by Bev Marshall
After my brother Howard came by and helped me get the sewing machine set up for Rowena, I went down to meet my new hired hand. When I knocked on the smokehouse door and Sheila opened it, I saw right off what Rowena meant about her looking like a deformed weakling. I tried not to stare at her back, but she pointed her finger over her shoulder and said, “This don’t mean I won’t be a good worker. It don’t hinder me a’tall.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded. “Your name is Sheila, right? I’m Lloyd Cotton.”
She smiled then and swept her arm out gesturing me into the room, which I saw Rowena had tried to make into a bedroom of sorts, but it wasn’t a place I’d think a gal would want to live in. “You got all you need here?” I asked.
Sheila made a little dance around the floor skipping from the bed to the one window. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Mr. Cotton. I ain’t never had so much space all to myself.” She came close up to me. “Mama and Papa got a pack of young’ns at home. We slept four to a bed no bigger than this’n.”
I backed up a little, wondering why in the world I felt uneasy being alone in the dark room with her. She was just a child really. I needed to finish my business and get out of there. “I came to tell you about your duties,” I said, and immediately she came to attention. “You need to come up to the barn at four a.m. sharp. I’ll show you what-all I want you to do. I pay wages on Saturday. Fifty cents a day.”
Her mouth flew open. “That much! Lordeee. My papa ain’t never made so much.” She laughed and covered her mouth with her tiny hand. “I feel like I done died and gone to heaven.”
It didn’t take but a day or two for me to see that hiring the girl wasn’t a bad idea after all. She was ten times faster than the niggers, and she didn’t mind wading through cow piss and shit like I thought she would. Her fingers was so tiny, she could get around inside the bottles better than anyone. I got to admit it; I liked having her around. She was always cheerful, never sick, never complained like the rest of the workers.
Sheila and Annette became fast friends, and soon she was up to the house, helping out with Lil’ Bit and some of the housework. Rowena took pity on the girl and loaned her some dresses and such, and before long, between her and Annette, they had her looking right nice. Stoney must’ve thought so too as he and her began stepping out before too long. I didn’t like it one bit, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe I thought it might interfere with their work. But it turned out that their courting meant that Sheila came to the dairy earlier and started helping Digger shovel grain into the troughs, so it worked to my benefit, really.
After that, I didn’t pay much attention to what-all was going on between them, because about two weeks after I hired Sheila, Doris started going down hill. Rowena was beside herself, knowing she was going to lose her baby sister. When she and Walter came round, I tried to be off somewhere. I hated trying to talk to Walter when the whole goddamned sky was falling in on him. Here we had his son, his wife looked like a corpse already, and he was wandering around with these dead eyes that it hurt to look at. It started me thinking on what if something happened to Rowena, or Annette, or me. You never know. You can’t count on things staying the way you want them to. Hadn’t I had a near epidemic of hoof and mouth? I could’ve lost the whole damn herd, but I got lucky on that, only lost four head of Holsteins.
Doris wasn’t lucky though. She died before her thirty-first birthday. I was a pallbearer at the funeral, and it was a sad sad affair. After we buried Doris, Rowena, her older sister, Leda, and their mama were all looking to me for whatever they thought they needed. And their troubles and blues kept me running for a while. “Lloyd, my pipe is leaking. Lloyd, could you pick up some chops for dinner? Lloyd, change the facts and make me feel happy again.” Walter was the one I felt sorriest for. His whole life was gone. He was on the road constantly, came by to see Lil’ Bit only once before he left for Chicago. I think it hurt him more to visit the baby since the little fellow looked so much like Doris. Lil’ Bit had a lot of me in him even though there wasn’t any blood between us. He copied my motions and habits like a monkey, and his first word was Da-da, which he said looking straight at me. I was the only daddy he really knew.
