Dovey Coe

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “Now tell me seriously, John,” he said, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye, “did you really think Caroline was going to go on to teachers college? Or was you just playing along?”

  Daddy give Parnell a curious look. “Why, Parnell, you make it sound like she’s done gone and changed her plans. To the best of my knowledge, them folks still got my money over there, so I reckon somebody’s going to college.”

  Parnell slapped his knee and hooted a bit. “Good God, John, ain’t you been paying attention? Caroline ain’t going anywhere.”

  “What’re you saying, Parnell?” Caroline asked from across the table, a bit of love still left in her voice. “We never said anything about me not going to college. We never talked that way.”

  “Now, Caroline, honey, be reasonable,” Parnell said, trying to get serious about the matter. “It don’t make sense for you to go now. You ain’t going to be a teacher. You’re going to be Mrs. Parnell Caraway and sit in the lap of luxury all day.”

  Maybe if Parnell had left it at that, maybe if he and Daddy hadn’t been cracking jokes and being silly all evening, the situation would have worked itself out. But Parnell couldn’t leave things alone, and on that particular evening he was of a mind to laugh at everything.

  “Besides, Caroline,” he said, and here’s where he started to giggling again, “were you really serious about being a teacher? I mean, I ain’t ever seen you pick up a book of your own volition. I ain’t even sure you can read.” Now that right there really broke old Parnell up.

  You just keep talking, Parnell, I thought to myself as I slathered about an inch of butter on a biscuit. For the first time in weeks, I seen me a little glimmer of hope. Parnell had just made himself a grave error, talking to Caroline that way. Like I’ve said, she was sensitive about folks thinking she weren’t anything more than a pretty face. Caroline had some pride, and Parnell had just wounded it. He might think he could sweet-talk his way out of it, but I had my doubts.

  That’s why it come as no surprise to me that Caroline agreed right away the next day when Daddy suggested we have a going-away party for our future teacher. Oh, I tell you, me and Amos was practically dancing all over the house at the news. It told us all we needed to know. Caroline had left the idea of Parnell Caraway in the dust and was going back to her old dreams. If Caroline was going to get out of town, it would be by her own devices, not in Parnell Caraway’s car on an afternoon trip.

  Later that afternoon, I got even more proof of this when Caroline was setting the table for supper and casually remarked, “Folks think I’m good-hearted, and I reckon I am, but that don’t mean a man can’t set my blood to boiling by saying the wrong thing.”

  “You talking about Mr. Parnell Caraway?” I asked, handing her the silverware, a grin breaking across my face.

  “Oh, I believe you know exactly who I mean,” Caroline replied, grinning her own grin.

  Caroline still acted as sweet as could be to Parnell. He kept coming to the house every day, and they both pretended like that dinner conversation had never taken place.

  “Oh, I do think you’re going to enjoy the party,” she told Parnell one afternoon while he was sitting on the porch steps watching me and Caroline pluck dead petunia blooms from Mama’s garden. “It’s always such a treat to have a party at the end of the summer, don’t you think? I’m hoping Mama’ll make some strawberry ice cream. I think this will be the best end-of-the-summer party anyone’s ever given!”

  I noticed that Caroline didn’t once refer to the party as her going-away party. There weren’t no doubt in my mind she was up to something, I just couldn’t figure out what.

  “That sounds fine,” Parnell agreed, using a toothpick to get some dirt from under his nails. “You better not eat too much ice cream, though. I don’t want you losing that pretty figure of yours.”

  “Now don’t you worry yourself over that, Parnell,” come Caroline’s cheerful reply. “I aim to keep my looks for as long as I can.”

  “Why you always got to say such things, Parnell?” I asked, tossing a bunch of the wilted blossoms toward his feet. “Caroline ain’t your prize sow you’re going to take to the fair so you can win a ribbon, you know.”

  Caroline patted me on the shoulder. “Oh, don’t take Parnell the wrong way, Dovey. Besides, if I was Parnell’s prize sow, I reckon he’d want me to eat till I was too big to fit in the front door!”

