Near Canaan

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “Come on into the kitchen,” said the girl.

  We sat at the kitchen table for a while with our glasses of lemonade, not saying anything. I’d already used up some conversation saying how the lemonade was mighty good, and how it was mighty hot, and how there’d been a breeze yesterday but not today, and how it usually rained more than it was doing. To all of it she said nothing, just “Uh-huh,” or “Oh,” not even looking straight at me. I guess maybe she was embarrassed thinking of the awful things she’d said to me. It was like now we’d started being civil, we didn’t know how to go on. Like we’d had a habit, and couldn’t get out of it easily.

  “She’s a rare old thing,” I told the girl. “Broke my grand-daddy’s heart when he was a young man. She married somebody else, but he died young. My grand-daddy started courting her again, but she threw him over again, married a man thirty years older, who died almost right away. Grand-daddy trotted the horse-and-carriage around again, but after three months of Sunday rides she told him she was going to Raleigh to live with her sister.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the girl. She didn’t seem overly interested, but I went on anyway.

  “My grand-daddy gave up then, I guess, and married my grandma, and raised up a family. They were happy together, five sons and two daughters, and my grandma died at a good age, and left my grand-daddy alone for five years before the old lady come back into town.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the girl.

  “Well,” I said. “At the age of eighty-five, he rode over to her place, this place, and asked her to marry him.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the girl.

  “You know what she said?” I asked.

  “Uh uh,” said the girl.

  “She said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You aren’t going to tell me you’re marrying somebody else?’ and she said, ‘At my age, it isn’t seemly.’ He said, ‘Why didn’t you marry me before?’ and she said, ‘Henry, you never asked me.’ And you know, he never had, not in sixty years of courting.” I waited for the girl’s response, but there wasn’t any. “I guess he moved pretty slow,” I said.

  “Runs in the family, I guess,” she said. I could see that we were back to the old way again, but for once I didn’t say anything, just drank up my lemonade and left.

  The next day the old lady was about the same. I sat by her bed for a while, and when I went to leave the girl offered me lemonade again.

  “No thank you,” I said. “It’s awfully sour, the way you make it.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said,” the girl told me. “I didn’t mean to be unkind. I don’t know, just sometimes these words come out of me. I’m sorry.”

  The strangest thing: those eyes that could be so mean could just as easy turn sweet. The girl looked at me that way and I just gave in, like that.

  “All right,” I said. “Thank you kindly.”

  We sat over our lemonade like before, but not so quiet this time. It was like the girl was trying to make it up with me—she did most of the talking, about her hometown in Tennessee, somewhere I’d never heard of.

  “It’s beautiful at night,” she said. “When the river’s high and there’s a moon.”

  Talking that way, she was almost pretty. If I hadn’ta known, I’da said she was just a young homesick girl, and not a viper. But I knew better; I wasn’t taken in.

  “Will you go back there … after?” I asked her, trying to walk careful around the old lady’s death. I coulda cut my own tongue out, the way the words sounded, nice as pie. I opened my mouth quick to add something sharp about taking all she could back to Tennessee with her, but the words stopped right there, and held, like I had no more breath to talk.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought that far. Nothing much to go back to, my daddy’s house is just run over already, what with my sister and her kids.”

  “This here ain’t a bad town,” I said. “Best town on earth.”

  “Not as good as home,” she said. “I had friends there.”

  That girl could change. Now she was just a little lonely girl living way out in the country with an old woman, and never meeting anybody her own age that she could talk to. I almost felt sorry for her.

  “You oughta get into town more,” I said. “There’s socials over to the church on Fridays.”

  “What church?” she said.

  “Congregationalist,” I said.

  “We’re Baptist,” she said, looking shocked.

  “Baptist is nice,” I said.

  “Couldn’t get there anyway,” she said, irritated again. “Who’d stay with the old lady if I was to go off?”

  “That’s true,” I said. And the mention of the old lady brought us back to the same sad fact we’d been turning around without saying. “She’s bad, ain’t she?”