After things around the place got back into a routine, Rowena was the one who told me Sheila was crazy for Stoney. I had already figured as much. I saw the way she looked at him down at the dairy. I caught them kissing once or twice, and then…well, hell, I admit it…I started looking for opportunities to watch them rubbing around on each other. I told myself it didn’t mean nothing, that it was natural to want to see them happy together, and that’s really all it was. Until one night they came down to the house and Sheila came out on the porch and flashed her titties at Stoney and me. I don’t know if Stoney read my mind or if the heat of my sudden desire was flaring up on my face, but he got mad and carried her off to the smokehouse, and that’s when I knew I’d best steer clear of the girl.
Rowena would be the first to know my feelings, and I took care not to be too affectionate with the girl; I tried not to look at her when she’d dance around the house. Rowena is the suspicious type, and I have to say, she has had cause for not trusting me. There was the one time back when she was pregnant with Annette, and I still feel bad whenever I think on it. I was younger then, filled up with hot blood, but that wasn’t any reason for doing what I did.
The reason was Virgie Nell Jackson. She had been in my class at the Lexie County School, and there wasn’t a boy over twelve who didn’t notice her high tits bouncing by when she walked down the hall. Bad as I wanted to, I never asked her for a date; too scared she’d say no. After we got our diplomas, I heard she had moved off to New Orleans, and I didn’t think about her again until one afternoon when I knocked on the door of 124 Front Street and she opened it. I had given Rowena my heart three years earlier, but not my eyes, and that day I had some view. Virgie Nell was wearing a low-cut blouse that opened two-thirds the way down her milk-white chest, and her skirt fit across her hips like a cap on a bottle. She invited me in, and before I knew it, I was tracking cow shit all over her expensive rug. Virgie Nell just laughed about it, said it was a good man’s smell, and didn’t she miss having that scent in her house. I removed my shoes, set them beside the door, and took her up on an offer of a cold beer.
She sat on the couch cushion right next to me, and I could smell her perfume when she leaned over and said, “So what brings you to my house, Lloyd? I heard you run a dairy out on Carterdale Road now.”
“I do. That’s why I came. Always looking for new customers. The Trasks who lived here took two quarts every morning. Lots of children.”
She laughed, red lipstick flashing over white white teeth. She tossed her head, and blonde hair fell down her back. “Well, I don’t have kids, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be interested in your delivery.” She batted her eyelashes and grinned. She heaved her tits up and down and let out a long breath. “I heard you married Rowena Bancroft.” She slapped my arm. “Why didn’t you wait for me, Lloyd?” This just floored me.
“I, well…” I didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure if she was teasing or serious. “I reckon I didn’t know you were coming back.”
That was the wrong answer, and I knew it because my face got hot, and I could near ’bout hear Rowena saying “Oh Lloyd!”
We didn’t do nothing sinful that day, nor the whole rest of that week, but it was getting harder and harder to leave. I didn’t have Robert or Shorty helping on the milk run back then, so Rowena had no way of knowing what time to expect me home. I stayed a little longer each visit.
It happened on a Monday. I remember that because me and Rowena had a fight right after we got home from church on Sunday. I’m not saying it was the preacher’s fault, but his sermon got me all worked up. The more he talked about David and Bathsheba, the clearer I could see her taking that bath and the wet, soapy body I was imagining belonged to Virgie Nell Jackson. So when we got home, thinking to erase sinful thoughts o
f her out of my mind, I said to Rowena, let’s skip Sunday dinner at your mama’s and have a little time alone. She knew what I meant, but she turned up that Bancroft nose and turned me down flat. Ever since Rowena had found out she was going to be a mother, when we made love she acted like her womb was an eggshell I was going to crack. Twice I hadn’t even finished before she pushed me off and said she was going to be sick again. I didn’t blame her about that, but that Sunday morning she was fit as a fiddle, and I suspected that her not wanting to stay home had more to do with worrying about missing the gossip at her mama’s table than anything. Looking back now, I know better. I should have been more understanding about her fears and her delicate condition, but I didn’t have an older man’s wisdom in my young head back then.
