The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  “I was watching that, honey,” Sally murmured.

  “And now you ain’t.” She glanced at him and went to put the baby down for her nap. Joey wandered in from the bathroom, naked except for a stained T-shirt. His tiny penis was erect—a fact he seemed unaware of and uninterested in. The two men laughed, breaking their strained silence.

  “Like father, like son,” Hank exclaimed.

  “You’ll be having you a good time with that in a few years, son!” He instantly erased from his mind the sudden awareness that Hank and he had had erections during the backyard clinch. Joey looked up questioningly, smiled, eager to please, then toddled out.

  After lunch they sat drinking beer and smoking and watching the basketball game. Six of the ten players were Negroes.

  “What do you reckon them jigs earn in a year?” Jed muttered.

  “Fifty, sixty thou, easy.”

  Jed digested this. Close to ten times what he earned, and he thought he was doing pretty good.

  “At least it keeps them off the welfare and out of prison,” Hank added.

  “Motherfucking coons.”

  “Yeah, but they’re good ball players. Shit, did you see that one-handed jump shot?”

  Jed sat in silence, hating them. Their dark bodies, gleaming with sweat, stretched and strained toward the net, muscles rippling. Four of them in pursuit of a rebound rose into the air in unison, their long limbs floating upward and intertwining, their torsos twisting and turning and colliding. His breathing quickened. “Did you hear the one about the nigger and the deodorant bottle?” he asked, jumping up.

  Hank nodded no and Jed told it as they walked out the back door and returned to their hammering. Joey came out and picked up his hammer and began hammering the bright yellow jonquils growing next to the house.

  “Hey, Joey, what you doing?” Jed yelled. “Stop that!”

  Joey looked up, hammer poised. “Naughty flowers! Joey not like flowers!”

  Hank and Jed laughed. Jed took away the hammer. “You don’t hit them, Jo-jo. You pick them.” He handed him a bunch. “Now go give them to Mommy and Laura, and they’ll put them in water and make our house pretty.”

  After church the next day they sat at dinner with his parents and Raymond, who had refused to go to church.

  “Same old Raymond,” Jed was saying with a grin.

  “I just never will understand, Junior,” their mother moaned as she moved from kitchen to table with loaded serving plates, “what you got against the Lord.”

  Raymond paused, a forkful of rice and gravy almost to his mouth. “You get all wrapped up in the world to come, and it takes your attention away from changing things in this world.”

  Jed sat back and folded his hands across his starched white shirt front and gave a long-suffering sigh. “Things ain’t so terrible like they is.”

  “They could be better,” Raymond muttered, his mouth full.

  “Junior, don’t talk with your mouth full,” his mother said.

  “Yeah, and apples could be redder,” Jed remarked.

  “Apples is red. But apples is also green or yellow. And there’s pears and peaches and plums too. The way things is set up ain’t the only way they could be.”

  “How they are is fine with me,” said Jed, chewing. Ah hell, Raymond had climbed on his hobby horse again, like he did every goddam time you was with him.

  “Jed honey, don’t talk with food in your mouth,” his mother murmured.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You ain’t running golblamed machines all day every day. Going cross-eyed watching spindles turn. Counting the minutes till the shift’s over with.”

  “If you don’t like it, you know where the door’s at.” Why Raymond stayed at the mill if he hated it so much was what Jed couldn’t figure out. Why he came back to Newland in the first place. Nobody had missed him while he’d been gone.

  “That ain’t the point.”

  Jed clamped his mouth shut, determined not to ask what the point was. If he did, Raymond would never shut up.

  “The point is,” said Raymond, needing prompting from no one, “the Yankee capitalists moved in after Reconstruction and took over the plantation system. They turned some of us into overseers and the rest into wage slaves.”

  “What’s your uncle over there talking about, Joey?” Mr. Tatro asked the child at his elbow, who was mashing together rice and butter beans with his fingers. Joey looked up and smiled. “I declare, I never saw such a flirt,” announced Mr. Tatro. “I do believe he takes after his mama.” Sally and Mr. Tatro exchanged smiles. Mrs. Tatro stood behind her husband, her hands on his chair back. “For the Lord’s sake, sit down, Mother. You make me nervous back there.”

