The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  “Yes sir.”

  “The onliest ones who ain’t tired is resting in their graves. Or setting on their cans up on Tsali Street.”

  Donny smiled faintly and nodded. “Yes sir, ain’t it the truth?”

  “How would you know, boy? I don’t reckon you hang around much with Tsali Street folks.” “I works in their yards. That’s where I’m headed now.” The bus had reached his stop, and he stood up. “Take my advice, son, and keep your eyes to yourself after this.”

  “I surely will.” Donny grinned, wanting to claw the ugly pink cheeks and watch blood well up. He reminded himself to relax or the high blood pressure would come back.

  He trimmed hemlock hedges, each opening and closing of the shears feeling like his last movement on this earth. As he mowed the lawn, he reflected on how he knew every square inch of this yard, every hollow in the hedges, every boulder and leaf pit, from playing Kick-the-Can with The Five on summer evenings.

  The Princes were out, but a jar of bacon grease and his check sat on the back step. He walked down Tsali to the bus stop on the highway. He’d just missed one bus, and another wasn’t due for twenty minutes. Going into Anderson’s Drugstore where The Five used to buy grape snowcones, he leaned on the soda fountain counter and wiped his sweaty upper lip and forehead with his shirt-sleeve. The counter was almost full, and a woman in a white dress was busy filling orders. Her hips strained against the tight white cloth of her uniform.

  “What can I get you, honey?” she asked as she rushed past.

  “Just a glass of water, please ma’am.”

  She filled a glass and shoved it down the counter. He said, Thank you, ma’am.” And downed it in one long gulp. As he walked toward the door, he could see her reflected in the plate glass window. Looking up, she studied him. She looked toward the druggist behind the prescription counter, looked back at Donny, gazed at the empty glass in her hand, gave a couple of people at the counter a perplexed look, shrugged, and tossed the glass into the garbage can, where it splintered.

  He heard Rochelle in the kitchen opening a bottle of beer. Almost whimpering, he took her in his arms and buried his face in her neck, unable to speak.

  “Whew, nigger, you stink!” she exclaimed with a laugh, pushing him away. He felt his arm draw back. His fist smashed into her laughing mouth. She screamed. Time after time his fists sank into her flesh. He caught glimpses of her terrified face—her pale face. The face of the mother who left him, the face of the woman at the Majestic Theatre, the face of the woman at the soda fountain, the face of Mrs. Prince handing him bacon grease. Stinking cunts, all of them. He was a nigger, but at least he wasn’t no stinking cunt. Blood dribbled down Rochelle’s chin. His fist smashed into her pale cheekbone.

  She grabbed the beer opener and raked it down his face. He clutched at his left eye, as it filled with blood, and stumbled out of the apartment.

  Chapter Four

  Jed

  Jed picked up his black lunch pail. “Be good now,” he counseled Sally, pecking her cheek.

  She bounced Joey on her hip. “When do I ever get a chance to be anything else?”

  “It’s a good thing. I’d beat hell out of anyone who touched you.” This was true, too. The mere idea of Sally lying in some other man’s arms and revealing that Jed had hemorrhoids and sometimes missed the bowl when he pissed could make him frantic.

  Sally laughed. “You make me feel like Rapunzel or something.”

  “That’s just how I think of you, darlin. The princess at the top of my tower. Am I right?”

  “Yes, hon, you sure are.”

  They kissed while Joey grunted, trying to push Jed away.

  As he got in his Chevy left over from high school, Jed surveyed his home. He’d paid off twenty-five percent already; in sixteen more years it would be all theirs. He glanced at his calendar watch. In 1981, to be exact. He’d been over every square inch, inside and out, with his own hands—scraping and painting, puttying and pasting up the wallpapers Sally had picked out. He was building a third bedroom on the back for Joey. He was making payments on a TV console, and a new Dodge wagon for Sally and the kids. He’d mowed, pruned, weeded, trimmed, and planted throughout the small yard, built a sandbox, set up a swing set. He’d married the prettiest girl in town, had two cute babies—his son first, then a daughter. He’d be a foreman over at the mill before long. Maybe in a few more years a supervisor. Who knew after that? Maybe production manager, or even operations manager. Anything was possible. After all, his father started out a broke, uneducated hillbilly, and here he was today recently promoted to supervisor. Yes, all right, he’d messed up in high school, with him and Sally cheating the starter and all. But he’d been doing real good ever since. Besides, most everybody believed the story about them being secretly married. Or pretended to.

