“There’s a trail of sorts,” he said after we parked in a small clearing between some roadside scrub trees. “Keep close to me and don’t wander off it.” His flashlight lit the way.
“Are there snakes?” I asked.
“No, not at night, but these woods are crawling with poison ivy.”
I followed his khaki form up and into the woods. Except for Harmon’s dim light ahead, everything around us was dark. It was only when I looked up that I could make out any shapes. Trees whose branches stood out against the lighter sky.
We didn’t talk. The trail was just a path of beaten-down brush and the flat rocks that bred in the hills of eastern Oklahoma were our only firm toeholds as we crept upward. It wasn’t easy going, but Harmon was in good shape and I had often accompanied Billy Roy on his hunting trips, so I knew just how to pace myself.
The trail began to angle to the left and it wasn’t as steep. Then we came to a clearing. Someone had built a rock-protected fireplace, but we passed the slabs in silence except for the rustle of the first fall leaves on the ground and went on a few hundred yards to the next clearing. It was higher up the mountain and more to the left of the first campsite.
There was another rock fireplace, but the rocks weren’t as symmetrical as the first. I recognized it as Billy Roy’s favorite campsite. Leaves covered the ground here, too, but seemed more beaten down. They didn’t rustle as much as the ones in the earlier clearing.
“The sheriff’s men really searched around here today,” Harmon explained. “There’s nothing here to see, even if you could see, that is.” He sounded almost apologetic that I wouldn’t get to see any blood stains or brain bits laying about.
That wasn’t what I went there for anyway.
“His body was found here,” Harmon pointed to a piece of ground illuminated in a circle by his flashlight. “On his back. By another hunter, but you know that.”
I wandered out of the circle of light, out of the circle of the campsite—into the woods.
Harmon aimed the light around the campsite in widening revolutions.
“Hey, where’d you go?” There was a rising panic in his voice.
“I’m here.” I stepped back into the lighted arch of his flashlight. “I just had to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh, well, what else do you want to see?” He seemed more irritated than embarrassed.
I sat down on one of the flat rocks of the campfire and judging from Harmon’s grim expression, probably right where Billy Roy’s shot head had been found.
“Nothin’. I just wanted to make sure. In my mind. I wanted to see how everything looked. I couldn’t go to sleep tonight until I knew how everythin’ looked. We can go now.” I stood up.
Harmon and I didn’t say much of nothing driving back home. This was only the beginning for the two of us and we knew it. But we couldn’t say anything yet. It wasn’t the right thing to do. We just rattled along the fireroad in silence until we came to the main highway back to town.
Like I said, it wasn’t all that far.
The pale green glow of the dash, the bouncing seats, the lateness of the hour, the secrecy of our visit: all were part of the tension that the unusual circumstances produced. There was some sexual feelings riding in that truck with us, too, gliding around us like the tree shapes along the road. The feelings and the trees were actually present, but as you came up on them, you couldn’t see them as clear as you could when you were far off.
We exchanged a formal handshake before I got out.
“Thank you for takin’ me up there. I know it seems silly, but I had to go.”
“It’s okay. I hope it helped you.”
“Oh, yes. Except I should have listened to you. I’m afraid I did get poison ivy when I went into the woods to go to the bathroom.”
“What makes you think that?”
I held my sweater-covered arms out in front of me and pushed up the sleeves. “My arms itch.”
“That’s foolish, Bonita Faye. No one gets poison ivy that quickly. It takes several hours before it starts swelling. Your sweater is probably just scratchy.” He walked me up the porch. We stood in front of the brightly lit oval glass door.
I slid the sleeves of the sweater back over my arms.
“Yes, of course, you’re right. Harmon, are you going to tell anyone…Sheriff Hoyle…or anyone about takin’ me up there tonight?”
“Nah, it was personal, wasn’t it? Isn’t it?” The question hung like an invisible line between us.