  The girl nodded. Now I could see tears filling up her eyes. Crocodile, I told myself. Probly crying over the china hutch she won’t get, cause the old lady’ll die before she’d convinced her to sign it over.

  “Her sister’s girl will get everything,” I said. “It’s a pity.” The girl looked up. “She’ll haul it off to West Virginia or sell it to some dealer from the city,” I said. “Hate to see good things go to those don’t love ’em.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” the girl said, snuffling. “Wouldn’t you sell them too?”

  “Some,” I admitted. “But not all. That china hutch. I couldn’t put a price on that. The old lady’s grand-daddy made it for his bride. That’s love, that is. I couldn’t sell that. Give it, maybe, to someone who appreciated it. But not sell.”

  “That’s just exactly,” the girl said, stammering. “Exactly how I feel about it.”

  “We agree on something, then,” I said, embarrassed by my silly speech. “Thank you kindly for the lemonade,” I said, and got up. She saw me to the door.

  “You’ll be back tomorrow?” she asked, without a bit of meanness to her. “She looks forward to your visits,” she explained, jerking her head back toward the bedroom and turning red.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  Well, the next day the old lady wasn’t much better, but then she wasn’t any worse, and to make a long story short, she recovered right out of her sickness like it had never happened. She lived another ten year and died peacefully in her sleep. Her kin had to get another girl to do for her, though, not too long after she got well, cause somehow Maggie and I wound up getting married. The china hutch was our wedding present from the old lady. We laughed and laughed when she gave it, and promised each other we’d never quarrel, because then we’d have to cut it in half like Solomon’s baby.

  Honeymoon talk, but we didn’t do too badly. Maggie has her a sharp tongue and a fierce temper when she wants. They didn’t surprise me none, being the first side of her I got acquainted with. Used to tell people I met a devil and married an angel, though I was stretching it. She weren’t no angel, specially when she got after one of the kids for something. She’s mellowed some over the years, though she’d deny it.

  The china hutch is still in our house, still shining like it did in the old lady’s dining room. I mean for our son and his wife to have it when I go. I know they’ll take good care of it, and hand it on to their children, or someone else who’ll appreciate it. One thing’s for sure—it’ll never pass through here.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Midnight Round

  THE BOY WAS a virgin. It stuck out all over him. No pun intended, thought Jack to himself with a smile. No doubt that’s what made him so goddamn nervous all the time. He was a funny mix. Cowardly, like a dog that’s been beaten; but bold too, like a sure-of-itself cat. Jack had been watching Buddy put himself forward for a week now. God only knew what he got up to during the day when Jack went to work.

  “Half the shit I do ain’t worth the doing,” Jack said now. “Half the time if I knew what I was in for I wouldn’t do any of it.”

  “Do you mean me?” asked Buddy, looking up.

  How selfish he was. “Everything in the world d
oesn’t have to do with you,” said Jack.

  “Because I really appreciate all your help,” said Buddy. “I think some of those people wouldn’t have talked to me, except for you.”

  “That may be so,” allowed Jack, yawning. They were sitting on the porch in the chill dense evening, waiting for Rupe. “He’ll be along soon,” Jack told Buddy. “There’s a guy you should meet.” He wanted very badly for Rupe to come, to put things back into their places. More and more, the conversations with Buddy were bothering his senses, dulling some of them, heightening others, throwing everything out of order. The earnest sounds of the crickets were louder to him now than the smooth words of the boy folded up on the steps, two feet away.

  “Will he talk to the camera?” Buddy asked. Jack winced. The inevitable question.

  “No, he won’t fucking talk to the camera,” he snapped. “And don’t go asking him. I don’t want you bothering him with your nonsense.”

  “It isn’t nonsense,” said Buddy, looking wounded.

  “Well, acourse it isn’t,” temporized Jack. “But Rupe’ll sure as hell think so. You’re gonna have it hard enough getting him past that accent of yours.”

  “Accent?” asked Buddy, faintly.

