“Yawl know Miz Missouri lives all to herself in the old Kitteredge place down on the old Winona road. Now, they’s some fair squirrel hunting down there, and one day last week me and Thetford took off and went. Well, we was going towards a stand I had noticed before, where was a good many sign, when we hear this gun go off not very far off. Now it being a little out of season, you know, we didn’t much care to be seen ourselves, so we hid us behind a tree. Well, along down the path comes the damndest sight you ever saw. It’s Miz Missouri in them tennis shoes and that old man’s hat of hers, carrying a shotgun, and right on her heels comes a little nigger boy just slapping high, carrying a three-legged milk stool and a tackhammer. That’s what I said: three-legged milk stool and a tackhammer. If they wasn’t a pair to come up on in the woods. And you orter seen that shotgun. The barrel was tied on with bailing wire and they was enough black tape wrapped around the grip to go in business with. The stock looked like it’d been hacked out of a stump with a hatchet by a blind man on a drunk. An old single-barrel Long Tom. Well, they was both sneaking along—you know Miz Missouri’ll run you near two hundred pound—and tippy-toeing so hard they was jouncing like walking on a spring mattress. Every once in a while she’d turn to the little nigger boy and put her finger to her lips and shoosh him, and he would nod and put his finger to his lips and shoosh her right back. So me and Thetford fell in behind and went along to watch. Pretty soon Miz Missouri stops and the boy stops too. Then she turns and jerks her head for him to come up. So he sneaks up to her and sets his milk stool down right beside her feet and climbs up on it. Miz Missouri puts the gun to her shoulder and points it up a tree and squints down the barrel. Little boy raises his tackhammer. “Now!” says Miz Missouri, and the little boy brings his hammer down and whacks the gun hammer—for, you see, the hammer spring was broke. Blooey! Miz Missouri staggers back and the little boy goes ass-over-teakittle. Then he gets up and grabs his stool and goes over under the tree to look for the squirrel. Damndest funniest sight you ever saw in your life. Laff, I thought I’d die. Me and Thetford was rolling on the ground and trying to hold it in, but at last I just couldn’t no more, and as soon as I let out Thetford lets go and starts choking to get his breath. Well, first thing we know there is Miz Missouri standing over us and that little nigger boy with her.
“‘What’s the matter with you two sonsabitches?’ she says.”
“It’s just a good thing she ain’t a man,” Thetford feels called upon to say.
“Yeah, good thing for you, you mean. Well, there we laid, and Thetford being the one closest to her …”
It was the birth of another legend to add to the common stock. It would come up there for years, and something like it was to be heard every Saturday on the square.
“Why ain’t you downtown today?” said Melba. “Pretty day like this.”
“Oh, I just don’t feel like it.”
“Trouble with you,” said Melba, “you in love.”
Outside the kitchen window the crew hired to clean up the relics of yesterday’s feast under Chauncey’s direction came into view on the lawn. The wind had blown a paper napkin against the trunk of the magnolia tree, where now it stuck, plastered, sopping wet. Wet paper plates, melted on the grass, came away in pulpy tatters when the men tried to pick one up. A white, swollen pickle washed out when a man dumped the rainwater from the barrel.
“What?” said Theron.
“You heard me.”
“Oh, Melba, mind your business. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But it was true that overnight he had thought of Libby Halstead. Not as much as he had thought of her father, and he knew it was only because she had been denied him. But he had remembered those gray eyes, the kind you could not help noticing, paler than the lashes and brows.