“Yes, of course. Whatever you think is best.” I ducked my head to break the thread holding us and went inside. Before I shut the door, before Harmon turned and walked away, I added, “Thank you, Harmon. It meant more to me than you’ll ever know for you to help me.”
THREE
My mama had named me Bonita Faye. It means “pretty Faye” in Spanish. I wished she had gone all the way and called me “Belle” and dropped the Faye part. I like French better than Spanish. Anything French.
When I wore my real Paris nightgown and strutted around our bedroom, Billy Roy used to roll around on the bed where he was watching me and just laugh. Then he’d say in a voice that wasn’t laughing, “Come here, Frenchy. Let me show you what us G.I.s do to little French girls.”
Only he wasn’t ever no G.I. I never did know what he did during the war. Same as he did after, I guess. Not much of nothing. Some moonshining. Guiding hunting or fishing groups of city men. Knocking around on automobiles…making those pre-war rattle-traps accelerate into a post-war world.
He was finishing a fishing trip for some Hot Springs visitors when I met up with him. They had packed their gear and driven away to take their mineral baths at the spas and Billy Roy had gone to clear out the signs of the campsite. Billy Roy weren’t that clean minded, but he wanted to make sure it was safe to come back there again for the good fishing. It was private property and Billy Roy didn’t hold the deed, but the fishermen never knew it.
So, he was kicking down the rocks that had surrounded the campfire and covering it with leaves and sticks when I crossed through the clearing he had made for his customers. It was illegal for me to be there, too, but, like Billy Roy, I knew there was good fishing in the deep water by the creek. Mama and I were hungry and the fish I caught would be the only meal we said grace over that day.
“Hey, you. What in the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he’d yelled at me. “This here’s private property.” That’s just like Billy Roy, attacking when he should of been running himself.
He was half-crouched on the ground and he threw himself out in a wide lunge to grab my ankle as I ran by. He wasn’t gentle and he scuffled awful hard to get me to be still. During his tussling he found out I weren’t no boy, though I didn’t have much girl parts to show around. His hands were rough and he felt around my body like he had a right to. Holding me down with his arm across my throat, he made sure there were no boy parts hid in my overalls.
He surprised me then. After taking some liberal dips into my anatomy, he just pulled his hand free and slapped me on my bottom.
I was pretty good at getting away from freehanded men, but Billy Roy had caught me unawares, so he had the advantage. I knew when I was caught good and was prepared to lose this one. Not expecting no leniency and getting it was what kept me from scrambling up and away from there. He couldn’t of caught me when I was prepared.
“Who are you, girl?”
“Who the hell are you?” I asked right back. I sat hunkered on my legs ready to run.
Billy Roy weren’t no Robert Taylor, but he had enough of the dark good looks that were famous in the movies to get by on. I took in his worn, dirty corduroys and buttonless flapping sleeves. A stained felt hat was worn low down on his forehead, almost to his eyes. His black eyes were the prettiest thing about him. And sometimes the ugliest. It never did matter what all he said with his mouth,
it was always the words in his eyes that I came to listen to.
When he caught me that day in the clearing, they were laughing eyes. And tired. It ain’t easy catering to high-falutin’ rich city men. He’d just spent twenty-four hours busting his ass making sure every one of them sons-of-the-city had caught a big fish to carry home on their stringers nestled down by a straw-covered block of fast-melting ice in the trunk of their big automobile. Now it was over and he had a little cash in his pocket, and the promise of more the next time they come.
Billy Roy was feeling good, not mean like he was most of the time. And I had to go and meet him when he weren’t like himself. It was like my being named Bonita instead of Belle. It was a good idea, it just wasn’t quite on the mark.
We weren’t much good in geography, so we didn’t ever know if we met in Arkansas or Oklahoma. I always meant to go back and find out for sure, but when I knew enough to know how to tell, I didn’t care enough to know after all.