  I shook my head. I’d known Caroline long enough to know that this cheerfulness of hers weren’t for real. But I had no idea what she was up to.

  Once I got wrapped up in making the plans for the party, I stopped giving the situation between Caroline and Parnell so much thought. We set the date for a few days before Mama and Daddy was to drive Caroline down to school. Luther McDowell and Gaither Sparks would play music so folks who was of mind to could dance and carry on, and Mama and MeMaw would fry up a batch of chickens to be served with slaw, biscuits, greens, and whatever anyone else cared to bring to supper.

  A week before the party, Mama and Caroline sat down at the kitchen table and made out a list of who all to invite.

  Caroline chewed on the end of her pencil, thinking out loud. “’Course, we’ll invite all the McDowells and the Sparkses, since Luther and Gaither will be playing. And Patty Brown and all her folks, so Dovey can dance with Wilson.”

  “I ain’t dancing with no one, lessen Daddy asks me to,” I said, trying to get her away from the idea that me and Wilson Brown was going to dance the night away together.

  Mama smiled. “You dance with whoever you want, Dovey, though I expect you to use your good manners when you say no to an unwanted suitor,” she said in her best ‘I am teaching you how to be a lady’ voice. “Caroline, write down the Byerses and the Mitchells, honey. They been real good to you. Oh, and don’t forget Pastor Bean and Coreen Lovett.”

  Caroline wrote down the list of names in her careful script. “I can’t think of who else to ask,” she said when she was done.

  “What about Parnell and his folks?” Mama asked, sounding surprised that Caroline hadn’t brought them up.

  “My goodness, I can’t believe I forgot old Parnell,” Caroline said, looking sly. She added the name “Caraway” to the list.

  “We ain’t inviting Paris!” I exclaimed. I weren’t about to put up with Paris Caraway for an evening, and I’d just as soon skip Homer, Lucy, and Parnell, too. “Why, that’ll ruin everything, Mama,” I complained. “Them Caraways come up here and everyone’s going to spend the entire time looking at their feet and then go home early.”

  “They ain’t going to do no such thing, Dovey,” Mama replied. “Besides, I don’t rightly see how we can overlook them, seeing as Parnell’s practically lived here all summer. It wouldn’t be right not to invite them.”

  “Can we at least not invite Paris?” I asked.

  Mama laughed, thinking I was fooling, but I weren’t doing no such thing.

  Me and Amos spent a good amount of time that next week getting things ready. To the best of my remembrance, us Coes had not had a party before, if you didn’t count grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins coming over after church on Easter Sunday for dinner, or to drink cider and eat popcorn and cookies on Christmas Eve. Mostly what me and Amos known about parties come from the books we’d read.

  Daddy said the most helpful thing we could do was get the barn cleaned out before he started building a platform for Luther and Gaither to play music on. I liked spending time in the barn, for the good smell of it, in part—the hay kept stored up in the loft and the sharp scent of the kerosene Daddy used to keep his tools clean. Them smells took me back to the days when nobody cared if I was acting like a lady or not, when I spent hours every day watching Daddy fix things up and being his little helper.

  By the day before Caroline’s party, me and Amos had gotten the barn swept and Daddy’s tools and such put over to the side of the barn in an orderly fashion and covered up with some old blankets so they wouldn’t be an eyesore. There
weren’t much left to do but to commence decorating the place. Here’s where being more girlish than I naturally was would have come in handy, I reckon. If I’d been studying up on ladylike activities, I might have been able to sew some curtains to hang over the windows or some such thing.

  It was Amos who come up with the idea of making paper chains to hang all over the place in a festivelike manner. We got us a mess of colored paper and old comic books we’d read so many times that we could probably draw our own copies, and we cut them into colorful strips to make chains with.

  “This will be a sight to see,” I told Amos as I added a loop to the chain I was working on. It already stretched halfway across the barn floor.

  Amos nodded, then held up one finger, as if to tell me to wait a minute. Dragging his paper chain behind him, he run over to the little room that held Daddy’s worktable and chair and closed the door. A few seconds later, he popped back out, that chain wrapped around him from head to foot. He looked like a Christmas tree all done up in decorations.

