by John Gardner
“A Jezebel,” Aunt Ella said. Her teeth clicked. “She’s like apples laying in the hay.”
“Well, she’s young too” Leon said.
“They’re not either one of ’em as young as all that. If a ten-year-old that was kin to me tried a stunt like that I’d thrash ’em to an inch of their life.”
He sighed and looked out at the car. Smashed, black and yellow, it made him think of a crushed yellow-jacket, and his mind wandered vaguely to the differences, not yet quite clear in his mind, between hitting a grown-up, a child, and a bee. He’d had a tendency to strike out at people himself, once; a bad tendency in a man as big as he was. The doctors at the university claimed that he was a bona fide giant; some glandular disorder. He tried to think whether he’d stopped for any reason. He realized he couldn’t remember what they’d been saying, and he concentrated.
“Aunt Ella,” he said firmly, when he’d caught the thread, “the Preacher was upset, that’s all. If he’d had time to think he might’ve done something different. You can’t really blame him. Then too, he was protecting his wife. He might have had better sense if it was just himself.”
“She’s a vixen besides,” Darthamae said. “You know what she does if he doesn’t do every last thing she asks him to? I know people that’s friends with her …”
Aunt Ella wasn’t interested. “Man seven foot tall can handle a flabby little hussy.”
“Now Aunt Ella,” Leon said, “she’s no hussy, and he’s not—”
“Seven foot tall and not one inch under or the Lord strike me dead on this spot.”
Ralph looked at the ceiling.
Darthamae said, “He may be eight-six for all I know, but that’s no help in the bedroom.”
Aunt Ella looked around her, shocked at her coming out with it in front of Ralph and Leon. But after she’d thought about it a minute she smiled. She was beginning to like the Preacher’s wife.
Darthamae leaned over closer to Aunt Ella. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she married him in the first place just to torment him. Betty Jane always was a tease. She’d come to Sundayschool in those white frilly dresses, and she’d smile and smile till every boy for half a mile around had his eye blacked and his clothes torn to pieces fighting for her, and when somebody won, oh my but she was cooled! She doesn’t really like boys, that’s my opinion.”
Aunt Ella smiled, looking at the baby again, and this time she was conscious of it when she patted him and said, “Bless you.” Then she looked back out the window and saw the car. “I want justice,” she said fiercely. She clenched both fists. “I just want satisfaction, and not a soul will lift their finger in my behalf!”
“Now Aunt Ella,” Leon said, “put on charity.”
She drew herself up. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
Darthamae’s eyes widened. “Are you thinking of plucking up the Preacher, Aunt Ella?”
Leon said, “It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman.”
“It is a joy to the just to do judgment,” she said, “and destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity.” She stood up. She felt more cheerful now. There was nothing she liked better than quoting the Scriptures. Also, she had a plan.
“God help the Preacher,” Leon said.
He watched them go out to the car. Ralph got in before her, sliding in back end first, Aunt Ella hanging on to his leg. Then Aunt Ella got in and drove.
2
He wasn’t out riding, as she’d somehow expected him to be (though it was dark). He was sitting at the round table in the diningroom, writing. He was less than six feet from the window she watched through, and she put off knocking. It was the first really good look at him she’d gotten. The light over the table was the only one they had on in the house, as near as she could tell from the porch. His wife must have gone to bed. He had on a clean blue workshirt with the sleeves rolled up, and horn-rimmed glasses she’d never seen on him before. There were papers scattered all over the table, and books lying open. He’d been at it for a long time, she could see, and the way he was working—writing a sentence, reading a page from one of the books, writing two more words, scowling and chewing on his pencil, reading some more—she knew he was going to be at it for a while yet. Working on next Sunday’s sermon, she guessed. His sermons were humdingers, that was the truth. They could make you perspire.