I stayed mad the rest of that day and all of the next, feeling righteous and sorry for myself, until I knocked on Virgie Nell’s door. It was like she was a snake who knew when and where to strike to get her man. As soon as I stepped inside her house, without one word, she pulled me up against her tits and started kissing me like I hadn’t ever been kissed before. I never found out if she learnt all them things she said and done to me in New Orleans, but I know she didn’t get them from anybody around Lexie County. She told me that I was the best lover she’d ever had, said I had a rare combination (that’s how she put it — a rare combination) of brute strength and gentle touch. I still don’t know what she meant by that, but I left her house that afternoon with my head swelled to the size of a pregnant sow.
By the time I parked the truck at the barn door, my head had shrunk back to normal size and I was sick with regret. All I could think about was Rowena. God knows I never meant to hurt her, and right off I saw that I was plain stupid letting myself get taken in by Virgie Nell’s tricks. And tricks is what it was; it wasn’t nothing like the love I had for Rowena. I deserved to live with the guilt and shame, without the comfort of Rowena’s forgiveness, but Leda, the other snake in my life, had already struck. She told Rowena, and the whole town of Zebulon that my truck was parked at Virgie Nell’s house for over two hours. She said she just happened to drive past twice, but I know better. Leda was trying to pay me back for choosing her younger sister over her is what I think, but it doesn’t matter why. The damage was done, and the feeling I had when I saw the hurt in my darling’s eyes that night will never leave me.
But that was all in the past, and I hadn’t done anything since to deserve her distrust. Oh, once and a while I’d sneak off to Howard’s to play cards, and there was the whiskey I kept in the dairy barn, but I figured the little bit she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. To put it plain and honest, Rowena made me be a better man, and I was glad of it.
When Stoney and Sheila ran off to get married, I was some relieved, and I had hopes they’d go off somewhere far away and find a new life together. But then Rowena said I should offer them the vacant tenant house and told me to give them both a raise. I put my foot down then. All they got was a break on the rent on the house.
It wasn’t much of a house, but it was a step up from the smokehouse, and Stoney was itching to get out from his daddy’s rule, so they jumped on the offer and moved in before I’d had a chance to get Shorty to sweep it out. It wasn’t long before Sheila and Annette had made a path running back and forth over the acre and a half between them. I’d see them hiking up their dresses jumping Rowena’s flowers, always giggling, whispering in each other’s ears about god knows what. I was glad for Annette; she didn’t have many friends, and Rowena worried she was jealous of Lil’ Bit. But she was wrong there. We all loved the little fellow to death. I got a soft spot for little ones. I reckon it started when my mama gave me my first puppy and it got sick and died. It was just a mongrel, but I treated it like a prize hunting dog, and when Daddy had to shoot it after it got the mange, I thought I’d never get over it. Of course, I did get over it, but to this day I can’t stand to see no little creatures, human or otherwise, in pain.
That’s maybe why, when I saw what Sheila’s papa had done to her after she and Annette came from out there to tell them about the marriage, I threatened to call Clyde Vairo and have him lock the man up. Sheila wouldn’t hear of it though, said she knew he was sorry for hurting her, and she didn’t care anyhow because she was already married and he couldn’t change that.
Then Stoney took up where Sheila’s papa left off. I don’t know when it started. He might’ve been whipping her since the beginning, but the first I knew of it was the day I bought the Ayrshires at the state fair in Jackson. I’d heard that a man named Patterson was bringing his prize Ayrshires to the fair, and that he was in trouble and aimed to sell them to settle his debts. I bought the cows all right, but I also borrowed a lot of trouble that day. Annette had asked if she could invite Sheila and Stoney to go to the fair with us, and so I gave them the day off. The kids deserved some fun, and I liked the idea of them seeing me buy the best damned cows in the state. We stopped by my folks on the way up, but didn’t stay long because Annette was about to have a hissy fit to get to the rides. I told her to hold her horses until I made the deal with Patterson. After a little half-hearted haggling, Patterson named a fair price, and when I pulled out my billfold, Sheila stepped up so close to me that I got a whiff of her toilet water. Her eyes got real big when she saw how much money I counted out for the Ayrshires and the trailer, and she said, “Mr. Cotton, you must be the richest man in Lexie County.”