  “I can’t help it, Raymond. I just don’t feel right setting while my men is eating.”

  Mr. Tatro gestured behind him with his fork. “Now there’s an old-fashioned country woman for you, boys. That’s the trouble with you young people. No respect. Time was when the younger men over to the mill would let their supervisors win at softball. You’d get an older man who ran the weave room up to bat, and you’d pitch slower. Maybe you’d let him get on base when you could of throwed him out easy. But showing respect was more important than winning ball games. Seem like everything nowadays is strife and struggle. Lord, boys, I tell you, I hate to see it happen.”

  “Coach Clancy used to say a good ball team was like a Continental Mark IV car,” said Jed. “You had all different kinds of parts, but if any one wasn’t doing their job the car wouldn’t run.”

  Raymond looked at them as though they were the Missing Link. “Yall is playing by the old rules. But they done gone and switched games, and you don’t even know it.”

  “Come on, Sally,” Mrs. Tatro said softly. “Let’s you and me go set in the living room and let the men folk do their talking.” Sally got up and unhitched Laura from her high chair. Joey looked back and forth between the two groups, then scrambled down and followed his mother.

  “The way I figure it, Raymond,” said Jed, “is that you gon feel real different when you get you a mortgage and a wife and some kids.”

  Mr. Tatro laughed. “Ain’t it the truth?”

  “Ah, shit,” said Raymond. “I can’t get nobody at this table to talk serious.”

  “Just cause we don’t agree with you means we ain’t serious?” demanded Jed, jutting out his chin. He clenched his fists under the table. Raymond was like a mosquito. Made you want to swat him.

  “It’s the way yall talk. Darting all over the place like mice in a maze.”

  “Well, some of us ain’t blessed with your exposure to the temples of learning in New York City, Junior,” Mr. Tatro replied. “I’m truly sorry we ain’t up to your level of discourse, but I reckon you’ll just have to babble along with us hillbillies. Or go back up there with your interlechurl Yankee friends.”

  “I’m sorry,” Raymond muttered. “I didn’t mean that.”

  Mrs. Tatro was saying, “Well, Sally, I just don’t know why we can’t get along any better.”

  “I don’t either, Mother Tatro. Lord knows I’ve tried. I get along pretty good with everyone else …” Mr. Tatro and Jed exchanged glances.

  “Now I know for a fact that ain’t true, Sally Tatro. Why, just the other day I was talking with Ellen Louise Smithey, and she said you and her quarreled something terrible last June …”

  Laura crawled up in Jed’s lap. “Sally, this baby’s wet!” He held her at arm’s length with an expression of distaste, until Sally ran in and took her.

  “… now that’s just what I mean about respect,” Mr. Tatro was saying. “Where is your respect at, you young people today?”

  “Sally’s trying, Dad, she really is. Why, she called and asked Mother for her spoon bread recipe just last month.” “Yeah, but it shouldn’t have to be a special effort. It should come natural-like. I just don’t know what this world’s coming to. I’m glad I won’t be around to see.”

  Mrs. Tatro was saying, “… and you
never wear my Christmas presents, Sally!”

  “Now that’s not true. That’s absolutely untrue.”

  “Remember those swatches you used to bring home, Dad?” asked Raymond.

  Jed and Mr. Tatro smiled, remembering the squares of each print made at the mill, hooked together through holes in their corners by a ring.

  “Yeah, we’d sort through them and know whose clothes around town were made from mill rejects.” Jed chuckled.

  “So now they’ve shut down the dye room. The weave room will be next. They’re turning us into gears on machines that spin thread. And as soon as they can, they’ll replace us with machines.”

  “Mr. Prince’ll never let that happen,” maintained Mr. Tatro.

  “It’s already happened. They’ve replaced half the old machines in the roving room and turned those people out. They’ve upped our quotas and cut down on breaks. They’re getting more work from fewer people, so they’re making more money. But have wages gone up? Lots of families here have donated three generations to the mill, and they’re bleeding us dry!”