He was a nice-looking preacher, really. He was tall as a stalk of fieldcorn, though not as tall as Leon, of course. He had big broad shoulders and a chest like a stove; nice tanned skin; a handsome face with a cleft in the chin. It wasn’t a weak face or the usual kind of liar’s face (Aunt Ella trusted her judgment in these matters), and it wasn’t the face of a stupid person. The face of a young man too tall for his grade all the length of his childhood, a mother’s pride and joy too often praised—for his voice, a big bass voice that could fill the whole church; for his marks in school; for his hearing the call of the Lord; for his height and for his weird gray-blue eyes, and for the lock that fell over his forehead, suspiciously casual, from his otherwise straight hair.
“What’s he doing?” Ralph whispered, just audible over the clicking of the crickets and the rustle of the maple leaves.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Writing something.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Shhh!”
The Preacher put down his pencil and got up. He arched his back and stretched, pulling his chin into his neck. Then he picked up the cup from beside his papers on the table and walked toward the kitchen. When he reached the door Aunt Ella heard the Preacher’s wife calling, “You coming to bed, Bill?”
He looked cross. “Pretty soon, honey,” he said. He was too far away for her to see his features clearly.
His wife’s voice said, “All you care about is your preachin.”
“Now Betty Jane, that’s not so.”
She said nothing more, and his blurry shape stood undecided. He went on standing in the doorway a long while, his hands around the cup, but then at last he went into the kitchen.
“What’s he doing?” Ralph asked.
“Shh.” She raised one finger to her lips. “Gone for some coffee.”
Ralph tried to get closer, to help her watch, but the porch wasn’t wide enough—not a proper porch at all but a concrete square with wrought-iron ornamental supports on each side and a roof over it. He couldn’t get both crutches up onto it at once, and when he did he couldn’t get his feet on it right. He stood with one crutch on the cement and one in the grass, hovering precariously between them like a beetle with some of its legs missing.
The Preacher came back in and set the cup on the table. He stood a minute listening for something more from the bedroom, then pulled out his chair and brushed his hair back and sat down. It was true, Aunt Ella reflected, uneasy at heart, that the Preacher was a worker. It was a piece of luck when a country church like the Ebenezer Baptist got a man like that. Mostly they either got old men that ought to be retired years ago or young men not smart enough to get called to a church in town. Why he’d come had been a puzzle to them all until the day that horse appeared. Then they knew. Pretty soon he’d put up a white fence made out of boards and had barrels for the horse to run between. You might have seen him riding along anywhere between here and the other side of Cobden. But she had to be fair, the Preacher got his work done. He put on the best weddings the church had ever seen, and he went and prayed with the sick and decrepit, and he built up church attendance till they hardly knew what to do with the offering. If he had his way, they’d be putting up a new brick church before long, and he’d probably fill it, too.
He looked like no more than an overgrown boy, she thought, feeling still more uneasy. She’d looked after she didn’t know how many young ones just like him—but not so tall. She could see as well as Leon James how he must ha
ve felt, that first minute, when his wife came in and told him she’d run some old lady off the road, maybe sent her to Glory. Maybe if Ed Hume and the Howard boy had believed her when she told them the truth, if they’d gone along with him only because he was the Preacher, knowing all he said was lies …
“Aunt Ella,” Ralph whispered.
“Hush,” she said.
“Aunt Ella, I’m cold,” he said. He was shaking like a leaf, trying to balance on the crutches and hug himself.
“Won’t be long now,” she said. She was about to knock. She stood with her fist raised near the door, hesitating not from curiosity now but because she wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with it. That very second the Preacher’s wife came in from the bedroom. Quickly, Aunt Ella got in front of the window again so Ralph wouldn’t see.
The Preacher’s wife had nothing on but a pale blue nightgown that didn’t hide one thing. She came over and stood beside him, with one hand on the nape of his neck, and she said very sweetly, “Billy?”
Just then, like a house tipping over, Ralph fell down. Aunt Ella got her face back out of the window as quick as she could and knocked at the door. She got a glimpse of the Preacher’s wife running for the bedroom. Ralph couldn’t get up.