“Don’t?” demanded Melba. That was her business, and her professional standing had been called in question. For Melba had something of a reputation as an interpreter of signs. She did not advertise, but in her afternoon off-hours in the kitchen she was available for consultation by sufferers suspicious of being under a hex, or people seeking to learn the hiding place of lost belongings—“hiding place” because Melba and her consultants believed that nothing was ever lost, but that things were rebellious, endowed with anti-human feelings, and, apparently, with locomotive power, as they were always playing hide-and-seek with their owners. Theron had heard her, seeking to conjure up a vision of a strayed pocketbook or ring in its hiding place, chiding it as if it were a prankish child. She had three or four formulas for wart-removing and hair-straightening and a few herbal receipts; but she specialized in problems of love. Or perhaps it was simply that for her clients, as for everyone else, love was the major problem. She was an encyclopedia of the omens of love, most of which seemed to portend lucklessness and misery. She knew charms to melt a disdainful lover, to thwart a rival. She did love forecasts, too, though judging from the number of vacant-eyed Juliets and slack-jawed Romeos whom Theron had seen mope away by the back door, her crystal ball was seldom clear of a dark cloudiness. She bore upon her neck and extending down into the hide of her slatty breast a long razor scar, professional hazard, earned in the days of her youthful pride when she had claimed to be able to name a rival for you. “Don’t?”
“Oh, leave me alone, Melba. You know I don’t believe in any of your superstitions.”
She was wisely amused. She had heard this before. “Oh,” she said. “It ain’t got you enough yet, I see.” Her eyes narrowed owlishly, by a raising of the lower lids. She glanced slightly away, and her tone of voice altered. It was as if she was speaking not to him, but about him, to some familiar spirit with whom she shared an old and rather weary amusement for the vagaries of mortality. “When it gits to aching em sho nuff, then you don’t hear no mo talk bout superstitions, let em be black, let em be white,” she said.
This toleration of his lack of faith and the vision that her last words conjured up of hosts of doubt-wracked lovers who had seen the light of occult truth, to some percentage of whom, at least, the truth must have been kind, momentarily persuaded him as arguments never could. “I wouldn’t mind knowing,” he said, “whether she thinks of me.” He did not believe in it, but he would have liked to. Half serious, half joking, he said, “Is there a sure way, Melba? One you can trust?”
The air of mystery and evasion that he had seen her adopt with her “callers” settled about her. Again she gazed off into space. “They is ways,” she said. “They is ways and ways. Some cases seems to require one method and other cases another. I guess,” she added in a tone that struck a very nice balance between modesty and truth, “I knows em about all.”
“Ah,” he said, as glad to be doing this as anything else to keep his mind off last night, “but will the answer come if the person doesn’t believe in it?”
“The truth don’t much seem to care wh’er it’s believed in or not,” she said.
There was an awesomeness to this utterance that impressed him despite himself. She seemed to have been joined by a silent Presence, and for a moment he felt his complacent white skepticism shrivel under the cool and level gaze of Truth, ancient and everlasting, careless of the voice it chose to speak through—an illiterate old Negro woman—and indifferent alike to his belief and disbelief.
“Tell me then,” he said.
“Lissen to that!” She was amused and shocked at his naive understanding of the difficulty at getting at the truth, of which she was merely the interceding priestess. “Now what is yo problem ezzactly?” she asked, assuming her professional tone. “Jealousy of a known rival, or uncertainty for yoself?”
That was a possibility that had not occurred to him. Had she herself sent her father down to turn him away—out of last-minute fidelity to some other, some regular boy of hers? He chose “uncertainty.”
“Um-hum,” she said. “Um-hum.” She was silent for a full minute then, waiting for orders from some source beyond. “Bring me,” she said, “the core of an apple that you and
her has shared together.”
“That would make your job nice and easy for you, now wouldn’t it? Nobody would need to be very uncertain about a girl he could get to do that with him.”
“All I know,” she said, “is what I’m told. I am but the handmaiden of providence.”
After his breakfast he went to the den, though it was not the place he would have chosen if he had had a choice, because of the souvenirs of the dance, the lanterns hanging from the rafters, the powdered wax in drifts in the corners like dirty snow, and one unexpected one, a girl’s dainty, fragrant handkerchief he found lying on the window seat. He wished not to encounter his mother, however, and felt that the likelihood was smaller here. Why he wished to avoid her he was forced to consider. He had a suspicion that it was because of the ambivalence of his feelings, the presence in his thoughts of something more than resentment of Mr. Halstead, the presence there of Libby.
His mind ought to have been entirely filled, if not with definite schemes for revenge, certainly with resentful brooding upon the insult he had suffered. And at first he had forgotten Libby in thinking of her father. But now, though he told himself it was mere perversity, he alternated his thoughts of injury with memories of her; and he chid himself, believing that this, which made him a better person, made him a worse.