  His plans for the future included joining the Elks, and buying him a motorboat. And maybe a new car—a T-Bird.

  Recently Hank said to him, “Yeah, and when Sally’s old man dies, I bet you gonna come into a bundle, buddy.”

  This had never occurred to Jed. He’d been aware that her daddy ran the mill and her family had them a fancy house. But he hadn’t figured it had much to do with him, apart from making him feel like a big shot to be Sally’s steady. But maybe Hank was right. Maybe Sally would be rich someday—and him too as her husband. They could buy a new house in a development, take trips to Disneyland with the kids, eat out, everything. He grinned.

  Jed drove slowly through the streets where he’d spent his whole life, past the house where he’d grown up. He could recite the life histories of most people here. He liked knowing each day exactly who he’d see and what he’d be doing. Hardly ever did he have to face anything he hadn’t planned on.

  He smiled thinking about making love that morning right after the alarm went off. He’d woke up with a big hard-on, had just rolled over and put it to her. He liked it best in the morning, when he was rested. And since he had to go to work, it had to be over with fast. At night and on the weekends you had to go into all that do-you-really-really-love-me junk that sometimes made jerking off seem preferable. He didn’t understand why Sally couldn’t just take it for granted that he really really loved her. Why did they have to go over it time after time? It was like the Lord’s Prayer at church—after a while it stopped meaning anything. The secret agent in the paperback he was reading said, “I’ve never told any woman I love her. I don’t know if I’ll even be alive tomorrow, and it’s not fair to let you think you can count on me. But if only my life were like other men’s, believe me, Rachel, I would want to spend it with you.” Coach Clancy used to say, “A woman gets hooked on love like a junkie on dope. But don’t let them pass their habit on to you, men.”

  He pulled into the parking space next to Raymond’s battered army surplus Jeep. It was weird having Raymond back. He’d driven out last week to the crumbling house Raymond had rented on an abandoned farm in the hills on the way to Kentucky. He was rebuilding the house and sheds, had planted a garden, bought a cow. Lived all by himself. What he did for pussy out there in the boonies was a mystery. But that never had been one of old Raymond’s major interests. Couldn’t have been with a girl like Emily. She was about as sexy as a telephone pole. Raymond had cut his hair off, shaved his mustache, went around in coveralls like everyone else. When he was up in New York City, he used to be some kind of beatnik or something. But now he tried to chat and joke with the folks at the mill. He’d gotten rid of his Yankee accent. Sometimes he sounded more country than real country people. It was almost embarrassing. That boy should of been an actor or something. The whole town had been pretty shocked when his Newland High graduation picture had been all over the newspapers and on the TV right after he got beat up. You knew they was shocked because nobody mentioned it. They pretended like it hadn’t happened, like a Newland boy hadn’t really been working for a bunch of Yankee Communists. Jed felt like Raymond probably got what he deserved. Looked like Raymond felt that way himself now,
and was turning over a new leaf.

  He talked some junk the other night about “the strength of Southern working people being based on their connection with the soil.” If they didn’t like how they was being treated on the job, they’d quit—because they could grow food in their gardens and hunt in their woods.

  “When’s the last time you shot a deer, Raymond?” Raymond had always had all these big theories that didn’t have nothing to do with what he actually did.

  “Yeah, you’re right, baby brother. But I’ve come home to stay now.” Jed tried to act glad. “But anyway, what I’m saying is that we don’t have to be lackeys to no Yankee capitalists.”

  “What’s that—lackeys?”

  “Servants.”

  “Shoot,” Jed said, spitting into the stone fireplace. “I don’t know bout you, buddy, but I ain’t nobody’s servant”

  Raymond glanced up from the stick he was whittling on. “That’s what you think.”

  “All right, whose then?”