  “You think it’s normal,” said Jack. “That’s because you watch TV. You think anything on TV is the way it’s supposed to be. But down here, you got an accent. Down here, we talk normal.”

  Why was he being so hard on the boy? He couldn’t help the way he talked. It was the week, Jack told himself, the week of pimping behind him, and another one in front. Not that he’d have done things differently if he’d known how it would be. But maybe he wouldn’t have been so quick to offer his extra bedroom. Then he could have gotten away from it some, left Buddy off at some motel, seen him in the morning. Good night, he thought to himself. Sleep tight, see you tomorrow. What a luxury. But he’d wanted to keep an eye on Buddy, to know what he knew, to keep him from the things he shouldn’t. Heavy price.

  The boy was still looking hurt, picking at his shoelaces, keeping his eyes down.

  “Tell me again,” said Jack. “You’re making this movie about Naples.”

  “Right,” said Buddy, muffled, to his shoes.

  “And your mother.”

  “If she comes into it.” Still curt, but bending and warming around the edges, like a dog that wants to forgive.

  “She can’t help but come into it, son,” Jack said, patiently. There was just so much Buddy didn’t understand. Beth and Naples were the same thing, almost. No matter that she left. No matter what had happened to her before she left, or since. The town was part of her, and she was part of it. “You can take the girl out of the country.”

  “Pardon?” asked Buddy.

  “Never mind,” said Jack. “Hope you know what you’re looking for,” he added. “I can point the way to people, but I can’t tell if they’re gonna say what you want.”

  “That’s the whole thing about documentary,” said Buddy, looking up now, smiling tentatively. “Nobody says what you want them to. They say what they want to say, and you film it. It’s like real life.”

  “But it ain’t real life,” said Jack. “They act different in front of the camera, I seen em.”

  “That’s true,” said Buddy, eager now. “That’s all part of it, too. Sometimes they forget the camera’s there, but most of the time they don’t. It’s part of the concept, how the camera affects things.”

  “Huh,” said Jack.

  “They act different from the way they would if the camera weren’t there,” the boy went on. “But the camera sees the things they’re trying to hide. They try to hide, and in doing so they reveal everything.”

  “To the camera,” said Jack.

  “That’s right,” said Buddy.

  “How bout you?” asked Jack. “You somewhere behind that camera? Or aren’t you part of the concept, too?”

  “Well,” said Buddy, uncomfortably. “I try not to be.”

  Crunch, from down the road.

  “Here’s Rupe,” Jack said, with relief, as the pickup drove in.

  Rupe spat out of the window before opening the door of the truck and climbing out. On the ground, he stood an inch or so taller than Jack, but was much heavier. Planting his feet, he grabbed his belt with both hands and pulled it up, resettling the waistline of his pants over the middle of his belly.

  “Hey,” he said, coming up to the porch. Buddy popped to his feet like a well-trained child and stuck his hand out.

  “Buddy,” said Jack, by way of introduction.

  Rupe looked him over.

  “Settle down, son,” was all he said. He shook the pale hand gravely.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Buddy.

  “You don’t know that yet,” said Rupe, sending Jack a glance. “Wait till you’ve gone out on the midnight round.”

  “What’s that?” asked Buddy.

  “You’ll see,” said Rupe. “When I don’t like somebody, they know it.”

  “We got some hard drinking till then,” said Jack, bringing up the bourbon bottle from the floor beside his chair.

  “Say it again,” said Rupe, and it seemed to be an old joke between them, because they smiled, while the boy looked on.

  Glass on glass, the gurgle of pouring liquid, crickets. The only sounds for a few minutes.

  “You’re the moviemaker,” said Rupe, turning to Buddy so suddenly that he jumped.

  “Uh—yeah,” said Buddy.

  “You got nekkid girls in your movies?” Rupe inquired.

  “Um, not so far,” said Buddy, trying for a smile.

  “Huh,” said Rupe.

  “You volunteering?” Jack said.

  “Ha,” said Rupe.

