I was taking a big sniff when I felt the toe of Roderick’s shoe in my side.
“Get up, whale butt,” he said. Immediately, the God smell left. “What are you doing down there? You’re mentally unstable; do you realize that? Somebody’s going to lock you up one day; I’m not kidding.” To prove that I was of sound mind and that I could not be ordered around, I had to stay on my belly in the dirt, pretending to be occupied with something mysterious and important, while he prodded me with the toe of his shoe. This continued until Henry walked by, his arms full of luggage, and ordered us to stop it, whatever we were doing.
Florida and Grandmother came around the corner of the house, with Puff behind them, tugging on his rhinestone leash. He, too, was sniffing the ground, beside himself with the wild new scents. When a cow mooed in the distance, he strained against the leash, pulling himself up to his hind legs and yip-ping madly. His bow was long gone. Ignoring him, Florida paused again at the nasturtiums.
“Mine dried right up,” she said. “Did you have any trouble with the petunias?”
“The tenant’s cat got most of ‘em. Never seen a cat eat flowers before. She come down here and says I killed it.” Brack, who had made his way back across the lawn and was maneuvering up the concrete steps to open the screen door, said something no one could hear.
“What’s that, Daddy?”
“Addled,” he said, allowing Henry to get the door for him.
“She had a black eye—that man batters her—says she’s married to him, but I don’t reckon she is.”
“Hush,” said Florida. “We don’t need to hear all about that.”
“Last week she had a fellow up there drinking and carrying on . . .”
“Addled,” said Brack again. “That cat sucked eggs like a dog.”
“Is that right?” said Henry. “Watch your step.”
“Why don’t you evict her and get a new tenant,” suggested Florida.
“Oh honey! They’s all just white trash. Carrying on.” Her voice trailed off into despair. “You don’t know how we do when y’all are gone away.”
“I guess not,” said Florida briskly. She looked at me. “How did you get so dirty?”
“Wallowing in the dirt, of course.” said Roderick. “Oink, oink.”
“Come on in, Henry,” said Mrs. Deleuth as he held the door for her. “I’ll have dinner directly.”
“I hope you didn’t go to any trouble.”
“Pshaw,” she said. Henry continued to hold the screen door, scrolled with a large d, as we filed into the low dining room. In the corner sat a diesel stove, and for the occasion, the cherry table was covered with a pale-blue vinyl cloth. Beside the door were the section of newspaper where Daddy-Go kept his brogans and the sixteen-penny nail where he hung his hat.
Two steps led up from the dining room into the parlor, where Grandmother and Daddy-Go slept on a heavy old mahogany bed. The headboard was elaborately carved with birds perched on a winding vine; some of them balanced grapes in their beaks. Brack’s mother had purchased the bed for five dollars, and it was too big to carry any further into the house.
Everything in the house was heavy: the cast iron stoves in the parlor and back bedroom bent the floorboards, and the wood that Henry brought in at night clunked down heavily beside them. We were all heavy in the featherbeds, sinking down and down and down. In the summer, Roderick and I slept in cots on the back porch, but even then our quilts weighed down on us, making it difficult to move our arms and legs. I dreamed that I was a hummingbird weighted down with the wings of an eagle. Roderick dreamed that he he was trapped under the hull of a boat.
The doors in this house did swing airily, closing with a gentle, precise click like the doors at Owl Aerie. These doors were made of oak slats, hung on cast iron hinges, and closed with latches. Closing a door at the Deleuth house was a momentous act. Separated by one of these doors, we felt the cool hollow of each other’s absence. Likewise, when a door creaked open, and someone entered the room, everything shifted.
At Owl Aerie, since we had no neighbors, Florida left the windows uncovered to take advantage of the view, but on the farm in Red Cavern, even though the nearest neighbor was five miles down the road, Grandmother pulled yellowed shades over the long windows, and at night, drew the dusty velvet drapes across them. The dust in the Deleuth house was thick and permanent. Over the years, it had settled deep into the folds of the wool rugs, the velvet drapes, the quilts, and even the clothing, so that everything became the same heavy, muted, nameless color. I liked the dust; it smelled faintly of the yard, but Roderick suffered in the thick air. After a few hours in the house, he’d begin to wheeze, and after a day or so, he was squirting his inhaler every fifteen minutes, struggling to breathe. If he went into the barn he had an out-and-out asthma attack. Florida hovered over him until he ordered her to leave him alone; then she lectured Grandmother about housekeeping.