  “Here, boy, have some more of this red meat,” Mr. Tatro said, holding out some roast beef on a serving fork and chuckling, “we don’t want you bled dry.”

  “What you’re saying,” said Jed, thrusting out his chin, “is that Mr. Prince is out to do you in? Boy, have those Yankees done a job on you! You some kind of Communist or something?” Seemed like Raymond didn’t know how to chat. He always had to be arguing or lecturing you. It drove Jed crazy.

  “No, I’m a Southerner.”

  “Well, you ain’t like any Southerner I ever saw.”

  “The only ones you’ve ever seen are in captivity.”

  Jed scowled. “Hell, I ain’t no captive. This here is America, U.S.A., not Russia. The Land of the Free.”

  “Tell that to Wall Street.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Mr. Tatro.

  “The Yankee capitalists who’ve colonized the South.”

  Jed and Mr. Tatro stared at Raymond. His eyes looked frantic behind his glasses. Jed thought he really was a little crazy. Maybe getting beat up had damaged his brain.

  “Mr. Prince and his father has been real generous to us Tatros,” Mr. Tatro pointed out. “Why, I remember the day I paid off the mortgage on this house. I called up old Mr. Prince, and he …”

  “Dad, we’ve heard this story a hundred times,” Raymond snapped.

  Jed gave him a nasty look. Raymond had no respect, that was for sure.

  “You call it generous that he lives in that huge yellow air-plain hangar on Tsali Street, and yall live down here?” Raymond demanded.

  “What’s wrong with down here?” snarled Jed. If he’d had a can of Flit, it’d have given him great pleasure to spray Raymond.

  “Listen to me, son. Excepting for Prince and his dad, yall would be up in Tatro Cove right now, eating possum meat instead of roast beef.”

  “But how long do we have to go on being grateful?”

  “For as long as the Lord sees fit to leave a single breath in your body.”

  Raymond brought his fist down on the table. The silverware clattered. “I ain’t talking about Prince, goddam it! I’m talking about an entire economic system that just rolls along, trampling anybody in the way!”

  “You look all right to me, Raymond,” Jed said, grinning. “Does Raymond look trampled to you, Daddy?”

  Mr. Tatro rocked back on his chair legs. “I declare, Junior, I believe you done stayed up North too long. Trampling. What was that Yankee song? Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.’”

  Raymond stood up. “Jesus Christ, yall are hopeless.”

  Mrs. Tatro called from the living room, “Junior, I won’t have you using our Lord’s name in vain in this house.”

  He stomped to the door and slammed it behind him.

  “Boy, he’s a mess, ain’t he?” Mr. Tatro asked of Jed.

  “Just about like always.”

  “I was kindly hoping when he came back this time, he’d of settled down some.”

  “Just wait till he gets hisself a mortgage and a wife and some kids.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it the truth? I expect he needs him the love of a good woman.”

  Jed woke up mean. He rolled over and screwed Sally before she was hardly awake. She whimpered when he jabbed her at a bad angle.

  As he pulled out, she asked in a sleepy voice, “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. Tell me, baby.”

  “Nothing.”

  “I can see something’s wrong, darling,” she said, rubbing his shoulders.

  He felt spied on. She always knew what he was feeling and thinking. He had no privacy. Even his moods couldn’t be just his own business.

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “Aw, shit, Sally, why can’t you just leave me alone? If I’m in a bad mood, I’ll get over it if you just ignore it.”

  “But I need to know if it’s something I’ve done. So I won’t do it again.”

  He didn’t know anymore whether it was something she’d done or not. But since she seemed so willing to take the rap, he started searching for dissatisfactions to lay on her. “Shit, I don’t know, Sally. It’s just that when I make love to you, it’s like screwing a corpse.”

  “But I was sound asleep, honey.”

  “Awake. Asleep. Who can tell the difference?”

  He raced into the bathroom so she wouldn’t have a chance to bring the discussion around to whether he really really loved her. Sometimes he wondered if she really really loved him. If he wasn’t paying the bills, would she have anything to do with him?

  She gazed at him throughout breakfast.