  Silence fell again, over the sounds of men drinking. Buddy, unused to hard liquor, was struggling with the bourbon. He tried to take it the way the men did, into his mouth and straight down like water, but it burned, making him cough.

  “Who’s it this time?” asked Jack.

  “Webb,” answered Rupe. “He was fussin my dogs.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Sonabitch won’t know what hit him,” said Rupe.

  “Webb who?” asked Buddy.

  “Dyke Webb,” said Jack. “He’s that kinda fat guy, wears a Cards cap.”

  “Dyke?” repeated Buddy. The men looked at him. “That’s his name?” he asked. “Dyke?”

  “Yup,” said Jack. “What about it?”

  “Well,” said Buddy, feeling the bourbon loosening his mouth into a silly smile. “You know.”

  “No,” said Jack. Rupe just looked, without changing his expression.

  “Well,” said Buddy, looking at them to see if they were joking. “Come on,” he said. “You know what dyke means.”

  “Don’t believe I do,” said Jack.

  “Whyncha tell us,” said Rupe.

  “I can’t believe it’s just a regional thing. I mean, well,” and he stopped himself. I’m babbling. He took a breath, and his whisky-fogged head cleared for an instant. I’m in too far now. “Up north,” he said, enunciating carefully, “the word dyke means, you know,” he took in another breath, the eyes of the two men on him, “it means lesbian.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well,” said Jack, finally. “It don’t mean that here.”

  Silence again, while Buddy contemplated his most recent humiliation. It seemed that these men could sit and drink without other entertainment, without even comment, for hours at a time.

  “What time is it?” asked Rupe, after a while.

  “There’s time,” said Jack, unhurriedly.

  “What’re you going to do?” asked Buddy, timidly.

  Rupe considered the question.

  “Could blow his head off,” he said.

  Buddy smiled, waiting for the punch line.

  “Or I could blow his fucking head off,” said Rupe.

  “That’s right,” said Jack, pouring.

  “You’re kidding, right?” s
aid Buddy, looking from one to the other.

  “Never kid,” said Rupe. “Do I?” to Jack.

  “Nope,” Jack said. “Never does.”

  “You have a gun?” asked Buddy.

  Rupe didn’t bother to answer this.

  “Did you at least talk to this guy, what’s his name, Webb?”

  “Talk’s no good,” said Rupe, clearly tired of it. “Gun’s the only language some people understand,” he said.

  “For bothering your dogs?” said Buddy, his voice scaling up.

  “No one bothers Peg and Tillie without they get answered by me,” said Rupe.

  “Right,” said Jack.

  “But—” said Buddy, then stopped, a thought coming to him. He sat up straight and looked at Jack, whose face said No, you can’t film this. Buddy’s shoulders sagged again.

  “Near time,” said Rupe.

  “Few more minutes,” said Jack.

  “Hell, it’s close enough,” said Rupe. “Who cares about a minute here or there?”

  “Now, Rupe,” said Jack with a kind of wounded air. For the first time, Buddy could see that he was drunk. “You know better.”

  “Well,” said Rupe.

  “It’s got to do with honor,” said Jack. “Everyone knows it’s midnight. You can’t just go any old time, after all these years.”

  “They’re expecting you?” asked Buddy. This was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Hell yes,” said Rupe.

  “It’s the midnight round,” said Jack, significantly.

  “Everybody knows about this?” Buddy asked.

  “Only those who got reason to fear,” said Rupe, holding his glass out to Jack. “Clean conscience, sleep like a baby. Guilty, toss and turn and one eye on the clock, waiting for midnight. Waiting for me.”

  “What if they shoot you first?” asked Buddy.

  Rupe made a scornful noise, which turned out to be a laugh. It shook his arm, so that the bourbon Jack was pouring missed the glass and sloshed onto the wood of the porch.

  “Rupe’s best shot in the county,” said Jack, steadying the neck of the bottle on Rupe’s quivering glass, letting it pour. He motioned to Buddy. “You’re dry.”

  “No thanks,” said Buddy.