Many years back, a clean-shaven young man in a new suit had come by the farm with a Kirby vacuum cleaner, which he demonstrated on the parlor floor. Grandmother, who let anyone in the door—except the tenants—was so embarrassed at the sight of this strange man cleaning her house that she pulled out her worn leather coin purse and bought the Kirby. When he was gone, and she tried the machine herself, it became clear why they’d sent a man to the job. The Kirby was a monster—a gleaming, flashing, screaming ton of lead. When Florida got married, Grandmother gave it to her and let the dust settle in peace.
Time was heavy on the farm. Every half hour, a yellow door sprang open in the cuckoo clock that hung on the parlor wall. A bird sprang out, screeching “Cuckoo!” It was an insane and ponderous cry, heavy with doom, like the crow of the rooster on cold black mornings.
At the side of the house was a cast iron dinner bell that Roderick had to pull with both arms. Then the pendulum swung—dong, dong, dong—loud enough to crack the sky, and it would not stop. That afternoon, even after Henry went outside to stop the noise, the bell rang inside the house, in our ears, dong, dong, dong.
GRANDMOTHER DELEUTH, WHO was eighty-one that year, had the habit of picking up a story wherever she’d last dropped it in her thoughts. As she moved around the kitchen preparing dinner, she suddenly shouted to Florida, “Fell sick and said he never was no account no way.”
“Mother,” said Florida firmly. “Who, what, when, and where.”
Grandmother was impervious to the criticism of her story. She raised her voice, yelling impatiently, “Your cousin Frank’s youngest sister! Who married the Thompson boy with the game leg. He run off with Perry Marvin when he was a boy— out to Deer Creek with his Daddy’s gun, and they got to fussing and fighting over a gal over in Louisville and the Marvin boy shot him. Franklin D. Deleuth, honey!”
“We can’t read your mind,” said Florida coolly. “Did you make biscuit?”
“Yes, Sister,” she said, flustered now, but determined to finish her story. Moving from cupboard to cupboard, she shouted out, “She said she’d like as not butcher them hogs after the boy fell sick and couldn’t tend to them.”
“Who got sick? Frank?”
“No, honey, Frank’s boy, Moses. Irma Jean’s son. The one that drinks. Your uncle Evange Lyle has been out there a time or two to preach to him, but that boy’s no account, I was telling you. Never has been.” She went to the back porch and came back with a ham. “Irma Jean brought this ham—I carried it out of the springhouse this morning to let it soak. I don’t know if y’all will like it or not. I told her not to butcher them hogs afore the frost—they oversalt ‘em.”
“I just want to eat your biscuit,” said Florida. “Nobody makes biscuit like you do.”
“Pshaw. I used to cook, but I forgot.”
Chapter Four
I WAS IN the final stages of starvation, dying quietly on the musty parlor floor, when Grandmother came out of the kitchen in her flour-covered apron, walked halfway across the dining-room floor, and hollered, “Yoo-hoo! Y’all come on while it’s hot!” Fl
orida came right behind her, calling, “Yoo-hoo, Henry! Roderick! Louise! Supper! Somebody get Daddy out of his chair. Y’all come on now.”
The dining-room table was laden: fried chicken, sliced ham, creamed potatoes, gravy in a boat, butter beans, corn on the cob, bright red tomatoes, pickles in a dusty mason jar, biscuits steaming under a dish towel, a jar of sorghum, and a pitcher of sweet iced tea with melting ice. The cranberry jelly, still showing the rings of the metal can, quivered on its china dish when Daddy-Go let go of Henry’s arm and sat down heavily in his chair.
“—thought y’all weren’t coming today,” said Grandmother. “Well, Henry ran out of gas.”