I laughed at that. “No, no. There’s a lot of men got more than me.” I winked at her then. “But I guess I do all right for a dairy farmer.”
We spent the rest of the day tromping through the dust and trash that blew up around our legs. The noise bothered me most. When you live your days listening to birds calling, cows lowing, horses neighing, and such, the harsh screaming and loud music around a midway can near ’bout do you in. I won Annette a teddy bear throwing knives, which she accepted with a frown, and that told me it was time to go. We’d had our fill of the fair, and I said we should find Sheila and Stoney and head for home. Just then I heard this show gal calling out to me. “Buy a ticket, and I’ll show you my hoochy koochy.” I turned around and a woman, dressed up in some kind of Egyptian outfit that showed a lot of her skin, strutted across a make-shift stage toward me. I tried to ignore her at first, but she kept on swiveling her hips, and before I knew it, I heard myself ask, “How much?” When she said ten cents, I turned to Annette and told her to wait for me. Right away I saw Rowena’s disapproval written on her face, but she didn’t say a thing.
The show was a disappointment, not worth the dime it cost. The hoochy koochy girl didn’t do much more inside the tent than she had on the little wooden stage outside. There was some strange Egyptian-type music playing from somewhere, and then she stepped out from behind a red curtain and began her dance. She switched around, jiggling the coins on her hips and shimmying her tits, leaned over so that I could see near ’bout all of them, but she didn’t take off the veil or anything else. I had a front row seat on one of the metal folding chairs, and when the show was over, Salome (that was what she called herself) came over to me and took my hand and brought it right up to her left titty. My fingers were stretching out to touch her, and she laughed and dropped my hand. A real tease she was. I was ashamed of myself, and I felt my face heat up. I hurried out of the tent, wishing I hadn’t wasted money on Salome and her lousy music.
Just before I got to where Annette stood with a big scowl, Sheila and Stoney came running up. I didn’t take much notice of them as I was worrying more that Annette was gonna spill the beans about me going into that tent to her mama. I could already hear Rowena crying, asking me what was I thinking leaving Annette alone, disgracing the Bancroft family with my behavior. I’m not a man who acts on impulse ordinarily, but I reckon the excitement of buying the Ayrshires had affected me, causing me to forget myself that day. I stared hard at Annette and said to Stoney and Sheila that we had been looking for them, that it was time to go. Annette’s face was frozen, and I knew
she was mad as a setting hen. I pulled her close and whispered a plea for forgiveness and help. I saw the slow deliberation cross her face, and I smiled, hoping for understanding. Finally, Annette nodded and backed up my lie. She wouldn’t tell, but I knew the reason was that she was looking out for her mama, not me.
I was in a hurry to get home, speed away from the loud noises, bad smells, and cheap women. I’d load my Ayrshires and by nightfall I’d hold Rowena in my arms. I turned to Stoney and Sheila and said, “Let’s get started home,” and that’s when I noticed the handkerchief wrapped around Stoney’s hand. I was about to ask him what had happened when Sheila raised her head and I saw that her eye was swollen some. It didn’t take a genius to figure two and two. They’d had a fight, and Stoney had got the best of her. I wanted to punch his face, and I felt my hands balling up, but Sheila stepped in front of him. “I run into the edge of one of them booths,” she said real low so that only I could hear her. “It were my fault.” I shook my head, but then she reached out and touched my arm. “Please, Mr. Cotton. Let’s go home.” I gave Stoney a long warning look that said I knew what he’d done. Sheila’s eyes filled with tears. “Please,” she said again. I uncurled my hands and nodded then. I couldn’t go against the husband if the wife had forgiven him. Stoney put his arm around Sheila’s shoulders, and as he steered her toward the livestock barns, his face crumpled with misery. He was ashamed of himself, sorry for what he’d done, and I imagined that my own shame over my acts that day showed on my face, too. We’d been forgiven, but both Stoney and me were making the trip home with the heavy weight of guilt on our chests.