The Preacher was white as a sheet when he came to the door. “Who is it?” he said. He bent down a ways, squinting, holding his glasses in his two hands.
“Ella Reikert,” she said. “I’m sorry to call so late.”
“Good evening,” the Preacher said. He looked past her. “Evening, Brother Ralph.”
“Evening,” Ralph said. He was trying to pull himself up on the crutches. His mouth was twisted all out of shape from the effort, and his eyes were crossed, but he made a quick snatch at his hatbrim.
The Preacher said, “Won’t you come in?” He showed Aunt Ella into the parlor, and when Ralph didn’t come he went outside to help. When finally they were all sitting down, Aunt Ella said, “I owe you an apology, Brother Flood. I ought not to been so stubborn.”
The Preacher smiled, but a trifle vaguely, looking at his interlocked fingers. “We all make mistakes,” he said.
She studied him.
He said with more spirit, “Leg giving you any discomfort, Ralph?” Just talking he sounded more musical than the basses in the choir when they sang.
“I’m all right,” Ralph said. “Your wife did it.” He shaped the words with extreme care, and every one of them came out clearly. When he finished he smiled with pleasure and crossed his eyes on purpose.
“I was sinfully proud,” Aunt Ella said. “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”
“Well, then too,” the Preacher said, smiling kindly, “our eyes play tricks on us.”
Again, longer this time, she studied him. That man was truly obstinate. His neck was an iron sinew and his brow was brass. Except that it was worse than just stubbornness; it was as though he was an invisible man and could do whatever he pleased against her. If one of them was blind or confused or crotchety, if one of them was slipping back into petulant childish fibbing, it had to be her. She wondered in sudden panic if even Leon and Darthamae believed her. “Put on charity,” he’d said. Well enough for him. You could choose to step on an ant or not, but the ant had no say about it. No sir! She was shaking so badly she had to keep her hands folded.
Ralph said something neither of them caught and began to say it again more slowly, but Aunt Ella interrupted. She felt a rush of wicked pleasure the instant she knew she was actually going to say it. “That’s not what we came here to talk about, Brother Flood. I’m here to see about buying your palomino horse.”
His eyebrows went up, and a second later he laughed. “Sister Reikert, that horse is worth two hundred dollars.”
“I’m willing to pay, if I look at him and see it’s fair.”
Now it was the Preacher’s turn to do the squinting. “Golly,” he said finally, “I’m sorry, Sister. I’m really not thinking of selling him. Star’s like one of the family.” He laughed again.
“Well, you think about it,” she said. “Call me if you change your mind.”
“I’m afraid that’s not likely,” the Preacher said.
And so it was done, or would be done pretty soon now. She felt light, as though she were sitting in empty air. She said, “Ralph, we better go home now.” Ralph opened his mouth and eyes wide, reaching over the chair arms for his crutches. And so they left.
At the door the Preacher said, puzzled-looking, “What did you want him for, Sister Reikert?”
“Oh, you know how it is,” she said. She took Ralph’s right elbow, jutting out from the crutch. “Evening, Brother Flood.”
He seemed to consider, then nodded.
When he closed the door Aunt Ella took a quick look in through the window. Already the Preacher’s wife Betty Jane was coming from the bedroom, but things were different now. She had on a heavy brown bathrobe and her hair was in pink plastic curlers. It wasn’t hard to see Brother Flood was in trouble for sitting up all that while while she was waiting.
Six rods down the road, a third of the way to her own house, Aunt Ella stopped the car and turned off the lights, and Ralph got out. She watched him hobble through the tall grass and apple trees toward the Preacher’s horse-barn, the other side of the graveyard. In fifteen minutes Ralph was back.
“I feel ten years younger,” Aunt Ella said thoughtfully, smiling at her reflection in the cracked windshield.