  He opened his lunch box to see what she’d packed. “Damn it, Sally. Do the sandwiches always have to be bologna?”

  “But Jed honey, you love bologna.”

  “Not ever day I don’t.”

  She looked at him, perplexed, retrieved the lunch box and refilled it with egg salad sandwiches.

  As he pecked her good-bye, Joey toddled over and tried to push his way between them. Jed pushed Joey with his foot. The damn kid was always in the way. Right from his conception. If Sally hadn’t gotten pregnant …

  “Jed honey,” Sally said, looking at him with confused hurt. She didn’t hardly have time for him anymore, in between what the babies wanted. Him and her, they couldn’t just run out to a movie. They was like servants to these tiny tyrants.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  As he got out of his car, he saw that the parking lot was blanketed with handbills. He picked one up. It said that Benson Mill was one of forty-five owned by Arnold Fiber Corporation, that Arnold employed thirty-five thousand workers, that their sales the previous year topped eight hundred and seventy-five million dollars, that fourteen million in profits went to shareholders that included fourteen banks, insurance companies, and investment companies in New York City.

  “… you are earning twenty-five to forty percent less than Arnold workers in the North. These same fellow workers also have pension plans, grievance procedures, seniority rights, maternity leave, medical benefits, safety protection, job bidding, arbitration, and dues checkoff. People up at Wall Street are getting rich off of your sweat. You are being taken advantage of by those who claim to be your friends. Stand up and be counted. Sign your union card when your local Allied Textile Workers representative contacts you.”

  Jed wadded up the leaflet and threw it down. As he headed for the door, he passed a Negro sweeping up leaflets with a push broom. Donny had disappeared back in the fall. Gone up to New York City, according to Sally, whose mother had it from Ruby. That was just about what you could expect from a jig. Couldn’t hold a job if you put it in a basket for them.

  “Good man, there.”

  “Yes sir, they sure does mess things up, these union peoples.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Seems like that somebody toted them in in their lunch p
ail. Opened the pail in the shift change when nobody wasn’t looking, and the wind just picked them right up.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Glanced at it.”

  “Well, don’t you believe it. Mr. Prince does right by us.”

  “Yes sir, I expect he does. He a fine man, Mr. Prince.”

  “What you think about all this union foolishness?” You couldn’t hardly ever tell what a jig thought about something without you asked him. A white man, his face would color, or his mouth would twitch. But a jig had a face like a cat in front of a mouse hole.

  “Ain’t studying no union.”

  “Well, that’s good, cause they don’t let coloreds join anyhow.”

  Niggers. They was now two in the breaking room. When he’d first started in, there was only one in the whole entire place—Donny, who was the janitor. They was sort of like weevils—they spread. Next thing you knew, the spinning room would be infested, then your lunchroom and your locker room. All this civilian rights shit, it couldn’t help but go to their heads.

  He never would forget that night at the Barbecue Pit last summer when this big ole Pontiac pulled up, full of jigs thinking they’d get theirselves served. The Pontiac had New York license tags, and this was round about the time when the whole area was full of Yankee Communist agitators. You’d sometimes see them around town—these smart-ass white kids in blue jeans and sweaty T-shirts, who hadn’t shaved or had a haircut all year; and these surly nigger bastards in college sweatshirts, who didn’t have the manners not to look you right in the eye when you spoke to them.

  Anyhow, there was this carload of jive-ass jigs down from New York wanting milk shakes. And setting there in the back, about to get the shit kicked out of him, scared to death, with his eyes all bugged out, was old Donny. Jed had never had a kid brother, but sometimes he felt that way about Donny—all the time having to get him out of scrapes he’d been dumb enough to get hisself into. Why Jed bothered he couldn’t of said.

  First the civilian rights assholes, and now the union turds—it got plumb exhausting trying to maintain your freedom and democratic rights in the face of all this infiltration from up North. He surveyed the room as the workers found their places. Everyone knew niggers wasn’t smart enough to run these machines. Couldn’t most white folks run them right. All the calculations and adjustments. Had to have a head on your shoulders, and a brain in that head. All niggers had was cocks—big ones, to hear it.