When finally he became conscious of an annoyance to his eyes, he realized that he had been vaguely and unsuccessfully trying for some time to shade them against a glare from outside. It was the glint of something bright dancing in the sunshine. He shifted his position, but it persisted. He shifted again; the glitter was worse than ever. He shifted again; it followed him as if with intent, and its flicker grew more restless.
He looked out the window, and the glare struck him full in the eyes, dazzled him. He shielded his eyes and ducked under the beam. After his vision had returned, and after a moment’s search, he discovered its source. At the focal point of the beam, near the hedge across the lawn, stood Libby, semaphoring to him with something round and small and bright, a mirror no doubt, held at her breast.
25
When Libby Halstead closed her front door and looked down at herself in tattered jeans and shabby sneakers the laugh she had promised herself failed to come. This might have been the way she always looked for all the indication he gave. She felt that she had made a fool not of him, but of herself. His solemnity and his chivalry shamed her for teasing him. At the same time, the formal politeness with which he had treated her made her feel more mature. Finally she began to feel angry with him for having seen her in such an unbecoming state.
To feel a sense of shame and apology, a touch of anger and resentment—there is nothing like it for whetting a girl’s interest in a boy. Then she thought of his exploit in the woods, and she made a discovery about herself: she was not so free of traditional frontier female feelings as she had thought. Consequently, by that time it was no ordinary date that Mr. Halstead frustrated, and (as he himself began to fear immediately) his action made an already interesting boy infinitely more so. Her father had never done anything remotely like this before, and Libby reasoned that he must regard Theron Hunnicutt as more dangerous than any of the town’s other young men. Perhaps he was. She knew nothing about him, really. Actually no girl did. She enjoyed thinking her father was right. However, though she did not really know him, still it was a small town. She knew that he was a strange menace, if menace he was, to the girls of the town, because as far as she knew he had never gone near one.
But it was not necessary for Libby to work very hard at constructing a romantic character for Theron. He had had one thrust upon him. Besides, as yet she was as much in love with the thrill of what she herself was doing as she was with him. She had sneaked into the grounds, been frightened by a pen full of big dogs, and she had used her romantic ingenuity to bring him out to her: finding herself there, but balked, she had thought of her compact and had used its mirror to signal her presence.
“You’re looking fine,” he said.
She flushed with pleasure. She had been pleased to see that, despite her lack of sleep, it was going to be one of her good days, good enough to make up for the last look he had had of her. She was radiant with having lied to her father for a boy’s sake, and with excitement over what she risked in coming to him clandestinely.
Then it dawned on her that he meant it for a reproach rather than a compliment. She was supposed to be sick.
She had vowed that if he read too much into her coming to him like this she would never see him again—forgetting that her original resolution had been to see him only once, and then only to apologize. Far from presuming upon her forwardness, he seemed almost displeased to see her.
“I came to apologize,” she said.
“Did your father send you?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and smiled. But he did not take this as she had assumed he would. He seemed disappointed.
He despised disloyalty in anyone. She did not much recommend herself to him by having disobeyed and deceived her father, even for his sake.
“Don’t hold it against me,” she said.
“You ought not to be here like this,” he said in a solemn, moral tone and with a grave face.
She felt a twitch of impatience with him. He seemed more worried than thrilled. She mocked herself for the vow she had made. Her escapade loomed in her own mind at once both larger and smaller than his anxiety made it seem. She did not like to think she had been immodestly forward, but she did like to think she had gone pretty far, and she wished he would appreciate it rather than fret over it. She wished he would do something. Just what, she did not know. Something appropriate.
Out of nowhere a drop of rain appeared upon her cheek, another upon his forehead. He felt himself relenting, or, rather, exempting her from his resentment, though conscious that he did it still with little grace. “It was nice of you to come,” he said. There was no doubt that she meant well; she brightened at even this grudging gesture towards peace. But farther than that he could not go.
A few more drops of rain fell. She said, “Well, I’d better be going now,” though she made no move.
“Well, thanks again for coming,” he said.
A gust of large warm raindrops splashed in his face. In the next instant their clothes were dotted with dark spots the size of quarters.