  “Son, you are a crazy thing!” I said, admiring his handiwork.

  “If Amos ain’t careful, a lot of folks are going to think he’s crazy.”

  Parnell stood at the doorway, his fingers hooked in his suspenders, smiling down on our little scene. “I reckon a lot of folks already do,” he said. “I’ve heard many a story myself. I hear Amos used to like to go around and kill people’s chickens. Why do you suppose he did that?”

  I was glad of only one thing right then, and that was that Parnell was facing me and not Amos. I preferred that Amos not be privy to this particular conversation.

  “You’re the one who’s crazy if you believe them kind of stories,” I told Parnell, turning back to my work, pretending like his words hadn’t affected me. “You ought not to spread rumors. They’ll come back around to bite you in your behind.”

  Parnell laughed a dry laugh. “Don’t blame me that some folks have their concerns about the boy. Besides, I ain’t the one making up the stories.”

  “No, you’re the one going around repeating them.”

  “I just think you ought to know that there’s some folks out there who don’t feel real comfortable with Amos around, is all,” Parnell said, turning to leave. “I’d advise your brother to be real careful about acting the fool. He could get himself in trouble.”

  By this time, Amos had pulled the paper chain from around him. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, as if to ask what the problem was. I shrugged my shoulders back at him, like I couldn’t figure out what Parnell was going on about.

  Amos smiled, then picked up the end of his chain and started running around in circles so that it was flying like a tail behind him. Parnell shook his head, like only a crazy boy would do such a thing, then walked off toward the house.

  I felt the blood run hot through me, and I wanted to hit something as hard as I could. But for Amos’s sake, I shook off my bad feelings and give him a smile as he run in silly circles around the barn.

  The worst thing about Parnell’s little warning is I known it was true. There had always been folks around Indian Creek who believed Amos was off-kilter. That’s one reason I made a point from the time we was little to take Amos to town with me, so folks could see that he was as normal as any other boy except for the fact of his not being able to hear. And while there was always going to be some mean boy to make fun of Amos, I thought that most folks had taken to him and liked him.

  Parnell’s the only one who don’t like Amos, I thought to myself as I pulled the length of my paper chain toward me. Parnell is the only one who’d rather have him out of the picture.

  I would have to be extracareful to watch over Amos from now on, that much was for sure. Somebody had to protect him from the likes of Parnell Caraway.

  chapter 9

  The day of the party broke cool and pretty, and I woke up hardly able to wait until evening, when folks would start coming over. MeMaw and PawPaw, Mama’s mama and daddy, come around noon, and MeMaw started baking her fancy chocolate cakes she only made for company. You got to be quick around one of MeMaw’s cakes, else you won’t get a bite. They get et up in a flash. I tried sticking my finger in the mixing bowl when I thought MeMaw weren’t looking, but she caught me and swatted my hand away, saying, “Law, Dovey, you’re getting to be too old for such doings.”

  “I’m only twelve, MeMaw,” I told her. “I got me a few years before I turn into an old woman.”

  “But you’re a young woman now, and you best start acting like one. I reckon a lot of boys will be after you ’fore too long. Caroline was just telling me that Wilson Brown’s right sweet on you.”

  “Caroline’s got a head full of dreams, MeMaw,” I said. “Don’t go listening to her.”

  I decided I best leave the kitchen before I got surrounded by a flock of women wanting to talk about me and Wilson Brown. I walked out to the barn, where Daddy and Amos was building the little platform for Luther and Gaither to play on.

  The only time I felt real bad about Amos not being able to hear was when I listened to music. It was right difficult to explain to Amos what music was, the same way it was hard to get across to him that when people moved their mouths to talk, sound came out. He didn’t have a good idea for sound, I don’t think. The closest I could get him to understanding was for him to put his hand on my throat while I talked. When you talk, your throat will vibrate a bit, and I wanted Amos to feel that particular vibration. The next day I heard him making them noises he made from time to time, and when I looked into his room, he had his hands on his throat, listening to himself.