“Yes’m,” Ralph said, scrunched down level with the dash, ducking the low roof on his side. The horse had stepped on his good foot, and he believed the toe was broken, which it was.
3
“There’s just no satisfaction,” Aunt Ella said. That was three days later, at Leon’s. The baby was sitting on the floor cooing, picking up a soupspoon and putting it down again, and the big part-collie dog was sitting opposite, looking at him with his head tilted and his ears straight up. Ralph sat half-heartedly watching them, the crutches lying in his lap, the broken leg going out to his right, the leg with the broken toe going out to his left. He was sunk in gloom, but sometimes he would remember to lean down toward the child, the muscles of his face contorting with the effort, and say “Boo!” The child showed a hint of a smile.
Leon said, “What happened?” He wished Darthamae would come in from the pumps (she was filling up Leonard Avery’s dumptruck). He hated to be the only one to hear what Aunt Ella had done. She was Darthamae’s relative, after all; he only called her “aunt” the way other people did, because after all those years of her nursing people and taking care of children while their mothers worked (with Ralph at her heels, forever wailing “Aunt Ella! Aunt Ella!”) it had turned into part of her name. It was Darthamae’s responsibility more than his. She ought to be hearing it anyway, because it was something.
It was the old gypsy pea trick, and if the Preacher had just called in Doc Coombs, the way other people did, and not some real veterinarian from town, it would never have worked. (“The Lord resisteth the proud,” said Aunt Ella.) It ought to have taken at least three days, but the Preacher was hasty as well as proud. The vet gave the horse a shot of tranquilizer, and when he was wiping off the needle, he said, “I hate to tell you, Reverend, but your horse has gone crazy.” Even after the tranquilizer had taken effect, the horse went on jerking his head up and down and rolling his eyes back, trying to get the pea out of his ear. (“I’d rather have given him spavins,” Aunt Ella said. “You can run a piece of his tail’s hair between the two bones in his foreleg and clip off the ends. You’d swear he was crippled for life, but then you measure up and take that hair out and he’s just as good as ever, sometimes improved. That’s what I’d done if I wasn’t worried Ralph would measure wrong and we’d never find the hair.”)
It took the Preacher about fifteen minutes to get down to Aunt Ella and say he’d thought it over and maybe he’d let his horse go after all. He’d had some une
xpected expenses.
“Vetinary bills?” Aunt Ella said. Inside, she was jumping up and down with glee. She felt ten years old again. She felt the way she’d felt the time she broke out all the schoolhouse windows, seventy years ago now. After a while she talked the Preacher into driving her up for a look at the horse. He was asleep in the stall—he had enough tranquilizer in him to kill any ordinary horse. The Preacher said he’d been riding him hard all morning. “Hmm,” Aunt Ella said. She opened up the horse’s eye. It could have been perfectly normal, for all she knew. But she squinted at the Preacher and said, “Well, I can give you twelve dollars.” He looked like she’d knocked all the wind out of him, and for a minute she was sure he’d had a heart attack, and she was going to have some explaining to do to Leon and Cousin Gordon. He said, “What are you talking about?” She thought a minute, or pretended to (looking up at the new-timber rafters above the stall, and the hay that lay in the shaft of sunlight, as green as dry evergreen boughs). “Well then, fourteen,” she said. “I can’t stand dickering.” He looked like she’d whipped him in front of his playmates. Finally he said, “All right.” He was so mad he could hardly talk. She followed him into the house and paid him, and that night she took the pea out and walked the horse down to her place and staked him in the yard like a goat.
“Surely you gave the horse back to him later,” Darthamae said—standing at Aunt Ella’s elbow now. She still had Leonard Avery’s money in her hand.
“Certainly not,” Aunt Ella said. “I sold him for glue.”
“You what?” Darthamae said.
Leon said, “A two-hundred-dollar riding horse?”
“I needed the money,” Aunt Ella said, pouting. “And he owed it to me, for the expense of fixing Ralph’s toe.”