“Raining,” she said.
Her word was like a signal. At once a shower fell. He pointed to the arbor and grabbed her hand. But they had run only a few steps when across the back lawn streaking towards the arbor came the men of the clean-up crew. She stopped, tugging his hand.
“I don’t want them to see me,” she said, and blushed.
“The house then,” he said, and led her at a dash.
They were soaked. In the den she said, panting, “I must look like a drowned rat.” He had just been observing how very pretty she looked, with her hair dripping, drops sparkling on her cheeks and clinging in her long dark lashes. The run and the wetting had for the moment cleansed him of spleen.
At first their conversation was insignificant. They would both remember things left unspoken, looks, undertones that thrilled just below speech, taking their meaning from the very inconsequentiality of the actual words. Aside from the time he had asked her for the date, they had not met more than to say hello on the street since he left school. They renewed acquaintance. She was graduating from school in little more than a month. She tried to be blasé about it, knowing how little school had meant to him; however, he could see that it was the big thing in her life. But not, he learned, because it was the end of something. For her it was the beginning of something: college. Oh yes, she was going to college. She liked school; she made good grades, studied hard. He must not think she was only—Obviously she had been about to say, “only pretty,” or something like that. She blushed. But it was her way to gain forgiveness for a faux-pas by being the first to forgive herself. She smiled a smile meant for herself which was so engaging no one could help
forgiving her. She went on. She was puzzling over her choice of a college; it would depend on what she decided to major in. She liked math, and SMU was said to be good for math. She also liked history and—
She stopped abruptly. She sensed that he was not listening, and she feared she had been egotistic and boring. She asked his plans. He had been listening to her voice, not her words. It was low in timbre, and her accent, though undoubtedly southern, was more easterly sounding than the nasal local twang with its singsong rhythm and its exaggerated inflection. Her question was a surprise not only because of his inattention. He never made plans. His plans were just to go on.
“Go on what?” she said.
He studied a minute. “Living,” he said.
A soft, rich laugh rose from deep in her throat. “Do go on doing that,” she said.
She gave her attention to the room. She looked at both the boars’ heads. “One is your father’s and one is yours, isn’t it? Which is yours?”
He pointed and said, “The small one.”
“Looks just as big as the other one to me,” she said.
“It isn’t, though,” he said.
“It’s big enough. Weren’t you awfully scared?”
He had been asked that question by a good many girls the day before. He had given them the answer they wanted—no answer at all, but an immodestly modest expression. He did not care for their admiration, but it would have been unchivalrous to let that be seen. He did care for Libby’s admiration, but for an admiration different from the conventional ooh’s and ah’s of other girls. “I was so scared,” he said, “I didn’t know what I was doing.” And that, he thought, was quite literally true.
She saw that she had been treated to a special intimacy, and she responded with a look of mixed gratitude and triumph.
She looked back at his trophy, studied it, and then he thought he saw a light shudder pass over her. He did not dare interpret it, yet he did so; clearly her shudder had been for the risk he had run. He felt his heart miss a beat. She turned suddenly to him, as if with a sudden consciousness of having lost herself in contemplation, of having perhaps revealed too much of her feelings—so suddenly that it caused one of the little seed pearl earrings that trembled like a last raindrop from her ears to shake loose and fall to the floor. Theron picked it up. She never could keep earrings on, she said, laughing, lifting back her hair to show that she had ears of the sort that have no pendant lobes. The thought of women’s ears with hanging lobes was suddenly distasteful, almost monstrous to him. It was her right ear, yet to bare it she had drawn back her hair with her left hand, reaching clear over her head. As she did this the light stole down the underside of her chin and down the sinuous line of her throat bent on the strain. Perhaps she saw in his eyes that it was a moment worth prolonging. It was, in fact, the moment and the attitude which his memory was even then selecting for its permanent impression of her image. He had a consciousness of drops still sparkling in her brown hair. Her eyes, now some shade of lavender, startling in their paleness beneath their dark and rather heavy brows and lashes, looked at him from out the extreme corners of their high and rounded lids and over two triangles of light resting softly on her cheekbones.
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