“Henry, butter you a biscuit before they get cold. Brack, put that bib on before you spill gravy down your shirt. Like to fell over dead last night when I saw that cow coming around the yard—”
“Mother. What cow?”
“Celestine’s cow, honey. I told you. Her Angus broke that fence and—”
“Let me help you, sir,” said Henry, unfolding a paper napkin to tuck into Daddy-Go’s collar.
“Uncle Lyle went down there to fix it, but she claimed she didn’t have no money to pay him. Claimed their tobacco did poorly. Now she’s always lived in a brick house. Orders her dresses from Louisville.”
“Slow down, Mother. No one can follow you.”
“I said, her black Angus.”
“Whose black Angus!”
“Honey. Lyle’s wife’s sister Celestine that fell down that well when she was your age.”
“Mother, I’m forty.”
“Well, y’all played together. Preacher-man. Your cousin Estelle married his half brother and had a chile that died.”
“Oh, you’re talking about Evange Lyle. He’s a character. I’d like Henry and the children to meet him. He’s always been out of town when we visit.”
“He goes and goes. I never saw anything like it.”
“Roderick, get that dog away from the table.”
“Y’all don’t set her out?”
“Puff is a boy, Mother. No, he can’t go outside by himself. He’s an inside dog. A toy poodle.”
“I reckon,” said Grandmother. She passed the butter beans then paused to stare down at Puff, who sat up on his hind legs, front paws dipping daintily. Florida had put a fresh bow in his topknot. Frowning, Grandmother nudged him with the toe of her shoe, as if he were a big barn rat whose costume would fall off.
“Oooh, Mother,” said Florida. “I sure have missed your biscuit.”
“I quit trying to cook,” said Grandmother.
“They’re as light as angel wings,” said Henry, taking another one from the basket.
Daddy-Go, seated at the head of the table and staring blindly down the center, held an angel wing in his big trembling hand. Melted butter and sorghum dripped onto the napkin tucked into his collar.
“Eat that biscuit ‘fore it gets all down your shirt,” said Grandmother. “He’s just like a baby.”
The biscuit dripped. Daddy-Go spoke slowly, panting, as if he were lugging each word from a gravel pit.
“I was born in this house, and I aim to die in it.”
We all looked at him, startled, except for Grandmother, who said, “Hush that, Brack!” and went to the stove to get more corn. “Y’all don’t know how he does me when y’all ain’t here,” she said, shuffling back into the dining room with a platter of steaming corncobs. “Like to worry me to death.”
Daddy-Go continued, “I was born in the parlor bed, and I aim to die in it.”
“How he curses me,” said Grandmother, beginning to cry. “You all don’t know.”
“Hush, Mother. Don’t start that. We just got here. Let’s have a nice dinner.”
“Curses the farm and the day I was born,” said Grandmother with tears running down her soft, creased cheeks.
Sitting up straighter in her chair, Florida asked Roderick to pass her the ham. Then she said sternly, “Let’s talk about something pleasant.”
“I can’t,” said Grandmother.
“Try,” said Florida. “You’ve got two fine grandchildren sitting here. Don’t you have something nice to say to them?”
She gave Roderick and me a wan, damp smile then brought up her favorite subject—death.
“We just set up here and fret until the sun goes down, when y’all ain’t here. I guess the good Lord is gonna take us away afore long. We ain’t no use to nobody.”
“Aw,” said Henry cheerfully, “I think you’ve got a few years on you yet.”
“Life is strange, but death is certain,” she replied.
Daddy-Go reiterated his request to die at home, in the parlor bed where he was born, and then, for a while, no one had anything to say.
I liked Grandmother’s corn because into each end of the cob she inserted tiny yellow forks in the shape of corncobs, so we wouldn’t burn our fingers. I was turning my cob by the tines, methodically devouring each line of plump yellow kernels while trying to catching the warm, dripping butter with my tongue, when I looked up and caught her eye. Like most country people, she stared. She stared with the frankness of a cow or a dog or a child, having never acquired the complex art of pretending not to look. It had taken me years to master the subtleties of averting my eyes, dipping my chin, lowering my eyelids, and otherwise disguising my intention to see what I wanted to see, and even now, I sometimes blundered, blushing red hot when Florida chastised me. Therefore, Grandmother’s stare offended me. She was rude. I looked away and continued eating my corn.