Mama died when she met Billy Roy. Oh, not on the first “Howdy-do,” but not long after. She said he was weasely and crafty enough to take care of me, not that most of it would be any good, but I’d get by. And then she just up and died.
We lived hand-to-mouth in Mama’s house. She and I had found it abandoned some years ago and since no one ever said it wasn’t, we said it was ours. Now it was Billy Roy’s and mine.
We had some fun. I learned to drink whiskey. And to like doing sex. And to hide from Billy Roy when his eyes were mean.
One of his regular clients was from Mena not far from where we lived. He was a banker and was always bringing rich clients out to hunt and fish and drink so as to get them to do business with his bank.
One day, sometime in forty-eight, his big car broke down in our yard. He’d been out to arrange for Billy Roy to take another group of fellas to our special fishing hole. The one where Billy Roy and I met. It might of been private property, but no one ever showed up to claim it, so we kept on fishing it. Billy Roy said the owner probably died in the war. We felt like it was our place and would even go up there by ourselves to fish and do loving by a campfire.
Anyway, when the banker’s car broke down, Billy Roy just laughed and said, “Never you no mind, Judge, I’ll fix it up with a bang and a toot.” Billy Roy called our benefactor “Judge” ‘cause he said calling him “Banker” didn’t sound right. I guess it was all right though, ‘cause the man never corrected him.
Now when Billy Roy banged and tooted on the car so that it ran better than it had before, the Judge was impressed. It wasn’t long after that when he offered to set Billy Roy up in the automotive business. His bank had foreclosed on a service station on the highway into Mena and the Judge wanted Billy Roy to make a go of it. He made him a good deal on the profits and said we could live in the house behind the station’s office.
So that’s how we moved to town.
But I made Billy Roy marry me first. And that’s when he got me the Paris nightgown. He bought it from a real G.I. down on his luck. The soldier had really been in Paris, France, when he bought it and had carried it with him for years, looking for a ladylove to put inside it. He never found one and now, he needed cash more. Or it might of been whiskey Billy Roy traded for it. I forget.
Maybe it was just a little ole gas-station, but it was the first for-sure place I had a legal right to live in. So I started in fixing it up like it was a real home. I didn’t know no grand things to do, but I knew cleanliness helped. My mama had done some cleaning for folks in her time and she always said she didn’t know if rich folks were clean or if clean folks were rich.
My first step was to start washing up everything in sight. Billy Roy said nobody noticed if my cabinets were clean inside when the doors were closed, but I got a great satisfaction from knowing that behind them closed doors were four matching drinking glasses, sparkling on clean white butcher paper next to six unchipped blue china plates. Next I saved up and bought Fiestaware a piece at a time. I love colorful things around me.
Billy Roy didn’t care that I served potatoes in a bowl on the table instead of from the pot, but he did seem a little impressed the night he noticed two sheets on the bed. Only, of course, he put me down when he did. “Bonita Faye Burnett! What is this? A sheet on the bottom for my ass and another one on top for my tally-wacker? Now, that’s class, girl. Let’s see if I can make this top sheet stand up all by itself. Well, looky there, I did it.” Then he threw off the sheet and said, “Come here, my ‘Pretty’ Faye, you’re all the sheet I need covering me.”
That was one of the good times.
Billy Roy spent his days under cars getting grimy and greasy and I spent mine washing away the grime and grease. Whatever he brought in I scrubbed away. Even the greasy stuff he left in me.
We didn’t have no babies. And no friends. I had never had one so I didn’t miss ‘em, and Billy Roy got enough of “friends” when he would shut down the garage part and leave me pumping gas to take the Judge and his buddies off on a hunt.
