie. I've got no time for grexing."
"You've only lost your husband. That's not the same as losing a child. What can I expect? You'll never understand. Nickel isn't yours anyway."
"Piss on your teeth," Julia enunciated without any emotion.
A pair of feet plodded into the bathroom. The door closed. The sisters could hear the water running. Juts became more animated and put water on for Nickel's tea. The kid couldn't abide coffee. She turned on her radio now that her daughter was awake and kept time with the music.
Louise checked to see the bathroom door was shut tight. The sound of a shower satisfied her that Nickel couldn't hear a thing. "Juts, have you seen anything she's done since she's home?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, anything she's written."
"I don't go through her stuff. For all I know she could be back there doodling at night."
"Go look."
"No."
I’ll go with you."
"It ain't right," but Juts was tempted.
"She's in the shower. Quick. One fast little look."
"Well . . ." Juts dried her hands on a dish towel, then walked to the bathroom door. "You gonna wash your hair, honey?"
"Yes."
"O.K. I just want to know so I don't pour your tea water too early."
"Thanks, Mom."
Julia motioned to her sister and they tiptoed back to Nickel's old bedroom, unchanged since she left home at seventeen. They zipped over to the small wooden desk. Julia started looking through the papers.
"See anything about me?" Louise became excited.
"No. All I see here is stuff about Runnymede."
"Gimme that." Louise snatched the papers out of her hand.
Julia Ellen snatched them back. "She's my daughter. I get to see first."
The bathroom door opened and the two old women froze.
"Mother, I forgot my comb. Mom, where are you?"
"Uh—right here, dear. I'm coming." Juts raced to the bureau, grabbed the comb and buzzed down the hall. "Here."
"Thanks." The door closed.
Juts returned to find Louise straining her eyes over Nickel's scrawling handwriting. "How can a writer not make good letters, I ask you?" Then she found her name: "Louise Trumbull nee Hunsenmeir born 27 March 1901." "Here's my name! Here's my name!"
"Is mine there?" Julia leaned over her sister's shoulder.
"Yes, here next to mine. See: 'Julia Ellen Smith nee Hunsenmeir born 6 March 1905.' There must be more."
"Looks like history stuff to me."
"Maybe she's doing research. Writers do that, you know. She's gonna write about us. Sneak." Louise uttered the word "sneak" without much venom. Hide it as she might she was dying to be written about.
"Louise, let's get back to the kitchen. She'll be out of there any minute."
Reluctantly, Louise put the papers back on the desk exactly as she had found them. She even remembered to place Nickel's prize Mont Blanc fountain pen on top of the papers. The two scurried down the hall and took up their former positions in the kitchen.
"I know she's going to write about me."
"You're not the on
ly one." Juts dropped butter in the pan.
"Julia?"
"What?"
"Do you think you could get her to make me fifteen pounds lighter in the book? I need to fall off a little."
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