  I hoped Amos would be okay with all them folks around. I knew it could be confusing for him to have a lot of folks about him moving and talking all at once. Watching him help Daddy build that platform, I got to wondering if some little girl might take a shine to him soon. Amos was right handsome; in fact, he had a lot of the same features as Caroline had, and even went one better. His hair was yellow and curly while Caroline had to do with dark and straight. How I got stuck with this old brown mess on top of my head, I don’t know. Seems God made me for something other than sitting around and looking good all the time, I reckon.

  I sat down on a pile of old blankets for a minute, letting my usual worries wash over me. What if some little girl broke Amos’s heart? What if Parnell turned Caroline’s feelings around again and convinced her to marry him and then somehow got control of Amos and sent him to a home? What if something happened to me and there was no one to help Amos through all the complications that life threw in his path?

  “Sister, come over here and help hammer some of these nails,” Daddy yelled from where he and Amos was working. I stood up then and shook the worries from me. When I reached the other side of the barn, Daddy put a hammer in my hand, saying, “Just don’t tell your mama I made you stray from your ladylike ways. I’ll get in a mess of trouble for that.”

  I began pounding a nail into the two-by-four, humming beneath my breath, and in less than a minute, I felt like my old self again.

  Hammering will always cure what ails you, I have found.

  After what seemed like years, the sun started making its way down the other side of Katie’s Knob, and us Coes got dressed for the party. Caroline looked pretty as always in a blue and white polka-dot dress and sweet little white dance slippers Mama ordered special from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Mama looked extrapretty, too. She had on her red dress that brought out the coppery red lights in her hair, which is brown like mine, only darker.

  I was hoping to get by with wearing a clean pair of dungarees and a white shirt, but Mama come into my room and said I had better wear a dress so as to make Caroline happy. She pulled out my good yellow dress from where I tried to keep it hid in the back of the closet, and then went to borrow a yellow ribbon for my hair from Caroline. By the time I finished getting ready I looked so dolled up, I hardly known myself in the mirror.

  Seems like just about everybody showed up at once, and the yard was
full of folks talking and laughing and looking good as they known how to. Tom and Huck was running around, trying to convince folks to give them the scraps off their plates, and a couple of the littler children were chasing after them. I sat on the porch with Amos and Wilson Brown, feeling like I was in another girl’s skin. For the first time since I known him, I felt like I needed to make nice conversation with Wilson. That’s what wearing a dress will do to a person.

  By the time most folks were well into their eating, who should finally show up in his car but Parnell Caraway. I breathed a bit more easy when I seen he come alone. The last thing I wanted was for Paris to see me dressed like I was. She’d never let me hear the end of it.

  Parnell strolled up to the yard, nodding and smiling at folks left and right, like he were a politician. A few of the younger girls got right fluttery, chirping out, “Well, hey there, Parnell,” as he passed. I seen Parnell wink at a few of them, and they liked to never stop giggling.

  Caroline give Parnell a wave, and a couple girls sitting next to her on the steps scooted over to make Parnell room. He sat down next to Caroline like a king taking his throne.

  “You know what I heard Fetzer Hall tell my daddy?” Wilson asked me, nodding over to where Parnell was making a fuss over my mama’s fried chicken.

  “What’s that?” I asked, relieved to be getting a conversation going instead of just sitting there looking fancy.

  Wilson leaned over close to me. “He said a bunch of them were up to Buddy Webb’s a-drinking Friday night, and Parnell was there, too, just throwing whiskey down his throat like it were water. Well, in wanders old Cypress Terrell, just to get in from the weather, is what Fetzer told my daddy. Cypress weren’t going to make trouble for no one.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Well, Parnell starts saying things to Cypress,” Wilson continued. “First just conversational type sayings, like, ‘There’s a whole lotta thunder out there tonight, ain’t there, Cypress,’ like that. But then he starts getting real mean, saying folks like Cypress and his mama ought to just wander off into the woods and get lost and stop being such a burden on society. Fetzer said Parnell went so far as to take off his belt like he was going to beat Cypress with it, but Buddy got aholt of him, and some of the other fellers got Cypress out of there.”