  “The shareholders of Arnold Fiber Corporation.”

  “Shit, man, I ain’t serving no shareholders. I don’t even know no shareholders.”

  “You know Prince, don’t you? And that guy from New York. What’s his name—Mackay? They put money into the mill and then get back a share of the profits without doing any work.”

  “Prince and Mackay work damn hard.”

  “Well, that’s debatable. But lots of shareholders don’t. They sit on their asses in New York City yacht clubs and get checks in the mail.”

  “Naw, you’re lying.” He’d looked up to Raymond when they were kids, but it seemed like Jed had grown up, taken on marriage and a family and responsibilities, and Raymond was still just a jerky snotnosed kid who told fibs about half the time. But Jed was never sure which half.

  “It’s the truth, Jed. I swear it.”

  “Don’t hardly seem fair.” “That’s what I been trying to tell you.”

  Jed thought this over on the drive home and decided it was so unlikely Mr. Prince would do his workers that way that it couldn’t possibly be true. Though he did wonder if Raymond wasn’t maybe connected up with them union people and down here to stir up trouble, just like he’d been doing all his life. He began watching Raymond around the mill, but he was acting so normal-like and eager to fit in that Jed began to feel guilty about being suspicious of his own brother. But rumors was circulating that the union was making another try. Their efforts came in waves, like locusts. The first time was in the thirties. One of his father’s stories concerned the mill men dragging the organizers out of their boarding house and carting them to the town line, singing “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”

  In the fifties an organizer disguised as an insurance salesman had leafleted the mill and started setting up an organizing committee. His father and some others began driving down to the Howard Johnson Motel every night and shining their high beams through the organizer’s window and throwing pebbles, to keep him awake and nervous all night. He didn’t take the hint, so they came at him in the mill parking lot one afternoon with tire irons and crowbars. While he jumped in his car and locked the doors and revved his engine, they let the air out of his tires.

  “He looked so scared,” his father would relate with a grin, “I have to laugh even now. You know, Yankees is scared to death of the South to start with. They get fed so many tales about us savages down here. You kindly hate to disappoint them.”

  As he got out of the Chevy, Jed straightened his tie. Mackay was requiring all supervisory personnel to wear dress shirts and ties now under their coveralls. At first, his father insisted he’d gotten along just fine for thirty-five years without wearing no goddam tie to get caught in a roller and strangle him to death. But Mr. Prince took him aside, and he’d been wearing one ever since. Jed actually liked wearing one. Seemed like he got more respect from his workers.

  Jed nodded and waved to people as he walked from the locker room through the breaking and carding rooms to the spinning room, where he was assisting the foreman Mr. Meaker. He’d been assigned to several months in almost all the rooms by now. It looked likely he’d be foreman of his own room before long. One night a week he went to foreman class, where you learned how to handle your workers. He knew that some who’d been at the mill for a long time resented him. They sometimes made jokes about how they wished they could have married the boss’s daughter. That may have been partly why he was given this special treatment. But it was also that his father had been there thirty-five years and was a strong company man. Also, a lot of the workers was women, and of course you couldn’t have no woman running a room. Although some of them sure acted like they owned the place—Mabel Pritchard, for one. Now there was a ball-breaker for you. Even if she had taught him Sunday School when he was six. Yesterday she’d disputed a plan he’d come up with for staggering breaks. He’d called her over.

  “Seems like you think you run this place, Mrs. Pritchard.”

  “I don’t have no ambitions to run nothing but my own life, Mr. Tatro. But I do aim to do that.” She had real thin frizzy red hair, kind of like Sally’s pubic hair.

  “I wonder do you realize who’s in charge of this here room, Mrs. Pritchard.”

  “I realize you and Mr. Meaker is running this room. Now you tell me what you want done regarding the spinning of thread, Mr. Tatro, and I’ll do hit.”