Still staring, she said, “Look at them hands.”
“She has pretty hands,” Florida said loudly. “I wish I had hands like that. Mine are all beat up from painting and gardening. Henry wants me to wear gloves, but I won’t do it.”
Self-consciously, I set the corncob down on my plate and wiped my hands on the napkin, hiding my painted fingernails in the folds. Suddenly I was terrified that someone would say aloud, Good Morning Peach. Why had I ever painted my nails? Drew St. John didn’t paint her nails. The very thought would disgust her. I hated myself. I hated Grandmother, so I stared back at her with narrowed eyes. Her face was shattered with lines, like a hard-boiled egg that had been tapped against the edge of the sink.
“Look at them white hands,” she said.
“She has a name,” said Florida. “Don’t call her ‘she.’ Her name is Louise.”
“She ain’t never worked a day in her life,” said Grandmother. “She’s a lady.”
From Henry this was a compliment; from Grandmother, it was not. Either way, I loathed the word. Young lady, Ladies’ Room, Lady Fingers. I ran from the table, slamming the back door so hard that Daddy-Go’s hat fell off the nail.
THERE WAS NOTHING new at the farm, and nothing separate. The news on TV sounded old, caught with rusting rabbit ears and spit out through crackling voices on a fuzzy screen. The telephone was on a party line; when you lifted the heavy black receiver, you had to wait your turn. In the sepia-colored photographs, curling at the edges, even the babies were old, dressed up like miniature adults and staring into the camera with sad, wise eyes. And everybody was kin to everybody; even the cows had cousins up the road.
The oldest thing on the farm was the cave. It ran under the road in a narrow wet tunnel and broke open in the corner of the back pasture. I went there after Grandmother called me a lady, slipping through the barbed-wire fence and sprinting across the rough field to what looked like a pile of rock. When Florida was a girl, the county had blown the cave up with dynamite, to make the road, but there was still a round, dry room with stalactites hanging from the ceiling like light fixtures. On one wall, you could make out the sketch of a tail and a hind leg, carved by Indians. Florida, who had seen the whole wall before it was blown up, said that it was a deer. Every year, for as long as I could remember, Roderick and I had collected arrowheads in the field; we brought home jars of them, but they always got lost. I found one that day, lodged into a crack in the wall, and held it in my fist as I
cried. Everything was old but me.
After a while, pressing my thumb into the smooth cuts of the flint, I began to think about Mr. Rutherford, and how we might live here together, as Indians. I’d pour some more sand on the floor, and sweep it smooth every morning. He’d let his hair grow and braid it. Our skin would be dark and smooth, our eyes black and clear and smart. We’d wear short, soft deer-skin skirts and cook our venison on sticks. At night, in the blackness that sucks your breath out, we’d kiss.
I looked at the back wall of the cave, into the black hole that led to the tunnel under the road. From far away, out in the pasture, I could hear Florida calling. I rubbed the arrowhead, gunning up my courage, then I tossed it to the floor and went headfirst into the hole.
It was as black as a Kentucky night. I couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling or my hands as they slapped against the wet rock. Immediately, I lost my sense of direction. As I crept forward, the ceiling lowered, forcing me down further on my knees until my head scraped, and I had to slide onto my belly. I squirmed along until I hit a wall. Then I panicked. I felt the walls at my elbows slowly squeezing in, felt how they would crush my ribs together. There must be, by now, a road on top of my head, maybe a cattle truck rumbling over it, and my head ached, as if I held it all up. What if I got stuck?
Gingerly, I tapped one hand along the slimy floor, bracing myself for the squish of a snake, or the knock of bones. All I could think was, No air! No air! No air! My muscles tightened, ready to spring, but I couldn’t move. Gradually, my arm found an opening, and I pulled myself through it. I pulled with my elbows, scraping my knees, and then I turned a corner. Suddenly, there was light. Florida stood in the weeds, clapping.
The School of Beauty and Charm Page 7