I loved it when they were gone. I’d get me a grape drink from the cooler, unwrap a Hershey bar and read the magazines I’d bought in the drugstore in Mena. When a horn would honk I’d go out and fill the tanks and collect the money. When I was alone I’d go back to my stories. I didn’t just buy movie-star books either, I picked out anything that had something about France in it, whether it was a complicated news story or a Paris fashion show. I preferred the ones where they told about how post-war Paris was the place to be. That tourists were flocking by the thousands to enjoy strolling down the Champs-Elysees, nodding howdy to each other in French. The pictures, especially in LIFE, showed Americans sitting at out-side cafes drinking wine with Frenchmen wearing berets while white-aproned waiters hovered over their shoulders to see if their glasses were full.
I’d never drunk any wine, but I knew how it would taste. Like my Grapette, only more so. Someday I knew I was going to walk down that street I couldn’t pronounce. I wasn’t ready yet, but when I was, I’d go there and I’d get in a taxi, and say, “Take me to the Champs-Elysees.” And the driver would say, “Oui, madame,” and that’s where we’d go.
FOUR
Doctor Bushy wasn’t going to let me go to Billy Roy’s funeral on Thursday, but I said, “Of course, I’m going. What kind of a wife do you think I am? People aren’t going to care about what I look like. Especially since they already know everything I got in my house and what color my underwear is under my dress. A little calamine lotion ain’t going to make any difference to what they think about me now.”
“I don’t mean that, Bonita Faye. Not how you look. Although it’s a sad sight. It’s not good for you to have to get dressed and go out. This is unusually warm September weather and you’ll get to itching terrible and probably vomit again.” Doctor Bushy had come to my house three times since Patsy called him. He gave me a shot while he talked to me in the dim light of my bedroom. “This shot will help the itching, but only if you stay still and cool.”
“I don’t want something to help the itching. I want something to stop it,” I said. “And I’m going to Billy Roy’s funeral.”
“All right, all right, but only to the church. You’re not going to the cemetery. You might get complications. I swear, Bonita Faye, you got the worse case of poison ivy I ever had to treat. You’d think you wallered in it.” Doctor Bushy put the needle away in his black bag and Patsy moved into view from where she’d been watching.
I think it was Patsy. My eyes were swollen shut, but occasionally, I would make the effort to open them and through the slit of light, I could make out who was near me. I didn’t like not knowing who was in the room with me.
He left the room and Patsy helped me to dress. Because of the poison ivy and where all it was located, I didn’t need to worry about if any one knew the color of my underwear. I didn’t have any on. The dress was a lightweight maternity dress that Patsy had worn with her last pregn
ancy. She’d dyed it black and sewed a white lace collar from my yellow two-piece onto the neck. I could imagine how I looked in it, but since I couldn’t see, what did it matter anyway?
Patsy had helped me to wash my hair earlier, but there were so many bumps on my head that we couldn’t get a comb through it enough to make it look like anything. We got tickled trying to squeeze my swollen feet into a pair of her black shoes.
“Lord, I always wanted small feet like yours and now here you go and grow ones bigger than mine.” Patsy was holding on to me under my armpits, about the only place I wasn’t covered with rash and calamine. I struggled to stand up and she struggled to hold me there.
“We shouldn’t be laughing so, Bonita Faye. Not considering where we’re fixing to go.” But we just laughed harder. I know now it’s called “gallows humor”—hysterical laughter about something that’s deadly serious and not at all funny.
We settled down proper enough though when Mr. Wilson’s black limousine pulled up in front. There’s something about that black car of death rolling up to your door that makes a believer out of all skeptics. Patsy took me under one armpit and her husband Jerry took the other and we made it to the funeral car and to the church.
If there hadn’t of been a murder involved, probably nobody much would have come to Billy Roy’s funeral. But since he died like he did, you’da thought they were burying the mayor. It was that crowded. Even the Judge was there.
I didn’t see any of it. What I could have seen was blocked by the black veil Patsy had clapped on my head before we went out the front door. Sometimes when I strained my eyes open—through a tear in the net—I could see some candles flickering and a shiny reflection on Billy Roy’s gray coffin.
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