  If she’d been a man, he’d of busted her in her smart mouth. (This was what he was learning how not to do in foreman class. The teacher told him he had to learn how to control his “gunslinger mentality.” Jed had been flattered. He didn’t see it was necessarily something that should be got rid of.) The way she threw her head back and glared at him as she talked. Ranks of bossy women marched through his brain—his mother, Ruby, Kathryn, Emily, Betty Boobs, twelve years of schoolteachers and Sunday School teachers. He felt almost like a helpless little boy again. But no goddam woman was going to tell him what to do now that he was a grown man, and almost a foreman. Women! Like Coach Clancy said: They was good for two things, and one was to get your meals on the table.

  He was just glad he’d played ball in high school and learned how to grit his teeth and eat some crow and get the job done. Like Coach Clancy said, you had to direct your anger into constructive channels. “Go out on that ball field and bust some heads. Or take your girl into the woods and fuck the cunt out of her. But I don’t want to see no fists flying between my athletes.”

  Besides, you couldn’t hit no woman. “Now you get on back over there, Mrs. Pritchard, and you do your job,” he said in a choked voice, his face flaming red.

  “Let me tell you something, Mr. Tatro: that was exactly what I was a-doing when you interrupted me.”

  Their eyes locked. She called herself a woman. Shit, he’d have to see her cunt first to believe it. More and more he saw how lucky he was to have Sally. She never disagreed with him, always tried to please him. Some nights he’d come home growling like a grizzly and she’d set him down, and rub his neck and shoulders, and turn on the TV, and bring him his supper. She’d bathe the kids and bring them to him, all clean and powdered, to kiss goodnight. And once they was asleep, she’d lead him to their bed, and he’d roll into the warmth of her arms, while she whispered how much she loved him. He sometimes had to act all tough and mean at work so bitches like Mrs. Pritchard didn’t think they could take over. But Sally let him be what he really was underneath—firm but fair, and a little bit shy. She gave him the strength to get up the next morning and go back to the mill.

  People was all the time saying how easy he had it just watching other people work. The truth was that doing the work was easy. Getting people to do it right was what was hard. All his sympathies was with the foremen and supervisors and managers. Trash like Mrs. Pritchard left it all behind them when they punched the clock and walked out the door. But management took their problems home. He was getting used to this kind of responsibility, had to if he was going to be a foreman.

  H
e waved across the room to Betty Boobs, who’d just arrived. She’d put on some weight since marrying Hank right after high school. Even those green coveralls couldn’t conceal her huge tits. She used to be a good time, but he’d reformed since marrying Sally and didn’t run around on her anymore, although Sally pretended not to believe it and pouted if he stopped off for a beer after work. Even to go to Raymond’s the other night, he’d had to bring Raymond in from the car to verify his story. Raymond had looked at them like they was crazy. But poor old Raymond had probably never been in love himself. It made Jed feel good to have Sally worrying over him, and sometimes he dawdled in the locker room and parking lot to keep her guessing. She got real sexy on such nights and would sometimes even blow him. It was a funny thing: He loved that when it was actually going on. It was damn nice just to lie back and let it happen. But after it was over with, he’d feel terrible and jump up and smoke cigarettes and be mean to her and refuse to hold her. He couldn’t stand knowing she’d seen him all helpless on his back and whimpering like that. And he couldn’t stand the idea of her performing on him like some kind of high-paid hooker.

  Every now and then him and Betty Boobs exchanged a look that indicated neither had forgotten their good times. It was strange having her married to his best friend. Did she talk to Hank about how he screwed? What did she tell him? That he was pretty good at it? Or not? Was he or wasn’t he, he often asked himself. As he gazed at Betty, bursting out of her coveralls, he wished he could get Sally to show more enthusiasm, like Betty used to. Screwing Sally was like screwing a corpse. He studied the V where Betty’s coverall legs joined. Her cunt had a way of tightening around you so you wondered if you’d ever get out again. Both Hank and him had pushed their dicks time after time into that dark tight slimy hole. His breathing quickened.

  He felt ashamed. He was a married man now. Betty was his best friend’s wife. What he’d been thinking was sinful. As for wishing Sally would behave as Betty had … In high school Betty had been nothing but a whore. That was a horrible thing to think about your own wife—particularly such a sweet girl, who was so good to their children. Sally was a saint. He was a monster to be having such lustful thoughts about her.